Mendinho, also ''Meendinho'', ''Mendiño'' and ''Meendiño'', was a

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

Iberian

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

. Nothing is known about Mendinho except by inference. Scholars generally assume from the reference to the

shrine A shrine ( "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred space">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...: ''escri ...

of ''San Simión'' (in the modern Isle of ''San Simón'', Rías Baixas of

Vigo Vigo (, ; ) is a city and Municipalities in Spain, municipality in the province of province of Pontevedra, Pontevedra, within the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Galicia (Spain), Galicia, Spain. Located in the northwest ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

) that he was Galician. And it is supposed from his name (without any accompanying

patronym A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (more specifically an avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor. It is the male equivalent of a matronymic. Patronymics are used, ...

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''wikt:toponym, toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage, and types. ''Toponym'' is the general term for ...

), his style, and the place of his song in the manuscripts (the Cancioneiro da Vaticana,

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, and the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional,

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) that he was a ''jogral'' - a non- noble

Minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. The term originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist enter ...

. Mendinho may have been active in the early 13th century, making him one of the earliest poets in this genre whose work has survived. A single cantiga de amigo (song about a boyfriend sung in the feminine) is attributed to him - ''Sedia-m' eu na ermida de San Simion'', but it is among the most famous in the Galician-Portuguese lyric corpus of around 1685 texts. It has been admired for its imagery (critics say the girl is afraid of the waves of her own passion), its rhythm, and its formal and semantic parallelism (including the system of alternating strophes with the rhymes-sounds ''-on(or)/-ar''). The text in the manuscripts is problematic in places, especially in the refrain, where the reading is much disputed. In 1998, the Día das Letras Galegas (Galician Letters Day) was dedicated to Mendinho, along with Martín Codax and Xohán de Cangas. His single known poem was set to music by Alain Oulman, the French composer and long term musical collaborator of the great Portuguese

Fado Fado (; "destiny, fate") is a music genre which can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar Rui Vieira Nery states that "the only reliable information on the history of fado ...

singer Amália Rodrigues. An English translation/adaptation of ''Sedia-m'eu na ermida...'' is contained in the longpoem ''The Tale of Tekarionyoken'' (2013) by Thomas M. Capuano (p. 33).

Sediam'eu na ermida de San Simión

Text of Cohen 2003, slightly modified.

Notes

*Cohen, Rip. ''500 Cantigas d’ Amigo: Edição Crítica'' (Porto: Campo das Letras, 2003). *Ferreira, M. do Rosário. ''Águas Doces, Águas Salgadas: da funcionalidade dos motivos aquáticos nas cantigas de amigo'' (Oporto: Granito, 1999), pp. 41–53. *Montero, Xesús Alonso. “Fortuna literaria de Meendiño”, in ''Estudos Portugueses. Homenagem a Luciana Stegagno Picchio'' (Lisbon: Difel, 1991), pp. 86–109 *Oliveira, António Resende de. ''Depois do Espectáculo Trovadoresco. a estrutura dos cancioneiros peninsulares e as recolhas dos séculos XIII e XIV'' (Lisbon: Edições Colibri, 1994), pp. 391–92. *Reckert, Stephen & Helder Macedo. ''Do cancioneiro de Amigo'' (Lisbon: Assírio e Alvim, 1996), pp. 145–51. *Tavani, Giuseppe. "Meendinho", in G. Lanciani & G. Tavani, edd., ''Dicionário da Literatura Medieval Galega e Portuguesa'' (Lisbon: Caminho, 1993), p. 456. *Tavani, Giuseppe. ''Trovadores e Jograis: Introdução à poesia medieval galego-portuguesa'' (Lisbon: Caminho, 2002), pp. 417–18. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mendinho Galician poets Galician-Portuguese Portuguese language Galician language Culture of Galicia Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown Spanish male poets