the production of different periods of Ayala’s life. Twice he marks the
year in which he was writing, and from these dates we know that parts
of it were certainly composed in 1398 and 1404, while yet another part
seems to have been written during his imprisonment in England, which
followed the defeat of Henry of Trastamara by the Duke of Lancaster, in
1367. On the whole, therefore, the Rimado de Palacio is to be placed
near the conclusion of the fourteenth century, and, by its author’s
sufferings in an English prison, reminds us both of the Duke of Orleans
and of James the First of Scotland, who, at the same time and under
similar circumstances, showed a poetical spirit not unlike that of the
great Chancellor of Castile.
In some of its subdivisions, particularly in those that have a lyrical
tendency, the Rimado resembles some of the lighter poems of the
Archpriest of Hita. Others are composed with care and gravity, and
express the solemn thoughts that filled him during his captivity. But,
in general, it has a quiet, didactic tone, such as beseems its subject
and its age; one, however, in which we occasionally find a satirical
spirit that could not be suppressed, when the old statesman discusses
the manners that offended him. Thus, speaking of the _Letrados_, or
lawyers, he says:[161]--
[161] _Letrado_ has continued to be used to mean a _lawyer_ in
Spanish down to our day, as _clerk_ has to mean a _writer_ in
English, though the original signification of both was different.
When Sancho goes to his island, he is said to be “parte de
letrado, parte de Capitan”; and Guillen de Castro, in his “Mal
Casados de Valencia,” Act. III., says of a great rogue, “engaño
como letrado.” A description of Letrados, worthy of Tacitus for
its deep satire, is to be found in the first book of Mendoza’s
“Guerra de Granada.”
When entering on a lawsuit, · if you ask for their advice,
They sit down very solemnly, · their brows fall in a trice.
“A question grave is this,” they say, · “and asks for labor nice;
To the Council it must go, · and much management implies.
“I think, perhaps, in time, · I can help you in the thing,
By dint of labor long · and grievous studying;
But other duties I must leave, · away all business fling,
Your case alone must study, · and to you alone must cling.”[162]
[162] The passage is in Cortina’s notes to Bouterwek, and
begins:--
Si quisiers sobre un pleyto · d’ ellos aver consejo,
Pónense solemnmente, · luego abaxan el cejo:
Dis: “Grant question es esta, · grant trabajo sobejo:
El pleyto sera luengo, · ca atañe a to el consejo.
“Yo pienso que podria · aquí algo ayudar,
Tomando grant trabajo · mis libros estudiar;
Mas todos mis negoçios · me conviene á dexar,
E solamente en aqueste · vuestro pleyto estudiar.”
Somewhat farther on, when he speaks of justice, whose administration
had been so lamentably neglected in the civil wars during which
he lived, he takes his graver tone, and speaks with a wisdom and
gentleness we should hardly have expected:--
True justice is a noble thing, · that merits all renown;
It fills the land with people, · checks the guilty with its frown;
But kings, that should uphold its power, · in thoughtlessness look
down,
And forget the precious jewel · that gems their honored crown.
And many think by cruelty · its duties to fulfil,
But their wisdom all is cunning, · for justice doth no ill;
With pity and with truth it dwells, · and faithful men will still
From punishment and pain turn back, · as sore against their will.[163]
[163] The original reads thus:--
_Aqui fabla de la Justicia._
Justicia que es virtud · atan noble e loada,
Que castiga los malos · e ha la tierra poblada,
Devenla guardar Reyes · é la tien olvidada,
Siendo piedra preciosa · de su corona onrrada.
Muchos ha que por cruesa · cuydan justicia fer;
Mas pecan en la maña, · ca justicia ha de ser
Con toda piedat, · e la verdat bien saber:
Al fer la execucion · siempre se han de doler.
Don José Amador de los Rios has given further extracts from the
Rimado de Palacio in a pleasant paper on it in the Semanario
Pintoresco, Madrid, 1847, p. 411.
There is naturally a good deal in the Rimado de Palacio that savors
of statesmanship; as, for instance, nearly all that relates to royal
favorites, to war, and to the manners of the palace; but the general
air of the poem, or rather of the different short poems that make it
up, is fairly represented in the preceding passages. It is grave,
gentle, and didactic, with now and then a few lines of a simple and
earnest poetical feeling, which seem to belong quite as much to their
age as to their author.
* * * * *
We have now gone over a considerable portion of the earliest Castilian
literature, and quite completed an examination of that part of it
which, at first epic, and afterwards didactic, in its tone, is found
in long, irregular verses, with quadruple rhymes. It is all curious.
Much of it is picturesque and interesting; and when, to what has been
already examined, we shall have added the ballads and chronicles,
the romances of chivalry and the drama, the whole will be found to
constitute a broad basis, on which the genuine literary culture of
Spain has rested ever since.
But, before we go farther, we must pause an instant, and notice some
of the peculiarities of the period we have just considered. It extends
from a little before the year 1200 to a little after the year 1400;
and, both in its poetry and prose, is marked by features not to be
mistaken. Some of these features were peculiar and national; others
were not. Thus, in Provence, which was long united with Aragon, and
exercised an influence throughout the whole Peninsula, the popular
poetry, from its light-heartedness, was called the _Gaya Sciencia_,
and was essentially unlike the grave and measured tone, heard over
every other, on the Spanish side of the mountains; in the more northern
parts of France, a garrulous, story-telling spirit was paramount; and
in Italy, Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio had just appeared, unlike all
that had preceded them, and all that was anywhere contemporary with
their glory. On the other hand, however, several of the characteristics
of the earliest Castilian literature, such as the chronicling and
didactic spirit of most of its long poems, its protracted, irregular
verses, and its redoubled rhymes, belong to the old Spanish bards in
common with those of the countries we have just enumerated, where, at
the same period, a poetical spirit was struggling for a place in the
elements of their unsettled civilization.
But there are two traits of the earliest Spanish literature which
are so separate and peculiar, that they must be noticed from the
outset,--religious faith and knightly loyalty,--traits which are hardly
less apparent in the “Partidas” of Alfonso the Wise, in the stories of
Don John Manuel, in the loose wit of the Archpriest of Hita, and in the
worldly wisdom of the Chancellor Ayala, than in the professedly devout
poems of Berceo and in the professedly chivalrous chronicles of the Cid
and Fernan Gonzalez. They are, therefore, from the earliest period, to
be marked among the prominent features in Spanish literature.
