136 ROMANCE BALLADS

an unwelcome bridegroom by Hugues, a young Lochinvar; Belle
Argentine, as sorely abused as any medieval wife and mother, was
justified at long last. The Count de la Marche exploits the theme
of the "shepherdess of joyous heart' who mocks the timid gallant:
Oh how much of worth you miss,
since without one little kiss
I've eluded you!

(Bartsch in. iii.)

Anonymous tales of this sort open Bartsch's collection. Belle
Erembors resumes her old affair with Raynaud; Belle Aiglentine is
rewarded for her true love to Count Henry by marriage; Belle
Doeite hears that Boon is dead, refuses a comforter, and enters a
nunnery (Marlbrough s'en va en guerre is the same story in another
style, and the various tests of ladies' faithfulness may be expansions
of the same theme). There are encounters at fountains and any
number of fma! mariees*. Different in style from what are later
admitted to be 'chansons populates', more literary and perhaps
set to more intricate music, these poems contain the seed of many
future ballad developments in Spain, England, Holland, and
Germany.

In the second half of the fifteenth century, perhaps due to an
uprush of national and popular sentiment at the close of the
Hundred Years' War,1 a current set in in favour of simplicity of
music and rhythm, and we encounter for the first time poems of
the same texture as those preserved in actual oral tradition.

Ballads and rondeaux give way gradually to livelier and lighter pieces.
To pompous and precious phrases more natural and realistic turns and
expressions are preferred. The style of composers also changes: com-
positions for voices accompanied by instruments no longer predominate;
the vocal a capetta style is established with Ockeghem and his school.
In the sixteenth century, in particular, the form is simplified, and,
perhaps under the influence of the Italian frottole, lyrics approximate
to the forms of the popular dances, or even to the songs of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.2

This simplification of style is applied, characteristically in France,
to artistic lyrics. There remains the same doubt as before concern-
ing the traditional nature of a large part of the albums in which

1 In several songs (as Le Capitaine et la Belle} the villain is an Englishman.
3 Th. Gerold, Chansons populates des XVe et XVI& sttcles (Bibliotheca
Romanica, 190-2), Strasbourg, n.d., p. vii.