Home > Navigation > Text Groups > Lyrical Poetry > Secular Lyrics

Secular Lyrics have survived mostly from the late 13th and early 14th centuries onwards. Before that time, clerical scribes do not seem to have estimated them noteworthy.

But all the same, we know that there must have been a great oral tradition for songs of all kinds. The earliest mentioning of secular lyrics is in Giraldus Cambrensis (12th century), who tells us that a priest who had listened the whole night to dancers and their songs added the line of a lovesong to his prayers during mass the following morning!

The earliest secular poems we know are preserved in The Harley Lyrics and show a highly developed lyrical skill. From the 14th century onwards we have plenty of secular lyrics, but still less than religious poems. The themes vary greatly and it is nearly impossible to give a proper survey in key-words. We have love lyrics and lover's complaints, political and social poems, satirical poems on all sorts of themes, occasional verse, practical verse and convivial and drinking songs, letters and a great number of secular carols.

With many of the anonymous secular poems we can only presume who were the authors. It must have been people who knew about French traditional poems like pastourelle and reverdie, because they used these forms for the English lyrics. But at least we know that minstrels, travelling the country and entertaining people in the streets as well as in rich houses, must have sung them.