Taylor, Edgar [Hrsg.]; Austin, Sarah [Hrsg.]: Lays of the minnesingers or German troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Illustr. by specimens of the contemporary lyric poetry of Provence and other parts of Europe ; With histor. and crit. notes, and engravings from the ms. of the minnesingers in the king's library at Paris, and from other sources (London, 1825)

28 CATALONIA.

amongst the adventurers who gradually encroached
upon the dominion of their Moorish conquerors; and
it still continues to be the popular dialect in Catalo-
nia and (with more of Moorish intermixture) in Va-
lencia. The Catalan is a genuine Romance tongue,
evidently deduced from the Latin by the same process
as the Provencal: and as the latter had received less
intermixture from the Northern invaders, and was
therefore less removed from its parent than the Nor-
man French, so the Catalan suffered less adulteration
than the Castilian from the Moors, whose empire was
in this part of Spain short and precarious. It is a lan-
guage " rich in musical sounds, abounding in rhymes,
and divested of every thing harsh and grating in its
utterance; equally free from the deep gutturals of
its twin sister the Castilian, and the perpetually re-
curring nasal twang of the Portuguese." Yet if the
Catalan poets did often use their native tongue,
few early productions in it have survived to us.
This is a matter of regret, as the pieces which we
have of a later date in this tongue are often distin-
guished for the harmony of their versification, as
well as the simplicity, tenderness and energy of their
style. It is to be hoped that the awakened industry
of the Spaniards will be directed towards the revival
of this department of their ancient national litera-
ture. No one doubts the great prevalency of Pro-
vencal poetry in this part of Spain during the 12th