Nor should we be surprised at this. The Spanish national character,
as it has existed from its first development down to our own days, was
mainly formed in the earlier part of that solemn contest which began
the moment the Moors landed beneath the Rock of Gibraltar, and which
cannot be said to have ended, until, in the time of Philip the Third,
the last remnants of their unhappy race were cruelly driven from the
shores which their fathers, nine centuries before, had so unjustifiably
invaded. During this contest, and especially during the two or three
dark centuries when the earliest Spanish poetry appeared, nothing
but an invincible religious faith, and a no less invincible loyalty
to their own princes, could have sustained the Christian Spaniards
in their disheartening struggle against their infidel oppressors. It
was, therefore, a stern necessity which made these two high qualities
elements of the Spanish national character,--a character all whose
energies were for ages devoted to the one grand object of their prayers
as Christians and their hopes as patriots, the expulsion of their hated
invaders.
But Castilian poetry was, from the first, to an extraordinary degree,
an outpouring of the popular feeling and character. Tokens of religious
submission and knightly fidelity, akin to each other in their birth
and often relying on each other for strength in their trials, are,
therefore, among its earliest attributes. We must not, then, be
surprised, if we hereafter find, that submission to the Church and
loyalty to the king constantly break through the mass of Spanish
literature, and breathe their spirit from nearly every portion of
it,--not, indeed, without such changes in the mode of expression as the
changed condition of the country in successive ages demanded, but still
always so strong in their original attributes as to show that they
survive every convulsion of the state and never cease to move onward
by their first impulse. In truth, while their very early development
leaves no doubt that they are national, their nationality makes it all
but inevitable that they should become permanent.
CHAPTER VI.
FOUR CLASSES OF THE MORE POPULAR EARLY LITERATURE.--FIRST CLASS,
BALLADS.--OLDEST FORM OF CASTILIAN POETRY.--THEORIES ABOUT THEIR
ORIGIN.--NOT ARABIC.--THEIR METRICAL FORM.--REDONDILLAS.--
ASONANTES.--NATIONAL.--SPREAD OF THE BALLAD FORM.--NAME.--EARLY NOTICES
OF BALLADS.--BALLADS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, AND LATER.--TRADITIONAL
AND LONG UNWRITTEN.--APPEARED FIRST IN THE CANCIONEROS, THEN IN THE
ROMANCEROS.--THE OLD COLLECTIONS THE BEST.
Everywhere in Europe, during the period we have just gone over, the
courts of the different sovereigns were the principal centres of
refinement and civilization. From accidental circumstances, this was
peculiarly the case in Spain, during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. On the throne of Castile, or within its shadow, we have
seen a succession of such poets and prose-writers as Alfonso the Wise,
Sancho, his son, Don John Manuel, his nephew, and the Chancellor Ayala,
to say nothing of Saint Ferdinand, who preceded them all, and who,
perhaps, gave the first decisive impulse to letters in the centre of
Spain and at the North.[164]
[164] Alfonso el Sabio says of his father, St. Ferdinand: “And,
moreover, he liked to have men about him who knew how to make
verses (_trobar_) and sing, and Jongleurs, who knew how to play
on instruments. For in such things he took great pleasure, and
knew who was skilled in them and who was not.” (Setenario,
Paleographía, pp. 80-83, and p. 76.) See, also, what is said
hereafter, when we come to speak of Provençal literature in
Spain, Chap. XVI.
But the literature produced or encouraged by these and other
distinguished men, or by the higher clergy, who, with them, were the
leaders of the state, was by no means the only literature that then
existed within the barrier of the Pyrenees. On the contrary, the spirit
of poetry was, to an extraordinary degree, abroad throughout the whole
Peninsula, so far as it had been rescued from the Moors, animating
and elevating all classes of its Christian population. Their own
romantic history, whose great events had been singularly the results of
popular impulse, and bore everywhere the bold impress of the popular
character, had breathed into the Spanish people this spirit; a spirit
which, beginning with Pelayo, had been sustained by the appearance,
from time to time, of such heroic forms as Fernan Gonzalez, Bernardo
del Carpio, and the Cid. At the point of time, therefore, at which
we are now arrived, a more popular literature, growing directly out
of the enthusiasm which had so long pervaded the whole mass of the
Spanish people, began naturally to appear in the country, and to assert
for itself a place, which, in some of its forms, it has successfully
maintained ever since.
What, however, is thus essentially popular in its sources and
character,--what, instead of going out from the more elevated classes
of the nation, was neglected or discountenanced by them,--is, from
its very wildness, little likely to take well-defined forms, or to be
traced, from its origin, by the dates and other proofs which accompany
such portions of the national literature as fell earlier under the
protection of the higher orders of society. But though we may not be
able to make out an exact arrangement or a detailed history of what
was necessarily so free and always so little watched, it can still be
distributed into four different classes, and will afford tolerable
materials for a notice of its progress and condition under each.
These four classes are, first, the BALLADS, or the poetry, both
narrative and lyrical, of the common people, from the earliest times;
second, the CHRONICLES, or the half-genuine, half-fabulous histories
of the great events and heroes of the national annals, which, though
originally begun by authority of the state, were always deeply imbued
with the popular feelings and character; third, the ROMANCES OF
CHIVALRY, intimately connected with both the others, and, after a time,
as passionately admired as either by the whole nation; and, fourth, the
DRAMA, which, in its origin, has always been a popular and religious
amusement, and was hardly less so in Spain than it was in Greece or in
France.
These four classes compose what was generally most valued in Spanish
literature during the latter part of the fourteenth century, the whole
of the fifteenth, and much of the sixteenth. They rested on the deep
foundations of the national character, and therefore, by their very
nature, were opposed to the Provençal, the Italian, and the courtly
schools, which flourished during the same period, and which will be
subsequently examined.
* * * * *
THE BALLADS.--We begin with the ballads, because it cannot reasonably
be doubted that poetry, in the present Spanish language, appeared
earliest in the ballad form. And the first question that occurs in
relation to them is the obvious one, why this was the case. It has been
suggested, in reply, that there was probably a tendency to this most
popular form of composition in Spain at an age even much more remote
than that of the origin of the present Spanish language itself;[165]
that such a tendency may, perhaps, be traced back to those indigenous
bards of whom only a doubtful tradition remained in the time of
Strabo;[166] and that it may be seen to emerge again in the Leonine
and other rhymed Latin verses of the Gothic period,[167] or in that
more ancient and obscure Basque poetry, of which the little that has
been preserved to us is thought to breathe a spirit countenancing such
conjectures.[168] But these and similar suggestions have so slight a
foundation in recorded facts, that they can be little relied on. The
one more frequently advanced is, that the Spanish ballads, such as we
now have them, are imitations from the narrative and lyrical poetry
of the Arabs, with which the whole southern part of Spain for ages
resounded; and that, in fact, the very form in which Spanish ballads
still appear is Arabic, and is to be traced to the Arabs in the East,
at a period not only anterior to the invasion of Spain, but anterior to
the age of the Prophet. This is the theory of Conde.[169]
[165] The Edinburgh Review, No. 146, on Lockhart’s Ballads,
contains the ablest statement of this theory.
