Occitania, a canso with its music · Occitania, late 12th century
A chantar m'er
A trobairitz writes that she must sing of what she would rather not. Hers is the only woman's song from that court whose melody still sits on the page.
Comtessa de Dia
DieOccitan courts
The vida later called her wife to a viscount and lover to a troubadour. Vidas are legends with a coat of arms. What the archive actually holds is four cansos and one tenso, and, uniquely among the trobairitz, a melody: A chantar m'er de so qu'eu no volria, copied around 1270 for Charles of Anjou.
She sings as amia, the friend, of a man whose pride will not answer her worth, her beauty, or her sense. Courtly love is often a man's complaint that a lady will not yield. Here the grammar is reversed, and it is not a novelty act. It is a craft. The song does not tell us whether he existed as a household fact. It tells us what a woman could do with the form.
This house will not baptize her Beatritz as if the given name were a document. It will also not pretend the song is anonymous weather. Someone composed it. Someone had a name at Die. The music survived. That is already more than most of her sisters were allowed.
The letter
A chantar m'er de so qu'eu no volria, tant me rancur de lui cui sui amia; car eu l'am mais que nuilla ren que sia.
Primary source · Comtessa de Dia, A chantar m'er
I must sing of what I would rather not, so much do I complain of him whose friend I am. For I love him more than anything that is.
Editorial paraphrase · house paraphrase · Editorial English of the opening
Atlas plate · Occitania, late 12th century
A chantar m'er
A trobairitz writes that she must sing of what she would rather not. Hers is the only woman's song from that court whose melody still sits on the page.
From one shore toward the other. A path of relation, not a lineage.
From
Between
Toward
Placement is approximate where the record is not a surveyor.
- From
- Die, Dauphiné, Occitania
- Toward
- Occitan courts, southern France
- Distance
- 339 km
The line that survived
A chantar m'er de so qu'eu no volria
Comtessa de Dia
What happened next
The melody waited in a royal songbook. Later centuries argued about her biography. The canso does not need the argument in order to be sung.
Distant echoes
Echo
Kiss Me AgainAnother woman who takes the lyric and will not wait to be its object.
Another language
I Go My Way with PridePride answered in verse, from another court, in another tongue.
Source / evidence
- A chantar m'er de so qu'eu no volria·Paris, BnF, Manuscrit du roi (fr. 844), about 1270. Occitan public domain.
- The vida·Later prose biography. Traditional, not a parish register. The house does not treat it as itinerary.
Twelfth-century Occitan. The melody is in the Manuscrit du roi, about 1270. English here is a house paraphrase of the opening, not a singing edition under copyright.
A word opens beside this story: amor
One question remains
If the melody had not survived, would we still have known how to hear her?