.

May Songs

.

I.

Where does loyalty take its rest?
Where is charity’s portraiture,
Except in you, sweet virgin pure?
Where has virginity possessed
The honor due its high allure?
Where does loyalty take its rest?
Where is charity’s portraiture?
Where can a creature find the best
Retreat and refuge most secure,
That ever glorious will endure?
Where does loyalty take its rest?
Where is charity’s portraiture,
Except in you, sweet virgin pure?

.

II.

Foolish is he who fosters not
Humility’s flowering spray;
Her fruit of life heals our decay.
Reason prepares the garden plot
That servants justified array;
Foolish is he who fosters not
Humility’s flowering spray.
She draws admirers toward the spot
Where endless glory they survey,
And as her friends make holiday;
Foolish is he who fosters not
Humility’s flowering spray;
Her fruit of life heals our decay.

.

III.

Lady, through whom the contrite heart
Wins God’s mercy and gains his grace,
When tears sincere adorn the face
For faults that make one’s conscience smart,
You who hold the Advocate’s place,
Lady, through whom the contrite heart
Wins God’s mercy and gains his grace,
We know how well your pleading art
Can clear a soul of guilt’s last trace,
For you prevail in every case,
Lady through whom the contrite heart
Wins God’s mercy and gains his grace
When tears sincere adorn the face.

.

IV.

Queen of the heavens, one who intends
To serve you in devout affection,
Acts with worthy circumspection.
All virtues he acquires, and rends
His vices that require correction.
Queen of the heavens, one who intends
To serve you in devout affection
Perceives how God to him extends
Sweet glory in this grand subjection,
Nurturing entire perfection.
Queen of the heavens, one who intends
To serve you with devout affection,
Acts with worthy circumspection.

.

Translator’s Note: These songs come from Les Miracles de Nostre Dame [Miracles of Our Lady], eight-volumes of verse plays compiled by Abbot Gautier de Coincy (1177–1236). Ordinary dramatic dialogue is spoken in rhymed couplets, while these rondels with elaborate rhyme and refrains of several lines, are lyric interludes to be sung. The author says, “Each year I owe Mary the debt of a spring song. She is the flower, the violet, the rose in bloom, which gives out and casts around such a perfume as entirely overcomes us. The mother of the Lord on high has an exalted fragrance above every flower. I bid each and everyone to love and praise her.”

.

Original French

I.

Ou prent loyauté son sejour?
Ou est charité sanz mesure,
Fors qu’en vous, doulce vierge pure?
Ou a virginité honnour
Recouvré par dessus nature?
Ou est charité sanz mesure,
Ou doit estre aussi le retour
Ne le refuge a creature,
A ce qu’en gloire touz jours dure?
Ou prent loyauté son sejour?
Ou est charité sanz mesure,
Fors qu’en vous, doulce vierge pure?

II.

Folz est qui n’ayme et sert en foy
L’ente d’humilité florie
Qui porta le doulx fruit de vie.
Raison y a bonne pour quoy,
Car se son servant justiffie.
Folz est qui n’ayme et sert en foy
L’ente d’humilité florie
Oil, et de ce monde a soy
Le trait a la gloire infinie:
Donques pour avoir telle amie
Folz est qui n’ayme et sert en foy
L’ente d’humilité florie
Qui porta le doulx fruit de vie.

III.

Dame, par qui grace et merci
Acquièrent li cuer repentant
Qui vraiement sont lamentant
Des deffaultes qu’il ont fait ci,
Puis qu’a vous en son dementant,
Dame, par qui grace et merci
Acquièrent li cuer repentant,
Nous savons bien qu’il est ainsi,
Ne nulz n’en doit estre doubtant:
Car vous pouvey troplus que tant,
Dame par qui grace et merci
Acquièrent li cuer repentant
Qui vraiement sont lamentant.

IV.

Royne des cieulx, qui en vous
Servir met son entencion,
Moult fait bonne opperacion.
Il acquiert vertuz, et de touz
Ses vices a remission.
Royne des cieux, qui en vous
Servir met son entencion,
Et Dieux treuve en la fin si doulx
Que de gloire a refeccion,
Ou est toute perfection.
Royne des cieulx, qui en vous
Servir met son entencion,
Moult fait bonne opperacion.

.

.

Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others. 

NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets.

The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.


CODEC Stories:

19 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I can identify a gifted linguist like you, although French is not one of the languages I studied. Using words like “portraiture” and “contrite heart” are both inspired and beautifully employed. I often am amazed at finding and presenting such melodic poems from bygone eras. Thank you for translating, polishing, and delivering these poems to us.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Happy May Day in the old way, Roy! In your work as Russian Foreign Area Officer, you must have been required to observe militaristic May Day celebrations. I much prefer these heart-uplifting tributes to the mother of Jesus, which I why I brought a few of the best as my gift to fellow poets and other readers on this occasion. I’m very happy you enjoy them.

      Reply
      • Roy Eugene Peterson

        You are right about Soviet/Russian May Day parades. I was assigned to take photos on Red Square of the military equipment and personnel observed on top of Lenin’s Tomb. I much preferred the Bavarian May Day with traditional costumes, Maypole and dancing.

