[DPs] Martins, Ana Maria (2001) Documentos portugueses do Noroeste e da Região de
Lisboa: Da Produção Primitiva ao Século XVI. Lisboa: IN-CM.
[FR] Ferreira, José de Azevedo (1987) Afonso X. Foro Real. Edição, estudo linguístico e
glossário, 2 vols. Lisboa: INIC.
[LLC] Brocardo, Maria Teresa (2006) Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro. Edição do
fragmento manuscrito da Biblioteca da Ajuda (século XIV). Lisboa: IN-CM
[PP] Ferreira, José de Azevedo (1980) Alphonse X. “Primeyra Partida”. Edition et
Etude. Braga: INIC
[TAII] Castro, Ivo 2006. Testamento de D. Afonso II (edição dos manuscritos L e T). In:
Introdução à História do Português. Lisboa: Colibri, pp. 111-117
[TP] Ferreira, José de Azevedo (1986) Edição e estudo linguístico dos “Nove Tempos dos Preitos”. In: Roudil. J. Jacobo de Junta el de las Leyes. Oeuvres. I. Summa de los
Nueve Tiempos de los Pleitos, Édition et étude d’une variation sur un thème. Paris:
Klincksieck, pp. 65-80, 95-138, 141-142, 151-169, 387-406
[ZPM] Brocardo, Maria Teresa (1997) Crónica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses de
Gomes Eanes de Zurara. Edição e estudo. Lisboa: FCG / JNICT.
Recursos em linha
CIPM – Corpus Informatizado do Português Medieval http://cipm.fcsh.unl.pt/
DVPM – Dicionário de Verbos do Português Medieval http://cipm.fcsh.unl.pt/gencontent. jsp?id=5
Revista Galega de Filoloxía, ISSN 1576-2661, 2010, 11: 79-103
Data de recepción: abril de 2009 | Data de aceptación: xuño de 2009
Rip Cohen
The Johns Hopkins University
Everybody knows: Teophilo Braga was an incompetent editor of Galician-Portuguese
lyric.1 In his “critical” edition of the Vatican manuscript in 1878 (based on Ernesto
Monaci’s transcription [1875a]), Braga makes countless errors. He changes what was right in the manuscript, he lets stand what was wrong, and he shows on almost every page that he cannot really read the language he is editing: he does not know the lexicon, and niceties of metrics and historical grammar are beyond his ken. Here, however, I will argue that the emendation of augua to agua in a cantiga d’amigo of Pero Meogo was not one of his myriad blunders, but a sound correction.
Augua, a Galician-Portuguese variant of agua, occurs in two songs of Meogo, nos.
5 and 9 (the central and final songs), appearing four times in all.2 It should be noted
that no derivative of Latin aqua (REW 570) is found elsewhere in the lexicon of the secular lyric. Here is the text of these two poems of Meogo with the correction already included:
PERO MEOGO – 5 aaB (x6): 11’ [5’+5’] i-a // a-a ║ ęda
<Levou s’ aa alva>, | levou s’ a velida, vai lavar cabelos | na fontana fria leda dos amores, | dos amores leda.
1 The text and numbering of the cantigas of Pero Meogo, except for the proposed emendations, are taken from Cohen 2013a. The numbering and text of all other cantigas d'amigo are from Cohen 2003. Roman numerals refer to strophes. I am grateful to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for a research grant which has enabled me to prepare an edition of Pero Meogo with introduction, notes and commentary. 2 Although Braga corrects augua to agua in Meogo 9, v. 11, he does not do so in v. 8 or in (our) v. 14 of
Meogo 5, where the word is not in rhyme. The strophe where augua appears in rhyme in Meogo 5 is missing in V, which was Braga’s only source. Once we emend twice for rhyme, we should emend also when the word is not in rhyme, since each half of the formula should be identical whether the word is in rhyme or not.
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<Levou s’ aa alva>, | levou s’ a louçana,
vai lavar cabelos | na fria fontana 5
leda dos amores, | dos <amores leda>. Vai lavar cabelos | na fontana fria, passa seu amigo, | que lhi ben queria leda dos <amores, | dos amores leda>.