[166] The passage in Strabo here referred to, which is in Book
III. p. 139, (ed. Casaubon, fol., 1620,) is to be taken in
connection with the passage (p. 151) in which he says that both
the language and its poetry were wholly lost in his time.
[167] Argote de Molina (Discurso de la Poesía Castellana, in
Conde Lucanor, ed. 1575, f. 93. a) may be cited to this point,
and one who believed it tenable might also cite the “Crónica
General,” (ed. 1604, Parte II. f. 265,) where, speaking of the
Gothic kingdom, and mourning its fall, the Chronicle says,
“Forgotten are its songs, (_cantares_,)” etc.
[168] W. von Humboldt, in the Mithridates of Adelung and Vater,
Berlin, 1817, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 354, and Argote de Molina, ut
sup., f. 93;--but the Basque verses the latter gives cannot be
older than 1322, and were, therefore, quite as likely to be
imitated from the Spanish as to have been themselves the subjects
of Spanish imitation.
[169] Dominacion de los Árabes, Tom. I., Prólogo, pp.
xviii.-xix., p. 169, and other places. But in a manuscript
preface to a collection which he called “Poesías Orientales
traducidas por Jos. Ant. Conde,” and which he never published,
he expresses himself yet more positively: “In the versification
of our Castilian ballads and _seguidillas_, we have received
from the Arabs _an exact type_ of their verses.” And again he
says, “From the period of the infancy of our poetry, we have
rhymed verses according to _the measures used by the Arabs
before the times of the Koran_.” This is the work, I suppose, to
which Blanco White alludes (Variedades, Tom. II. pp. 45, 46).
The theory of Conde has been often approved. See Retrospective
Review, Tom. IV. p. 31, the Spanish translation of Bouterwek,
Tom. I. p. 164, etc.
But though, from the air of historical pretension with which it
presents itself, there is something in this theory that bespeaks our
favor, yet there are strong reasons that forbid our assent to it.
For the earliest of the Spanish ballads, concerning which alone the
question can arise, have not at all the characteristics of an imitated
literature. Not a single Arabic original has been found for any one
of them; nor, so far as we know, has a single passage of Arabic
poetry, or a single phrase from any Arabic writer, entered directly
into their composition. On the contrary, their freedom, their energy,
their Christian tone and chivalrous loyalty, announce an originality
and independence of character that prevent us from believing they
could have been in any way materially indebted to the brilliant, but
effeminate, literature of the nation to whose spirit every thing
Spanish had, when they first appeared, been for ages implacably
opposed. It seems, therefore, that they must, of their own nature, be
as original as any poetry of modern times; containing, as they do,
within themselves proofs that they are Spanish by their birth, natives
of the soil, and stained with all its variations. For a long time, too,
subsequent to that of their first appearance, they continued to exhibit
the same elements of nationality; so that, until we approach the
fall of Granada, we find in them neither a Moorish tone, nor Moorish
subjects, nor Moorish adventures; nothing, in short, to justify us in
supposing them to have been more indebted to the culture of the Arabs
than was any other portion of the early Spanish literature.
Indeed, it does not seem reasonable to seek, in the East or elsewhere,
a foreign origin for the mere _form_ of the Spanish ballads. Their
metrical structure is so simple, that we can readily believe it to
have presented itself as soon as verse of any sort was felt to be a
popular want. They consist merely of those eight-syllable lines which
are composed with great facility in other languages as well as the
Castilian, and which in the old ballads are the more easy, as the
number of feet prescribed for each verse is little regarded.[170]
Sometimes, though rarely, they are broken into stanzas of four lines,
thence called _redondillas_ or roundelays; and some of them have rhymes
in the second and fourth lines of each stanza, or in the first and
fourth, as in the similar stanzas of other modern languages. Their
prominent peculiarity, however, and one which they have succeeded in
impressing upon a very large portion of all the national poetry, is one
which, being found to prevail in no other literature, may be claimed
to have its origin in Spain, and becomes, therefore, an important
circumstance in the history of Spanish poetical culture.[171]
[170] Argote de Molina (Discurso sobre la Poesía Castellana,
in Conde Lucanor, 1575, f. 92) will have it that the ballad
verse of Spain is quite the same with the eight-syllable verse
in Greek, Latin, Italian, and French; “but,” he adds, “it is
properly native to Spain, in whose language it is found earlier
than in any other modern tongue, and in Spanish alone it has
all the grace, gentleness, and spirit that are more peculiar
to the Spanish genius than to any other.” The only example he
cites in proof of this position is the Odes of Ronsard,--“the
most excellent Ronsard,” as he calls him,--then at the height
of his euphuistical reputation in France; but Ronsard’s odes
are miserably unlike the freedom and spirit of the Spanish
ballads. (See Odes de Ronsard, Paris, 1573, 18mo, Tom. II. pp.
62, 139.) The nearest approach that I recollect to the mere
_measure_ of the ancient Spanish ballad, where there was no
thought of imitating it, is in a few of the old French Fabliaux,
in Chaucer’s “House of Fame,” and in some passages of Sir Walter
Scott’s poetry. Jacob Grimm, in his “Silva de Romances Viejos,”
(Vienna, 1815, 18mo,) taken chiefly from the collection of
1555, has printed the ballads he gives us as if their lines
were originally of fourteen or sixteen syllables; so that one
of his lines embraces two of those in the old Romanceros. His
reason was, that their epic nature and character required such
long verses, which are in fact substantially the same with
those in the old “Poem of the Cid.” But his theory, which was
not generally adopted, is sufficiently answered by V. A. Huber,
in his excellent tract, “De Primitivâ Cantilenarum Popularium
Epicarum (vulgo, _Romances_) apud Hispanos Formâ,” (Berolini,
1844, 4to,) and in his preface to his edition of the “Chrónica
del Cid,” 1844.
[171] The only suggestion I have noticed affecting this statement
is to be found in the Repertorio Americano, (Lóndres, 1827, Tom.
