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The Mediæval Debate Between Wine and Water

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Extract

Among the mediæval debates which have enjoyed the widest currency and have retained their hold on popular interest for the longest time is the contention between Wine and Water. Poems on this subject are extant in most of the languages of mediæval Europe; and the tradition has persisted with surprising vitality through more than seven centuries down to the present day. The bickerings of these two ancient foes may still be heard on the lips of the peasantry of Germany, France, and Spain, and a fragment of the same dispute was sung not long since as a nursery rhyme in Devon.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1913

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References

page 316 note 1 Ed. Schmeller, No. 173.

page 316 note 2 Poésies inédites, p. 303. A verse translation into English may be found in J. A. Symonds's Wine, Women, and Song.

page 316 note 3 Wright, p. 87; J. Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, iii, p. 78; Mone's Anzeiger, xv, p. 285; Novati, Carmina Medii Ævi, p. 58; A. Bömer, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, N. F., vi, p. 123. Cf. Bibl. de l'école des chartes, xlvii (1886), p. 89.

page 316 note 4 The Benedictbeurn collection was written down, as Meyer has shown (Fragmenta Burana, p. 17), about 1225.

page 318 note 1 Davus is the slave in the Andria of Terence, Geta in the Phormio. But the allusion in the case of the last two names in the line is undoubtedly, as Professor J. D. M. Ford points out to me, to the Latin poem, Geta aut Carmen de Amphitrione et Alcmena, attributed to Vital de Blois (fl. c. 1150) and based on the Amphitruo of Plautus (see Thomas Wright's Early Mysteries, p. 77).

page 319 note 1 See Meyer, Die Oxforder Gedichte des Primas, Göttinger Nachrichten, Phil.-Hist. Classe, 1907, pp. 149 ff.

page 320 note 1 I. e., divisa, separata; Heb. phares, divisio. (Du Cange.)

page 320 note 2 In the debate Wine says:

Per me mundus reparatur
Per te nunquam generatur
Filius vel filia.

page 322 note 1 Suetonius, Tiberius, cap. 42: “Asellio Sabino sestertia ducenta donavit pro dialogo in quo boleti et ficedulæ et ostreæ certamen induxerat.” Cf. also the synkrisis of pease porridge and pease soup mentioned by Athenæus (iv, 157 b) as one of the writings of the Cynic philosopher, Meleager of Gadara.

page 322 note 2 Vespœ Judicium Coqui et Pistoris; Bæhrens, Poet. Lat. Min.; Riese, Anthol. Lat., i (i), 199.

page 322 note 3 La Bataille de Karesme et de Charriage; Barbazan et Méon, Fabliaux et Contes, iv, p. 80. For various Italian versions see Batines, Bibliografia delle Rappresentatione Sacre, pp. 77 and 78. The material is treated in Spanish by Juan Ruiz in the Libro de buen amor. In these poems the sympathies of the author are on the side of the richer diet. A curious echo of the allegorical battle of foodstuffs is to be found in Rabelais, Pantagruel, xl and xli.

page 322 note 4 See below.

page 323 note 1 I have used Bömer's text.

page 323 note 2 Psalms, 110, 7.

page 323 note 3 John, 5, 4.

page 323 note 4 “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake.” I Timothy, 5, 23.

page 324 note 1 2 Kings, 5, 14.

page 324 note 2 Luke, 10, 34.

page 325 note 1 Of other parallels the following are the most striking:

Claudus currit; cæcus videt;
Surdus audit; mens subridet;
Per me mutus loquitur. (Denudata)

Mutis eloquentiam, contractis salire,
Dat, et inter verbera facit non sentire. (Dialogus,
(Wright's text)

Nullus per te fabulatur. (Denudata)

Si quis causa qualibet cessat a Lyæo,
Non resultat canticum neque laus ab eo. (Dialogus)

Vinum hæc: te plenam fraude
Probas esse tali laude:
Verum est quod suscipis
Naves; post hoc intumescis;
Dum frangantur non quiescis
Et sic eas decipis. (Denudata)

Tu deceptrix hominum, quibus dum te præstas
Placidam, post fluctibus subditis infestas;
Rogat super alias iustus res funestas,
‘Ne demergat,’ inquiens, ‘aquæ me tempestas. (Dialogus)

page 326 note 1 Cf. e. g., the Eologa Theoduli, ed. Osternacher, and the Conflictus Ovis et Lini, Haupt's Zeitschrift, xi, p. 215.

page 326 note 2 See Wright's collection cited above, p. 316.

