Songs expressing the grievances of an unhappy wife, traditional in northern and southern France and Italy, reflect the social reality of customary male dominance. The genre seems native to both regions of France despite the imbalance of surviving early examples (Old French outnumbering Old Occitan). These are mostly anonymous and probably late 12th- or early 13th-c. pseudo-popular adaptations of lost, orally transmitted folk-songs originating in May festivals—hence perhaps the high proportion of dance-song forms employed.
Typically, a young, occasionally coquettish wife complains that against her will she has married an old, important, yet cruel and jealous boor but desires a real or imaginary young lover. Variations include the reluctant fiancée (15th c. onwards); the nun reluctantly wedded to the Church but yearning for a male liberator (13th and 14th c. onwards); the drudge in penury, losing her youthful charms, married to a boozing womanizer and nostalgically recalling an old flame (more realistic variant, 15th c. onwards); the dwarf's wife (comically grotesque variant, attested 1724, probably much earlier); the predatory husband-seeker. All probably pre-date their earliest written attestation. Further variations are the complaint of a henpecked husband, comic (Colin Muset) or wryly ironic ( Le Mariage Rutebeuf), and objective condemnation of the jealous husband or the youngster-marrying hag (13th c. onwards). Pierre Bec surveys the genre and edits 12 examples in La Lyrique française au moyen âge (XIIe-XIIIe siècles) (1977-8).
[Peter Davies]