      • Margaret Coats

        Yes, indeed, Roy. I remember May Day as “bringing in the May,” which for children meant getting up early and gathering flowers for one’s mother.

  2. Warren Bonham

    It’s hard enough to write when starting from scratch in English. I can’t imagine starting with someone else’s work in another language. I was forced to “learn” French for about 10 years so I may have been able to trace a few more words through than Roy. It all looked spot-on. Exceptional work! I look forward to seeing all 8 volumes translated someday.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Warren! In English we have many fewer miracle plays than in French, so it might be interesting to translate a sample. With whatever time and energy I have left, I have to make what seem the best choices between translation and original poetry. Glad you enjoyed this sample of May songs alone!

      Reply
  3. Julian D. Woodruff

    Margaret, these are beautiful in the original, and you have maintained, perhaps even enhanced that beauty in your translations. (I admit, I don’t quite get the sense or syntax of Ii.4-5, either in French or your English.)
    Are there by chance extant musical settings of any of these from the 13th-14th centuries?

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Julian, please see a long answer to you which appeared below Joseph Salemi’s comment.

      Reply
  4. Paul A. Freeman

    Thank you for this May treat, Margaret. Your translation and composition skills never cease to amaze.

    Reply
  5. Brian A. Yapko

    These are quite wonderful poems, Margaret — enthused addresses to the Virgin Mary in an interesting form requiring repetends and only two rhymes per piece. That you succeed in making this work both structurally and in the preservation of joyous devotion within the limitations of English is highly praiseworthy. You refer to these as “songs” and the forms themselves beg for music. It would be a treat to hear them actually sung.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Brian. I’m glad you found enthusiastic devotion in my translations; these four are interesting for varied imagery and speech strategies and posture of the speaker. I hope you noticed number III tends toward legal terminology, as an early expression of the idea of Mary as Advocate for the People of God. As songs, they are similar to popular works today that have little argument, but regularly (three times, maybe more at the end to fade out) repeat an important line or element. As I told Julian Woodruff above, you can find music by Gautier de Coincy on YouTube, some of it marked as being from or for Les Miracles de Nostre Dame. Because of unfamiliar musical style (and the many instruments used in the modern performances) I have trouble identifying a song melody. That being said, I would think the first piece above (with its questions and direct address to the Virgin) might make the most successful song.

      Reply
  6. Joseph S. Salemi

    It is no mean feat to pull off a series of rhyming translations like this. Margaret had to maneuver the difficulties of Old French while finding appropriate English rhymes to conclude each line. I think she must have been grateful that the first three lines of each song were repeated at the close!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Joe. I am indeed grateful to have only seven lines in a 13-line rondel where I need to know meanings for the words. However, one cannot simply repeat lines 1-3 as lines 11-13, especially when lines 1-2 also appear in the middle of the poem. The translation of each repeated line must be carefully considered in view of the whole, where it has more than one function. Still, that makes for a challenge where the poem becomes much more than a line-by-line translation. I think I can say I’ve done dozens of these, and I would only put the best in your May basket.

      Reply
  7. Margaret Coats

    Julian, thank you for appreciating these! To answer your easy question first, there are musical settings attributed to Gautier de Coincy, and you will find quite a few if you search his name on YouTube. I did not find any of these poems in particular. About the fourth and fifth lines of the second poem here, we have to remember Abbot Gautier may not have been the original author. He is certainly the author of the texts as we have them, and in the lines you mention, either he or the original writer was struggling to rhyme something with foy, faith. The chosen word quoy means what or why, and the lines read literally, “Reason there has good for what, because his servant justifies himself.” With my English rhyme word struggles, I chose to work with the obvious garden imagery of the poem. The lines say something about the part reason has in justification by faith. I therefore said reason prepares the garden plot (where faith comes and does the work of justification) that servants who become justified (through faith working in accord with reason) array (do their own good works). There’s a lot of theology here which is unclear in French, but certainly has to do with humility, the thing that flowers in the poem, and which is the chief virtue of the Blessed Virgin. That’s another unclear connection, but the main point is that any person who does not try to be humble is a fool (probably unjustified). The fact that this is not a theological treatise but a poem about a flowering spray means that the reader, like the translator, must use his imagination to discover what flowering humility does in the soul. There is a fruit of life, but we will not find moral or theological precision. Hope this helps a little, and thanks again for your attention.

    Reply
  8. Gary Krauss

    A great way to start the Month of Mary. Thank you Margaret,

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      A bouquet for Our Mother, Gary. Glad you like it, too!

      Reply
  9. Daniel Kemper

    Wow. Translation is almost exactly twice as difficult as straight writing. First is the understanding, nuance and all of the original, which must be gotten in some form of English, then the English basically re-written as a poem. Not meaning to imply that’s your process, but just to detail my math.

    Which was a very wordy way of saying, “Wow.”

    And more, because where I not only appreciate the task, and where I might have talents in some places I have none in translation.

    I’m late to the chase here, but have to echo also, the comments on very savvy diction choices.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks so much for the “Wow,” Daniel! After childish efforts at original poems, translation was for me the way to develop skills in versification. It all started with wanting to be able to read poems in many languages–and going on to discover characteristics in each literature that could be applied (or not) to English. We all have our processes, as you imagine so well.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Captcha loading...

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.