In this book, John Haines presents a detailed survey of songs performed in Vulgar Latin and early Romance languages from around 500 to 1200. The first part of the book discusses this enormous body of neglected songs according to the categories of lament, love song, epic and devotional song. Medieval sources - mostly condemnations - ranging from sermons to chronicles attest to the long life and popularity of this music performed all throughout this period, and predominantly by women. Performance contexts range from the burial of the dead to the nursing of infants. The study argues for the reinstatement of female vernacular song in the mainstream of medieval music historiography and ends with a discussion of the neglected medieval lullaby. The second part of the book presents an edition and informative commentary of the dozen surviving witnesses with musical notation in the early Romance period prior to 1200.

'This study seeks to shed light on a large body of female song in Vulgar Latin and early Romance languages from around 500 to 1200 CE. … This study will be valuable as a teaching resource. It provides useful surveys of scholarship and a coherent narrative for these songs. … will surely beckon further research on these bits of song in their manuscript context.' Karen L. Fresco, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (SMART)

John Haines holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto, where he is an Associate Professor cross-appointed at the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Faculty of Music. He has published on medieval music and its modern reception in many journals, from Romania and Scriptorium to Early Music History and Music and Letters. He is the author of Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères (Cambridge, 2004) and Satire in the Songs of Renart le nouvel (2009), and is the co-editor of Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Paleography and Performance (2004).