Lelia doura Revisited

LELIA DOURA REVISITED Rip Cohen Johns Hopkins University Federico Corriente University of Zaragoza 1. The text "Lelia doura" is the second verse of the second cantiga d'amigo of Pedr' Eanes Solaz (= Solaz 2),1 which begins "Eu velida non dormía / lelia doura / e meu amigo venia...", leading to the forth verse, which in manuscript B (= Biblioteca Nacional, Lisboa, codex 10991) reads "Edoy lelia doura" (doutra in V [= Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, codex Latinus 4803]). "Lelia doura // Edoy lelia doura" constitutes therefore an intercalated refrain. This refrain is the most famous textual crux in the corpus of 500 cantigas d'amigo and has proved to be the most difficult and elusive one to solve. Later in the same text, in strophes VII-VIII, we find leli used six times and this, too, has earned the title of crux, although we believe the correct solution has already been proposed by Brian Dutton (1964). The enigma of "Edoy lelia doura" still needs to be addressed. 2 It is either onomatopoeic -the opinio communis- or it is not. If it is intelligible in some geographically ' Numbering and texts are from Cohen, whence all citations ofcantigas d'amigo are taken, except that Solaz 2 appears without cruces (the use oïcruces, as in ftextt, indicates that the editor finds the text enclosed between cruces either unintelligible or corrupt). 2 Tavani writes: "Merece atençâo especial a cantiga de amigo Eu velida non dormía (...): as tentativas de explicar o significado da enigmática expressäo "lelia doura", que aparece no refram intercalado deste texto, fizeram correr os proverbiáis rios de tinta, mas sem resultados apreciáveis" (521). La corónica 31.1 (Fall, 2002): 19-40 20Rip Cohen & Federico CorrienteLa coránica 31.1, 2002 and chronologically relevant language or languages, then the onomatopoeic hypothesis falls. With the help of Solaz 1, we will try to make sense of Solaz 2 without the refrain, then propose a new interpretation of the refrain, and finally try to work out the consequences of our interpretation both for the study of Medieval Iberian poetic and cultural exchange, and for our reading of the poem. Here is the text with cruces still included (but, for the refrain, only in the first strophe): Eu velida non dormía tLelia douraf E meu amigo venia fEdoy lelia douraf Non dormía e cuidava5 Lelia doura E meu amigo chegava Edoy lelia doura O meu amigo venia Lelia doura1 0 E d' amor tan ben dizia Edoy lelia doura O meu amigo chegava Lelia doura E d' amor tan ben cantava1 5 Edoy lelia doura Muito desejei, amigo, Lelia doura Que vos tevesse comigo Edoy lelia doura20 Muito desejei, amado, Lelia doura Que vos tevess' a meu lado Edoy lelia doura fLeli, lelit, par Deus, flelif25 Lelia doura Ben sei eu que non diz flelif Edoy lelia doura Lelia doura Revisited2 1 Ben sei eu que non diz flelif Lelia doura30 Demo x' é quen non diz flelif Edoy lelia doura B 829 f. 175'V 415 f. 66v 2 dou(t)ra V 4 doutra V 9, 13 O BV : E Nunes; cf. vv. 3, 7 19 teuesse B : tenesse V 21-24 om. V 26 doura (ben se) V 27 que Braga (cf. ?. 31) : q' BV 29 que Braga : que BV 31 que BV lelia BV : correxit Pellegrini; cf. vv. 25, 27, 29 added ( ) in apparatu critico = cancelled in manuscript This song is divided into three parts:3 Strophes I-IV form the first part, in which the girl tells (narrates) how she was not sleeping but awake pining and waiting for her boy, who was coming, singing of love. Strophes V-VI make up the second 'scene', during which the boy has evidently arrived and the girl greets him with expressions of amorous affection that mark her receptivity to his visit: "Muito desejei, amigo, // que vos tevesse comigo. // Muito desejei, amado, // que vos tevess' a meu lado".' In strophes VII-VIII we reach a new moment, after the actions narrated in the first part and directly represented in the second, a moment when the girl repeats leli three times in one phrase, apparently as an exclamation, and then...