XIX - Doas cuidas a*i, compaigner

Summary

4 MSS: A (29^v-30^r) Marcabruns, I (118^r) Marcabrus, K (104^r) Marcabrus, d (304^r-304^v) Marcabrus

Analysis of the manuscripts

A diverges from IK on a number of details (for example lines 13, 17, 18, 20); it also has a number of errors and is lacunary, see lines 21, 23, 27–34 (where it seems likely that a scribe’s eye jumped a stanza, but then failed to notice he had produced a stanza with one line too many), and 38. Only in line 64 does A seem to preserve a correct reading when IK are in error, though IK are also in error in lines 28, 29 and 31, where A is missing. The MSS are nonetheless relatively uniform and lines 20-21, 41–42 and 51 suggest a faulty archetype. Since I has a number of minor scribal errors (lines 4, 8, 53 and 66, this last being corrected by the scribe himself), K is the obvious base MS.

Versification

Frank, Repértoire, 204.1: a8 a8 b8 c8 d4 d4 c8 c8 b8; eight coblas unissonans; unicutn. As Frank points out (see his 202b), another way of representing the rhyme scheme would be a8 a8 b8 c8 d8 c8 c8 b8, in which case the fifth line would be a rim estramp with an internal rhyme. In all but the second stanza, the poem seems to have cuiar as a refrain word in the fifth line (or at the internal rhyme of the fifth line, if the second scheme is adopted), but see the notes to lines 14 and 41–42. There is an irregularity at the rhyme in line 51 in the MSS: again see the note.

Previous scholarship

Lejeune, ‘Une allusion’, in Littérature, pp. 151–57; Lewent, ‘Beiträge’, pp. 334–37; Marshall, ‘The doas cuidas’; Mölk, Trobardus, pp. 64-65; Pillet, ‘Zum Texte’, p. 19; Ricketts, “Doas cuidas1; Topsfield, Troubadours, pp. 95–99.

There is little sustained commentary on this poem, perhaps because of its obscurity and abstraction (on which see the note to line 1), though critics often allude to the notion of two ways of thinking, which derives from this poem.

Previous editions

Dejeanne; Ricketts, ‘Doas cuidas’.

Base: K

I

Companions, there are two ways of thinking that give me joy and angyish: I rejoice because of the good way, and am saddened because of the vile way.