page 326 note 3 In Grimm's Venetian manuscript the debate is labelled “versus primatis presbiteri.” “Primas” as Meyer has shown, is Hugo of Orleans, who flourished about 1140 and was famous for his Latin verses for more than a century. To him were ascribed many Goliardic poems written later and by various authors. Salimbene appears to have confused him with Archipoeta, who flourished a generation later at Cologne and is unquestionably the author of the Confessici Goliœ. The Dialogus cannot possibly be the work of Hugo, since it differs entirely from his known poems in meter, style, and subject matter. (The Goliardic stanza was almost unknown before 1150.) Its resemblance, on the other hand, to the Confessici and to other undoubted writings of the Archipoeta is so marked as to make his authorship not at all improbable.

page 327 note 1 Eine Vagantenliedersammlung des 14. Jahrhunderts; Haupt's Zeitschrift, 49 (1907-8), pp. 161 ff.

page 328 note 1 Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 207, col. 1155.

page 329 note 1 Genesis, 19, 33.

page 329 note 2 Works edited by G. Roethe, Leipzig, 1887, p. 555 (nos. 297-299). See Hermann Jantzen, Das deutsche Streitgedicht im Mittelalter, pp. 35, 36.

page 330 note 1 Jubinal, Nouveau recueil (1839), ii, pp. 293 ff.; Wright, Latin-Poems, pp. 299 ff.

page 331 note 1 Œuvres de Henri d'Andeli, edited by A. Heron, Rouen, 1880, pp. 23 ff.

page 333 note 1 See Héron, introduction, pp. liii ff., notes, p. 91.

page 333 note 2 In both the Dialogus and the Desputoison Water boasts that it drives mills; in the Denudata and the Desputoison it mentions its usefulness in carrying ships, and declares that Wine could never exist without Water's help in making the vine fruitful.

page 334 note 1 See Montaiglon, Recueil de Poésies, iv, p. 103; also Le débat de deux demoyselles, Paris, 1825.

page 335 note 1 Cf. also the following reference:

Comme en Sapience lirez:
Par via tout mal vient, etc.

page 335 note 2 The first speech of Water is introduced by a narrative describing Water's gentle manner of speech. The language of the argument is more glowing and picturesque. “You are common and unregarded,” says Wine, “mais moi on me baise et acolle. I live with amoreus et chantants gallants; quand s'en vont, il leur fault lanternes. You make men pale; I cause them to flush comme rose qui boutonne.”

page 336 note 1 Such a version has been recorded from oral tradition in the neighborhood of Metz. See Chants populaires recueillis dans le pays messin, par Théodore Puymaigre, Paris, 1865, p. 191 (lxiii). This piece is reported to have been frequently sung at Maizeroy and elsewhere, also to have been circulated in broadside form. Fleury, Littérature orale de la Basse-Normandie (1883), p. 230, notes that the same version is popular in Normandy. The poem is written in a ten-line stanza ababccdeed; in substance it resembles the Débat more closely than any other version, and Puymaigre is right, I think, in believing it to be a derivative of that piece. He gives a number of parallels, to which the following may be added:

Helaa! que tu es folle! (Metz version; the stanza goes on to describe the senseless meanderings of water)
Tu cours partout com une folle. (Débat)

There are, however, the usual resemblances to other versions. Thus the description of the destructive effects of floods, which appears in the Metz version as in the Italian poems, the Denudata Veritate, etc., has no parallel in the Débat. It is noteworthy that in this poem, as in the folk versions generally and the Italian pieces, Water has the last word.

The opening stanzas of another colporteur chanson, given by Smith, are quite different from the above; yet they also suggest derivation from the Débat. Note especially the following:

S'il manquait mon arrosée
Que deviendrais-tu avec ton bois tordu.

page 337 note 1 V. Smith, Un Débat Chanté, Romania, vi (1877), p. 596.

page 338 note 1 The passage in the Débat also suggests the “grosse manière” of Wine; Water, says the poet,

Ne fut pas si estourdie
En parole ne se hardie
Comme le Vin qui la tensa,
Tout bas de parle s'avansa.

page 338 note 2 Le Pays Basque, p. 355.

page 339 note 1 The text has been frequently printed owing to its interest as one of the few examples of Spanish literature earlier than the fourteenth century. See Morel-Fatio in Romania, xvi, pp. 364 ff.; Monaci, Testi basso-latini e volgari della Spagna, Roma, 1891; Egidio Gorra, Lingua e lettatura spagnuole delle origini, Milano, 1898; G. Petraglione, Studi di Filologia Romanza, viii, p. 494. Cf. Menéndez y Pelayo, Antologia, p. xxviii.

