ter, is
naturally not uncommon in the Middle Ages: and it helps to explain the
rapid transference of the Latin hymn-rhythms to vernacular verse. Thus
we have a _Noel_ or Christmas poem not only written to the tune and in
the measure of a Latin hymn, _In hoc anni circulo_, not only crowning
the Provencal six-syllable triplets with a Latin refrain, "De virgine
Maria," and other variations on the Virgin's title and name, but with
Latin verses alternate to the Provencal ones. This same arrangement
occurs with a Provencal fourth rhyme, which seems to have been a
favourite one. It is arranged with a variety which shows its
earliness, for the fourth line is sometimes "in the air" rhyming to
nothing, sometimes rhymes with the other three, and sometimes forces
its sound on the last of them, so that the quatrain becomes a pair of
couplets.

[Sidenote: _Forms._]

The earliest purely secular lyrics, however, are attributed to William
IX., Count of Poitiers, who was a crusader in the very first year of
the twelfth century, and is said to have written an account of his
journey which is lost. His lyrics survive to the number of some dozen,
and show that the art had by his time received very considerable
development. For their form, it may suffice to say that of those given
by Bartsch[179] the first is in seven-lined stanzas, rhymed _aaaabab_,
the _a_-rhyme lines being iambic dimeters, and the _b_'s monometers.
Number two has five six-lined stanzas, all dimeters, rhymed _aaabab_:
and a four-lined finale, rhymed _ab, ab_. The third is mono-rhymed
throughout, the lines being disyllabic with licence to extend. And the
fourth is in the quatrain _aaab_, but with the _b_ rhyme identical
throughout, capped with a couplet _ab_. If these systems be compared
with the exact accounts of early French, English, and German lyric in
chapters v.-vii., it will be seen that Provencal probably, if not
certainly, led the way in thus combining rhythmic arrangement and
syllabic proportion with a cunning variation of rhyme-sound. It was
also the first language to classify poetry, as it may be called, by
assigning special forms to certain kinds of subject or--if not quite
this--to constitute classes of poems themselves according to their
arrangement in line, stanza, and rhyme. A complete prosody of the
language of _canso_ and _sirvente_, of _vers_ and _cobla_, of _planh_,
_tenso_, _tornejamens_, _balada_, _retroensa_, and the rest, would
take more room than