Note 394 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY

This leprous monk has been a godsend to the writers on ballad origins. But one might as well appeal to the ego in a passage from Thomas Cantipratensis, written near Cambrai, in 1263, and often quoted: Quod autem obscoena carmina finguntur a daemonibus et perditorum mentibus immittuntur, quidam daemon nequissimus qui ... puellam nobilem ... prosequebatur, manifeste populis audientibus dixit: “Cantum hunc celebrem de Martino ego cum collega meo composui et per diversas terras Galliae et Theutoniae promulgavi”.... Here are individual authorship—or collaboration: “I and a colleague of mine,” says the demon,—aristocratic origins, and Prior’s lady in the case.