Vai lavar cabelos | na fria fontana, 10
passa seu amigo, | que <a> muit’ a<ma>va leda dos a<mores, | dos amores leda>. Passa seu amigo, | que lhi ben queria, o cervo do monte | a agua volvia
leda dos a<mores, dos amores leda>. 15 Passa seu amigo | que a muit’ amava,
o cervo do monte | volvia <a> agua leda <dos amores, | dos amores leda>.
B 1188 ff. 252v-253r V 793 ff. 124v-125r
1, 4 <Levou s’ aa alva> supplevi (ex Dinis 17, v. 2 levantou s’ <aa> alva)
1 <Levou-s’a louçana> Nunes <Leda dos amores> Bell uelida
B : uenda V
4 <Levou-s’a velida> Nunes <Dos amores leda> Bell 8 passa Nunes (probante Cunha) : passou BV
10-12 copied at the end of the text in BV
11 <a> Nunes muit’ a<ma>va Monaci (cf. v. 16) : q’ muytaua B : q’ muytau9 V
14, 17 agua correxi : augua BV 15 dos a] d9 a V : do a B 16-18 om. V
16 amana B
17 volvia] noluya B <a> cf. v. 14 PERO MEOGO – 9
aaB (x6) 10’ [4’+5’] ║ 5
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– Digades, filha, | mha filha velida, por que tardastes | na fontana fria? – (Os amores ei.)
– Digades, filha, | mha filha louçana,
por que tardastes | na fria fontana? 5
– (Os amores ei.)
Tardei, mha madre, | na fontana fria, cervos do monte | a agua volv<i>an. (Os amores ei.)
Tardei, mha madre, | na fria fontana, 10
cervos do monte | volv<i>an a agua. (Os amores ei.)
– Mentir, mha filha, | mentir por amigo, nunca vi cervo | que volvesse_o rio.
– (Os amores ei.) 15 – Mentir, mha filha, | mentir por amado,
nunca vi cervo | que volvess’ o alto. – (Os amores ei.)
B 1192 f. 253v V 797 f. 125r-v
1 uelida B : ne naa V
8 do monte a augua do mõte BV : corr. Varnhagen
8, 11 agua correxi (iam Braga in v. 11) : augua BV volv<i>am
Varnhagen : uoluã BV
9 amores ey V : om. B
Augua occurs in essentially the same phrase in both texts, except that in 5 the verb
is singular (volvia), while in 9 it is plural (volvian). Hence, in 5.V-VI we find
volvia <a> augua / a augua volvia. These are variants of an invertible formula, so
constructed that it occupies the second colon of the verse, and so either part can stand at verse-end in a system of alternating rhymes in i-a // a-a.3 Augua should rhyme
3 The shift in Meogo 9 from i -a // a-a (I-IV) to i-o / a-o (V-VI) is extremely unusual, but see Pedr’Eanes Solaz 2 (i-a // a-a [I-IV]; i-o / a-o [V-VI]; in VII-VIII all verses outside the refrain end with leli) and Cohen 2011: 117-119.
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with amava in 5, v. 16, and with fontana in 9, v. 10. Most editors (including Cohen 2003, 2013a) have thought this unproblematic. But if we examine the question we will see that poetic practice compels us to reject the form augua transmitted by the manuscripts and to correct it (as Braga did in one case) to agua.
