faculty of expressing moods explicitly, takes the lead. Let us remember again Deschamps’ ballads, celebrating the beauty of the castles, which we compared with and found inferior to the perfect miniatures of the brothers of Limburg. These poems of Deschamps lack power and splendour; he has not succeeded in reproducing the vision of these glorious halls. But now compare the ballad in which he paints himself, lying ill in his poor little castle of Fismes, kept awake by the cries of barn-owls, starlings, crows and sparrows, nesting in his tower.
“C’est une estrange melodie
Qui ne semble pas grant deduit
A gens qui sont en maladie.
Premiers les corbes font sçavoir
Pour certain si tost qu’il est jour:
De fort crier font leur pouoir,
Le gros, le gresle, sanz sejour;
Mieulx vauldroit le son d’un tabour
Que telz cris de divers oyseaulx,
Puis vient la proie; vaches, veaulx,
Crians, muyans, et tout ce nuit,
Quant on a le cervel trop vuit,
Joint du moustier la sonnerie,
Qui tout l’entendement destruit
A gens qui sont en maladie.”[1]
At night the owls come with their sinister screeching, evoking thoughts of death:
“C’est froit hostel et mal reduit
A gens qui sont en maladie.”[2]
This trick of the mere enumeration of a multitude of details loses its wearisome character, as soon as the faintest trace of humour is mixed up with it. In the middle of a very prolix allegorical poem, L’Espinette amoureuse, Froissart diverts us
- ↑ It is a strange melody, Which is not felt as a great amusement By people who are ill. First the ravens let us know For certain as soon as it is day: They cry aloud with all their might In deep and shrill tones, without interruption. Even the sound of a drum would be better Than those cries of various birds. Next come the cattle going to pasture, cows, calves, Bellowing, lowing, and all this is noxious When one has an empty brain, With the bells of the church chiming in, And destroying altogether the understanding Of people who are ill.
- ↑ It is a cold hostelry and ill refuge for people who are ill.