page 339 note 2 This is the theory of Petraglione, who prints the two parts separately, taking lines 11-36 from the “Razon d'Amor” and making them, together with the conclusion of the love poem as printed by Morel-Fatio, the introduction of the debate. Note that the garden opening is found in one other example of the Wine and Water debate. (Below, p. 344.) The episode of the dove may be regarded as simply a fanciful variation of the conventional narrative explanation of low the drinks are mixed.

page 341 note 1 For example, the following:

Yo fago al ciego veyer
Y al coxo correr
Y al mudo faublar
Y al infermo organar.

See above, p. 325. Cf. also the following parallels: La mesa sin mi nada non val; Mensa pro (var. per) te non ornatur; E sueles tanto andar con polvo mesclada Fasta qu'en lodo eres tornada“; see above, p. 331.

page 341 note 2 The baptism and sacrament motives, neither of which appears in the Denudata, are common to the Spanish poem, the Dialogus, and the French Débat. Peculiar also to these three is Wine's boast that it is shut up in casks as a precious thing. These features recur, as we shall see, in other vernacular versions.

page 342 note 1 Nuevo y curioso Romance, en que se refiere el pleyto y publico desafio que tuvo el Agua con el Vino, para saber qual de los era de mayor utilidad y provecho. Latin Poems, pp. 306 ff. Morel-Fatio says that the style of the poem indicates that it could not have been written earlier than the eighteenth century.

page 343 note 1 The basis of the dispute is the original question of the mixing of wine and water. There appear in the course of the argument Wine's boast that it can cure the blind and deaf, its condemnation of its rival on the ground of filth, Water's statement that the vine would never grow but for its influence—all of which motives are common in the Denudata, the Débat, and the earlier Spanish poems.

page 343 note 2 Morel-Fatio, op. cit., p. 366: “Au siècle dernier, les aveugles d'Espagne vendaient encore par les rues une romance où était narré le plaid du vin avec l'eau, et dans une de nos provinces se chante aujourd'hui une forme très populaire de ce débat.”

page 343 note 3 A dispute between Chocolate and Wine, Xácara del gracioso desafio que tuvieron el chocolate y el vino, in a pliego suelto of c. 1670, is noted by F. Wolf, Studien zur Span. und Port. Nat.-Lit., p. 371.

page 344 note 1 Contrasto dell' Acqua e del Vino; Firenze, 1897, Per nozze d'Ancona-Orvieto. Professor Rajna reports another fifteenth-century manuscript in Seville.

page 344 note 2 Festschrift beim Eingang in das neue Gebäude der städtischen Oberrealschule zu Halle a.S., Halle, 1908, pp. 65 ff.; Zum Streitgedichte zwischen Wein und Wasser, Zwei neue italienische Bearbeitungen: II., Incomincia la nobilissima Historia della disputacione del Vino et dell' Acqua, Cosa bellissima da ridere composta nuovamente.

page 345 note 1 Loc. cit., I., El Contrasto del'Acqua et del Vino.

page 346 note 1 Cf., however, the Desputoison, above p. 331, and the later Spanish version, above p. 342.

page 346 note 2 See the parallels given in footnotes by Wiese. A close examination of these passages will show that in most eases where the same motive appears in several versions the phraseology is most nearly that of the Débat, while several of the motives appear only in one or more of the Italian poems and the Débat. See, especially, stanzas 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 21, 27, 32, 33, in the B version; 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 22, in C; and vv. 34, 40-43, 54-55, 64-65, 79, 82, in A.

page 346 note 3 Cf. C, stanza 11, with the parallel from Denudata given by Wiese; see also C, stanza 15 (cf. A, vv. 88-93), and 11 (an almost certain reminiscence of the Dialogus).

page 346 note 4 The resemblances are matters of detail rather than of general plan. Cf. the following passages:

“Te toria la forza e lo vigore.” B
“Eyo t'o tore la forza e-1 vigore. A
“Gia sai tu che da bevere non sei sana.” B
“Za sa' tu ben che da beve non e sana.” A

For similar parallels see Wiese's notes, esp. B, stanzas 7, 21, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, etc.

page 347 note 1 Stanzas 7 (cf. B 29), 10, 15 (cf. A, vv. 88-93), 7 (cf. A, vv. 75-6 and B stanza 29).

