Spelling in this edition
The spelling used throughout this edition is based on Mettmann's, but with modifications designed to make the performer's life easier—especially the majority who will come to the Cantigas de Santa Maria with limited prior knowledge of the language. Mettmann stated in his first edition (Coimbra, 1959) that he had two main goals: "a fluidly legible text and philological precision". The first goal tends to push any edited text away from faithfulness to the original manuscripts, and the second back towards it, and Mettmann certainly had his work cut out in reconciling the two. Fortunately, in my edition the philological aspect really isn't so important, and that means I have had a bit more freedom to simplify the spelling.
Marking of stress and hiatus
The most pervasive spelling change here is the addition of the acute accent and the trema (two dots) to mark unpredictable word stress and hiatus between adjacent vowels, as in the words ángeos, porén, María, grorïosa and nïún.
The accentuation system I have chosen is derived mainly from modern standard Galician orthography (the official RAG variety) rather than Portuguese, simply because I think that the former is a bit easier for speakers of other languages. In general I have worked on the principle that it's better to use too many accents than too few, given that most performers won't be linguistic experts and will appreciate all the hints they can get. My ultimate goal has been both to identify stress unambiguously in combination with some easily learnt rules, and also to make the syllables in every word as obvious as possible when the red bullets are not displayed, all without inventing something ugly and heavy-handed in the process.
Portuguese speakers in particular should note that at present, the stress marks do not distinguish between the open and close pronunciations of e and o (i.e. [ɛ] ~ [e] and [ɔ] ~ [o]) since only the acute accent is used. In this respect, however, I do plan to introduce the modern Portuguese usage of the circumflex accent to mark the close vowels, so that for example porén will become porên (since all nasal vowels are close) and avé-lo (= aver + lo) will turn into avê-lo. This will, I hope, happen in the near future as soon as the work to identify vowel quality is finished.
See the Pronunciation guide for full details on how to identify word stress.
Other spelling modifications
You don't need to study the table below if you are new to the Cantigas de Santa Maria: just go straight to the Pronunciation page to get started. However, if you have seen the Cantigas before with different spelling, and are curious about what I have changed and why, then this page will tell you everything you need to know (and possibly a lot more).
| Spelling change | Examples | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Double letters become single where they do not represent a distinct sound. This affects bb, cc, ff, gg and pp, (but not ll, nn, rr and ss). |
peccado → pecado soffreu → sofreu appareceu → apareceu |
| 2. | Latin, Greek and Hebrew-based spellings are nativized:
|
Jhesu-Christo → Jesú-Cristo psalmos → salmos Theophilo → Teófilo patriarcha → patrïarca Joachin → Joaquín Archetecrỹo → Arquetecrinno Anna → Ana |
| 3. | c' → qu' before e or i when the sound is [k]. |
ric' e poderoso → riqu' e poderoso pouc' enante → poqu' enante |
| 4. | g' → gu' before e or i when the sound is [g]. |
log' enton → logu' entón fog' infernal → fogu' infernal |
| 5. | c' → ç' before any vowel when the sound is [ʦ]. | vic' e sabor → viç' e sabor |
| 6. | g' → j' before any vowel when the sound is [ʤ].
Strictly speaking, changes 5 and 6 are only necessary before a, o, u, but it is perhaps clearer if they are made in all cases. |
mong' acorreu → monj' acorreu long' alá → lonj' alá eigreg' e → eigrej' e |
| 7. |
ç → c before e or i.
The letter c in this position is always pronounced ç [ʦ], but the manuscripts employ c and ç more or less randomly. |
çeo → ceo guareçer → guarecer |
| 8. | Word-initial rr- and ss- are normalised to r- and s-. (Medially, the double letters are strictly preserved.) |
rrijo → rijo ssa → sa |
| 9. | Syllable-final -m and -n are normalised:
Word-final -m is very rare in the CSM manuscripts compared with -n (apart from a curious run between about CSM 350 and CSM 400), and this is my only reason for choosing -n here. (Note that official modern Galician orthography uses -n, whereas the alternative 'Reintegrationist' system uses -m.) Some Latin and French words are protected from this change, e.g. dominum, requiem, triclinium, Balaam, Monpisler (not Mompisler!). The m is also preserved in the two occurrences of omnipotente. However, Adam → Adán, Beleem → Beleén and Jerusalem → Jerusalén since variant forms with -n occur in the original manuscripts anyway. |
nenbra → nembra anpar → ampar conprida → comprida faziam → fazían virgem → virgen dum mõesteiro → dun mõesteiro |
| 10. | Syllable-initial h is deleted, since it is silent.
