On p. 166, the Editors’ Note 4 to Letter 424 reads: “Fifteenth-century author of drinking-songs known as "Vaux-de-Vire". RLS’s quotation comes from "A Son Nez", edition not specified.
Olivier Basselin (c.1400-c.1450) was a fuller (or miller) of Vire in Normandy, the reputed author of drinking-songs current in the Vau (valley) of the river Vire. He may have died in the wars against the English. According to Wikipedia, at the beginning of the 17th century a collection of songs was published by a Norman lawyer, Jean Le Houx, purporting to be the work of Olivier Basselin. There seems to be very little doubt that Le Houx was himself the author of the songs attributed to Basselin, as well as of those he acknowledged as his own.
The form and the sense of the origin of RLS’s quotation (the last 4 lines of Basselin’s poem, of which the first 8 lines are more usually cited in anthologies) becomes clearer with a longer citation arranged correctly in the intended metre of alternating 12- and 6-syllable lines::
Combien de riches gens
N'ont pas si riche nez! Pour te peindre en la sorte,
Il faut beaucoup de temps.
Le verre est le pinceau, duquel on t'enlumine;
Le vin est la couleur
Dont on t'a peint ainsi plus rouge qu'une guisgne
En beuvant du meilleur.
On dit qu'il nuit aux yeux; mais seront-ils les maistres
Le vin est guarison
De mes maux: j'aime mieux perdre les deux fenestres,
Que toute la maison
This strongly resembles:
MIEUX VAUT LE VIN QUE LA VUE, 1546, by the more famous Clément MAROT:
Le vin qui trop cher m'est vendu,
M'a la force des yeux ravie,
Pour autant qu'il m'est defendu,
Dont tous les jours m'en croit l'envie.
Mais puisque lui seul est ma vie,
Malgré les fortunes senestres,
Les yeux ne seront point les maistres
Sur tout le corps, car, par raison,
J'aime mieux perdre les fenestres
Que perdre toute la maison.
Does RLS mean “chouette”? which the Grand Robert gives, in popular use from 1830 as adjective and interjection, meaning: “nice”, “good”, “great”, “grand”.
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