1 MS: C (173r) marcabru (C Meg. marc e bru)

Analysis of the manuscript

Line 26 as transmitted is hypometric and it is possible that C preserves only an incomplete version of the song (stanza VIII may lack one line, probably the initial line, and the end of the song seems rather abrupt). There are probable scribal errors in lines 11, 12, 14, 22, 27, 30, 31, 34 and 37 and lines 23-24 seem to have been interverted (see the notes to these lines). Lines 7, 13, 16 and 32 feature inflected nom. pi. characteristic of C, but occurrences elsewhere in the Marcabru corpus mean that it is not possible to determine whether these forms reflect scribal or authorial practice.

Versification

We atpree with Billy (Architecture, p. 91), who describes the versification of the song as a ‘cas marginal à tous les égards’. What survives is seven stanzas and one tornada of four lines which may perhaps be an incomplete eighth stanza (compare poems VIII and XIV). We treat the rhymes in -a(n) and -an, -o(n) and -on as different (a question to which previous editors have given little sustained attention: see below), and this gives a total of six rhyme-sounds in this song: -a(n), -on, -urn, -oc, -o(n), -an. We have emended the text conjecturally on the grounds of sense and syntax. The following table sets out what we see as the rhyme scheme. The regular features of the scheme seem to be that the last line of every stanza is in -oc; apart from stanza VII, the rhyme In -on has a regular permutation; the rhymescheme for each stanza is infringed only in VII, which lacks a ‘c’ rhyme but compare the irregularities noted in Frank, Repértoire, 246.1 (PC 80.21); 362.4 (PC 80.45); 577.208 (PC 202.7); 35.1 (PC 327.1); 274.2 (PC 437.21), and so on, where the same rhyme-sound is used first as an ‘a’ rhyme and later as a ‘b’ or ‘c’ rhyme, and similar. In Marcabru’s song, it is noteworthy that where the two ‘b’ rhymes of a stanza are in -a(n) or -an, the pair is always matching, not mixed, which suggests strongly that -an is distinguished from -a(n) and -on from -o(n).

Frank, Repértoire, 733.1 (unicum) gives 8a 8b 8b 8c 8d: ‘a’: an, on, or, ‘b’: on, or, an; ‘c’: or, an, on, and notes ‘Texte eontompu, rimes altérées’.