CSM Cantiga 384 Lyrics: A que por mui gran fremosura éste chamada Fror das frores †Cantiga 384Mettmann assigns this cantiga to his metrical category XIII in which every hemistich of both the refrain and the stanzas has 7' syllables (i.e. eight syllables with the final one unstressed). This clearly comes from a desire to match the refrain to the stanzas, since the latter essentially have 7' syllable hemistichs throughout, notwithstanding certain irregularities in the first stanza, which unfortunately are supported by the musical notation (more on this below).

The refrain as written in [E], however, clearly has hemistichs of 8' syllables (i.e. nine with the final one unstressed). In order to force it into the 7' model, Mettmann had to drop the word mui from the first hemistich, write é in the second even though this is corrected to éste in the manuscript, drop the second lle in the third, and finally assume synaeresis to compress loores to two syllables in the fourth (apparently, although he made no comment on this last point). Previously on this website—though admittedly after a lot of toing and froing—I accepted these changes, preferring above all to keep the musical structure of the refrain and the stanza exactly the same. However, that decision was based on not being aware of the é → éste correction, and also accepting perhaps too readily the synaeresis in loores, something José-Martinho Montero Santalha describes in A estrutura métrica de algumas das Cantigas de Santa Maria as 'a form so exceptional [as to be] inadmissible'. (Note that modern Portuguese has louvores which strengthens the original hiatus with a consonant.) Whilst it might be possible to work around this by dropping the d' of d' outras and marking synalepha (giving seu no•me que_ou•tras lo•o•res), I have, for now at least, decided that the safest option is to reinstate the manuscript version of the refrain lyrics, and to transcribe its music without modification.

The stanzas, however, still need a bit of work. Unfortunately, in the first stanza as it appears in the manuscript, the first hemistich of line 5 and both hemistichs of line 6 have 8' syllables, and the music is written to accommodate this. In order to fit the other twelve stanzas I have therefore accepted Mettmann's edition of line 6, which drops the word end' and changes daquesto to desto, and I have also removed the superfluous conjunction e from the start of line 5. See the Music tab for details of my corresponding minor modifications to the musical notation.