Why? Because the rules of assonant rhyme in this genre, as they can be induced from the (roughly) forty texts where it appears, require that the same vowel occur in the tonic syllable in each of the rhyming words—and also in the post-tonic syllable, in feminine rhymes (see Appendix).4 And, if we except these two poems
of Meogo, nowhere in Galician-Portuguese lyric do we find a pure vowel rhyming with a diphthong. In fact, diphthongs are never used in assonant rhyme at verse- end.5
Someone might be momentarily tempted to argue that in the archaic—or archaizing— poetics of this genre traditional pairs of rhyme words were an important part of composition: amigo / amado; cabelos / garcetas (Johan Soarez Coelho 12, Pero Meogo 6); rio / alto (Johan Zorro 3, 6, 8); ferido / fossado (Pai Gomez Charinho 1, Martin de Giinzo 1); and that despite the passage of time, older words and forms were sometimes kept rather than being substituted by more modern ones. The result might be a lexical archaism, such as loir, perhaps meaning “amorous play” in Meogo 8 (from Latin lūdere via *ludīre; Cohen 2013c, s.v. loir), which in its only occurrence is paired with bailar; or it might be a semantic archaism, such as alto meaning “stream,” which is paired with rio (Meogo 9; Zorro 3, 6, 8); or it might be a phonological archaism where intervocalic n or l is retained, such as fontana (Meogo 5 and 9) or salido (Johan Zorro 9, Martin Codax 3; Cohen 2013b; Ferreiro 2008, 2013). The phonological archaisms appear to violate the most basic principle of the laws of sound change, that the change should be universal in all words, throughout all grammatical categories, so long as the same phonetic conditions obtain.6 So
phonological archaisms have been taken as evidence that the poets were aware of
4 In the cantigas d’amigo assonance occurs mainly in songs with cobras alternantes, of which seven, including Meogo 5 and 9, display the pattern i-a // a-a. The others are Nuno Fernandez Torneol 1; Afonso Sanchez 2; Pedr'Eanes Solaz 2 (see previous note); Dinis 17, 40. A list of cantigas d'amigo with cobras alternantes can be found in Cohen 2009: 128-129. On assonant rhyme and the origins of the genre, see Cohen 2013b.
5 In v. 23 of B 491 / V 74-74a (Afonso X) B has panos / da rraizís (da naizes in V) but the rhyme sound is –azes and Lapa (1970: 38) reads panos d’ arrazes (I thank Manuel Ferreiro for callling my attention to this passage). There is an internal feminine assonant rhyme with a diphthong in the first syllable in Pero de Veer 4.10-11 (ęu-en): Nen o viss’ eu nen | o tant’ amasse, / pois mi Deus deu quen | me
non leixasse and with a diphthong in the second syllable in Bonaval 6.10-11 (i-ęu): Pois m’ aqui seu | mandado non chegou, / muito vin eu | mais leda ca me vou. In each case both the tonic and the post-
tonic vowels are identical.
6 Exceptions are analogical formations and loan-words which entered the language late enough to escape the change.
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chronological stages of the language and of diatopic variation and used older and variant forms when and how they needed or wanted to (Ferreiro 2008: 94). In other words, these concurrently available variants were useful resources in the poetic word-hoard.
But this explanation does not apply to augua in Pero Meogo. Found in late 13th and
14th century prose texts (and in three rubrics of CSM), augua is not a phonological
archaism that has been retained because it rhymes, but a recent form which was copied twice at verse end despite the fact that it does not rhyme. So the well documented existence of the variant augua does not speak for its soundness in the text of Meogo. The older form that has been displaced here is agua, which is found as early as the tenth century (Lorenzo 1977, s.v. agua) and is the only form documented elsewhere in the lyric, appearing around 70 times in the Cantigas de Santa Maria (TMILG).7
The apparent simplicity of the correction enabled Braga to emend, but he would not have known that agua must precede auga and augua; or rather, that auga cannot be derived directly from aqua. And this we know; because if aqua had become †auca already in Latin, this would have become †ouca in Galician-Portuguese, since lenition does not occur following au (e.g., paucum > pouco; autoricare > outorgar; Cohen 2010a: 16). So auga must be derived from Galician-Portuguese agua, while
augua seems to be a cross between agua and auga (Lorenzo 1977, s.v. agua).8 If,
then, the oldest form of the word is agua, and this poet elsewhere uses archaic forms in rhyme, why would he twice employ a newer variant that does not rhyme instead of an older variant that does?
