ROMANCE LANGUAGE. 



ROMANCE LANGUAGE. 



150 



of thw : " Xow that our France is all subject to one king, we are 

 obljgcd, if we wish to attain honour or fame, to speak hi* language, 

 b* our work*, however honourable anil perfect, would be thought 

 Utti* of, or might perhaps be altogether despised and neglected." 

 With the invention "I printing, copies t tin- works in the Loiigue 

 roil were speedily multiplied, while th. .xc uf tin- Troubadours re- 

 mained mostly in manuscript*, confined to .1 iY\\ libraries. In the 

 16th century it was enacted that all public act* and deeds should be 

 written in French. The Langue d'Uc, being thus restricted to the 

 mere purposes of a doinmti cnerated into various patois or 



dialecU. Still there appean . il.. v, in the 17th aud 18th 



centuries, several native poets who wrote with spirit and humour in 

 their respective patois, such as Lesagc, a LanKuedocian, whose bur- 

 lesque and frequently licentious poems were published at Montpelicr : 

 ' Le Folies de le Sage,' 1050; Ader, ' l..>u Gcntilhomme Gascoun,' 

 Toulouse. 1610, and 'Lou Catounet Gascon,' 1611; a version of 

 Homer's ' Batnchomyomachia,' in Gascon, ' La Oranoul-Batromochio,' 

 Toulouse, 1664 ; ' La Pastourale (a comedy in 4 acts) deu Paysan que 

 rerque mcvtio a ton bib,' in the dialect of Bearn by Fondeville de 

 Lascar, Pau, 1767 ; ' L'Embarros de la Kieiro de Beaucaire,' by Michel, 

 Amsterdam, 1700; 'Actes du Synode de la Sainte Reformation, 

 Mootpelirr, 1599, a satire against the Calvinists, by Reboul, a witty 

 but profligate adventurer, who was at last executed at 'Rome, under 

 pope Paul V., in September, 1611, in consequence of his undiscrimina- 

 ting satirical propensity ; ' Lou Banquet,' jar Augid, Gaillard, Paris, 

 1583 ; the ' Jardin deys Musos Provencales,' Aix, 1628 ; Ac. 



In Spain the Latin language became corrupted, though perhaps less 

 rapidly and at a later date than in Italy and France, which is proved 

 by the fact that during the 8th and '.'th centuries masters were pro- 

 cured from the Peninsula to teach that language in Italy. It is 

 another evidence of this, that till the. beginning of the 12th century, 

 Latin, though corrupt, was the only language used among the Christian 

 population of the Peninsula, not only in the acts of the cortcs and 

 councils, but also in the municipal fucros, the public edicta, diplomas, 

 testaments, and the writings of author*. It was also the language of the 

 tribunals, until San Fernando, about the middle of the 13th century, 

 caused the ' Lil-er .hulicum ' to be translated into the vulgar tongue. 



The corrupt Latin of Spain gave rise to the Cataloniau and Valen- 

 cian, the old Portuguese or Galician, and the Castilian or modem 

 Spanish. The last two, and especially the Castilian, received a con- 

 siderable admixture of Arabic words (said to be about 2000 iu the 

 Spanish language), from which the Catalonian remained comparatively 

 free. The process of corruption of the Latin into Romance was the 

 same as in France aud Italy, and may be traced even in the writings of 

 the clergy, who professed to use the literary language of the country. 

 Elipando, bishop of Toledo, a man of learning for the time, who 

 strongly opposed the introduction into Spain of the tenets of the supre- 

 macy and infallibility of the Roman see, writes to Felix, bishop of 

 Urgel, in the following style : " Domino Felice, sciente voe reddo quia 

 vcstro scripto accepi . . . .direxi vobis scriptum parvuni de fratre Mili- 

 tane .... ego vero direxi cpistolam tuam ad Cordoba," &c. 



