This is the first section of a much larger work in progress written by Haroun for his master's work. While putting it together, I have started to understand something of what 'masterwork' really means. This particular section is the extent of several months of research on both my part and Harry's to develop a reasonable 'origin' of bardic tradition while incorporating some background for what they stand for as an organization. The various bardic personalities aside from Gweran are based on historical characters that subsequently turned into legend.
We, as bards, possess many faces. We may sing, dance, perform acrobatics, master dozens of instruments and take on the mantle of characters through dramatic acts. We may be called as witnesses, couriers, judges and guides. Before libraries were built and institutes of learning instated, the lineage of the troubadour was founded on the preservation and use of knowledge through oral tradition.
It is well known that the Troubadours did not become a unified guild until the actions of the first Poet Laudate, Gweran op Melthun, during the Consolidation (109-42SC). Prior to this time, each duchy possessed a guild structure of its own or was simply composed of loose affiliations of independent performers. From where does our tradition originate? One historian stated that our “poetry blooms like a flower from the earth without root or stalk” perhaps to suggest that our origins will always be lost to the ravages of time. However, it is this historian’s point of view that much can be gathered from the remnants if one only has the patience to look and sift through.
Indeed, our existence can be traced beyond this point to years prior to the events of the Consolidation. Modern scholars surmise that the conditions for the development of our traditions had to come from the proper mix of freedom and openness of ideas as our thoughts on travel, romance and lyric composition are well removed from the traditional thoughts of clergy, farmer or shipwright. In this vein, it is thought that the first troubadours were in fact nobles that moved in courts that had an interest in learning and letters. Certainly, peasant or freemen would be unable to travel so freely. Even if they adopted a mendicant life style while on the road, they would never have the necessary access to writings, musical instruments or the startling concentration and variety of experiences found at court to transmute into tales.
One of the first written documents pertaining to the existence of the such a free-roaming combination of valor and courtly manner comes out of a private Pre-Merchant Kingdom collection of tax documents, magisterial judgments and other sundry pieces of bureaucratic debris from the late 80s to 90s. An article of particular interest that I was able to examine while visiting one of the estates of the dul Terrais family contained an account of a foreign giant of a man name Guiraut de Argence, a resident lord of pre-Merchant Kingdom Vavard, being brought before one of their councils in regard to his illicit relationship with a viscontess by the family name of Cavali.
Guiraut’s famous reply to the bald council leader is written in plain Vavardi, “The comb shall curl your wayward hair before I give up the viscountess.” The chamber scribe marked a great stir of laughter from the attendees before Guiraut was put into prison for sedition. Though, according to corroborating documents, he did not remain there for long. Due to his overwhelming gravitas and renown as both a knight and a poet, Guiraut moved through the various courts as pleased him and his betters. Stories of his passion and deeds in the field kept him well-stocked with friends, allowing even foreign noble like himself to move as freely through the courts of Vavard as the branches of the Kirulean across the land. Though some officials would label him an enemy of chastity and virtue, many of de Argence’s companions and friends marked him as a great man, equal in his deeds as well as his poetry.
Through we are only able to examine fragments of this man’s life, one passage from a long-time acquaintance at court summarizes de Argence’s conflicted personality.
“To judge from his acts and prose, his was a many-sided life. His instinct and zeal for battle were made all the more magnificent by his detached irony and overwhelming education. He was a selfish man until he found a cause worth fighting for. With battles won, he would become listless once more, always looking for the next adventure and excitement. He told me, in confidence, that he always desired what he could not have, never enjoyed what he loved and whose heart told him –always in the moment of action – that all was vanity.”
Other such accounts show that he was a man that was both at home in the courts of Vavard yet suffered from bouts of wanderlust and even moodiness. It is unsurprising, as some fragmented letters from the Terrais collection, written by de Argence’s contemporaries, speak of his alien skin tone and the carefully hidden accent in his voice. It is speculated among his peers that he was a noble of distant Farin – a potentially wealthy trading partner for the loose collection of cities in the Pre-Merchant territories. Others yet insisted that his exotic stories could only come from the legend-shrouded tropics in the South.
If we, as troubadours, draw a single lesson from the life of de Argence it is balance. Though history remembers him as a bombastic presence, his inner turmoil and the beauty that he sought to attain show us what we, too, are called to achieve. In earlier times than ours, great deeds of arms won notoriety as a part of the warrior culture. As we will see, it is relative peace that turned fighting men toward the games of romance and beauty. Somewhere in this transition, the fledgling troubadour tradition comes to life. The varied experience of these men and women were refined from tales into song and poetry. De Argence’s life shows that all action needs to carry meaning with it, not just the enjoyment of the action. The pursuit of joy needs to be tempered with purpose. We are grand figures, from time to time, but we must temper our words and actions with small prayers against the vanity that he saw. It is from this that we reach one of Gweran op Melthun’s tenants for the troubadour’s life – moderation. While it may seem counter-intuitive for bards to limit themselves in anyway, it is our duty to maintain our rational faculty no matter how passionate the performance or dire the circumstance. Our courses of action must be suited to meet the demands of social and courtly convention, but be balanced against our talents, aspirations and quality.
