¹ Poésies du troubadour Guilhem Adémar (Uppsala, 1951), No. viii.

² The logical form of the two lines would be this: “S'amors non fos tant ab me, ieu m'en penedera.”

³ We think that sé penedir here means ‘to change one's mind, to desist from’ (Levy, SWT?, vi, 211) rather than ‘to repent.‘

⁴ Almqvist's ‘obséder’ approximately renders the sense of esser tan ab alcu: but the passage from Guiraut de Bornelh which he quotes to justify his translation (“Per benestar sui ab Jaufre”) has quite a different meaning (see my article in MP, xliii [1946], 153 ff.). How, by the way, could ‘obséder’ semantically be derived from ‘to have intercourse with’ (Kolsen's ‘verkehren,’ which is more than doubtful in itself)? Our interpretation of eser tan ab alcu as ‘to mean so much, to be of so great an importance to somebody,’ seems easy to understand in its semantic development, and finds a parallel in the following passage from Peire Bremon (ed. Boutiere, No. vii, Stanza vii. 1–3), interpreted differently, it is true, by the editor:

⁵ For rendering tirar son fre ‘s'arreter’ Almqvist might have referred to Levy, SWB, iii, 596, fren No. 3: tirar lofren ‘anhalten, zu Ende gehen,’ which is not quite the same thing as his ‘s'arréter.’ This is made clear by the translation Levy gives of that phrase in his P.D., viz., ‘s'approcher de sa fin.’ However this may be, one wonders why or what the poet should stop. Tirar lo fre is listed by Levy also as meaning ‘die Zügel lenken, führen’ (SWB) and ‘conduire’ (P.D.). Indeed, to guide a horse, whether one wants to stop it or have it go in a certain direction, one uses the bridle. So we think that the phrase tirar lofre originally and simply means ‘to govern a horse,‘ and that the direction in which it is governed depends on the circumstances. So, if we read no-n tir instead of non tir, it becomes clear that the poet, or at least his reasoning self, considers the possibility of going away from her (n = en), of abandoning her.

⁶ Most of the MSS. read in 1. 26: Oimais q (u)etn, and so does Almqvist's text. But I'K'd offer com, which is com. A question introduced by “how” fits the context much better than one introduced by “why”; what the poet wants to question is, in our opinion, the possibility, not the necessity of amending.

⁷ Provencal examples are not rare either; cf. the glossaries of Stimming's first edition of Bertran de Born, Appel's ed. of Bemart de Ventadorn, Kolsen's ed. of Giraut de Bornelh, Appel's Chrestomathie, and Levy, SWB, vi, 610, No. 3.

⁸ It may seem somewhat illogical to say that he will not part -with her even in case of death. But this possible separation is not meant physically, but spiritually. He will remain faithful to her till he dies even if he should not win her.

⁹ This phenomenon has not been recorded yet for ab and can. Of the former we gave examples in PMLA, lxiii (1948), 14–15. I am offering here some passages for can: (1) “Drechs es qu'ela senhorei; C'aissrs conve Can m'aura forfach,” Gir. Born. P.-C. 242, 48 (Kolsen No. 24), vi, 3. Kolsen's translation ‘if I am wrong in her opinion’ does not make sense, nor does Jeanroy's explanation seem satisfactory (see Kolsen's n. ii, 53, and Levy SWB, vii, 584 b). We translate: ‘even if she has wronged me.’ (2) “Mais Brunissens a seinoria Sobre totas de gran beutat, Qe cant auria om sercat Tot est mun e puis mentagudas Totas celas qe sun aiidas, No n'auria om una trobada Tan bela ni tan ben formada,” Jaufre (ed. Brunel), 3132. (3) “Pero, dona, si cossiratz ab sen … Com yeu tostemps vos ai anat selan E com aras yeu vos am lialmen, No m'aussiretz, can vostre cors seria Atrestan dura com ferres qu'el mon sia,” Bertr. Carb. P.-C. 82, 8 (ed. Appel. Prov. Inedita, p. 74), iii, 5; (4) “Mas Dieus no fa semblansa que-1 sia greu nil tir; Que, cant lor degra aucire, fa nos dezenantir,” Crois. Alb. (ed. P. Meyer), 8749. P. Meyer translates: ‘Car alors qu'il les devrait tuer, c'est nous qu'il abaisse. (5) “Amies, s'ie-us trobes avinen, Humil e franc e de bona merce, Be-us amera, quan era m'en sove Queus trob vas mi mal e fellon e trie,” Castelloza P.-C. 109, 1 (ed. Schultz-Gora, Prov. Dichterinnen, p. 23), i, 3.

