A (33r) Marcabruns, I (120r) Marcabrus, K (106r) Marcabrus, N (266r), a1 (301) marchabrus, d (307r) Marcabrus.

Critical editions: Jean-Marie-Lucien Dejeanne, Poésies complètes du troubadour Marcabru, Toulouse 1909, p. 13; Simon Gaunt, Ruth Harvey, «Tetxt and Context in a Poem by Marcabru: Al prim comens de l'invernaill», in The Troubadours and the Epic. Essays in Memory of W. Mary Hackett, Warwick 1987, pp. 59-101, p. 59; Lucia Lazzerini, «Un caso esemplare: Marcabru, IV, Al prim comens de l'ivernaill», Medioevo romanzo 17, 1992, pp. 7-42, p. 7; Simon Gaunt, Ruth Harvey and Linda Paterson, Marcabru: A Critical Edition, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2000, p. 65.

Base for version A: a1. The Ms. tradition of this poem has attracted comment because it has two different endings.  It has been suggested that these are separate authorial redactions (see Dejeanne’s edition and his comments on p. 218, and Gaunt and Harvey, «Text and context»); but compare Lazzerini («Un caso esemplare», pp. 7-12 and 42), who argues that a single authorial redaction lies behind the song’s Ms. manifestations and produces a single version based on all Mss. Although there are clearly two main versions of this song, one based on  IKNa1 and the other based on A, a simple view of the Mss. as representing two main redactions does not account for the complexity of the tradition as there is evidence of a faulty common archetype for stanzas I-VI while one stanza is found in Aa1 (VIII) only and another in Na1 only (VII). In stanzas I-VI the Mss. are relatively uniform, though a clear A/IKNa1 division, with IK and Na1 forming subgroups, is discernible. Putting aside stanzas VII and VIII, after line 36 the bifurcation of the Ms. tradition becomes much more marked with virtually every line showing substantive and consistent enough divergence to suggest deliberate remaniement.  Whereas some of these points of divergence may result from A’s attempt to ‘tidy up’ a source, most suggest a different redaction, though the division between IK and Na1 persists throughout the poem. The tornada, however, presents problems of a different order. In short the Ms. tradition of this poem is complex, but there is clear evidence for two different endings. As these two versions appear to address different circumstances but within Marcabru’s lifetime, the most likely explanation for the different versions of the poem is that Marcabru himself redeployed an extant poem for a different set of circumstances (see Gaunt and Harvey, «Text and context»). The relative chronology suggested by the historical references in the two versions indicates that the version based on A’s is the earlier. A corollary of this would be that although version B probably represents the earlier of the two versions, it only survives in a hybrid 13th-c. remaniement; conversely the later version of the poem may in fact be preserved in an earlier redaction than the earlier version. Although a1 contains numerous errors, most of these are copying mistakes, easily correctible from other Mss.: we consequently do not comment on them individually unless it is necessary to justify the reading adopted. We offer two editions of this poem, one based on a1, version A and one on A, version B.