CANTIGAS DE AMIGO

TheCantigas de Amigo(or “songs to a friend”) are Galician-Portuguese lyrics written between the 12th and 14th centuries. In this kind of lyric, a female persona sings to or about her lover. Generally the subject is the suffering the woman felt at her lover’s absence and her longing to be happily reunited with her beloved. These lyrics are less likely to express the conventions of COURTLY LOVE than they are to emphasize the pain of separation and the importance of loyalty in love. Peter Dronke points out that most of the bestcantigas de amigofocus on a single memorable image, and he quotes a song of Pero MEOGO to illustrate:

Hinds on the hillside, tell me true,

my love has gone, and if he lingers there,

Hinds on the hillside, I’m telling you:

My love has gone, and I long to know,

fair ones, what I shall do.

(Dronke 1996, 104)

While the majority of such poems are written, like this one, by male composers using a female persona (as in the case of Martin CODAX, for example), it seems clear that such poems come from a very old folk tradition.TheKHARJASthat form the concluding stanzas in the romance vernacular of Hebrew and Arabicmuwashshahpoetry bear a close resemblance tocantigas de amigo: They are generally lyric outcries on love from a female perspective. It seems likely that these snatches of col-loquial songs are traditional, probably associated with folk dances.Written between 1000 and 1150, thesekharjaspredate thecantigas de amigo, and suggest an oral tradition behind the genre. That tradition seems to have been common far beyond the Iberian Peninsula. Dronke points out that between the sixth and ninth centuries, church councils across Europe regularly condemned the composition of licentious songs, specificallypuellarumcanticaor the songs of girls. Charlemagne, in 789, expressly forbade nuns in his kingdom to write or sendwinileodas(that is, “songs for a friend”—essentially the same term ascantigas deamigo), and Dronke identifies the Old English lyricWULF AND EADWACERas an example of what this early Germanic analogue to thecantigas de amigowas like (Dronke 1996, 86–92).

■ Dronke, Peter.The Medieval Lyric. 3rd ed. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell and Brewer, 1996.

■ Klinck,Anne L., and Ann Marie Rasmussen, eds.Medieval Woman’s Song: Cross-Cultural Approaches. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.