This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
VILLALBA—VILLANELLE
73


K. Bücher (Leipzig, 1879); A. Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Westgermanen und Ostgermanen, der Kelten, Römer, Finnen und Slaven. Wanderungen, Anbau und Agrarrecht der Völker Europas nordlich der Alpen (4 vols., Berlin, 1895); F. de Coulanges, Les Origines de la propriété (Paris, 1893); M. Kovalewsky, Die ökonomische Entwicklung Europas bis zum Beginn der kapitalischen Wirtschaftsform (Berlin, 1901); B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community (London, 1896); The Land Systems of British India (Oxford, 1892); J. Jolly, Tagore Lectures on the Law of Inheritance and Succession in India; Th. Mommsen, Römische Forschungen (Berlin, 1864); P. Guiraud, La Propriété foncière en Grèce jusqu' à la conquête Romaine (Paris, 1893); R. Pöhlmann, Geschichte des antiken Kommunismus und Socialismus (München, 1893); F. de Coulanges, La Cité antique (Paris, 1872); F. Seebohm, The Tribal System in Wales (London, 1904); H. S. Maine, Lectures on the Early History of Institutions (London, 1875); H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, La Famille celtique (Paris, 1905); Cours de litérature celtique (Paris, 1902); R. Anderson, History of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1874), C. Innes, Lectures on Scotch Legal Antiquities (Edinburgh, 1872); W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland (Edinburgh, 1880); A. Dopsch, Die ältere Sozial- und Wirtschaftsverfassung der Alpenslaven (Weimar, 1909); J. Peisxer, Die älteren Beziehungen der Slawen zu Turkotataren und Germanen und ihre sozialgeschichtliche Bedeutung (Stuttgart, 1905); G. Cohn, Gemeindenschaft und Hausgenossenschaft (Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, XIII., 1899), Bogišić, Zborniken (Servian Collection of modern legal customs of the Southern Slavs; (Agram, 1874). De la forme dite Inokosna de la famille rurale chez les Serbes et les Croates (Paris, 1884); T. T. Smirnoff, Sketch of Culture History of the Southern Slavs (Kazan, 1900) (Russian); F. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven (Wien, 1885); A. Tschuproff, Die Feldgemeinschaft (Strassburg, 1902); A. Efimenko, Southern Russia (Russian), vol. i. (1901); Peasant Land-tenure in the Extreme North, I. (Russian) (1884); B. Cićerin, Essays on the History of Russian Law (Russian); V. Sergiević, Antiquities of Russian Law, III. (Russian) (St Petersburg, 1903); Koćarovsky, The Russian Village Community (Russian) (1906); A. Kaufmann, The Russian Village Community, I. (Russian) (Moscow, 1908); G. L. von Maurer, Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-, Hof-, Dorf- und Stadtverfassung und der öffentlichen Gewalt (München, 1854); Geschichte der Markenverfassung in Deutschland (Erlangen, 1856); Geschichte der Frönhofe, der Bauernhöfe und der Hofverfassung in Deutschland (4 vols., Erlangen, 1862); Geschichte der Dorfverfassung in Deutschland (2 vols., Erlangen, 1865); F. de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques de l'ancienne France (Paris, 1875-91); J. Flach, Les Origines de l'ancienne France (Paris, 1893); E. Glasson, Les Communaux et le domaine rurale à l'époque franque: réponse à M. Fustel de Coulanges (Paris, 1890); K. Lamprecht, Deutsches Wirtschaftsleben im Mittelalter (4 vols., Leipzig, 1885), F. Knapp, Grundherrschaft und Rittergut (Leipzig, 1897); W. Wittich, Die Grundherrschaft in Nordwest Deutschland (Leipzig, 1896); Rhamm, Die Grosshöfen der Nordgermanen (1905); G. Haussen, Agrarhistorische Abhandlungen (2 vols., Leipzig, 1880); H. Brunner, Deutsche Rechts geschichte (Leipzig, 1887); R. Schröder, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte (2nd ed., 1894); Fr. Seebohm, Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law (London, 1902); M. Sering, Erbrecht und Agrarverfassung in Schleswig-Holstein (Berlin, 1908); F. W. Maitland and Sir F. Pollock, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. (Cambridge, 1895); F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England (Cambridge, 1897); Township and Borough (Cambridge, 1898); Fr. Seebohm, The English Village Community (London, 1884); P. Vinogradoff, Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892); The Growth of the Manor (London, 1905); English Society in the 11th Century (Oxford, 1907); G. L. Gomme, The Village Community (London, 1890); C. I. Elton, A Treatise on Commons and Waste Lands (London, 1868); Th. E. Scrutton, Commons and Commonfields (Cambridge, 1887); J. Williams, Rights of Commons (London); J. Steenstrup, Studier over Kong Valdemars Jordebog (Copenhagen); Lauridsen, Aarböger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed, II Raekke, vol, ii. (Copenhagen, 1896); Steman, Dansk Retshistorie (Copenhagen, 1871); A. Taranger, Norsk Retshistorie (Christiania, 1899).  (P. Vi.) 

