The tone is not directly communal, but it smacks more of the village dance than of the troubadour's harp; for even Bernart of Ventadour did not dare to address Eleanor save in the conventional tone of despair. The clerks and gleemen, however, and even English peasants of modern times,[18] took another view of the matter. The "clerk," that delightful vagabond who made so nice a balance between church and tavern, between breviary and love songs, has probably done more for the preservation of folk-song than all other agents known to us. In the above verses he protests a trifle or so too much about himself; let us hear him again as mere reporter for the communal lyric, in verses that he may have brought from the dance to turn into his inevitable Latin:—
Come, my darling, come to me,
I am waiting long for thee,—
I am waiting long for thee,
Come, my darling, come to me!
Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain,
Come and make me well again;—
Come and make me well again,
Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain.[19]
More graceful yet are the anonymous verses quoted in certain Latin love-letters of a manuscript at Munich; and while a few critics rebel at the notion of a folk-song, the pretty lines surely hint more of field and dance than of the study.
Thou art mine,
I am thine,
Of that may'st certain be;
Locked thou art
Within my heart,
And I have lost the key:
There must thou ever be!
Now it happens that this notion of heart and key recurs in later German folk-song. A highly popular song of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has these stanzas:[20]
For thy dear sake I'm hither come,
Sweetheart, O hear me woo!
My hope rests evermore on thee,
I love thee well and true.
Let me but be thy servant,
Thy dear love let me win;
Come, ope thy heart, my darling,
And lock me fast within!
Where my love's head is lying,
There rests a golden shrine;
And in it lies, locked hard and fast,
This fresh young heart of mine:
Oh would to God I had the key,—
I'd throw it in the Rhine;
What place on earth were more to me,
Than with my sweeting fine?
Where my love's feet are lying,
A fountain gushes cold,
And whoso tastes the fountain
Grows young and never old:
Full often at the fountain
I knelt and quenched my drouth,—
Yet tenfold rather would I kiss
My darling's rosy mouth!