It is impossible to fix the epochs of the origin of the various Inn- 

 guages of the Spanish peninsula. The Catalonian and Galician or old 

 Portuguese appear to be the oldest. The Castilian, notwithstanding 

 the assertion of Bouterwek to the contrary, was not formed in the llth 

 century ; its oldest existing monument, the poem of ' El Cid/ is not 

 older than the year 1200. Previous to the 12th century the Galician, 

 or old Portuguese, appears to have prevailed in all western Spain. An 

 old manuscript Cancioneiro in this dialect, belonging to the library of 

 the Royal College uf the Nobles at Lisbon, of which Sir Charles 

 Stuart obtained a copy, which ho communicated to Raynouard, speaks 

 of the Galician dialect as being spoken in Galicia and in Portugal, as 

 far south as Coimbra, in the 10th and llth centuries, after which the 

 Portuguese grew into a separate and polished dialect, which was much 

 in use for poetry among Galicians and Castilians as well as Portuguese. 

 (Raynouard, Grammaire Compare^,' Discount Prdliininaire.) 



In the ' KluciilacSo das Palavras, Termos, c Frases que em Portugal 

 antiguametito se usarao, 1 2 vols. fol., Lisbon, 1798. are other specimens 

 of old Portuguese or Galician compositions. The original text of the 

 ' Amadis de Uaula,' by Vasco de Lobeira, which is lost, was written iu 

 



The Catalonian dialect became early a literary language, and as such 

 subject to Axed grammatical rule* ; it has its grammars and diction- 

 aries, a great number of printed books, and a still greater number in 

 manuscript. It had its historians ; among others on anonymous his- 

 torian of Catalonia, mentioned by Zurita in his ' Chronicas de Aragon ; ' 

 Barnard de Sclot, who lived in the 13th century, and wrote a history 

 of the principality of Catalonia and of the Aragoneso kings subsequent 

 t the junction of the two states ; and King Jayme I. of Aragon, who 

 wrote an account of his own reign, which has been published under the 

 following title : ' Chronioa o Commentori del glorioaissim e invictissim 

 Sty Jacme Key d'Aragrf de Mallorques e de Valencia, Compte de 

 Barcelona e de I'rgcll, e dc Muntpullier, eserita per nqm-11 en sa 

 infrua natural, e tn-ila del Arehiu del molt magnificri Rational de la 

 insigue CiuUtde Valencia, hon estava custodita.' \ ,il< n.-i.i, i;,r,7 K,,,_, 

 Jayme also wrote a book ' de la Savieen ' ' on wisdom,' quoted by 

 NiooUus Antonio, in his ' Bibliotheca Vetus.' The Catalonian is rich 

 in poetry, which was introduced into the Peninsula by the Troubadours 



of Provence and Lauguedoc. Alonso II. of Aragon, in the 12th 

 century, is numbered among its poets, as well as Uuillcrmo de Bergue- 

 dan, a Catalouian noble, who lived in the following century, and some 

 of whose verses are preserved in a manuscript in the Vatican library. 

 Mosen Pero March, Jacme March, Mosen Jorde, Moscn Febler, and 

 Ausias March of Valencia, rank also among the Catalonian, Aragonese, 

 and Yulencian Troubadours. [TiiouuATOUBS.] 



The languages of Aragon and Valencia, in the time of the Aragonese 

 monarchy, may be considered as one and the same with the Catalonian. 

 It i-> worthy of venmrk, that at the end of the 13th century, when the 

 Castilian language hod already gained the preponderance in a great 

 part of Spam, we find a controversial conference between the Jews of 

 Granada and some Christian missionaries from Castile, carried on in 

 the Catalonian language, which appears to have been vernacular at 

 Granada. ('Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Barcelona,' i., p. 615.) 

 In the same Memoirs (p. 613) it is stated that the bishop of Orenso, 

 having been requested to examine what analogy there might bo 

 between the vulgar Galician and the Catalonian, answered, that there 

 were iu both, not only nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech quite 

 identical, but also entire phrases. And Terreros (in his ' Paleography') 

 and others have stated, that the language of Asturias is the same as 

 that of Galicia, bating the difference of pronunciation. 



The Catalonian, observes Raynouard, is the living language which 

 most resembles the old Romance of the Troubadours, and that of tho 

 Voldenses of Pignerol in Piedmont is the next. The following are 

 among the shades of difference between the Catalouian and the 

 Romance : 1. The Romance substantives and adjectives ending in an, 

 en, in, and n, add in Catalonian the euphonic final vowel y ; uffan, 

 a/any, atran, eitrany, &c. The plural feminine in a* is changed into e>. 

