Refranes cantados y cantares proverbializados

TL;DR

Margit Frenk surveys the intermediate zone between the Spanish refranero and lyric-musical poetry in the 15th–17th centuries, showing that many proverbs were sung and many songs became proverbs. She argues the two genres were once largely undifferentiated ("el proverbio era verso y el verso refrán") and only later grew apart.

Key findings

• Certain refranes were demonstrably sung: the *Cancionero de Herberay* (ca. 1463) uses formulas like "este refrán le cantaron" and "el refrán es de cantar"; the *Cancionero musical de la Colombina* (fol. 72 v°) preserves *Niña y viña, peral y habar, / malo es de guardar* arranged for three voices.
• When a refrán became a song it was modified, often by amplification: Mal Lara records the proverb "Quien tiene hijo en tierra ajena, muerto lo tiene y vivo lo espera" and a sung version ending "hasta que venga la triste nueva"; the proverb "Por la puente se va a casa, que no por el agua" gave the song "Por la puente, Juana, / que no por el agua."
• The reverse process is equally attested: Correas states "De refranes se han fundado muchos cantares, y al contrario, de cantares han quedado muchos refranes," and marks items as "refrán que salió de cantar," "de cantar viene a ser refrán," "fue cantar." Proverbialized songs include the second verse of "La bella malmaridada" (*de las más lindas que vi*), "Aprended, flores, de mí," "Soñaba yo que tenía… que los sueños sueños son," and "las tres ánades, madre."
• Frenk concludes that priority between refrán and cantar cannot be established ("renunciar a establecer prioridades"), and that later, with the rise of the copla and seguidilla, the genres separated formally while songs incorporating a refrán multiplied.

Methods

• Philological/textual survey limited to the 15th–17th centuries, drawing on the major refraneros (Santillana, Vallés, Hernán Núñez, Mal Lara, Correas, Oudin, Horozco, Covarrubias) and on musical and literary sources (Cancionero musical de Palacio, Cancionero de la Colombina, Narváez's *Delphín de música*, Lope, Cervantes, Portuguese playwrights).
• Analysis proceeds by collating each refrán's attestations across collections and literary citations, distinguishing versions that are "said" from those that are "sung," and applying Julio Casares's definition of the refrán to test which sung texts qualify as genuine proverbs.

Limitations

• Stated by the paper: with only a single attestation, one cannot tell whether a refrán was commonly sung or turned into a song by "la iniciativa personal y efímera de algún autor"; the question of priority between refrán and cantar is "más ardua de resolver que la de la gallina o el huevo"; and the survey itself is called "fragmentario e imperfecto."
• Also stated: it is unclear whether the cantarcillos collected by Núñez had real or only potential proverbial value, and Correas recorded hundreds of songs without indicating whether they were proverbialized.
• Evident from the text: the study is explicitly a "nota" confined to a limited corpus and period, and several identifications rest on inference from literary citation rather than surviving music.