Peirol

Peirol or Peiròl (born c. 1160, fl. 1188–1222/1225, died in the 1220s) was an Auvergnat troubadour who wrote mostly cansos of courtly love in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Thirty-four surviving poems written in Occitan have been attributed to him; of these, seventeen (sixteen of them love songs) have surviving melodies. He is sometimes called Peirol d'Auvergne or Peiròl d'Auvèrnha, and erroneously Pierol.

Quotes

• Gran talen ai qu'un baisar
  Li pogues tolre o emblar;
  É si pueis s'en iraissia,
  Volentiers lo li rendria.
  • I'm pining, from that lady gay
    A kiss to take or steal away;
    And should the deed her coyness pain,
    I'd freely give it back again.
  • Translated by Edgar Taylor, Lays of the Minnesingers and Troubadours (1825), p. 268, note
  • Cp. Catullus 5, l. 7, and Raoul de Soissons, from the Anthologie Françoise:

    How does my spirit eager pine,
    But once to press those lips of thine;— [...]
    And if the theft
      Thine ire awake,
    A hundred fold
      I'd give it back.