VILLALBA, a town of north-western Spain, in the province of Lugo; on the left bank of the river Ladra, one of the headstreams of the Miño, and at the junction of the main roads from Ferrol and Mondoñedo to the city of Lugo. Pop. (1900) 13,572. Villalba is the chief town of the district watered by the Ladra, Tamboga and other small streams—a fertile plateau 1500 ft. above sea-level. Cloth and pottery are manufactured, and there is some trade in grain and live stock. The nearest railway station is Otero, 15 m. S. by E., on the Lugo-Corunna line.

VILLAMEDIANA, COUNT DE (1582–1622), Spanish poet, was born at Lisbon towards the end of 1582. His father, a distinguished diplomatist, upon whom the dignity of count was conferred in 1603, entrusted the education of the brilliant boy (Juan de Tassis y Peralta) to Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, the future editor of Mendoza’s Guerras de Granada, and to Bartolomé Jimenez Patón, who subsequently dedicated Mercurius Trismegistus to his pupil. On leaving Salamanca the youth married in 1601, and succeeded to the title on the death of his father in 1607; he was prominent in the dissipated life of the capital, acquired a bad reputation as a gambler, was forbidden to attend court, and resided in Italy from 1611 to 1617. On his return to Spain, he soon proved himself a fearless, pungent satirist. Such public men as Lerma, Rodrigo Calderón and Jorge de Tobar writhed beneath his murderous invective, the foibles of humbler private persons were exposed to public ridicule in verses furtively passed from hand to hand. So great was the resentment caused by these envenomed attacks that Villamediana was once more ordered to withdraw from court in 1618. He returned on the death of Philip III. and was appointed gentleman in waiting to Philip IV.’s young wife, Isabel de Bourbon, daughter of Henri IV. Secure in his position, he scattered his scathing epigrams in profusion; but his ostentatious attentions to the queen supplied his countless foes with a weapon which was destined to destroy him. A fire broke out while his masque, La Gloria de Niguea, was being acted before the court on the 15th of May 1622, and Villamediana carried the queen to a place of safety. Suspicion deepened, Villamediana neglected a significant warning that his life was in peril, and on the 21st of August 1622 he was murdered as he stepped out of his coach. The responsibility for his death was divided between Philip IV. and Olivares; the actual assassin was either Alonso Mateo or Ignacio Mendez; and naturally the crime remained unpunished.

Villamediana’s works, first published at Saragossa in 1629, contain not only the nervous, blighting verses which made him widely feared and hated, but a number of more serious poems embodying the most exaggerated conceits of gongorism. But, even when adopting the perverse conventions of the hour, he remains a poet of high distinction, and his satirical verses, more perfect in form, are instinct with a cold, concentrated scorn which has never been surpassed.  (J. F.-K.) 


VILLANELLE, a form of verse, originally loose in construction, but since the 16th century bound in exact limits of an arbitrary kind. The word is ultimately derived from the Latin villa, a country house or farm, through the Italian villano, a peasant or farm hand, and a villanelle was primarily a round song taken up by men on a farm. The Spaniards called such a song a villancejo or villancete or a villancico, and a man who improvised villanelles was a villanciquero. The villanelle was a pastoral poem made to accompany a rustic dance, and from the first it was necessary that it should contain a regular system of repeated lines. The old French villanelles, however, were irregular in form. One of the most celebrated, the “Rosette, pour un peu d'absence” of Philippe Desportes (1545–1606), is a sort of ballade, and those contained in the Astrée of d’Urfé, 1610, are scarcely less unlike the villanelles of modern times. It appears, indeed, to have been by an accident that the special and rigorously defined form of the villanelle was invented. In the posthumous poems of Jean Passerat (1534–1602), which were printed in 1606, several villanelles were discovered, in different forms. One of these became, and has remained, so deservedly popular, that it has given its exact character to the subsequent history of the villanelle. This famous poem runs as follows:—

"J'ai perdu ma tourterelle:
Est-ce point celle que j’oi?
Je veux aller après elle.

Tu regrettes ta femelle?
Hélas! aussi fais-je moi:
J'ai perdu ma tourterelle.

Si ton amour est fidèle,
Aussi est ferme ma foi:
Je veux aller après elle.

Ta plainte se renouvelle?
Toujours plaindre je me dois:
J'ai perdu ma tourterelle.