Here hang the wine-sotted troubadours of sadness and clouds,
~Having played serenas to paramours lipping at the cup of an evening bawd~
Like tethered donkeys now with their packsong of pastorela and alba,
No more musical mensurations of the ****** Mary, Cantigas de Santa Maria,
But slung over the railings of dawn-blotted taverns or courts of renown,
Here hang the wine-sotted troubadours of sadness and clouds,
Like drinking gourds, their stringed citherns dangle from their shoulders,
Leaking the strummed honey-wine of sound like the retchings of the nearby sea.
The troubadour flourished in France during the Medieval Ages (circa 1100-1350), primarily traveling from court to court.
The “serena” (evening song for a lover waiting to consummate his love), “alba” (dawn song of a lover), and “pastorela” (song of love from a knight to a shepherdess) are all song forms.
The “Cantigas de Santa Maria,” the well-known “Canticles of Holy Mary,” are 420 poems sung by troubadours, each mentioning the ****** Mary.
“Citherns” are essentially the precursor to modern-day guitars.