ABSTRACT
Likewise the Normans seem to have been without a lyrical bent. If we are to accept Gaston Paris’s analysis of the Norman character,3 the Norman was practical and business-like, earnest rather than gay. At all events, in the lyric of northern France, that is, in the poetry of the trouvères, the Normans seem to have played a very minor part. The same observation holds true for England. In the very considerable body of Anglo-Norman poetry there are few secular lyrics,4 and it does not seem that Continental specimens were often copied in manuscripts written in England. During the period when French was the predominant language of the upper class it would be useless to look for lyrics of the French courtly type in English. The few lyrical fragments older than the thirteenth century, such as St. Godric’s Hymns and Cnut’s Song,5 are of liturgical and clerical inspiration. When, therefore, English secular lyrics begin to appear about 1250, it is a little difficult to say precisely what are their antecedents.