 The Catalonian often changes the s into an .r ; a.r/, />ui.r : it doubles 

 the I at the beginning and at the end of words ; a'ju/lt, l/'tc/t, lluiii/ ; it 

 sometimes changes the e into an i, especially of the Romance i 

 pies in . >', scrrint, fuijlnt, premint : it odds a final u to some 



inflections of tho verbs, &c. The Cataloniau has retained the affixes of 

 tho Romance, of which the following are specimens taken from tho 

 poems of Ausias March, the Valencian Troubadour : 



Mottra w la Hum dc vera csperanra, 

 He ns mostra Deu lo mon que vol Bnir 

 Tot mon parlar als que no KS auran vista, 

 No solament los leigs qui t venen contra. 



The popular patois or dialects of the south of France, after being 

 long neglected, have of late years attracted the attention of philologists. 

 Colomb de Batmen has given an account of the patois of Dauphine ; 

 Sainte Beuve inserted a notice in the ' Revue des Deux Mondes,' 

 vol. x., 1837, of the poems of Jasmin, the barber poet of A gen ; a 

 ' Recueil de Podsies Bearnoises,' was published at Pau in 1827. (The 

 Bearnesc dialect is a Romance and not a Basque dialect, and resembles 

 the Gascon.) The dialect of Gascony has been illustrated by the 

 Viscount de Mdtivier: 'De 1'Agriculture et du Ddfrichemeut dr.. 

 Landes,' Bordeaux, 1839; and also by Du Mege : 'Statistique des 

 Dcpartemens des Pyrdndes." The Languedocian boasts of two graceful 

 poets, brothers : ' Podsias Patouesas de P. A. et Cyr. Rigaud,' Mou ; 

 1806 ; ' Melanges sur les Laugues, Dialectes, et Patois,' Paris, 1831 ; 

 Beronie, ' Dietionnaire Patois,' Tulle, 1820; the poems of Verdid, a 

 self-instructed artisan of Bordeaux, who died in 1820 whose works, 

 full of humour and nature, are unknown beyond the precincts of his 

 native town ; an imitation of the fables of Lafoutaiue, in the dialect of 

 Limousin, by J. Foucaud, 1835; Brunei, 'Notices et Extraits de 

 quelques ouvrages dcrits en Patois du Midi de la France,' Paris, 1840 ; 

 Millin, ' Essai sur la Langue et la Littdrature Provencale," Paris, 1811 ; 

 J. Champollion Figcac, ' Nouvelles Recherches sur les Patois ou 

 Idiomes vulgaires de la France, et en particulier sur ceux du Dc'parte- 

 nient de 1'lsere, suivies d'un Essai sur la Littdrature Dauphinoise, et 

 d'uu Appendix contenant des pieces en vers et en prose pcu connues, 

 et un Vocabulaire,' Paris, 1809; Grinet, ' Vocabulairo Limousin,' 

 a dialect which resembles those of Franche Comtd and W. 

 Switzerland. 



With regard to tho ancient Langue d'Oc, or Langue Romano, the 

 most refined of all the southern dialects, but which may be considered 

 now :\n a dead language, it was illustrated in the hist century, in Italy, 

 by Bastero, ' La Crusca Provenzale ; ' and in France, by L'Abbd Millot, 

 ' Histoirc LitWraire des Troubadours,' who compiled his work from 

 the voluminous manuscript folios of M. de Sainte Palaye. Iu tho 

 present century, Raynouard has been the most industrious and most 

 successful investigator of the Romance language aud literature. 1 1 is 

 ' Lexiquo Roman, ou Diet, do la Langue des Troubadours,' was pub- 

 li.-ln d in 6 vols. Svo, Par. 1836-44. M. Honnorat has published a 

 ' Dictionnaire Provencal-Fraucaise,' or Dictionary of the Langue d'Oe, 

 ancient and modern, 2 vols. 4to, Paris, 1846-49; and O. F. Burguy a 

 ' Grammaire de la Langue d'Oil, ou grammaircs des dialectes Fr> 

 aoi XII. it. XIII. sifccles,' accompanied by a glossary, 2 vols., Berlin, 

 1853-54. Other valuable works nave also appeared, either written <>i 

 edited by Mahn, Villemarque, &c. 



In Italy, the dialect of the valleys of Piguerol, or of the Valdenses, 

 has most affinity to the old Romance. The Piedmontese, which is a 

 written language, and is spoken by all classes of people, bears also 