Note that the h is deleted whether it is etymologically justified or not. Variants without the h always occur in the original manuscripts, and it doesn't really serve the goals of this edition to preserve a form like home that only crops up once, when ome appears literally hundreds of times. |
hũa → ũa and nihũa → niũa herdade → erdade hermitan → ermitán home → ome |
| 11. | The biggest change The letter y is replaced by i in all cases (and ỹ by ĩ etc.) since these letters do not represent different sounds. This does not mean that i and y are used indiscriminately in the original manuscripts. For a start, written i can represent the consonant which Mettmann transcribes as j (= [ʤ]), whereas y cannot. As a result, there seems to be a tendency for the scribe to use y when i might be read incorrectly as a consonant, and to prefer i where the vowel is unambiguous. But on top of that, it is largely a case of some words typically using i, and others y—with exceptions in abundance. My exclusive use of i here is simply because preserving the distinction from y is extremely unlikely to tell the performer anything useful. |
amỹude → amĩude bẽeyta → bẽeita reyno → reino foy → foi paryu → pariu oya → oía vỹir → vĩir vyu → viu Ysaya → Isaía ygreja → igreja y → i |
| 12. |
Long or short nasal ĩ (or original ỹ) before a, o or e is replaced with a sequence containing
the consonant nn (≡ ñ [ɲ]) to indicate the correct pronunciation:
It is quite clear from the variant spellings and the use of rhyme in the Cantigas de Santa Maria that this 'glide consonant' nn was generally present in these words, as it still is in the modern Galician language, though now spelled as "ñ", e.g. "tiña". Interestingly, the very first edition of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, published by the Real Academia Española in 1889, used this spelling with nn throughout—something which Mettmann quite rightly describes as a "great defect", since the evolution of the nn next to nasal vowels is of significant interest to philologists, and faithfulness to the forms in the manuscripts is crucial for them. For performers, however, it is likely to be of no interest whatsoever. Note that ĩi is not affected unless a follows, and neither is ĩu, so my spelling leaves words like vĩir and vĩudo unchanged. |
tĩian → tiínnan convĩia → conviínna meirỹo → meirinno menĩez → meninnez reỹa → reínna vỹo → vinno |
| 13. | Nasal vowels ã, ẽ and õ plus a 'yod' become ann, enn and onn respectively.
A yod is an i (originally always y) that begins a rising diphthong, and is therefore a semivowel rather than a full vowel. As for change 12, we know that the pronunciation of these words included the nn from the evidence of variant spellings and rhymes (e.g. estrãya rhymes with aranna in CSM 201, and the word commonly appears as estranna elsewhere). On the other hand, this process does not apply, for instance, to the imperfect verb form põya, where the y not a yod but a full vowel. This word therefore appears as põía in my edition. |
eãyo → eanno (e•a•nno) engẽyo → engenno estrãya → estranna omãyar → omannar poçõy' aquel → poçonn' aquel testimõya → testimonna BUT põya → põía (põ•í•a) |
| 14. | The rare endings -eo and -io become -eu and -iu in 3rd person singular preterite verbs.
For the even rarer subset of these cases where the scribe might be deliberately indicating diaeresis (i.e. an extra syllable) through the use of o, this is marked in the standard way by -eü and -iü. |
viveo → viveu respondeo → respondeu dormio → dormiu in CSM 372:17 dormio → dormiü in CSM 355:41 caeo → caeü in CSM 222:21 |
| 15. | Missing u is restored after q. |
mesqynna → mesquinna |
| 16. | Roman numerals are expanded into words. Note that there are just 16 of these, and they only occur in epigraphs. |
.XV. → quinze in CSM 333 .XXX. → triínta in CSM 364 .LXXVIIIIª. → septuagésima novena |
| 17. | Miscellaneous small changes.
There are just a handful of these: the list on the right is pretty much exhaustive. The objective here is simply aid pronunciation and to remove those jarring little irregularities to which the performer might attribute more significance than they are really due. In every case, the replacement form is well attested in the original manuscripts. |
segund → según before a consonant (6 cases) sancta → santa (2 cases) judeos → judeus (2 cases) sass → sas (4 cases) Yoan(e) → Joan(e) in CSM 138 gejũar → jajũar in CSM 15:67 demaes → demais in CSM 182:12 conplida → comprida in CSM 222:1 seyan → siían in CSM 257:16 ũu scolar → un escolar in CSM 291:8 pasqua → pascüa with diaeresis in CSM 333:39 flores → frores in CSM 366:1 rigio → rijo in CSM 366:53 ygleja → igreja in CSM 383:49 uun → un in the epigraphs of CSM 161 and 163 alguun → algũu CSM 123:35 suun → sũu CSM 105:40 connosco → conosco meaning ‘with us’ in CSM 254:26 |
On top of the spelling changes, I have made a few very minor alterations to Mettmann's punctuation. This includes: adding apostrophes to help identify elision (20 cases); adding soft hyphens where word roots are split across line or hemistich boundaries, to allow them to be joined up again in the Concordance; and removing Mettmann's own editorial square brackets, since these are of little relevance to the performer.