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If he had a turn for dramatics he had certainly indulged it now, and given himself strong meat for a new Sirvente of Kings. At least he was very busy after Richard's departure, himself preparing for a long journey to the South. Count Richard found time, while he was at Poietiers awaiting the Aquitanian levies, to write six letters to Jehane Saint-Pol.
These, with the Chancellor of Poictou, the household servants and guards, were all we had with us. The Countess was to be ready upon word from him to go with her ladies and the court whithersoever he should appoint. Bertran de Born went away in the night, and King Richard never saw him again; but I shall have to speak of his last tenzon, and his last Sirvente of Kings, by heaven!
He deemed himself forgotten in his captivity, and composed an indignant sirvente in his favorite Provencal tongue. The second verse we give in the original, for the sake of being brought so near to the royal troubadour: "Or sachen ben, mici hom e mici baron, Angles, Norman, Peytavin, et Gascon, Qu'yeu non hai ja si pauore compagnon Que per ave, lou laissesse en prison.
So saying, he took off his cup with much gravity, at the same time shaking his head at the intemperance of the Scottish harper. The knight in the meantime, had brought the strings into some order, and after a short prelude, asked his host whether he would choose a "sirvente" in the language of "oc", or a "lai" in the language of "oui", or a "virelai", or a ballad in the vulgar English.
I remember well that, at the siege of Retters, there was a little, sleek, fat clerk of the name of Chaucer, who was so apt at rondel, sirvente, or tonson, that no man dare give back a foot from the walls, lest he find it all set down in his rhymes and sung by every underling and varlet in the camp.
'They greatly admire a sirvente of Bertran de Born's, sire. 'What is the stuff of the sirvente? 'It is a scandalous subject, sire. He calls it the Sirvente of Kings, and speaks much evil of your Order. Richard laughed. 'I will warrant him to do that better than any man alive, and allow him some reason for it. I think I will go to see Bertran.
For he was making a sirvente in praise of Guenevere. So Duke Jurgen of Logreus duly rhapsodized of his Phyllida. "I borrow for my dear love the appellation of that noted but by much inferior lady who was beloved by Ariphus of Belsize," he explained.
And to protest that her eyes are as gray and fathomless as the sea is very well also, and the sort of thing which seems expected of me: but imagine how horrific would be puddles of water slopping about in a lady's eye-sockets! If we poets could actually behold the monsters we rhyme of, we would scream and run. Still, I rather like this sirvente."
Among the other forms used, the verse was merely a set of couplets, the chanson was divided into several stanzas, while the sonnet was much freer in form than at present. When more than two singers took part in a tenson, it became a tournament. The sirvente was a song of war or politics, sometimes satirical, sometimes in praise of the exploits of a generous patron.
The sixtine contained six stanzas of six lines each, with the rhymes holding over from one stanza to the next, and occurring in a different order in each stanza. The rhymes in the sirvente differed from what we consider correct by consisting always of a repetition of the same word. The discord was a sort of free fantasia, sometimes in several dialects.
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