La Trobe University - Library: Medieval Music Database - Annual cycle of feasts of liturgical chant, liturgical polyphony and secular music of the late middle ages.

Perché vendetta far or non si pò

ballata by Paolo da Firenze

Sources

Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds italien 568, fol. 83v (2/2).

Editions

1. Italian Secular Music: Bartolino da Padova, Egidius de Francia, Giulielmus de Francia, Don Paolo da Firenze, edited by W. Thomas Marrocco, Monaco: Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1975. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century IX, p. 156.
2. The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy, edited by Nino Pirrotta and Ursula Günther, Rome: American Institute of Musicology. Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 8/VI. [forthcoming]

Text Editions

CORSI, Giuseppe. Poesie musicali del Trecento, Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1970, p. 281.

Text

Perché vendetta far or non si pò,
aspetto tempo ch'i' far la potrò.

Di tal, che da me sempre ben sentì,
el contrario sarò di quel ch'i' fu',
perché la sua a la mia fé mentì
con minacciando farmi quello o più.
Dunque non guarderò a l'esser su'
di sopra in rota, ch'i' pur sì farò

Translation

Since I cannot take revenge now,
I will wait for the time when I will be able to.

There is someone who was always well treated by me:
now I will be the opposite of what I was,
because his lies deceived my faith,
when he threatened to do to me all that and more.
Therefore I will not mind him, wheeling around
hawk-like above me, and I will do the same.
Text revision and translation © Giovanni Carsaniga