with the things which they describe.

It was but natural that in a state of society like the one mentioned,
women should long to show themselves possessed of poetic gifts as well
as men. It must not be supposed that the wife of a great baron occupied
an easy position, however, and had many leisure hours, as her wifely
duties took no little time and energy, and it was her place to hold in
check the rude speech and manners of the warlike nobles who thronged the
castle halls, as well as to put some limit to the bold words and glances
of the troubadours, who were often hard to repress. Her previous
education had been bestowed with care, however, the advantages of a
formal and punctilious etiquette had been preached more than once, and
she was even advised that the enemy of all her friends should find her
civil-spoken; so, my lady managed her difficult affairs with tact and
skill, and contrived in many cases to acquire such fame for her
moderation and her wisdom that many poets sang her praises. It was her
pleasure also to harbor these troubadours who sang her praises, and
learn from them the secrets of their art; and in this pleasant
intercourse it often chanced that she was inspired by the god of song,
and vied with them in poesy. The names of eighteen such women have come
down to us, and fragments from most of them are extant, though the
Countess of Dia seems the most important of them all, as five of her
short poems are now known to exist. The Lady Castelloza must be named
soon after, for her wit and her accomplishments. She once reminded a
thoughtless lover that if he should allow her to pine away and die for
love of him, he would be committing a monstrous crime "before God and
men." Clara of Anduse must not be forgotten in this list, and she it was
who conquered the cold indifference of the brilliant troubadour Uc de
Saint-Cyr; still, however numerous her contributions to poetry may have
been, but one song remains to us, and that is contained in a manuscript
of the fourteenth century. It should be said that the reason for the
small amount of poetry which these women have left behind them is easily
explained. Talents they may have possessed and poetical ability in
abundance, but there was no great incentive to work, inasmuch as poetry
offered them no career such as it opened up to the men. A troubadour
sang at the command of his noble patron, but with the women poetry was
not an employment, but a necessity for self-expr