page 347 note 2 See D'Ancona, Origini del teatro Italiano, Turino, 1891, i, pp. 547 ff.; J. L. Klein, Geschichte des Italienischen Dramas, Vol. I. (Ges. des Dram., iv.), pp. 230 ff.

page 347 note 3 On the relation between debate and drama see in addition to Klein and D'Ancona, Hauréau, Notices et Extraits, vi, p. 32; Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, i, pp. 232 ff.

page 349 note 1 Works, edited by A. von Keller, iv, pp. 247 ff.: Ein Kampffgesprech zwischen wasser und wein.

page 350 note 1 Cf. especially the following lines:

Nimbt mir mein krafft und edlen geschmachn.
Car ma puissance s'ameindrit.
Bin eynes der vier element.
Je suis l'ung des quatre elemens.
Ich mach schön röszlet das antlitz.
Rougist comme rose qui boutonne.

page 350 note 2 See Otto Böckel, Deutsche Volkslieder aus Oberhessen, pp. xv and 108, for references; also Birlinger-Crecelius, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, ii, pp. 429 ff. The earliest prints date from the early years of the sixteenth century. See Wunderhorn, loc. cit.

page 351 note 1 Berlin, 1857, part iv, pp. 179 ff.

page 351 note 2 See below, pp. 354, 355 and notes.

page 351 note 3 The same motive recurs in most of the traditional versions. See, for example, that printed by Sztachovics, p. 140 (below, p. 356, n. 1):

Der Wein kanns Wasser nicht leiden,

and at the close

Der Wein musz Wasser wol leiden.

page 352 note 1 The same poem, somewhat changed, is printed from a manuscript of about 1673 in the Birlinger-Crecelius edition of the Wunderhorn.

page 352 note 2 Substantially the same in the Nürnberg version.

page 352 note 3 The Nürnberg version, Wunderhorn, p. 179; and that printed at Basel in 1607, Wunderhorn, p. 183.

page 352 note 4 The second piece has

Nun lost, ihr Christen allgemein,
Wohl von dem Wasser und dem Wein.

page 353 note 1 Not found in the 1607 version, but cf. the close of the third (Augsburg) print.

page 353 note 2 Cf. with the opening formulas quoted above the opening of the debate of the Body and the Soul:

Nun hoeret zu ihr Christenleut
Wie Leib und Seel gen einander streit.

And more especially the first stanza of Buchsbaum und Felbinger, a derivative of the debate of Winter and Summer. (Wunderhorn, ed. Birlinger-Crecelius, ii, p. 427):

Nun wölt ir hören newe Mär
Von Buchsbaum und vom Felbinger Sie zugen mitainander über Feld,
Und kriegten mit ainander.
Der Buchsbaum sprach: “Bin ich so kün,” etc.

The title of the Nürnberg print is “Ein new Lied von dem Wasser und dem Wein. In des Buchsbaum thon.”

page 354 note 1 Deutsche Volkslieder, no. 8.

Ein jedlichs will das besser sein (Basel).
Ein jeglichs will das beste sein. (Nürnberg).

page 354 note 3 The same motive is used in the Winter and Summer debate, in the debate of Buchsbaum and Felbinger, and in other similar pieces. Cf. Augsberg version: Der Wein sprach: Wasser, merk mich fein.

Man geuszt mich in silber und rothes Gold,
Und bringt mich vor grosze Herren,
Man hat mich allzeit gerne. (Augsberg.)

In mir badt man die Kindelein,
Man braucht mich die ganze Wochen
Zu backen und zu kochen. (Augsberg.)

The same in Basel version; slightly different in Nürnberg.

Man trägt mich in die Kirchen hinein;
Man braucht mich zum Sacramente,
Es braucht mich mancher vor seim Ende. (Augsberg.)

The same in Basel; does not appear in Nürnberg.

page 355 note 4 See note 5. In mir baden die Kindlein (Basel).

Aus mir badt man die Kindlein klein. (Nürnberg.)

Der Wein sprach: ich geb dir recht,
Du bist mein Herr und ich dein Knecht;
Wärst du mir nit kommen,
In der Sonnen wär ich verbronnen. (Augsberg).
Begehrt Alls meiner Hilfe,
Du thust selbs zu mir gilfen. (Nürnberg.)