There is some flexibility in the structure of assonant rhymes in the cantigas d’amigo, but that flexibility affects only consonants. The consonant after the tonic vowel and also (very rarely) the final consonant in the post-tonic syllable can be different in words that rhyme with assonance, or there can be a consonant in one word but none in the other. Hence, frias and dizian rhyme in the first strophe of Nuno Fernandez Torneol 1; and fria and dizian rhyme in Meogo 9 (cf. Dinis 17: velida / camisas). And there is sometimes a liquid or nasal, or even a sibilant, in the same syllable with the tonic vowel: rio / virgo (Johan Zorro 6); alto / barco (Johan Zorro 3, 8); barco /
amado (Johan Zorro 3); trago / ambos (Martin Codax 4, Dinis 15); forte / amostre
(Johan Zorro 7). In another poem of Meogo (7), madre rhymes with verdade even though an r follows the consonant in madre but not in verdade. But nowhere is there any exception to the rule that the tonic vowel must be identical in words that rhyme with each other.
7 In the 13th century agua is roughly ten times more common than auga, according to data in TMILG.
8 “It could also be an indication of uncertainty about where the labial gesture occurred” (Michael Weiss, personal communication 2014).
Revista Galega de Filoloxía, ISSN 1576-2661, 2010, 11: 79-103
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As Madvig (1871-1884: I, 95) says: before we think of emending a text we must show that a reading is truly suspect.9 Here there is no problem with colometry,
metrics, morphosyntax or meaning. The matters of historical phonology I have mentioned are not problematic either. The problem with augua is that the praxis of Galician-Portuguese lyric does not recognize a rhyme between au and a.
The readings of the manuscripts do reflect a linguistic reality, but that belongs to a stage in the transmission of the text. Evidently, augua was the dominant form in the speech community of the scribe who introduced it—maybe still in the 13th century.10 But we
ought not to consecrate a corruption merely because it smacks of linguistic variation.
Augua is equivalent to a metrically incorrect variant form like son for sõo.11 In both
cases the form in the manuscripts represents a further phonological evolution which renders the form inappropriate to its context—metrical or para-metrical. Now, the failure of many editors to correct for the sake of meter stems from an inadequate understanding of metrical practice and of the manuscript tradition (Cohen 2010c). And the failure to correct augua has been due to an imperfect understanding of assonant rhyme—and also to a fondness for variant forms.
It is sound procedure to emend for the sake of rhyme and early editors made certain corrections on these grounds.12 Sometimes subtle distinctions are involved. In Johan
Servando 12, for example, Monaci (1875b) restores mi<n> for mi (BV) because min must rhyme with vin and the rhyme system of the cantiga opposes i to in in the first two strophes, in being the b-rhyme of the first strophe while i is the a-rhyme of the second.
Diz meu amigo que lhi faça ben,
mais non mi diz o ben que quer de mi<n>; eu por ben tenho de que lh’ aqui vin polo veer, mais el assi non ten,
mais, se soubess’ eu qual ben el querria aver de mi, assi lho guisaria.
9 “Primum est emendationis initium, sine quo tentari coniectura non debet, mendum demonstrare et certis indiciis convincere aut saltem ita probabiliter arguere, ut iustae suspicioni sit locus.”
10 Souto Cabo (2012: 280-281, 291) provides a document dated 1260 where “Petrus Moogus, clericus de Sancto Simeone” serves as a witness. For the current distribution of agua, auga and augua in Galiza, see
ALG, vol. III, map 401 (my thanks to Xavier Varela for providing me with a digital copy of this map).
11 See Johan Garcia de Guilhade 4, v. 7, where Nobiling (1907) emends son (BV) to sõo. The verse reads
de pran non sõo tan louca, scanning 7’.
12 For instance, Monaci (1875a) corrects queymar to queymei in Afonso Lopez de Baian 1, v. 14 (Cohen 2012: 14-15). Braga (1878) transposes nada por mi where the manuscripts have por mi nada (Johan Perez d’Avoin 9, v. 20) and prints senti<u> instead of senti in Juião Bolseiro 10, v. 1. The correction m’errou for morreu in Johan Perez d’Avoin 1, v. 20 had eluded editors, including Cohen 2003: 151; see Cohen 2012: 13-23.
