[197] On this subject, see Gaston Paris's criticism of the "Origines de la poésie lyrique en France" of Jeanroy, in the "Journal des Savants," 1892.
[198] One fact among many shows how constant was the intercourse on the Continent between Frenchmen of France and Englishmen living or travelling there, namely, the knowledge of the English language shown in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the authors of several branches of the "Roman de Renart," and the caricatures they drew of English people, which would have amused nobody if the originals of the pictures had not been familiar to all. (See Branches I^b and XIV. in Martin's edition.)
[199] Jeanroy, "Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, au moyen âge," Paris, 1889, 8vo, p. 68. An allusion in a crusade song of the twelfth century shows that this motif was already popular then. It is found also in much older poetry and more remote countries, for Jeanroy quotes a Chinese poem, written before the seventh century of our era, where, it is true, a mere cock and mere flies play the part of the Verona lark and nightingale: "It was not the cock, it was the hum of flies," or in the Latin translation of Father Lacharme: "Fallor, non cantavit gallus, sed muscarum fuit strepitus," ibid., p. 70.
On chansons written in French by Anglo-Normans, see "Mélanges de poésie anglo-normande," by P. Meyer, in "Romania," vol. iv. p. 370, and "Les Manuscrits Français de Cambridge," by the same, ibid., vol. xv.
[200] Anglo-Norman song, written in England, in the thirteenth century, "Romania," vol. xv. p. 254.
[201] "La Plainte d'amour," from a MS. in the University Library, Cambridge, GG I. 1, "Romania," ibid.
Bele Aliz matin leva,
Sun cors vesti e para,
Enz un verger s'entra,
Cink flurettes y truva,
Un chapelet fet en a
De rose flurie;
Pur Deu, trahez vus en là
Vus ki ne amez mie.
The text of the sermon, as we have it is in Latin; it has long but wrongly been attributed to Stephen Langton; printed by T. Wright in his "Biographia Britannica, Anglo-Norman period," 1846, p. 446.
[203] "Le Pélerinage de Charlemagne," eleventh century. Only one MS. has been preserved, written in England, in the thirteenth century; it has been edited by Koschwitz, "Karls des Grossen Reise nach Jerusalem und Konstantinopel," Heilbronn, 1880, 8vo. Cf. G. Paris, "La poésie française au moyen âge," 1885, p. 119, and "Romania," vol. ix.