of song, gay and sprightly, ordinarily a parody upon a more serious subject, and which, because it was quite frequently sung with an air of the dance accompanied by the vielle or hurdy-gurdy, their favourite instrument, was called vau-de-vielle, or as is pronounced today, vaudeville.[1]
The Italians and Spaniards, who received from the Oscan troubadours their first impulse toward poetry, would have been perhaps as limited as they, to composing amorous sonnets, madrigals or, at the most, certain vehement sylves,[2] if the Greeks, driven from their country by the conquests of Mohammed II., had not brought them the works of the ancients as I have already said. These works, explained in the chaire publique, due to the munificence of the Medicis, struck particularly the Italians: not however by exciting their poets to take them as models; the turn of their mind and the form of their poetry, similar in everything to that of the troubadours, were opposed too obviously here; but by giving them that sort of emulation which, without copying the others, makes one strive to equal them. At this epoch the book of the monk of St. André, attributed as I have said to Archbishop Turpin, already more than four centuries old, was known by all Europe, whether by itself, or whether by the numberless imitations of which it had been the subject. Not only France, Spain, Italy, but also(whal) expresses all that is elevated, exalted. The French words bal, vol, fol, are here derived.]
- ↑ It is necessary to observe that vau or val, bau or bal, according to the dialect, signifies equally a dance, a ball, and a folly, a fool. The Phœnician, root [Phœn.: **
- ↑ The sonnets are of Oscan origin. The word son signifies a song in the ancient langue d'oc. The word sonnet is applied to a little song, pleasing and of an affected form. The madrigals are of Spanish origin as their name sufficiently proves. The word gala signifies in Spanish a kind of favour, an honour rendered, a gallantry, a present. Thus Madrid-gala arises from a gallantry in the Madrid fashion. The sylves, called sirves or sirventes by the troubadours, were kinds of serious poems, ordinarily satirical. These words come from the Latin sylva which, according to Quintilius, is said of a piece of verse recited ex-tempore (l. x., c. 3).
