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The bilingual alba of Fleury is a three-stanza Latin aubade that was written down around the year 1000 on a half-unused side of a codex of the French Benedictine abbey Fleury-sur-Loire. Neumes, a medieval element of notation, set the poem to music. The significance of this alba lies in its bilingualism, in code-switching. The three Latin stanzas end each with an identical two-line refrain in an early-Romance language.

The cryptic vernacular refrain lyric stands as one of the oldest lyrical attestations of Latin Europe. According to Swiss Romanist Gerold Hilty it involves the oldest Romance love poem, composed in an Old Occitan (Old Provençal) dialect.

The text of the poem

The quotation of the poem follows Gerold Hilty's transcription, and A.S. Kline's translation into English.

Phebi claro nondum orto iubare, fert aurora lumen terris tenue. Spiculator pigris clamat: surgite! ''L’alba par, ume mar, atra sol. Poy pas, a bigil, mira clar tenebras.''

En incautos ostium insidie torpentesque gliscunt intercipere, quos suadet preco clamat surgere. ''L’alba part, ume mar, atra sol. Poy pas, a bigil, mira clar tenebras.''

Ab arcturo disgregatur aquilo poli suos condunt astra radios, orienti tenditur septemtrio. ''L’alba part, ume mar, atra sol. Poy pas, a bigil.''

With pale Phoebus, in the clear east, not yet bright, Aurora sheds, on earth, ethereal light: While the watchman, to the idle, cries: ‘Arise!’ ''Dawn now breaks; sunlight rakes the swollen seas; Ah, alas! It is he! See there, the shadows pass!''

Behold, the heedless, torpid, yearn to try And block the insidious entry, there they lie, Whom the herald summons urging them to rise. ''Dawn now breaks; sunlight rakes the swollen seas; Ah, alas! It is he! See there, the shadows pass!''

From Arcturus, the North Wind soon separates. The star about the Pole conceals its bright rays. Towards the east the Plough its brief journey makes. ''Dawn now breaks; sunlight rakes the swollen seas; Now, alas! It is he!''

After the third stanza the text breaks off mid-refrain, after the word bigil. The following spellings deviate from classical Latin: Phebi instead of classical Phoebi, "Phoebus", meaning Apollo as sun-god; Spiculator instead of Speculator "watchman"; and preco instead of classical praeco "herald".

The neumes can be seen in the digitalised original manuscript, Codex Vaticanus Reginensis Latinus 1462, folio 50v.

From the neuemes there can be seen a sharp contrast between poem body and refrain. The long Latin lines are all sung in the same way, which is repeated three times in each stanza. The whole refrain, however, represents a single continuous melody.

The researchers are at odds

The poem preserves its secret. Researchers are at odds, both as regards what constitutes the essence of the entire poem, and what concerns the interpretation of the vernacular refrain lyric. There is also a lack of consensus as to in which early Romance language it has been formulated.

Different interpretations of the poem as a whole

Gerold Hilty discusses four theories dealt with by Romanists. Is it: 1. about a worldly alba, involving secret lovers, who should be wary of the enemy's ambush and urged to wake up by the watchman? 2. about the half-in-Latin transmitted Provençal wake-up call of a watchman without reference to the aubade situation? 3. about a Latin religious morning hymn with original vernacular refrain? 4. about a religious morning song whose refrain is the badly-written rest of a Latin tower watchman's song?

As set out by Gerold Hilty in the quoted essay, it is in his opinion about a religious morning hymn with a folk refrain, a theory already dealt with by Philipp August Becker:

It catches one's eye that we have here to do with a religious morning song, and an antelucanus at that ... The Fleury-sur-Loire alba stands on the border where the religious morning hymn breaks away from its original church service function in order to fulfil an aesthetic need.

Different interpretations of the refrain

The French Romanist and Medievalist Philippe Walter reports that no less than seventeen translations of this two-line refrain have been proposed: On a proposé pas moins de dix-sept traductions différentes de ces deux vers.

L’aube paraît, le soleil frappe la mer humide, puis passe le veilleur, les ténèbres se changent en clarté.

The day breaks, the sun shines on the foggy sea, then the watchman comes, the darkness changes into light.

Gerold Hilty glosses in detail each word of his Old Provençal reading of the refrain in his birthday gift for the Austrian Romanist Mario Wandruszka, who placed great value on multilingualism and comparative linguistics.

''L’alba part, ume mar, atra sol. Poy pas, a bigil, mira clar tenebras.''

The day breaks. Oh mother! He draws alone. As I go to him, oh watchman, the brightness I deem darkness.

par(t): in the script par occurs once and part twice. part would be correct (from Latin partire), here in the sense of "begin, break" ume: oy me = interjection "oh" mar: Latin matre(m) "mother" atra: third person singular present of Occitan atraire "draw to oneself" sol: Occitan "alone" po-y: this form is duosyllabic to read po y which, according to Hilty, is shown unequivocally through the neumes. po conjunction as, cf. Spanish pues. i adverb, often connected to persons, "to him". pas: first person singular of Occitan pasar "I go to him" a: Old Occitan interjection of complaint, "oh" bigil: vigil "watchman". The spelling with b points to Gascony, where the sounds b and v overlap. mira: imperative of mirar is here constructed with doubled accusative "deem, consider" clar: here used substantively tenebras: a widely-used Latinism in Old Occitan, "darkness". The girl wishes that the watchman not see what he could see in the light of daybreak: the lovers' rendezvous.

Gerold Hilty's reading of the Fleury alba is not undisputed.

The alba is reminiscent of Muwashshah with Romance Kharja

The Fleury alba is reminiscent of another form of bilingual poetry, the Hispano-Arabic and Hispano-Hebraic Muwashshah with Romance Kharja:

A literary language text - written Arabic/Hebrew in one case, Latin in the other - is followed by a vernacular - Romance - refrain. In the Muwashshah this refrain is Mozarabic, in the bilingual alba Old Provençal.

The Fleury alba also resembles the bilingual Muwashshah in motif identity: dawn (aurora) and watchman (herald). Thus it is conveyed in the Mozarabic Kharja of the anonymous Muwashshah No. IV:

Alba de mi fulgor Alma de mi alegria No estando el espia Esta noche quiero Amor

Dawn of my glint Soul of my joy Not here, the spy Tonight I want love

This structural relationship of the alba to the Muwashshah with Romance Kharja places this poem in the tradition of early Romance Frauenlieder, to which the Old Galician-Portuguese cantigas de amigo and the Spanish villancicos also belong.