are you going, my pretty maid?" is of the same type), _albas_ or dawn
songs which represent a friend as watching near the meeting-place of a
lover and his lady and giving him due warning of the approach of dawn or [9]
of any other danger; there are also _ballatas_ or dance songs of an
obviously popular type.[6] Whatever influence may have been exercised by
the Latin poetry of the decadence or by Arab poetry, it is in these
popular and native productions that we must look for the origins of the
troubadour lyrics. This popular poetry with its simple themes and homely
treatment of them is to be found in many countries, and diversity of
race is often no bar to strange coincidence in the matter of this
poetry. It is thus useless to attempt to fix any date for the beginnings
of troubadour poetry; its primitive form doubtless existed as soon as
the language was sufficiently advanced to become a medium of poetical
expression.

Some of these popular themes were retained by the troubadours, the
_alba_ and _pastorela_ for instance, and were often treated by them in a
direct and simple manner. The Gascon troubadour Cercamon is said to have
composed pastorals in "the old style." But in general, between
troubadour poetry and the popular poetry of folk-lore, a great gulf is
fixed, the gulf of artificiality. The very name "troubadour" points to
this characteristic. _Trobador_ is the oblique case of the nominative
_trobaire_, a substantive from the verb _trobar_, in modern French
_trouver_. The Northern French _trouvère_ is a nominative form, and
_trouveor_ should more properly correspond with _trobador_. The
accusative form, which should have persisted, was superseded by the [10]
nominative _trouvère_, which grammarians brought into fashion at the end
of the eighteenth century. The verb _trobar_ is said to be derived from
the low Latin _tropus_ [Greek: tropus], an air or melody: hence the
primitive meaning of _trobador_ is the "composer" or "inventor," in the