from “Lucky Pierre”

GUILLAUME IX

Guillaume IX, a now little known poet of eleventh-century France, is the earliest of the traveling troubadours who survives on the page, and thus, in a certain sense, could be called the first love poet in medieval Europe. As both the count of Poitiers and the duke of Aquitane, Guillaume was a true philosopher king—but not exactly the kind Plato had in mind. No, instead of forging reason and wisdom into a perfect alloy, Guillaume neglected his civic duties in favor of versifying and skirt chasing, concerning himself less with the laws of state as what he calls the “leis de con” (the laws of pussy). Writing in Old Provençal, Guillaume is widely considered the father of the courtly love lyric. And although in later hands these lyrics would become ornately stylized jewels on the nobility of love and the sanctity of the emotive heart, Guillaume’s prototypes are ribald, raunchy, and brazen. In one, he asks to outlive the war so he can get his hands beneath his neighbor’s mantle; in another, he can’t pick between his two steeds (you know what kind); in a third, he sums up his life philosophy with the words:

I don’t like women who put guards on their quim,
And I don’t like ponds that don’t have fish to swim,
And I don’t like braggarts with their “Me, me, me”
For when you look at what they’ve done, there isn’t much to see.

But despite his dislike of boasting, Guillaume isn’t shy about proclaiming his bedroom artistry. He says he’s called the “Sure Master” for “so well have I learned the sweet game / that I’m a hand up on all other men.” But apparently things don’t always go his way, despite his skills. Pussy’s law, as it turns out, is that, unlike most things, it gains from being detracted from, like a forest, where if you cut down one tree three grow back. Leave your lover alone and she’ll replace you with three others.

My favorite of his poems is a tale of how he tricks his way into a threesome with two married women. Like Petronius before him, and Boccaccio and Rabelais after, it’s another case of brains winning beauty but, in this case, not without a few scrapes.

In Auvergne, just out of Limousin,
I was walking all alone
When I came upon the lady Garin
Strolling beside the lady Bernard
Both of whom said meek hellos
In the name of Saint Leonard.

And this is how I answered that day,
I didn’t say “yeah” or “nay,”
Nor one word of sense did they hear me say,
Just: “Babariol, Babariol,
Babariay.”

Then Agnes says to Ermessen:
“We’ve found what it was we sought.
Sister, by God, let’s take him in
For he is mute
And so he’ll never dispute
Or tell what we do with him.”

“But Sister, this man is ingenious
He stopped speaking simply for us;
So let’s go fetch a cat,
Who’ll claw down his back,
And we’ll see if the show’s made for us.”

So we ate and drank—it was quite a feast,
Till Agnes came back, holding the beast.
Then she took off my shirt
And to make sure it hurt
Dragged it from my back to my knees.

Though the pain I did repent
My crafty ruse did not relent,
And, convinced, they set a bath to run.
I knew I had gone
Into a carnal oven
And eight days passed ’fore we were done.

And boy did I fuck them, as you will hear,
One hundred and eighty-eight times!
So much I did fear
I would break all my gear,
I can’t tell you the pain I was in.
No, I can’t tell you the pain I was in.

—translated by Jack Murnighan