CSM Cantiga 173 Lyrics: Tantas en Santa María son mercees e bondades †Cantiga 173Mettmann observes that at least one stanza appears to have gone missing from this cantiga (between the third and fourth stanzas that remain) even though there are no gaps in the manuscripts. What Mettmann fails to mention, however, is the fact that in both [E] and [T] the metre changes after this omission, with all masculine rhymes (final stress) gaining a syllable and becoming feminine (penultimate stress). Indeed, his usual footnote summarising the metre is conspicuous in its absence, indicating perhaps that he saw the problem but could not decide what to do about it. Stephen Parkinson [SP2012] likens the cantiga to the welding together of the halves of two stolen cars, and presents a convincing case for the text being the result of the accidental conflation of sections from two independently composed cantigas on the same miracle story.

Performance-wise, given the gap and the change in metre, this cantiga might reasonably be reserved for a purely instrumental interpretation. However, for the sake of completeness, I suggest the following solution for singers: where there is a single perfected virga .on at the end of the musical phrase, carrying the final stressed syllable of dizer, creer, acorrer, mal, mortal etc., this can be split into a .o + .on pair with the same duration, thereby matching the rhythm of the refrain. (Referring to Elmes' edition, the dotted minim should be divided into crotchet + minim.) These two notes can then take the final two syllables of carreira, enteira, and so on, at the points indicated by double underlining in my text.