Note 199 — from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 3)

Jeanroy, "Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, au moyen âge," Paris, 1889, 8vo, p. 68. An allusion in a crusade song of the twelfth century shows that this motif was already popular then. It is found also in much older poetry and more remote countries, for Jeanroy quotes a Chinese poem, written before the seventh century of our era, where, it is true, a mere cock and mere flies play the part of the Verona lark and nightingale: "It was not the cock, it was the hum of flies," or in the Latin translation of Father Lacharme: "Fallor, non cantavit gallus, sed muscarum fuit strepitus," ibid., p. 70.

On chansons written in French by Anglo-Normans, see "Mélanges de poésie anglo-normande," by P. Meyer, in "Romania," vol. iv. p. 370, and "Les Manuscrits Français de Cambridge," by the same, ibid., vol. xv.