[In the following excerpt, Hanford discusses the Razón de amor in the context of the Medieval European tradition of the conflictus, or debate poetry, noting the origins and main characteristics of the genre.]

Among the mediæval debates which have enjoyed the widest currency and have retained their hold on popular interest for the longest time is the contention between Wine and Water. Poems on this subject are extant in most of the languages of mediæval Europe; and the tradition has persisted with surprising vitality through more than seven centuries down to the present day. The bickerings of these two ancient foes may still be heard on the lips of the peasantry of Germany, France, and Spain, and a fragment of the same dispute was sung not long since as a nursery rhyme in Devon.

The history of this typical example of the conflictus, that species of disputation in which the contestants are not individuals but personifications or types, possesses considerable interest, first as a record of popular taste, secondly because of its bearing on the distribution of such material in the middle ages and on the relation between the literary and popular treatments of the same theme.

The literary debate of Wine and Water found its way early into Spanish literature. It appears in a thirteenth-century Castilian poem, probably of Provençal origin, in which the debate proper is curiously combined with an amatory dialogue in the style of the pastourelle. Originally the two parts of the "romance" must have existed as separate poems. In combining them the copyist or translator appears to have telescoped the two similar introductions. As it stands the narrative runs as follows: The poet, taking an April walk in an olive orchard, sees in the branches of one of the trees a vase full of clear cool wine. It was placed there, we are told, by the lady of the garden for her lover, and whoever drinks of it shall never fall sick. Coming nearer, the poet discovers another vase, full of cold water. He is about to drink, but desists for fear of enchantment. So much apparently constituted the opening of the original debate. It is sufficiently characteristic. At this point the poet lies down by a lovely fountain not previously mentioned, sees a beautiful woman, his own beloved, coming through the orchard, and holds conversation with her. We hear no more of the vases until the close of the love poem, when the author reverts to them. As he is about to sleep, a white dove flies toward the fountain, but, seeing him there, turns and enters the vase of water instead. As the bird flies out again in fright, the water is upset into the wine. In this astonishing manner the author makes his transition to the dispute between the two drinks.

There is little to distinguish the course of the argument which follows, from that of the debates which we have been considering. The tone of the dispute is colloquial; the contestants indulge in personalities and epithets much in the manner of the "flyting." The precious pair are visualized with a good deal of humor. The following passage may be quoted:

Ell agua iaze muerta rridiendo
De lo qu'el vino esta diziendo.
Don vino, si vos de Dios salut,
Que vos me fagades agora una vertud:
Fartad bien un villano,
No lo prenda ninguno de la mano,
Et si, antes d'una passada, no cayere en el
  lodo,
Dios sodes de tod en todo;
E si esto fazedes,
Otorgo que vençuda m'avedes.
En una blanca paret
.V. kandelas ponet,
E si el beudo non dixiere que son .c.,
De quanto digo de todo miento.

The suggestion of a judicial test in these lines is a very early instance of the adoption of legal language in the vernacular debate.

In substance the poem is most nearly parallel to the Denudata Veritate, some passages being practically paraphrases of the Latin. Specific resemblances between the Spanish and the other Latin and French versions of the dispute are in comparison trifling. Yet they are sufficiently numerous to make it seem unlikely that the author of this poem or its original was influenced by the Denudata alone. The widely known Dialogus may have furnished a few hints in this case as it appears to have done in others where the Denudata tradition is in the main adhered to. The problem of relations becomes increasingly complicated and baffling as we examine more versions of the debate.

Without belonging in the first instance to popular tradition, this material circulated throughout Europe as freely and in as many forms as the great romantic stories, the beast epic, or the fabliaux. Each succeeding writer [on the wine-water theme] might draw upon his recollection of more than one predecessor, following no one of them as a model, but elaborating the theme in his own way. Hence the bewildering confusion of similarities and differences in the extant poems. Without, however, attempting to relate the different versions too exactly, we may draw some fairly certain conclusions regarding the general history of the dispute. The main features of this history may now be summarized.

The debate originated with the Latin rhythmic poets, the Goliardi, in the twelfth century, having been developed under the influence of the debate type in general out of motives familiar to the potatory literature of the time. It appears first in two forms, one more popular in character and apparently designed for recitation or singing, the other pedantic and smacking of religious parody. The two are probably related, but neither can be called a version of the other. The more popular is probably the earlier. In what country either of them was written cannot be determined, though one is inclined to look toward Germany; nor is it a matter of much importance, since they belong to a class of literature which is essentially non-national. From this very characteristic, such literature circulates freely through all nations and is easily taken over into the vernacular. The two Latin debates, we know, from the evidence of the manuscripts, to have been read and copied throughout Europe at least as late as the fifteenth century. Meanwhile the dispute had been adapted in French and Spanish, where it appears as early as the thirteenth century, probably through intermediaries now lost. The type of these as of practically all other vernacular versions of the debate is that of the more popular Denudata rather than of the biblical Dialogus, but the latter certainly contributed some of the material which was incorporated in the later tradition.

Going back directly to the Denudata or to some form of the dispute much like it is a second French poem, belonging to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, which appears to have been an important influence in the later history of the dispute. Like the earlier French and Spanish pieces it is characterized by a tendency to romanticize the debate and to elaborate the narrative element.

The early sixteenth century saw the beginning of a wide distribution of the debate in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, in the form of fliegende Blätter, and similar prints are said to have been circulated by colporteurs in very recent times. Of these printed debates some few are of the elaborate type set by the French Débat; others, while belonging in a general way to the same tradition, show signs of having been adapted to the uses of popular entertainers. They are comparatively brief and simple; the narrative setting is generally absent; and the argument proceeds in alternate stanzas. Such adaptations may have been made independently by the street singers of different countries; or the material may have been passed from one group of minstrels to another.

Through these channels the dispute became familiar throughout Europe, finding its way even into such out of the way dialects as Rhæto-Romanic and Basque, and becoming very popular with the modern Hebrew and Yiddish writers. It is not surprising, therefore, that it should have been taken up into oral tradition. Popular versions have been recorded in modern times from France, Spain, England, and Germany. In the last named country, at least, the debate received a very general currency. The oral versions there evidently go back to the form of the dispute represented in the sixteenth-century German prints.

With respect to the breadth of its distribution, the variety of its forms, and the tenacity of its hold on popular interest, this debate is surpassed by only two dialogues of its class, the debate between the Body and the Soul, and the debate between Winter and Summer.

They, like it, are the common property of Europe, and they, too, appear in both literary and popular form. In comparison with these themes the debate of Wine and Water seems barren and circumscribed. It has little more than mother wit, a touch of the ridiculous, and a certain homeliness, as concerning the things of every day, to oppose to the imaginative appeal of the great drama of the seasons, or the eternal human interest of the conflict between flesh and spirit. Yet these slighter qualities are even dearer to the popular heart, and if other subjects aroused deeper emotions, none, apparently, afforded more delight. The mere fact that this theme should have lived for centuries in many tongues is full of interest for the student of literary history.