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Pede m’ el ben, quant’ á que o eu vi, e non mi diz o ben que quer aver de min, e tenh’ eu que d<e> o veer lh’ é mui gran ben, e el non ten assi, mais, <se soubess’ eu qual ben el querria aver de mi, assi lho guisaria>.
Or take the correction of Carolina Michaëlis (1895) to the text of Dinis 9, where the manuscripts offer senhor and she emends to Occitan senher (see Ramos 1988: 626- 627, 634, 637). Here a girl uses the foreign form with a mocking tone:
Ca demo lev’ essa ren que eu der por enfinta fazer o mentiral
de min, ca me non monta ben nen mal, e por aquesto vos mand’ eu, senher, que, ben <quanto quiserdes des aqui fazer, façades enfinta de mi>.
The tip-off is that senhor does not rhyme with der.13
Sometimes the issue is earlier vs. later forms. In Gonçal’Eanes do Vinhal 1 vijnha (in B; V has nunha) is a later form and Lapa (1982) corrects to the earlier vĩia (< Lat.
uenībat for ueniēbat) because the latter has the virtue of rhyming.
Nulha coita non avia (tanto creede per mi) outra, nen el non vĩia (mais por que verria aqui?), ai dona’, lo meu amigo <se non por falar comigo nen ven por al meu amigo se non por falar comigo>.
And consider the variant forms of the second conjugation future subjunctive, valvęr and valẹr. The older form valvęr (from Latin ualuerim or ualuerit, perfect subjunctive of valēre) belongs to a strong (irregular) conjugation with open ęr, while the newer form valẹr belongs to a weak (regular) conjugation with close ẹr. The newer form cannot take the place of the older in rhyme since close ẹr and open ęr belong to two distinct classes of rhymes (Huber 1986: 242; Ferreiro 1999: I, 312-314; Cohen 2010a: 17). If in the manuscripts we find the newer form allegedly rhyming with a
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word ending with open ęr, there is a problem. Sometimes an editor has noted this and made the necessary correction. In Airas Carpancho 4, v. 16, Lapa (1982: 162) sees that the regular conjugation cannot replace the irregular in rhyme, since valer, with close ẹr, cannot rhyme with quer, which has open ęr.
<será gran tort’, e non ei de fazer>, qual i quisesse, ben – qual a min quer o meu, que tan muit’ á que desejou meu ben fazer, e nunca lhi prestou, e será morto, se lh’ eu non val<v>er, e, se o eu por mi leixar morrer, <será gran tort’, e non ei de fazer>.
Lapa therefore emends to valver, the strong future subjunctive, which does rhyme with quer.14
A similar phonemic distinction which is maintained in classes of rhymes may be seen in the past subjunctive of second conjugation verbs. -esse-, with close e from the Latin pluperfect subjunctive -ĭsse-, is found in weak (regular) verbs such
morrẹsse, but in strong (irregular) verbs there is an open ę, as in mānsissem > masęsse; fēcissem > fezęsse. This contrast is neatly illustrated in Pedr’Amigo de
Sevilha 3 where the poet rhymes morrẹsse / sofrẹsse (two weak verbs) in the second strophe and ouvęsse / quisęsse (two strong verbs) in the third.
– Amiga, vistes amigo que por amiga morresse que tanto pesar sofresse <quanto sofre meu amigo>? – Non o vi nen <quen o visse nunca vi des que fui nada, mais vej’ eu vos mais coitada>. – Amiga, vistes amigo
que tan muito mal ouvesse d’ amiga que ben quisesse quant’ á por mi meu amigo? – Non o vi nen quen o visse <nunca vi des que fui nada, mais vej’ eu vos mais coitada>.
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Again the phonemic contrast between open and close e is sufficient to distinguish two classes of rhymes which are always kept separate.
If, therefore, we have a textual problem and must choose between two variant forms which are equivalent in everything but phonology, and if one form rhymes and the other does not, then the form that rhymes must be the correct one. If the manuscripts give us the form that does not rhyme, we should emend. And in a genre where tonic vowels that are matched in rhyme must be identical and where even the contrast between open and close e determines separate classes of rhyme sounds, does it make