To select capital examples from so large a body is no easy task. One or two, indeed, have "made fortune," the most famous of them being the great aubade (chief among its kind, as "En un vergier sotz folha d'albespi" is among the Provençal albas), which begins—
"Gaite de la tor,
Gardez entor
Les murs, si Deus vos voie;"[130]
and where the gaite (watcher) answers (like a Cornish watcher of the pilchards)—
"Hu! et hu! et hu! et hu!"
Then there is the group, among the oldest and the best of all, assigned to Audefroy le Bâtard—a most delectable garland, which tells how the loves of Gerard and Fair Isabel are delayed (with the refrain "et joie atent Gerars"), and how the joy comes at last; of "belle Ydoine" and her at first ill-starred passion for "li cuens [the Count] Garsiles"; of Béatrix and Guy; of Argentine, whose husband better loved another; of Guy the second, who aima Emmelot de foi—all charming pieces of early verse. And then there are hundreds of others, assigned or anonymous, in every tone, from the rather unreasonable request of the lady who demands—
"Por coi me bast mes maris?
laysette!"
immediately answering her own question by confessing that he has found her embracing her lover, and threatening further justification; through the less impudent but still not exactly correct morality of "Henri and Aiglentine," to the blameless loves of Roland and "Bele Erembors" and the moniage of "Bele Doette" after her lover's death, with the words—
"Tant mar i fustes, cuens Do, frans de nature,
por vostre aor vestrai je la haire
ne sur mon cors n'arai pelice vaire."
This conduct differs sufficiently from that of the unnamed heroine of another song, who in the sweetest and smoothest of verse bids her husband never to mind if she stays with her lover that night, for the night is very short, and he, the husband, shall have her back to-morrow!
And besides the morality, perverse or touching, the quaint manners, the charming unusual names or forms of names, Oriour, Oriolanz, Ysabiaus, Aigline,—there are delightful fancies, borrowed often since:—