Bi Nyghtes and Bi Daies
a love poem by Dunstan LeHeryngmongere. Modeled after the early 13th century poem Cant voi l’aube du jour venir

INTRODUCTION:
I have been spending a fair amount of time over the last year writing poems and songs in honor of many things- My Barony, My Baronessa, My Baron, My Kingdom, My Queen, etc. Of course each of these topics has been an important and worthwhile subject. But I am a gentle who knows which side of my bread is buttered, and I realized that it had been quite some time since I had written something for my greatest love in life, my wife, Lady Tangwystl ferch Morgana.

It was my desire to write her a poem professing my love for her in as close to a period format as I could. My persona is from the year 1189. After perusing several books on the troubadours, I came across a lyrical poem I really liked. The title of it was ‘Cant voi l’aube dou jor venir’. (When I see Daybreak coming on). I admired it for it’s rhyme, it’s meter, and it’s subject matter, which was love (and I don’t mean the courtly type). Of course, that particular poem is about an adulterer who hates daybreak because it takes his lover away and back to her husband. I, of course, was going to approach it from the opposite side as the husband who reveled in daybreak because I would wake in the arms of the woman I love.

ABOUT THE ORIGINAL POEM:
This poem may or may not have been written by Gace Brule, a troubadour active between 1180 and 1218. While Goldin (3) puts it among Brule’s work, he notes that several authors do not. It can be found in a 13th century manuscript at the tale end of several of Brule’s works, and is certainly from that same time, but it’s unique rhyme scheme and repetitive last two lines are atypical of Brule’s work. This, coupled with the fact that Brule does not sign this piece anywhere, causes many authors to just attribute the work as anonymous.

Brule, like other troubadours of the time, has many pieces about love. While other troubadours focused more on courtly love, Brule seemed to focus more on ‘earthly love’ (that which was attainable in a physical matter) and the quality of it. He also supports marriage, as long as it is for love. His work ‘L’autrier estoie en un vergier’ (the other day in an orchard) is an excellent piece that is a conversation he overhears about two ladies arguing about whether to marry for love or money. The ‘love’ argument seems to be the favored one by the end of the poem.

Other troubadors wrote about physical, or romantic love, of every conceivable type, including Guilhelm IX of Aquitane’s very bawdy piece ‘In the Sweetness of Springtime’, part of which translates;

     I still remember that morning
     When we pledged an end to our war
     And she gave me that great gift-
     Her loving, and her ring:
     O God, let me live some more
     To Grope beneath her cloak!
     (ref 5, pg 48)

Not all references to romantic love are so bawdy (indeed, most aren’t!). Bertran de Born’s late 12th century piece ‘I apologize, lady; I deserve no Ill’ spends several stanzas professing the loyalty of his love to his lady, wherein he wishes for himself all manner of evil fates if he is ever unfaithful, among them that he lose all his money and live in a castle with three peers who hate each other’s guts! (Ref 5, pg. 165)

The subject of dreams is also one found in various troubadour works. Brule speaks of loving in a dream-like state in his work ‘De Bone amour et de leaul amie’ (From good love and true beloved’) whose penultimate verse translates:

     My sweet dream can never cure my pain
     My loving you cannot cease
     I cannot stop speaking to you, but cannot stay silent
     About my pain; cannot keep, as I sing, from telling you.
     (Ref 3, pg. 391)

Jaufre Rudel, also mentions dreams in his piece “When the Nightingale upon the Branch’ in these translated lines:

     About this love I’m anxious
     Wakeful and then asleep in dreams
     For there I have miraculous joy
     (Ref 5, page 105)

The Mechanics

I chose to write this poem in English mainly because I do not speak French. I did, however, want to make it feel as period as possible, so I took the time to try to translate it into Middle English, which is the language my persona is most likely to be speaking on a day to day basis in Lynn, England. (See the next section, The Process of Translation, for more on that). While French was commonly spoken in that region at that time (darn Normans!), I did not speak it.

Meter scheme in the original poem consists of 6 line verses in roughly iambic quatrameter (8 syllables with every other one being stressed). The final two lines are always the same in every verse of the original poem, and I stick with that in my poem. Rhyme scheme is as follows:

And so on for a total of 5 verses. The interesting thing to me about this form is that it’s repetitive refrain makes it very lyrical, but the last line of each verse still has to rhyme with the last line in the refrain, which kind of ties the whole work together.

I wrote the entire poem in contemporary English first. I followed the rhyme and meter scheme rigorously and attempted to keep my language very simple so that I could get the most direct translation into Middle English later.

After I wrote the Middle English version I actually went back to the contemporary English version and I came up with a tune to it. This is so one day I can sing it to my wife. It was never my intention to make this piece a song- It was only my intention to write a period lyrical poem. The song just kind of happened.

