South of France; religious festivals were celebrated
with a gaiety which had its mundane side; love and malicious sport
demanded an expression as well as pious joy. But in tracing the forms
of lyrical verse anterior to the middle of the twelfth century, when
the troubadour influence from the South began to be felt, we must
be guided partly by conjecture, derived from the later poetry, in
which--and especially in the refrains--earlier fragments have been
preserved.

The common characteristic which distinguishes the earlier lyrics is
the presence in them of an objective element: they do not merely render
an emotion; they contain something of a story, or they suggest a
situation. In this literature of sentiment, the singer or imagined
singer is commonly a woman. The _chanson d'histoire_ is also known
as _chanson de toile_, for the songs were such as suited "the spinsters
and the knitters in the sun." Their inspiring motive was a girl's
joy or grief in love; they lightly outline or suggest the facts of
a miniature drama of passion, and are aided by the repeated lyrical
cry of a refrain. As yet, love was an affair for the woman; it was
she alone who made a confession of the heart. None of these poems
are later than the close of the twelfth century. If the author be
represented as actor or witness, the poem is rather a _chanson a
personnages_ than a _chanson d'histoire_; most frequently it is a
wife who is supposed to utter to husband, or lover, or to the poet,
her complaint of the grievous servitude of marriage. The _aube_ is,
again, a woman's song, uttered as a parting cry when the lark at
daybreak, or the watcher from his tower, warns her lover to depart.
In the _pastourelle_--a form much cultivated--a knight and a
shepherdess meet; love proposals are made, and find a response
favourable or the reverse; witnesses or companions may be present,
and take a part in the action. The _rondet_ is a dancing-song, in
which the refrain corresponds with one of the movements of the dance;
a solo-singer is answered by the response of a chorus; in the progress
of time the _rondet_ assumed the precise form of the modern triolet;
the theme was still love, at first treated seriously if not tragically,
but at a later time in a spirit of gaiety. It is conjectured that
all these lyrical forms had their origin in the festivities of May,
when the return of spring was celebrated by dances in which women
alone took part, a survival from the paga