The Troubadours were aristocratic poets with aristocratic patronage, so hardly folk musicians. Although for his famous estampie Calenda Maia Rambaut de Vaqeruias (1150-1207) describes how the melody came from two rustic fiddlers he once jamming on the theme by way of a musical joust. An early instance of a traditional music being collected in the field perhaps? Or just some colourfully bogus provenance from a wily storyteller? I believe it was Rambaut who once hid in a wardrobe to spy on the wife of one of his patrons, getting more than he bargained for when she came in stark naked and proceeded to attack the elaborate furnishings with her husband's sword.

When I recorded Kalenda Maia with the medieval duo Misericordia for their CD Robins M'aime (1999), our rendering bore all these elements in mind, with my medieval fiddle part (actually 13th century crowd, or crwth) played with suitably pastoral verve and the whole thing swinging along like the above mentioned burlesque swordplay!