YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

18
MARY E. WOLINSKI
In the motetus, Domine qui t’a ci amené, the speaker does not employ the elevated
tone that is used in the triplum running parallel above. He is unpleasantly surprised
to see an acquaintance there, berates him for doing something vile, and tells him to
go home. He curses the userers, who lend money for gambling with dice. Then he
tells Gautier, his unwelcome companion, that he wants to eat and drink. He calls for
the waferer (oubloier) to entertain (esbanoier) them. Waferers were classified as minstrels
at the English court and it appears that they entertained in other unspecified
ways, as well. Their wafers were eaten at the end of the meal with the sweet, spiced
wine known as hippocras. 29 Perhaps the speaker is referring to this wine when he calls
for drinking rapé in large amounts. 30
The French tenor begins with the Latin word Domine and then proceeds to
describe the speaker’s love of good wine and well-peppered pastries. The expression
vin ferré appears in a number of literary sources, although its exact meaning is elusive.
It could be a mulled wine, heated with hot iron (fer), 31 or it could be wine kept
in barrels with iron fittings, which definition was suggested by Stimming, but rejected
by Tobler, Lommatzsch and Christmann. There are also two definitions for claré (or
claret). It could be a rosé wine, 32 or a wine cooked with honey and spices. 33 It might
be significant that although a fifteenth-century printed edition of Taillevent’s Le
Viandier provides a recipe for claret with honey and spices, 34 this recipe is not found
in the manuscript tradition, which stretches back to the second half of the thirteenth
century. 35 The term clapé is a mystery. Stimming thought it was a scribal error for
rapé. 36
29 C. BULLOCK-DAVIES, Menestrellorum Multitudo: Minstrels at a Royal Feast, Cardiff, 1978, pp.
45–46. My thanks to Nancy Regalado and Marilyn Lawrence for this reference, and to Dr. Lawrence
for sharing her expertise on minstrels and related Old French terminology. See her dissertation: M.
LAWRENCE, Minstrel Disguise in Medieval French Narrative: Identity, Performance, Autorship,
Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2001.
30 For a description of vin de repasse, or rapé, which was wine made from the dregs of the first pressing,
see GARRIER, Histoire sociale et culturelle du vin, pp. 709–710.
31 See TOBLER, LOMMATZSCH and CHRISTMANN, Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 3, col. 1760; and
STIMMING, Die altfranzösischen Motette, p. 134, no. 8c, note 4.
32 M. LACHIVER, Vins, vignes et vignerons: Histoire du vignoble français, 1988, pp. 219-220; and
GARRIER, Histoire sociale et culturelle du vin, p. 551.
33 The two meanings of the term are acknowledged by T. SCULLY, Du fait de cuisine par Maistre Chiquart
1420 (Ms S 103 de la bibliothèque Supersaxo, à la Bibliothèque cantonale du Valais, à Sion), in Vallesia,
40 (1985), pp. 101–231. See especially p. 146, note 98, and p. 211.
34 J. PICHON, G. VICAIRE and P. AEBISCHER, Le viandier de Guillaume Tirel dit Taillevent, Paris,
1897, repr. Lille 1991, p. 98.
35 See T. SCULLY, The Viandier of Taillevent: An Edition of all Extant Manuscripts, Ottawa, 1988.
36 STIMMING, Die altfranzösischen Motette, p. 135, note 6.