426 , NATIONAL POETRY. 



the gallant and joyous literature of the Tongue of Oil. They had, like the 

 troubadours, their scrccntois, their descors, their rotmenges ; they borrowed 

 their lays from the singers of Brittany, and were the inventors of ihejfitx- 

 partis, the fabliaux, and the contcs, all of which are thoroughly French. The 

 fabliau (metrical tale) is the best, but at the same time the most immoral, of 

 the productions of the trouveurs and jugglers who wrote in the Tongue of 

 Oil. These fabliaux are many of them masterpieces of wit and insinuation, 

 and abound in strokes of humour, while the eight-syllable lines are well 

 adapted to their style. In most of these works it is easy to trace the ancient 

 sources from which the authors borrowed their generally indecent subjects of 

 song. Others, however, were of their own invention, and these latter were 

 not the least immoral, for the trouveurs of the people were, for the most part, 

 men of dissolute life. 



Rutebeuf is the most celebrated cf these trouveurs- jugglers, and he has 

 left a mass of exquisite and witty compositions, nearly all of which are satires 

 upon the nobles, the monks, and the clergy. He is doubtless depicting his 

 own life of poverty when he describes how he and his companions journeyed 

 from castle to castle, half dead with cold and hunger, begging, often in vain, 

 to be allowed to give their poetry and music. Most of them were not more 

 exemplary in their conduct than Rutebeuf himself ; and one of them, Colin 

 Muset, made an attack upon the King, who did not, however, condescend to 

 notice his violent diatribe. But these poetic excesses were not, on the whole, 

 favourable to the trouveurs and jugglers, who soon found themselves repulsed 

 with contempt wherever they went. 



There was only one school of trouveurs, most of whom were themselves of 

 noble birth, in favour with royalty and the nobility, and it comprised such 

 men as Quenes or Conon of Bethune (Fig. 334), and Count Thibaud of Cham- 

 pagne, afterwards King of Navarre, who was the most illustrious of them all 

 (Fig. 335). This school, in fact, rivalled that of the troubadours. The songs 

 of Thibaud found their way as far as Italy, and Dante, who had got them 

 by heart, mentioned in his work, "De Vulgari Eloquentia," the King of 

 Navarre as " an excellent master in poetry." One of the pupils and rivals of 

 Thibaud of Champagne was his vassal, Gace Brule. Amongst the princes and 

 lords of whom the gallant spirit of chivalry had made poets at this epoch 

 may be mentioned the Lord of Coucy, Pierre Duke of Brittany, Jean de 

 Brienne, Guillaume de Ferrieres, Hugues de Lusignan, and many others 



