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Rutebeuf (or Rustebuef) (fl. 1245 – 1285), a trouvère, was born in the first half of the 13th century, possibly in Champagne (he describes conflicts in Troyes in 1249); he was evidently of humble birth, and he was a Parisian by education and residence. His name is nowhere mentioned by his contemporaries. He frequently plays in his verse on the word Rutebeuf, which was a nom de plume, and is variously explained by him as derived from rude boeuf and rude oeuvre ("coarse ox" or "rustic piece of work"). Paulin Paris thought that he began life in the lowest rank of the minstrel profession as a jongleur (juggler and musician). Some of his poems have autobiographical value. In Le Mariage de Rutebeuf ("The Marriage of Rutebeuf") he says that on the 2 January 1261 he married a woman old and ugly, w