uliar.
Ordinarily, though not always, they were composed by the Trouvere, and
performed by the Jongleur. Sometimes the Trouvere condescended to
performance, and sometimes the Jongleur aspired to composition, but not
usually. The poet was commonly a man of priestly or knightly rank, the
performer (who might be of either sex) was probably of no particular
station. The Jongleur, or Jongleresse, wandered from castle to castle,
reciting the poems, and interpolating in them recommendations of the
quality of the wares, requests to the audience to be silent, and often
appeals to their generosity. Some of the manuscripts which we now
possess were originally used by Jongleurs, and it was only in this way
that the early Chanson de Geste was intended to be read. The process of
hawking about naturally interfered with the preservation of the poems in
their original purity, and even with the preservation of the author's
name. In very few cases[41] is the latter known to us.

The question whether the Chansons de Gestes were originally written in
northern or southern French has often been hotly debated. The facts are
these. Only three Chansons exist in Provencal. Two of these[42] are
admitted translations or imitations of Northern originals. The third,
_Girartz de Rossilho_, is undoubtedly original, but is written in the
northernmost dialect of the Southern tongue. The inference appears to be
clear that the Chanson de Geste is properly a product of northern
France. The opposite conclusion necessitates the supposition that either
in the Albigensian war, or by some inexplicable concatenation of
accidents, a body of original Provencal Chansons has been totally
destroyed, with all allusions to, and traditions of, these poems. Such a
hypothesis is evidently unreasonable, and would probably never have been
started had not some of the earliest students of Old French been
committed by local feeling to the championship of the language of the
Troubadours. On the other hand, almost all the dialects of Northern
French are represented, Norman and Picard being perhaps the
commonest[43].

[Sidenote: Style and Language.]

The language of these poems, as the extracts given will partly show, is
neither poor in vocabulary, nor lacking in harmony of sound. It is
indeed, more sonorous and stately than classical French language was
from the seventeenth century to the days of Victor Hugo, and abounds in
picturesque terms which have since dropped out of use