II. pp. 21, etc.,) where the writer, who, I believe, is Don
Andres Bello, endeavours to trace the _asonante_ to the “Vita
Mathildis,” a Latin poem of the twelfth century, reprinted by
Muratori, (Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Mediolani, 1725, fol.,
Tom. V. pp. 335, etc.,) and to a manuscript Anglo-Norman poem,
of the same century, on the fabulous journey of Charlemagne
to Jerusalem. But the Latin poem is, I believe, singular in
this attempt, and was, no doubt, wholly unknown in Spain;
and the Anglo-Norman poem, which has since been published by
Michel, (London, 1836, 12mo,) with curious notes, turns out
to be _rhymed_, though not carefully or regularly. Raynouard,
in the Journal des Savants, (February, 1833, p. 70,) made the
same mistake with the writer in the Repertorio; probably in
consequence of following him. The imperfect rhyme of the ancient
Gaelic seems to have been different from the Spanish _asonante_,
and, at any rate, can have had nothing to do with it. Logan’s
Scottish Gael, London, 1831, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 241.
The peculiarity to which we refer is that of the _asonante_,--an
imperfect rhyme confined to the vowels, and beginning with the last
accented one in the line; so that it embraces sometimes only the very
last syllable, and sometimes goes back to the penultimate or even the
antepenultimate. It is contradistinguished from the _consonante_, or
full rhyme, which is made both by the consonants and vowels in the
concluding syllable or syllables of the line, and which is, therefore,
just what _rhyme_ is in English.[172] Thus, _feróz_ and _furór_, _cása_
and _abárca_, _infámia_ and _contrária_, are good _asonantes_ in the
first and third ballads of the Cid, just as _mál_ and _desleál_,
_voláre_ and _caçáre_, are good _consonantes_ in the old ballad of the
Marquis of Mantua, cited by Don Quixote. The _asonante_, therefore, is
something between our blank verse and our rhyme, and the art of using
it is easily acquired in a language like the Castilian, abounding in
vowels, and always giving to the same vowel the same value.[173] In the
old ballads, it generally recurs with every other line; and, from the
facility with which it can be found, the same _asonante_ is frequently
continued through the whole of the poem in which it occurs, whether
the poem be longer or shorter. But even with this embarrassment,
the structure of the ballad is so simple, that, while Sarmiento has
undertaken to show how Spanish prose from the twelfth century downwards
is often written unconsciously in eight-syllable _asonantes_,[174]
Sepúlveda in the sixteenth century actually converted large portions
of the old chronicles into the same ballad measure, with little change
of their original phraseology;[175] two circumstances which, taken
together, show indisputably that there can be no wide interval between
the common structure of Spanish prose and this earliest form of Spanish
verse. If to all this we add the national recitatives in which the
ballads have been sung down to our own days, and the national dances by
which they have been accompanied,[176] we shall probably be persuaded,
not only that the form of the Spanish ballad is as purely national in
its origin as the _asonante_, which is its prominent characteristic,
but that this form is more happily fitted to its especial purposes, and
more easy in its practical application to them, than any other into
which popular poetry has fallen in ancient or modern times.[177]
[172] Cervantes, in his “Amante Liberal,” calls them
_consonancias_ or _consonantes dificultosas_. No doubt, their
greater difficulty caused them to be less used than the
_asonantes_. Juan de la Enzina, in his little treatise on
Castilian Verse, Cap. 7, written before 1500, explains these two
forms of rhyme, and says that the old romances “no van verdaderos
consonantes.” Curious remarks on the _asonantes_ are to be found
in Renjifo, “Arte Poetica Española,” (Salamanca, 1592, 4to, Cap.
34,) and the additions to it in the edition of 1727 (4to, p.
418); to which may well be joined the philosophical suggestions
of Martinez de la Rosa, Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. I. pp.
202-204.
[173] A great poetic license was introduced before long into the
use of the _asonante_, as there had been, in antiquity, into
the use of the Greek and Latin measures, until the sphere of
the _asonante_ became, as Clemencin well says, extremely wide.
Thus, _u_ and _o_ were held to be _asonante_, as in Ven_u_s and
Min_o_s; _i_ and _e_, as in Par_i_s and mal_e_s; a diphthong with
a vowel, as gr_a_c_ia_ and _a_lm_a_, c_ui_t_a_s and b_u_rl_a_s;
and other similar varieties, which, in the times of Lope de Vega
and Góngora, made the permitted combinations all but indefinite,
and the composition of _asonante_ verses indefinitely easy. Don
Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. III. pp. 271, 272, note.
[174] Poesía Española, Madrid, 1775, 4to, sec. 422-430.
[175] It would be easy to give many specimens of ballads made
from the old chronicles, but for the present purpose I will take
only a few lines from the “Crónica General,” (Parte III. f.
77. a, ed. 1604,) where Velasquez, persuading his nephews, the
Infantes de Lara, to go against the Moors, despite of certain
ill auguries, says, “_Sobrinos estos agueros_ que oystes mucho
son buenos; _ca nos dan a entender que ganaremos muy gran_ algo
de lo ageno, e _de lo nuestro non perderemos_; e _fizol muy mal
Don Nuño_ Salido _en non venir combusco_, e _mande Dios que
se arrepienta_,” etc. Now, in Sepúlveda, (Romances, Anvers,
1551, 18mo, f. 11), in the ballad beginning “Llegados son los
Infantes,” we have these lines:--
_Sobrinos esos agueros_
Para nos gran bien serian,
Porque _nos dan a entender_
Que bien nos sucediera.
_Ganaremos grande_ victoria,
_Nada no se perdiera_,
_Don Nuño lo hizo mal
Que convusco non venia_,
_Mande Dios que se arrepienta_, etc.
[176] Duran, Romances Caballerescos, Madrid, 1832, 12mo, Prólogo,
Tom. I. pp. xvi., xvii., with xxxv., note (14).
[177] The peculiarities of a metrical form so entirely national
can, I suppose, be well understood only by an example; and I
will, therefore, give here, in the original Spanish, a few lines
from a spirited and well-known ballad of Góngora, which I select,
because they have been translated into _English asonantes_, by
a writer in the Retrospective Review, whose excellent version
follows, and may serve still further to explain and illustrate
the measure:--
Aquel rayo de la guerra,
Alferez mayor del r_é_yn_o_,
Tan galan como valiente,
Y tan noble como fi_é_r_o_,
De los mozos embidiado,
Y admirado de los vi_é_j_o_s,
Y de los niños y el vulgo
Señalado con el d_é_d_o_,
El querido de las damas,
Por cortesano y discr_é_t_o_,
Hijo hasta alli regalado
De la fortuna y el ti_e_mp_o_, etc.
Obras, Madrid, 1654, 4to, f. 83.
This rhyme is perfectly perceptible to any ear well accustomed
to Spanish poetry, and it must be admitted, I think, that,
when, as in the ballad cited, it embraces two of the concluding
vowels of the line, and is continued through the whole poem, the
effect, even upon a foreigner, is that of a graceful ornament,
which satisfies without fatiguing. In English, however, where
our vowels have such various powers, and where the consonants
preponderate, the case is quite different. This is plain in the
following translation of the preceding lines, made with spirit
and truth, but failing to produce the effect of the Spanish.
