answering rimes, would not be satisfied before the conclusion of the
second stanza. A further step towards the provision of closer unity
between the separate stanzas was the _chanso redonda_, which was
composed of _coblas estrampas_, the rime order of the second stanza
being an inversion of the rime order of the first; the tendency reaches
its highest point in the _sestina_, which retained the characteristic of
the _chanso redonda_, namely, that the last rime of one stanza should
correspond with the first rime of the following stanza, but with the
additional improvement that every rime started a stanza in turn,
whereas, in the _chanso redonda_ the same rime continually recurred at
the beginning of every other stanza.

Reference has already been made to the _chanso_. A poetical form of much
importance was the _sirventes_, which outwardly was indistinguishable
from the _chanso_. The meaning of the term is unknown; some say that it
originally implied a poem composed by "servants," poets in the service
of an overlord; others, that it was a poem composed to the tune of a [31]
_chanso_ which it thus imitated in a "servile" manner. From the _chanso_
the _sirventes_ is distinguished by its subject matter; it was the
vehicle for satire, moral reproof or political lampooning. The
troubadours were often keenly interested in the political events of
their time; they filled, to some extent, the place of the modern
journalist and were naturally the partisans of the overlord in whose
service or pay they happened to be. They were ready to foment a war, to
lampoon a stingy patron, to ridicule one another, to abuse the morality
of the age as circumstances might dictate. The crusade _sirventes_[14]
are important in this connection, and there were often eloquent
exhortations to the leaders of Christianity to come to the rescue of
Palestine and the Holy Sepulchre. Under this heading also falls the
_planh_, a funeral song lamenting the death of a patron, and here again,