Mendinho


Mendinho, also Meendinho, Mendiño and Meendiño, was a medieval Iberian poet.
Nothing is known about Mendinho except by inference. Scholars generally assume from the reference to the shrine of San Simión that he was Galician. And it is supposed from his name, his style, and the place of his song in the manuscripts that he was a jogral - a non-noble Minstrel.
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 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, its rhythm, and its formal and semantic parallelism. 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 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 singer Amália Rodrigues. An English translation/adaptation of Sedia-m'eu na ermida... is contained in the longpoem The Tale of Tekarionyoken by Thomas M. Capuano.

Sediam'eu na ermida de San Simión

Text of Cohen 2003, slightly modified.