Indeed, the rhyme can hardly be said to be perceptible except to
the eye, though the measure and its cadences are nicely managed.
“He the thunderbolt of battle,
He the first Alferez t_i_tl_e_d,
Who as courteous is as valiant,
And the noblest as the f_i_erc_e_st;
He who by our youth is envied,
Honored by our gravest anc_ie_nts,
By our youth in crowds distinguished
By a thousand pointed f_i_ng_e_rs;
He beloved by fairest damsels,
For discretion and pol_i_ten_e_ss,
Cherished son of time and fortune,
Bearing all their gifts div_i_n_e_st,” etc.
Retrospective Review, Vol. IV. p. 35.
Another specimen of English _asonantes_ is to be found in
Bowring’s “Ancient Poetry of Spain” (London, 1824, 12mo, p. 107);
but the result is substantially the same, and always must be,
from the difference between the two languages.
A metrical form so natural and obvious became a favorite at once, and
continued so. From the ballads it soon passed into other departments
of the national poetry, especially the lyrical. At a later period,
the great mass of the true Spanish drama came to rest upon it; and
before the end of the seventeenth century more verses had probably been
written in it than in all the other measures used by Spanish poets.
Lope de Vega declared it to be fitted for all styles of composition,
even the gravest; and his judgment was sanctioned in his own time, and
has been justified in ours, by the application of this peculiar form
of verse to long epic stories.[178] The eight-syllable _asonante_,
therefore, may be considered as now known and used in every department
of Spanish poetry; and since it has, from the first, been a chief
element in that poetry, we may well believe it will continue such as
long as what is most original in the national genius continues to be
cultivated.
[178] Speaking of the ballad verses, he says, (Prólogo á las
Rimas Humanas, Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV., Madrid, 1776, 4to,
p. 176,) “I regard them as capable, not only of expressing
and setting forth any idea whatever with easy sweetness, but
carrying through _any_ grave action in a versified poem.” His
prediction was fulfilled in his own time by the “Fernando” of
Vera y Figueroa, a long epic published in 1632, and in ours by
the very attractive narrative poem of Don Ángel de Saavedra, Duke
de Rivas, entitled “El Moro Exposito,” in two volumes, 1834. The
example of Lope de Vega, in the latter part of the sixteenth and
beginning of the seventeenth centuries, no doubt did much to give
currency to the _asonantes_, which, from that time, have been
more used than they were earlier.
Some of the ballads embodied in this genuinely Castilian measure are,
no doubt, very ancient. That such ballads existed in the earliest
times, their very name, _Romances_, may intimate; since it seems to
imply that they were, at some period, the only poetry known in the
_Romance_ language of Spain; and such a period can have been no other
than the one immediately following the formation of the language
itself. Popular poetry of some sort--and more probably ballad poetry
than any other--was sung concerning the achievements of the Cid as
early as 1147.[179] A century later than this, but earlier than the
prose of the “Fuero Juzgo,” Saint Ferdinand, after the capture of
Seville in 1248, gave allotments or _repartimientos_ to two poets who
had been with him during the siege, Nicolas _de los Romances_, and
Domingo Abad _de los Romances_, the first of whom continued for some
time afterwards to inhabit the rescued city and exercise his vocation
as a poet.[180] In the next reign, or between 1252 and 1280, such
poets are again mentioned. A _joglaressa_, or female ballad-singer, is
introduced into the poem of “Apollonius,” which is supposed to have
been written soon after the year 1250;[181] and in the Code of Laws of
Alfonso the Tenth, prepared about 1260, good knights are commanded to
listen to no poetical tales of the ballad-singers except such as relate
to feats of arms.[182] In the “General Chronicle,” also, compiled
soon afterwards by the same prince, mention is made more than once of
poetical gestes or tales; of “what the ballad-singers (_juglares_) sing
in their chants, and tell in their tales”; and “of what we hear the
ballad-singers tell in their chants”;--implying that the achievements
of Bernardo del Carpio and Charlemagne, to which these phrases refer,
were as familiar in the popular poetry used in the composition of this
fine old chronicle as we know they have been since to the whole Spanish
people through the very ballads we still possess.[183]
[179] See the barbarous Latin poem printed by Sandoval, at the
end of his “Historia de los Reyes de Castilla,” etc. (Pamplona,
1615, fol., f. 193). It is on the taking of Almeria in 1147, and
seems to have been written by an eyewitness.
[180] The authority for this is sufficient, though the fact
itself of a man being named from the sort of poetry he composed
is a singular one. It is found in Diego Ortiz de Zuñiga,
“Anales Ecclesiasticos y Seglares de Sevilla,” (Sevilla, 1677,
fol., pp. 14, 90, 815, etc.). He took it, he says, from the
_original_ documents of the _repartimientos_, which he describes
minutely as having been used by Argote de Molina, (Preface and
p. 815,) and from documents in the archives of the Cathedral.
The _repartimiento_, or distribution of lands and other spoils
in a city, from which, as Mariana tells us, a hundred thousand
Moors emigrated or were expelled, was a serious matter, and the
documents in relation to it seem to have been ample and exact.
(Zuñiga, Preface, and pp. 31, 62, 66, etc.) The meaning of the
word _Romance_ in this place is a more doubtful matter. But if
_any_ kind of popular poetry is meant by it, what was it likely
to be, at so early a period, but ballad poetry? The verses,
however, which Ortiz de Zuñiga, on the authority of Argote de
Molina, attributes (p. 815) to Domingo Abad de los Romances, are
not his; they are by the Arcipreste de Hita. See Sanchez, Tom.
IV. p. 166.
[181] Stanzas 426, 427, 483-495, ed. Paris, 1844, 8vo.
[182] Partida II. Tít. XXI. Leyes 20, 21. “Neither let
the singers (_juglares_) rehearse before them other songs
(_cantares_) than those of military gestes, or those that relate
feats of arms.” The _juglares_--a word that comes from the Latin
_jocularis_--were originally strolling ballad-singers, like the
_jongleurs_, but afterwards sunk to be jesters and _jugglers_.
See Clemencin’s curious note to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 31.
[183] Crónica General, Valladolid, 1604, Parte III. ff. 30, 33,
45.
It seems, therefore, not easy to escape from the conclusion, to which
Argote de Molina, the most sagacious of the early Spanish critics,
arrived nearly three centuries ago, that “in these old ballads is, in
truth, perpetuated the memory of times past, and that they constitute
a good part of those ancient Castilian stories used by King Alfonso in
his history”;[184] a conclusion at which we should arrive, even now,
merely by reading with care large portions of the Chronicle itself.[185]
[184] El Conde Lucanor, 1575. Discurso de la Poesía Castellana
por Argote de Molina, f. 93. a.
