Note 8 — Chapter VII · THE JOGLAR.

This kind of personal apprenticeship to a renowned troubadour, be it here parenthetically stated, was, in the good times, the common way of acquiring the complicated and difficult art of poetry. Other poets taught themselves with the assistance of the great models preserved in writing, or transmitted by word of mouth and sound of voice or fiddle. Jaufre Rudel says prettily, that meadows and orchards, trees and flowers, and the cries and songs of wild birds have been his teachers. The ‘Academies,’ i.e. teaching and examining bodies, were, like the schools of the German master singers, creations of a late epoch.