6 - Ten Poems from the Gruuthuse Songbook (c.1462)

Summary

One of the most valuable manuscripts in Dutch literary history is the Gruuthuse Songbook. This volume, copied five times during the last quarter of the fourteenth century and soon after, contains a series of 147 Middle Dutch lyrics, complete with musical notation. No other lyric texts from the period and before are known to preserve their original melodies; this gathering is the oldest complete collection of Dutch songs in existence. The current article presents a selection of ten poems from the Songbook, lyrics we translate into English verse; most of these songs have never appeared in English before and take the name from Gruuthuse, their collector. The sequence of poems resembles material of the cancionero genre found in Spanish literature.

Lodewijk de Gruuthuse was one of the most remarkable book-collectors of the Middle Ages; because of his interesting life and our gratefulness for his having preserved these poems, we devote the next paragraphs to his biography. Part of the personal library of Lodewijk (a key player in the political life of Flanders in the late fifteenth century), the Songbook gives insight into the oldest lyric tradition of Dutch literature. Lodewijk was born in c.1427 to a wealthy Bruges family who had moved from the merchant classes into the minor nobility during the previous century: these mercantile origins are reflected by the family's name, which is derived from the spices or gruit that the Gruuthuses once traded.