Solage's rondeau is associated with a putative literary school of "fumeurs". There have been many interpretations of this sobriquet. Although it is tempting given the "outré" nature of some poems to suppose that it refers to the smoking of some drug, the simplest explanation in the case of the above work is that it was written for the Parisian Fumeurs, the Society of Smokers, "an eccentric literary clique of ostentatiously dressed bohemians that named themselves after "Jean Fumeux" and flourished in the 1360s and 1370s". One scholar suggests that Eustache Deschamps's poetry, which contains most of the surviving references to the fumeurs, was satirical. The literature associated with the Fumeurs is dated between 1366 and 1381, and Solage's ballade "Plusieurs gens voy" also alludes to them. In his "Règles de la Seconde Rhétorique" Deschamps claims to be the nephew of Machaut, and in his Ballade 447 states that Machaut "brought me up and did me many kindnesses". Though there is no independent verification of these claims, it seems likely that they must have been on close terms. On the other hand, if indeed the "Fumeurs" were literally devotees of smoking, since tobacco was not known in Europe for another two centuries, some other drug, e.g. hashish or opium, must have been implied. However, the current consensus among musicologists is that there was no physical smoking. In the Middle Ages, the French expression "avoir des fumées au cerveau" (having smoke in the brain) referred to mental confusion, a condition attributed to internal vapours which, according to ancient authorities such as Hippocrates and Aristotle, could be evacuated from "heated and smoky brains" either by sneezing or by drinking. Similarly, drinking in the morning was referred to as "abattre le brouillard"—"breaking up the fog".