The Herr and Knecht motive appears also in the Winter and Summer debate, in the debate of Buchsbaum and Felbinger, etc.

page 356 note 1 Wunderhorn (ed. of 1857), ii, p. 37; F. W. von Ditfurth, Fränkische Volkslieder (1855), ii, p. 268 (No. 352; very similar to the preceding); Sztachovics, Brautsprüche und Brautlieder auf dem Heideboden in Ungarn (1867), p. 140 (A shorter form of Wunderhorn, ii, p. 37); ib., p. 144 (From a print of 1787. Substantially the same as the preceding); A. Birlinger, Schwäbische Volkslieder (1864), p. 60 (No. 33); A. Schlossar, Deutsche Volkslieder aus Steiermark (1881), No. 317; K. von Leoprechting, Aus dem Lechrain (1855), p. 265 (Very close to the preceding); A. Peter, Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien (1665), i, p. 340 (No. 173; except for slight verbal variations and the omission of one stanza, identical with the Lechrain version); B. Pogatschnigg and E. Hermann, Deutsche Volkslieder aus Kärnten, ii, p. 573; C. Mundel (1884), p. 212; Wunderhorn (ed. Birlinger-Crecelius), ii, p. 435; L. Tobler, Schweizerische Volkslieder (1882), No. 72; F. W. Schuster, Siebenbürgisch-sächsische Volkslieder (1865), p. 425; Jeitteles, Das deutsche Volkslied in Steiermark, Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte, ix, p. 384; E. Meier, Schwäbische Volkslieder (1855), p. 263.

page 356 note 2 Extant in two dialects; see Ulrich, Rhätoromanische Chrestomathie, ii Theil, Engadisch, pp. 125 ff.; Zeitschrift für Rom. Phil., vi, p. 64.

page 357 note 1 Rangstreit-Literatur, Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akad., Phil.-Hist.-Kl., 155 (4), (1907-8).

page 358 note 1 The mixing of wine and water was a Hebrew-Yiddish custom. See Steinschneider, p. 71, note 2.

page 358 note 2 Cf. also Zalman Sofer's poem, below, p. 359, stanza 4.

page 358 note 3 Published by M. Steinschneider, in N. Brüll, Jahrbücher für Jüdische Geschichte und Litteratur, ix (1889), pp. 2 f. A Yiddish version with the same acrostic accompanies the Hebrew. The two amount practically to different poems. The rhyme scheme in the Hebrew is ababccc for the seven line, ana ababcc for the six line stanzas. What with acrostic, meter, and rhyme, says Professor Moore, the versifier has had a hard time, and what he meant to say is in some places somewhat less than transparent.

page 359 note 1 Lit. wars.

page 359 note 2 I. e., equal in value.

page 359 note 3 The whole Hebrew bible except the Law!

page 359 note 4 When several blessings are said at table.

page 359 note 5 The line is obscure. The author needed an “n” for his acrostic, possibly he was thinking of Hosea, 4, 11, though the verb there is not the same.

page 359 note 6 I. e., wine of idolatrous libations.

page 360 note 1 Possibly he means that the honor of water is withdrawn because of the incident alluded to in the next lines.

page 360 note 2 I. e., Moses, on account of his sin at the waters of Meribah.

page 360 note 3 I. e., not yet deprived of Moses. The exigencies of the rhyme are responsible for the expression.

page 360 note 4 The Israelites at the Red Sea.

page 360 note 5 Cf. Nürnberg version, Wunderhorn, p. 181; “Man … zahlet mich mit reichem Gold”; Basel version, Wunderhorn, p. 184, “Gar theur laszt man dich (l. mich) kaufen,” and ib., p. 185, “Ich bin auch basz dann du bezahlt.”

page 361 note 1 This first edition has not been reprinted. I have before me a photograph of the British Museum copy.

page 362 note 1 This song seems to have gained some independent currency. It is printed by William Sandys, Festive Songs principally of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Percy Soc., 23, xliii (p. 59).

page 362 note 2 Wine, Beere, Ale, and Tobacco, contending for superiority, ed. J. O. Halliwell, The Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, London, 1881.

page 363 note 1 The Debate Element in the Elizabethan Drama, Kittredge Anniversary Papers, Boston, 1913.

page 363 note 2 Reprinted by Charles Hindley, The Old Book Collector's Miscellany.

page 363 note 3 I purpose to discuss this question in a forthcoming article.

page 364 note 1 A Book of Nursery Songs and Rhymes, London, 1898, pp. 32-33. I owe this interesting reference to Profesor Kittredge.

Da sprach es das Wasser: wie bin ich so fein,
Man trägt mich in die Küche hinein,
Man braucht mich zum Waschen und Kochen,
Man braucht mich die ganze Wochen.