In the life of Guiraut de Argence, we see the beginnings of a new movement in literature that is more expansive than a single region. There is a desire for the outside world and the start of a common ‘quest’ motif that is both jaded and hopeful. Freed unto the world as a force of nature, this man travelled from their home both for the sake of love but also for conquest, redemption and answers. Our next example come from perhaps a few years ahead of the Consolidation and tempers the pursuit of joy that Argence embodied, introducing a new twist on romantic love in the world at large.
Jaufre dul Blais was a nobleman in Pre-Merchant Vavard just as Guiraut was. Born into a comfortable estate, well-established and managed with a great many ships and fields in its holdings, Jaufre could want for nothing. Unlike Guiraut, he only made one journey during the course of his life from his estate in what is now the county of Hevstina. He spent his life upon his estate, entertaining merchants and travelers along the coast of the Kirulean. Through the stories and tales of foreign lands, he became familiar with the Countess of Seahome. Her beauty was legendary. She was said to be as fair as the day is long and blessed with a voice that made bells grow silent from their shame. Dul Blais was in love without seeing her or her county for all the good he had heard from stories. Some of the songs that he composed in her honor remain, though we may never hear what they sounded like. Only their lyrics remain, and as one of his courtiers wrote to a friend in Capua – “They are good tunes with poor words.”
Through his desire to see her, Jaufre dul Blais let his estates in the hand of his younger brother and embarked upon the fierce waves of the Kirulean in a pair of ships loaded with trade goods and performers that he might win her heart. Within days, Jaufre lost his first ship to the monstrous waters and sickness would find his personal crew soon after. His ship washed ashore in Seahome, filled with the dead. He was brought into an inn of Seahome for some life still remained within him and only the Countess’ name upon his lips. This was told to her in the keep and she came to him at his bed and took the dying man in her arms. By miracle, it is said, he recovered his hearing and sight, praising the heavens for having kept him alive until he had seen her at least. And so, he died in the arms of his beloved. And she caused him to be buried with “great honors in the house of the temple” and took to wearing the black veil of the widow in his mourning.
The tale of the romantic quest may predate the story of Jaufre dul Blais’ journey across the sea, but there is no better exemplification and tragedy of the romantic precept of love from afar. Unlike Guiraut’s internal conflict, the death of dul Blais differentiates this story from the battle for love of the older warrior order. For dul Blais, love is something attainable without battle, even without seeing the object of affection. Most importantly, it is something that is worth dying for. The theme of a sorrowful pilgrimage for the sake of love will re-emerge later in history several times, including the most prominent example of the Travail of King Dav the Everlasting.
The development of the ‘pilgrimage’ motif gives us some insight into how the world was changing prior to the Consolidation. It may very well be impossible to explain such a selfless act without attributing this new look at beauty to a growing spiritual mindset in the population. To a practical mind, bereft of romance, it simply looks as if Jaufre threw his life away. “Love,” wrote one courtly scholar prior to the reign of Dav, ”is a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, which cases each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by common desire to carry out all of love’s precepts in the other’s embrace.”
To this person, certainly, it would appear as if a spleenful youth took off on some fool adventure as was the way of the soldier and knight in ancient days. Quests for glory and valor still exist to this day, but we see them as both true event and as heroic allegory. Attainment of glory through force of arms was no longer enough as the years passed in relative peace. With the beginnings of chivalric codes emerging in the various knightly orders across the kingdom, there are the first notions of the modern Knight that we see coming to light under the banner of Dav the Everlasting.
At its root, romantic action is selfless. Each deed of valor to a knight, or any deed in a courtly romance, is dedicated to the object of affection. These, much in the way that prayer or poverty are offered to the Lord, is a sacrifice to love and beauty. We may call love many things, but in no way does it always end with the precepts of the marriage bed. To a lord or lady, and indeed those that travel in court, romance of this sort is about the dedication of deeds and not the fulfillment of base desire. In truth, romantic love need never be fulfilled as the ‘love’ described by the above scholar. Every act of devotion is, unto itself, an act and fulfillment of love.
Much of what we see exemplified in the theology of the Lord of the Springs and indeed the epic mythology that is brought into existence around Dav is rooted in these romantic traditions. As we transition into the Era of the Consolidation and dive deeply into entwined history and legend, we will see how Gweran op Melthun, a dear friend of the king, helped preserve these traditions and bring them to new life through service to his sovereign.
Pre - Consolidation Bardic History
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