[185] The end of the Second Part of the General Chronicle, and
much of the third, relating to the great heroes of the early
Castilian and Leonese history, seem to me to have been indebted
to older poetical materials.
One more fact will conclude what we know of their early history. It
is, that ballads were found among the poetry of Don John Manuel, the
nephew of Alfonso the Tenth, which Argote de Molina possessed, and
intended to publish, but which is now lost.[186] This brings our slight
knowledge of the whole subject down to the death of Don John in 1347.
But from this period--the same with that of the Archpriest of Hita--we
almost lose sight, not only of the ballads, but of all genuine Spanish
poetry, whose strains seem hardly to have been heard during the horrors
of the reign of Peter the Cruel, the contested succession of Henry of
Trastamara, and the Portuguese wars of John the First. And even when
its echoes come to us again in the weak reign of John the Second, which
stretches down to the middle of the fifteenth century, it presents
itself with few of the attributes of the old national character.[187]
It is become of the court, courtly; and therefore, though the old and
true-hearted ballads may have lost none of the popular favor, and were
certainly preserved by the fidelity of popular tradition, we find no
further distinct record of them until the end of this century and the
beginning of the one that followed, when the mass of the people, whose
feelings they embodied, rose to such a degree of consideration, that
their peculiar poetry came into the place to which it was entitled, and
which it has maintained ever since. This was in the reigns of Ferdinand
and Isabella, and of Charles the Fifth.
[186] Discurso, Conde Lucanor, ed. 1575, ff. 92. a, 93. b. The
poetry contained in the Cancioneros Generales, from 1511 to 1573,
and bearing the name of Don John Manuel, is, as we have already
explained, the work of Don John Manuel of Portugal, who died in
1524.
[187] The Marquis of Santillana, in his well-known letter,
(Sanchez, Tom. I.,) speaks of the _Romances e cantares_, but very
slightly.
But these few historical notices of ballad poetry are, except those
which point to its early origin, too slight to be of much value.
Indeed, until after the middle of the sixteenth century, it is
difficult to find ballads written by known authors; so that, when we
speak of the Old Spanish Ballads, we do not refer to the few whose
period can be settled with some accuracy, but to the great mass found
in the “Romanceros Generales” and elsewhere, whose authors and dates
are alike unknown. This mass consists of above a thousand old poems,
unequal in length and still more unequal in merit, composed between the
period when verse first appeared in Spain and the time when such verse
as that of the ballads was thought worthy to be written down; the whole
bearing to the mass of the Spanish people, their feelings, passions,
and character, the same relations that a single ballad bears to the
character of the individual author who produced it.
For a long time, of course, these primitive national ballads existed
only in the memories of the common people, from whom they sprang, and
were preserved through successive ages and long traditions only by the
interests and feelings that originally gave them birth. We cannot,
therefore, reasonably hope that we now read any of them exactly as they
were first composed and sung, or that there are many to which we can
assign a definite age with any good degree of probability. No doubt,
we may still possess some which, with little change in their simple
thoughts and melody, were among the earliest breathings of that popular
enthusiasm which, between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries,
was carrying the Christian Spaniards onward to the emancipation of
their country; ballads which were heard amidst the valleys of the
Sierra Morena, or on the banks of the Turia and the Guadalquivir, with
the first tones of the language that has since spread itself through
the whole Peninsula. But the idle minstrel, who, in such troubled
times, sought a precarious subsistence from cottage to cottage, or
the thoughtless soldier, who, when the battle was over, sung its
achievements to his guitar at the door of his tent, could not be
expected to look beyond the passing moment; so that, if their unskilled
verses were preserved at all, they must have been preserved by those
who repeated them from memory, changing their tone and language with
the changed feelings of the times and events that chanced to recall
them. Whatever, then, belongs to this earliest period belongs, at the
same time, to the unchronicled popular life and character of which it
was a part; and although many of the ballads thus produced may have
survived to our own day, many more, undoubtedly, lie buried with the
poetical hearts that gave them birth.
This, indeed, is the great difficulty in relation to all researches
concerning the oldest Spanish ballads. The very excitement of the
national spirit that warmed them into life was the result of an age
of such violence and suffering, that the ballads it produced failed
to command such an interest as would cause them to be written down.
Individual poems, like that of the Cid, or the works of individual
authors, like those of the Archpriest of Hita or Don John Manuel, were,
of course, cared for, and, perhaps, from time to time transcribed.
But the popular poetry was neglected. Even when the special
“Cancioneros”--which were collections of whatever verses the person who
formed them happened to fancy, or was able to find[188]--began to come
in fashion, during the reign of John the Second, the bad taste of the
time caused the old national literature to be so entirely overlooked,
that not a single ballad occurs in either of them.
[188] _Cancion_, _Canzone_, _Chansos_, in the Romance language,
signified originally any kind of poetry, because all poetry,
or almost all, was then sung. (Giovanni Galvani, Poesia dei
Trovatori, Modena, 1829, 8vo, p. 29.) In this way, _Cancionero_
in Spanish was long understood to mean simply a collection of
poetry,--sometimes all by one author, sometimes by many.
The first printed ballads, therefore, are to be sought in the earliest
edition of the “Cancioneros Generales,” compiled by Fernando del
Castillo, and printed at Valencia in 1511. Their number, including
fragments and imitations, is thirty-seven, of which nineteen are
by authors whose names are given, and who, like Don John Manuel of
Portugal, Alonso de Cartagena, Juan de la Enzina, and Diego de San
Pedro, are known to have flourished in the period between 1450 and
1500, or who, like Lope de Sosa, appear so often in the collections of
that age, that they may be fairly assumed to have belonged to it. Of
the remainder, several seem much more ancient, and are, therefore, more
curious and important.
The first, for instance, called “Count Claros,” is the fragment of
an old ballad afterwards printed in full. It is inserted in this
Cancionero on account of an elaborate gloss made on it in the Provençal
manner by Francisco de Leon, as well as on account of an imitation of
it by Lope de Sosa, and a gloss upon the imitation by Soria; all of
which follow, and leave little doubt that the ballad itself had long
been known and admired. The fragment, which alone is curious, consists
of a dialogue between the Count Claros and his uncle, the Archbishop,
on a subject and in a tone which made the name of the Count, as a true
lover, pass almost into a proverb.
“It grieves me, Count, it grieves my heart,
That thus they urge thy fate;
Since this fond guilt upon thy part
Was still no crime of state.