¹⁰ Other languages know a similar use of the word corresponding to Prov. tot. a) French. For tout +gérondif see above, p. 250; for tout +adjective+que we quote the following example from Littré ii, 2288 b, No. 43: “La valeur, tout héroíque qu'elle est, ne suffit pas pour faire les héros” (Mascaron), Cf. also Hatzfeld-Darmesteter, Diet. Gén., ii, 2172 b, where the phrase tout … que is rendered by ‘quoique entibrément.’ b) English. “I was a moody comrade, For all the love I bore her” (Rossetti); “for all (that)” standing for a conjunction: “For all she seemed so calm, she had often to bear up against the same kind of feelings” (Keble). Examples given by OED, iv, 411, No. 23. Also with all following with instead of for: “England, with all thy faults, I love thee still” (Cowper); “With all her apparent roughness of disposition … she was by no means a heartless woman” (Bagot). Op. cit., xii, 213, No. 31 b (b). In all these cases, the dictionary glosses: ‘in spite of,’ ‘notwithstanding.’ c) German. Grimm's Deutsches Wörlerbuch, i, 1355a, offers these two examples from Goethe: “Jener war, bei alien seinen Fehlern, wirklich ein interessanter Mensch” and “Bei allem Nachforschen konnte man den Körper nicht finden,” where, after bei, the word trotz is added between parentheses as an explanatory remark. The second of these quotations is also found in Trübner's Deutsches Wörterbuch, i (Berlin 1939), 265 a, with the qualification ‘einraumend [concessive].’

¹¹ ZRPh, xlviii (1928), 620.

¹² ‘the tribute due to me.‘

¹³ ‘whether I can help myself, take care of myself.‘

¹⁴ Breuer, following MS. B, has lolz.

¹⁵ ‘however formidable you may be.‘ As to the text, see Brunel's n. to 1. 3431.

¹⁶ ‘whether they will bring him before me.‘

¹⁷ The number of cases should be reduced to 7, because the prefixes des- and de- are often interchangeable. So Levy lists desmaillar and desliurar under demaillar and deliwrar.

¹⁸ The part of the romance written by the first scribe does not show tost at the end of a verse.

¹⁹ Up to 1. 5186 Brunel records no less than 9 examples of atrasaig, closing his list with an “etc.” and referring to his introduction (i, xlvi) where he cites the word among “les formules destinées à compléter la mesure sans efforts.” Indeed our poet seems to have a predilection for it; he uses it up to the end of the romance, the last example we met with occurring in 1. 10428. In a kind of accumulating style not rare in OProv. poetry, 2 of the above quoted examples, Nos. 6 and 7, show atrasaig and our tot side by side in the same sentence. The frequency in the use of atrasaig and the stylistic value or non-value which Brunel attributes to it, seem to indicate that it is less strong than our lot and probably lacks the adversative or concessive semantic shade of the latter.

²⁰ In this connection we may point to the German expressions “doch” and “schon,” which, accompanied by a verb in the future, show a certain resemblance with the use of the tot dealt with here. In those of the above examples where we find wrai (Nos. 1, 4, 9) we may translate: ‘ich will doch (mal) sehen, ob … in the one with trobarai (No. 6): ‘ich werde es schon finden.’ 21 Although this tot may be only a repetition of that of the preceding line, it has the same function as the first tot, and we may render the passage by: ‘Even if I am tormented by love day and night, yet I shall sing, because I have good reasons for it.’

²² Neither Paul Meyer nor Eugène Martin-Chabot (of whose ed. only the 1st volume has been published) take care of that tot in their translations. We render the last 2 lines thus: ‘If I set you free, I do not know whether I shall find gratitude or consideration through it, but nevertheless I shall try it.‘

²³ The reason for this is no doubt that for the medieval mind the main clause and the subordinate clause form an inseparable unity.

²⁴ ‘It seems that you value your life very little.‘

²⁵ ‘It would be better for him to be in Hell than in the anguish which he suffers.‘

²⁶ The editor translates: ‘S'il ne vous plait pas autrement de m'enrichir … ’ It should be: ‘S'il ne vous plait pas de m'enrichir autrement, qu'il ne vous dSplaise si je vous aime et si je suis votre conquête.’

²⁷ Paul Meyer: ‘Je veux deliberer de ce que nous ferons desorrnais.‘

²⁸ M. de Riquer: ‘Le pedire el favor a mi senora de que me diga si en aquella sazón se acordaba de mi.‘

²⁹ Marouzeau, Lexique de la terminologie linguistique, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1943), p. 165, s.v. phonélique (see also p. 190, s.v. sandhi) calls this phenomenon “sentence phonetics.” The term “phrasal phonetics” has been proposed to us by Professor Malkiel, whom we want to thank here for his suggestion.

³⁰ See Stephen Ullmann, The Principles of Semantics (Glasgow, 1951), pp. 184–185, 192, 239–240.

³¹ Op. cit., p. 238.