The Process of Translation

This was only the second work I have ever tried to put into Middle English. As such, I used a slightly later period Middle English than my persona would likely have been speaking in the early 13th century. The Middle English I used was more a Chaucerian (early-mid 14th century) Middle English. While this deviates slightly from my period, I chose to do it this way because my skill and knowledge with translations into Middle English are all at a fairly beginner level, and the older the Middle English the more difficult it is to translate. As it is, the majority of words in my work can be found in one Chaucer poem or another. The rest were culled from glossaries in the backs of various references, but wherever I was given a choice I chose the later period Middle English rather than the earlier period word.

Problems with Translations

Obviously my translation could not be exact. Some of the words and word forms I used in contemporary English can not be found in Middle English. I made changes where I needed to, and as a general rule I tried not to sacrifice meter and/or rhyme while keeping with the piece’s theme. I think the translation overall kept the work true to it’s feeling. Here are some issues I had with the translation process:

Plural of by night and by day- Every reference I found to the phrases ‘by night and by day’ pluralized the night and day when translated into middle English. I think that the phrase was just thought of as a plural phrase. (Makes sense- you don’t do something ‘by one night’ so much as you do it ‘by many or every night’. This was not so much an issue as it was a linguistic curiosity to me. I don’t think it changes the feeling of the poem to change it this way.

Changes to words - in several instances I changed some of the words to more Middle English structures. The second line of the first verse, for instance, changes from ‘Open up my weary eyes’ to (translated) ‘Look out with my weary eyes’. The phrase ‘open up’ is not, as near as I could tell, used in Middle English.

In the second verse in the first line I chose to use the ‘Sun rising’ (the sunne-risindde ) instead of ‘rising sun’ simply because it was what I found to be in use in the period poetry I found. It sacrificed a little on the rhyme scheme, but seemed more accurate.
In the second line of the second verse I dropped the word adventure (which I could not find in any Middle English glossary) and used the phrase ‘Love Longing’, which I found entirely appropriate, even if it does change the meaning a bit.

In the fourth verse I use the phrase ‘when sunbeams come the dreams are few’ instead of ‘they end when sunlight comes in view’. I could not find a translation for sunlight, and I think lyrically and thematically this change works. I might even like the translation more than the original in this case.

In the fifth verse I could find no appropriate word for the contemporary word ‘replacing’ so instead I changed the line to literally read ‘and night begins to battle day’, which I found to be an appropriate and poetic line for referring to ‘a time around bed time’.

You vs. Thou (or thu)- This was the hardest decision I had to make throughout the entire poem and I have changed back and forth several times. I was torn between using the more formal ‘you’ and the informal ‘thou’ or ‘thu’ in this poem. While at first glance it would seem that this poem is screaming for the use of the informal second person (thu), I was still torn. It is true that it was a song to my wife and love, which is informal by nature, but I kind of wanted this poem to put my lady ‘On a Pedestal’, as it were. . . almost an ‘Earthly Love in a Courtly Love’ manner which said ‘I’m not worthy of your extra special love’ in a way. . The rhyme scheme actually changes depending upon the form used. (When it’s thou the fifth line of each verse must change to rhyme with thou instead of you, thus resulting in a fairly different poem depending upon the use). In the end, I went with the more formal you instead of thou. If you check with me next week . . . it might have changed

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENTS
I am happy with the way this piece worked out from a strict mechanics point of view.
Again, this poem is only my second attempt at putting my poetry into Middle English form, so there are improvements that need to be made on the translation end. I would like to continue working on verb tenses and noun forms that are more historically accurate. Probably most of all, I would like to try to one day put this work in an older Middle English (the kind it would be in if written in 1189). This may take some more intensive study and help from some people well versed in the differences between older Middle English and newer Middle English. I recognize that this is an early 13th century piece translated into a mid 14th century language, which at first glance might seem strange, but is actually very period too . . . Chaucer himself translated the works of some of the troubadour and post troubadour lyricists.

References:

1) Burrow, J.A. and Turville-Petre, Thorlac. A Book of Middle English.
3rd edition. Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

2) Cholakian, Rouben C. The Troubadour Lyric, Manchester University
Press, 1990

3) Goldin, Frederick Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouveres, an
Anthology and History Gloucester, Massachusetts (Peter Smith), 1983

4) Hirsh, John C. Medieval Lyric; Middle English Lyrics, Ballads and
Carols. Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

5) Wilhelm, James J. Seven Troubadours, The Creators of Modern Verse
Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA, 1970

6)  The following website was also used to help with some specific word translations:
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/concise/concise.html
 

Return to Dunstan's Page
Return to House Bayard Home Page
This site is maintained by Ursula von Bremen - this page was  updated 25 November, 2006.