Vol la regina mostrar
Qu’el’ es si amoroza.
Alavi’, alavia jelos,
Laissaz nos, laissaz nos
Ballar entre nos, entre nos[563].’
The ‘queen’ here is, of course, the festival queen or lady of the May, the regina avrillosa of the Latin writers, la reine, la mariée, l’épousée, la trimousette of popular custom[564]. The defiance of the jelos, and the desire of the queen and her maidens to dance alone, recall the conventional freedom of women from restraint in May, the month of their ancient sex-festival, and the month in which the mediaeval wife-beater still ran notable danger of a chevauchée.
The amorous note recurs in those types of minstrel song which are most directly founded upon folk models. Such are the chansons à danser with their refrains, the chansons de mal mariées, in which the ‘jalous’ is often introduced, the aubes and the pastourelles[565]. Common in all of these is the spring setting proper to the chansons of our festivals, and of the ‘queen’ or ‘king’ there is from time to time mention. The leading theme of the pastourelles is the wooing, successful or the reverse, of a shepherdess by a knight. But the shepherdess has generally also a lover of her own degree, and for this pair the names of Robin and Marion seem to have been conventionally appropriated. Robin was perhaps borrowed by the pastourelles from the widely spread refrain
‘Robins m’aime, Robins m’a:
Robins m’a demandée: si m’ara[566].’
The borrowing may, of course, have been the other way round, but the close relation of the chanson à danser with its refrain to the dance suggests that this was the earliest type of lyric minstrelsy to be evolved, as well as the closest to the folk-song pattern. The pastourelle forms a link between folk-song and drama, for towards the end of the thirteenth century Adan de la Hale, known as ‘le Bossu,’ a minstrel of Arras, wrote a Jeu de Robin et Marion, which is practically a pastourelle par personnages. The familiar theme is preserved. A knight woos Marion, who is faithful to her Robin. Repulsed, he rides away, but returns and beats Robin. All, however, ends happily with dances and jeux amongst the peasants. Adan de la Hale was one of the train of Count Robert of Artois in Italy. The play may originally have been written about 1283 for the delectation of the court of Robert’s kinsman, Charles, king of Naples, but the extant version was probably produced about 1290 at Arras, when the poet was already dead. Another hand has prefixed a dramatic prologue, the Jeu du Pèlerin, glorifying Adan, and has also made some interpolations in the text designed to localize the action near Arras. The performers are not likely to have been villagers: they may have been the members of some puy or literary society, which had taken over the celebration of the summer festival. In any case the Jeu de Robin et Marion is the earliest and not the least charming of pastoral comedies[567].