What is "marcoat"

Marcoat was a minor Gascon troubadour and joglar who flourished in the mid twelfth century. He is often cited in connexion with Eleanor of Aquitaine and is placed in a hypothetical "school" of poetry which includes Bernart de Ventadorn, Marcabru, Cercamon, Jaufre Rudel, Peire Rogier, and Peire de Valeria among others. Of all his works, only two sirventes survive: Mentre m'obri eis huisel and Una re.us dirai, en Serra.

Marcoat was an innovator building off the work of the contemporary Gascon Marcabru, whose death he recalls in one of his works c. 1150. Nonetheless his works are very simple, the stanzas being comppsed of three heptasyllables rhyming in the form AAB. It was he who first used the term sirventes to describe his poems; the word appears in both of his surviving works, twice in one:

''Mentre m'obri eis huisel, ''un sirventes escubel ''en giteira inz s'arena '''. . . ''Mon serventes no val plus, ''que faitz es de bos moz clus apren lo, Domeing Sarena.

The meaning of these verses is obscure, as he was an early practitioner of the trobar clus style. According to himself, he wrote vers contradizentz (contradictory verses). He was a model for the later troubadour Raimbaut d'Aurenga.