For all the errors love can bring
Deserve not mortal pain;
And I have knelt before the king,
To free thee from thy chain.
But he, the king, with angry pride
Would hear no word I spoke;
‘The sentence is pronounced,’ he cried;
‘Who may its power revoke?’
The Infanta’s love you won, he says,
When you her guardian were.
O cousin, less, if you were wise,
For ladies you would care.
For he that labors most for them
Your fate will always prove;
Since death or ruin none escape,
Who trust their dangerous love.”
“O uncle, uncle, words like these
A true heart never hears;
For I would rather die to please
Than live and not be theirs.”[189]
[189] The whole ballad, with a different reading of the passage
here translated, is in the Cancionero de Romances, Saragossa,
1550, 12mo, Parte II. f. 188, beginning “Media noche era por
hilo.” Often, however, as the adventures of the Count Claros are
alluded to in the old Spanish poetry, there is no trace of them
in the old chronicles. The fragment in the text begins thus, in
the Cancionero General (1535, f. 106. a):--
Pesame de vos, el Conde,
Porque assi os quieren matar;
Porque el yerro que hezistes
No fue mucho de culpar;
Que los yerros por amores
Dignos son de perdonar.
Suplique por vos al Rey,
Cos mandasse de librar;
Mas el Rey, con gran enojo,
No me quisiera escuchar, etc.
The beginning of this ballad in the complete copy from the
Saragossa Romancero shows that it was composed before clocks were
known.
The next is also a fragment, and relates, with great simplicity, an
incident which belongs to the state of society that existed in Spain
between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the two races were
much mingled together and always in conflict.
I was the Moorish maid, Morayma,
I was that maiden dark and fair,--
A Christian came, he seemed in sorrow,
Full of falsehood came he there.
Moorish he spoke,--he spoke it well,--
“Open the door, thou Moorish maid,
So shalt thou be by Allah blessed,
So shall I save my forfeit head.”
“But how can I, alone and weak,
Unbar, and know not who is there?”
“But I’m the Moor, the Moor Mazote,
The brother of thy mother dear.
A Christian fell beneath my hand,
The Alcalde comes, he comes apace,
And if thou open not thy door,
I perish here before thy face.”
I rose in haste, I rose in fear,
I seized my cloak, I missed my vest,
And, rushing to the fatal door,
I threw it wide at his behest.[190]
[190] The forced alliteration of the first lines, and the
phraseology of the whole, indicate the rudeness of the very early
Castilian:--
Yo mera mora Morayma,
Morilla d’un bel catar;
Christiano vino a mi puerta,
Cuytada, por me enganar.
Hablome en algaravia,
Como aquel que la bien sabe:
“Abras me las puertas, Mora,
Si Ala te guarde de mal!”
“Como te abrire, mezquina,
Que no se quien tu seras?”
“Yo soy el Moro Maçote,
Hermano de la tu madre,
Que un Christiano dejo muerto;
Tras mi venia el alcalde.
Sino me abres tu, mi vida,
Aqui me veras matar.”
Quando esto oy, cuytada,
Comenceme a levantar;
Vistierame vn almexia,
No hallando mi brial;
Fuerame para la puerta,
Y abrila de par en par.
Cancionero General, 1535, f. 111. a.
The next is complete, and, from its early imitations and glosses, it
must probably be quite ancient. It begins “Fonte frida, Fonte frida,”
and is, perhaps, itself an imitation of “Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,”
another of the early and very graceful lyrical ballads which were
always so popular.
Cooling fountain, cooling fountain,
Cooling fountain, full of love!
Where the little birds all gather,
Thy refreshing power to prove;
All except the widowed turtle
Full of grief, the turtle-dove.
There the traitor nightingale
All by chance once passed along,
Uttering words of basest falsehood
In his guilty, treacherous song:
“If it please thee, gentle lady,
I thy servant-love would be.”
“Hence, begone, ungracious traitor,
Base deceiver, hence from me!
I nor rest upon green branches,
Nor amidst the meadow’s flowers;
The very wave my thirst that quenches
Seek I where it turbid pours.
No wedded love my soul shall know,
Lest children’s hearts my heart should win;
No pleasure would I seek for, no!
No consolation feel within;--
So leave me sad, thou enemy!
Thou foul and base deceiver, go!
For I thy love will never be,
Nor ever, false one, wed thee, no!”
The parallel ballad of “Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,” is no less simple
and characteristic; Rosa being the name of the lady-love.
“Rose, fresh and fair, Rose, fresh and fair,
That with love so bright dost glow,
When within my arms I held thee,
I could never serve thee, no!
And now that I would gladly serve thee,
I no more can see thee, no!”
“The fault, my friend, the fault was thine,--
Thy fault alone, and not mine, no!
A message came,--the words you sent,--
Your servant brought it, well you know.
And naught of love, or loving bands,
But other words, indeed, he said:
That you, my friend, in Leon’s lands
A noble dame had long since wed;--
A lady fair, as fair could be;
Her children bright as flowers to see.”
“Who told that tale, who spoke those words,
No truth he spoke, my lady, no!
For Castile’s lands I never saw,
Of Leon’s mountains nothing know,
Save as a little child, I ween,
Too young to know what love should mean.”[191]
[191] These two ballads are in the Cancionero of 1535, ff. 107
and 108; both evidently very old. The use of _carta_ in the
last for an unwritten message is one proof of this. I give the
originals of both for their beauty. And first:--
Fonte frida, fonte frida,
Fonte frida, y con amor,
Do todas las avezicas
Van tomar consolacion,
Sino es la tortolica,
Que esta biuda y con dolor.
Por ay fue a passar
El traydor del ruyseñor;
Las palabras que el dezia
Llenas son de traicion:
“Si tu quisiesses, Señora,
Yo seria tu seruidor.”
“Vete de ay, enemigo,
Malo, falso, engañador,
Que ni poso en ramo verde
Ni en prado que tenga flor;
Que si hallo el agua clara,
Turbia la bebia yo:
Que no quiero aver marido,
Porque hijos no haya, no;
No quiero plazer con ellos,
Ni menos consolacion.
Dejame, triste enemigo,
Malo, falso, mal traidor,
Que no quiero ser tu amiga,
Ni casar contigo, no.”
The other is as follows:--
“Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,
Tan garrida y con amor;
Quando yos tuve en mis brazos,
No vos supe servir, no!
Y agora quos serviria,
No vos puedo aver, no!”
“Vuestra fue la culpa, amigo,
Vuestra fue, que mia, no!
Embiastes me una carta,
Con un vuestro servidor,
Y en lugar de recaudar,
El dixera otra razon:
Querades casado, amigo,
Alla en tierras de Leon;
Que teneis muger hermosa,
Y hijos como una flor.”
