Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/454

 404 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE ment of the lute and not, as among the ancient Greeks, tc that of the lyre. These lyrics of the south were, like the chansons de geste, a literature for and about the upper class in feudal society. Feudal Fully half of the troubadours whose names are southern ° f known were feudal lords or vassals. Their poems France show that social life in the south was refined, courtly, and even luxurious. Feudal marriages were gen- erally made at an early age and for family or political rea- sons, so that the ladies whom the troubadours worshiped and to whom they addressed their amorous lays seldom be- came their wives. In fact they were usually already married to some one else. Public opinion was little shocked by this circumstance, however, and it was quite common for the lady of a castle to accept some knight or troubadour as her devoted follower and protector, and to invest him in token thereof with a ring and a kiss. The story goes that when one jealous and irate husband slew the troubadour who had been making love to his wife and served his heart to her at dinner, she killed herself, and the King of Aragon, who was the overlord of both the husband and the troubadour, cast the murderer into prison for life, but buried the two lovers in the same tomb and ordained an annual festival in their honor. The sweet and musical Provencal language was admir- ably adapted to lyric poetry and enabled the troubadours Form and to express themselves both with ease and with content of «•,. . r t •, • Provencal perfection in every variety of meter and mtn- poetry ca ^ e rhyme. Besides the ordinary love-song and the lighter cansonetta, there were dancing-songs, and the serena in which the lover sighs for the coming of night, and the alba in which he laments the return of the dawn. "O God, that day should be so soon!" Their verses, moreover, did not deal exclusively with the passion of love, but might be war-songs, satires, threats of vengeance, plaints for the dead, burlesques, or dialogues and debates of an intellectual character. The troubadours