Mixed Latin-vernacular lyrics in medieval Europe Texts that mixed Latin and
vernacular language apparently arose throughout Europe at the end of the
Middle Ages—a time when Latin was still the working language of scholars, clerics and university students, but was losing ground to the vernacular among poets,
minstrels and storytellers. An early example is from 1130, in the
Gospel book of
Munsterbilzen Abbey. The following sentence mixes late
Old Dutch and Latin: Tesi samanunga was edele unde scona et omnium virtutum pleniter plena Translated:
This community was noble and pure, and completely full of all virtues. The
Carmina Burana (collected c.1230) contains several poems mixing Latin with Medieval German or French. Another well-known example is the first stanza of the famous
carol In Dulci Jubilo, whose original version (written around 1328) had Latin mixed with German, with a hint of
Greek. While some of those early works had a clear humorous intent, many use the language mix for lyrical effect. Another early example is in the
Middle English recitals
The Towneley Plays (c.1460). In
The Talents (play 24),
Pontius Pilate delivers a rhyming speech in mixed English and Latin. A number of English political poems in the 14th century alternated (Middle) English and Latin lines, such as in MS Digby 196: The taxe hath tened [ruined] vs alle, Probat hoc mors tot validorum The Kyng þerof had small fuit in manibus cupidorum. yt had ful hard hansell, dans causam fine dolorum; vengeaunce nedes most fall, propter peccata malorum
(etc) Several
anthems also contain both Latin and English. In the case of 'Nolo mortem peccatoris' by
Thomas Morley, the Latin is used as a refrain: Nolo mortem peccatoris; Haec sunt verba Salvatoris. Father I am thine only Son, sent down from heav’n mankind to save. Father, all things fulfilled and done according to thy will, I have. Father, my will now all is this: Nolo mortem peccatoris. Father, behold my painful smart, taken for man on ev’ry side; Ev'n from my birth to death most tart, no kind of pain I have denied, but suffered all, and all for this: Nolo mortem peccatoris. Translated: "'I do not wish the death of the wicked'; These are the words of the Saviour." An allusion to John 3:17 and 2 Peter 3:9. The Scottish
Chaucerian William Dunbar's
Lament for the Makaris uses as a refrain for every four-line
stanza the phrase from the
Office of the Dead "
Timor mortis conturbat me" ["The fear of death disturbs me"].
Latin–Italian macaronic verse The term
macaronic is believed to have originated in
Padua in the late 15th century, apparently from
maccarona, a kind of pasta or
dumpling eaten by peasants at that time. (That is also the presumed origin of
maccheroni.) Its association with the genre comes from the
Macaronea, a comical poem by
Tifi Odasi in mixed Latin and Italian, published in 1488 or 1489. Another example of the genre is
Tosontea by
Corrado of Padua, which was published at about the same time as Tifi's
Macaronea. Tifi and his contemporaries clearly intended to
satirize the broken Latin used by many doctors, scholars and bureaucrats of their time. While this "macaronic Latin" (
macaronica verba) could be due to ignorance or carelessness, it could also be the result of its speakers trying to make themselves understood by the vulgar folk without resorting to their speech. An important and unusual example of mixed-language text is the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of
Francesco Colonna (1499), which was basically written using Italian syntax and morphology, but using a made-up vocabulary based on roots from Latin,
Greek, and occasionally others. However, while the
Hypnerotomachia is contemporary with Tifi's
Macaronea, its mixed language is not used for plain humor, but rather as an aesthetic device to underscore the fantastic but refined nature of the book. Tifi's
Macaronea was a popular success, and the writing of
humorous texts in macaronic Latin became a fad in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in Italian, but also in many other European languages. An important Italian example was
Baldo by
Teofilo Folengo, who described his own verses as "a gross, rude, and rustic mixture of flour, cheese, and butter".
Other mixed-language lyrics Macaronic verse is especially common in cultures with widespread
bilingualism or
language contact, such as Ireland before the middle of the nineteenth century. Macaronic traditional songs such as
Siúil A Rúin are quite common in Ireland. In Scotland, macaronic songs have been popular among
Highland immigrants to
Glasgow, using English and
Scottish Gaelic as a device to express the alien nature of the anglophone environment. An example: Folk and popular music of the
Andes frequently alternates between Spanish and the given
South American language of its region of origin. Some
Classical Persian poems were written with alternating
Persian and
Arabic verses or hemistichs, most famously by
Saadi and
Hafez. Such poems were called
molamma' (, literally "speckled", plural
molamma‘āt ), Residing in
Anatolia, in some of his poems
Rumi mixed Persian with Arabic as well as the local languages of
Turkish and
Greek. Macaronic verse was also common in
medieval India, where the influence of the Muslim rulers led to poems being written in alternating indigenous
Hindi and the Persian language. This style was used by poet
Amir Khusro and played a major role in the rise of the
Urdu or
Hindustani language.
Unintentional macaronic language Occasionally language is unintentionally macaronic. One particularly famed piece of schoolyard Greek in France is
Xenophon's line "they did not take the city; but in fact they had no hope of taking it" (, ).
Read in the French manner, this becomes ('Where is Pauline the maid? At the [railway] station. She's pissing and taking a shit.') ==Modern macaronic literature==