“Quien os lo dixo, Señora,
No vos dixo verdad, no!
Que yo nunca entre en Castilla,
Ni alla en tierras de Leon,
Si no quando era pequeño,
Que no sabia de amor.”
Several of the other anonymous ballads in this little collection are
not less curious and ancient, among which may be noted those beginning,
“Decidme vos pensamiento,”--“Que por Mayo era por Mayo,”--and
“Durandarte, Durandarte,”--together with parts of those beginning,
“Triste estaba el caballero,” and “Amara yo una Señora.”[192] Most of
the rest, and all whose authors are known, are of less value and belong
to a later period.
[192] These ballads are in the edition of 1535, on ff. 109, 111,
and 113.
The Cancionero of Castillo, where they appeared, was enlarged and
altered in eight subsequent editions, the last of which was published
in 1573; but in all of them this little collection of ballads, as
originally printed in the first edition, remained by itself, unchanged,
though in the additions of newer poetry a modern ballad is occasionally
inserted.[193] It may, therefore, be doubted whether the General
Cancioneros did much to attract attention to the ballad poetry of the
country, especially when we bear in mind that they are almost entirely
filled with the works of the conceited school of the period that
produced them, and were probably little known except among the courtly
classes, who placed small value on what was old and national in their
poetical literature.[194]
[193] One of the most spirited of these later ballads in the
edition of 1573, begins thus (f. 373):--
Ay, Dios de mi tierra,
Saqueis me de aqui!
Ay, que Ynglaterra
Ya no es para mi.
God of my native land,
O, once more set me free!
For here, on England’s soil,
There is no place for me.
It was probably written by some homesick follower of Philip II.
[194] Salvá (Catalogue, London, 1826, 8vo, No. 60) reckons nine
Cancioneros Generales, the principal of which will be noticed
hereafter.
But while the Cancioneros were still in course of publication, a
separate effort was made in the right direction to preserve the old
ballads, and proved successful. In 1550, Stevan G. de Nagera printed,
at Saragossa, in two successive parts, what he called a “Silva de
Romances,” the errors of which he partly excuses in his Preface, on the
ground that the memories of those from whom he gathered the ballads
he publishes were often imperfect. Here, then, is the oldest of the
proper ballad-books; one obviously taken from the traditions of the
country. It is, therefore, the most curious and important of them all.
A considerable number of the short poems it contains must, however, be
regarded only as fragments of popular ballads already lost; while, on
the contrary, that on the Count Claros is the complete one, of which
the Cancionero, published forty years earlier, had given only such
small portions as its editor had been able to pick up; both striking
facts, which show, in opposite ways, that the ballads here collected
were obtained, as the Preface says they were, from the memories of the
people.
As might be anticipated from such an origin, their character and tone
are very various. Some are connected with the fictions of chivalry,
and the story of Charlemagne; the most remarkable of which are those
on Gayferos and Melisendra, on the Marquis of Mantua and on Count
Irlos.[195] Others, like that of the cross miraculously made for
Alfonso the Chaste, and that on the all of Valencia, belong to the
early history of Spain,[196] and may well have been among those
old Castilian ballads which Argote de Molina says were used in
compiling the “General Chronicle.” And finally, we have that deep,
domestic tragedy of Count Alarcos, which goes back to some period in
the national history or traditions of which we have no other early
record.[197] Few among them, even the shortest and least perfect, are
without interest; as, for instance, the obviously old one in which
Virgil figures as a person punished for seducing the affections of a
king’s daughter.[198] As specimens, however, of the national tone which
prevails in most of the collection, it is better to read such ballads
as that upon the rout of Roderic on the eighth day of the battle that
surrendered Spain to the Moors,[199] or that on Garci Perez de Vargas,
taken, probably, from the “General Chronicle,” and founded on a fact of
so much consequence as to be recorded by Mariana, and so popular as to
be referred to for its notoriety by Cervantes.[200]
[195] Those on Gayferos begin, “Estabase la Condessa,” “Vamonos,
dixo mi tio,” and “Assentado esta Gayferos.” The two long ones on
the Marquis of Mantua and the Conde d’ Irlos begin, “De Mantua
salió el Marqués,” and “Estabase el Conde d’ Irlos.”
[196] Compare the story of the angels in disguise, who made the
miraculous cross for Alfonso, A. D. 794, as told in the ballad,
“Reynando el Rey Alfonso,” in the Romancero of 1550, with the
same story as told in the “Crónica General” (1604, Parte III.
f. 29);--and compare the ballad, “Apretada està Valencia,”
(Romancero, 1550,) with the “Crónica del Cid,” 1593, c. 183, p.
154.
[197] It begins, “Retrayida està la Infanta,” (Romancero, 1550,)
and is one of the most tender and beautiful ballads in any
language. There are translations of it by Bowring (p. 51) and by
Lockhart (Spanish Ballads, London, 1823, 4to, p. 202). It has
been at least four times brought into a dramatic form;--viz., by
Lope de Vega, in his “Fuerza Lastimosa”; by Guillen de Castro;
by Mira de Mescua; and by José J. Milanes, a poet of Havana,
whose works were printed there in 1846 (3 vols. 8vo);--the three
last giving their dramas simply the name of the ballad,--“Conde
Alarcos.” The best of them all is, I think, that of Mira de
Mescua, which is found in Vol. V. of the “Comedias Escogidas”
(1653, 4to); but that of Milanes contains passages of very
passionate poetry.
[198] “Mandó el Rey prender Virgilios” (Romancero, 1550). It is
among the very old ballads, and is full of the loyalty of its
time. Virgil, it is well known, was treated, in the Middle Ages,
sometimes as a knight, and sometimes as a wizard.
[199] Compare the ballads beginning, “Las Huestes de Don
Rodrigo,” and “Despues que el Rey Don Rodrigo,” with the “Crónica
del Rey Don Rodrigo y la Destruycion de España” (Alcalá, 1587,
fol., Capp. 238, 254). There is a stirring translation of the
first by Lockhart, in his “Ancient Spanish Ballads,” (London,
1823, 4to, p. 5,)--a work of genius beyond any of the sort known
to me in any language.
[200] Ortiz de Zuñiga (Anales de Sevilla, Appendix, p. 831) gives
this ballad, and says it had been printed two hundred years. If
this be true, it is, no doubt, the oldest _printed_ ballad in the
language. But Ortiz is uncritical in such matters, like nearly
all of his countrymen. The story of Garci Perez de Vargas is in
the “Crónica General,” Parte IV., in the “Crónica de Fernando
III.,” c. 48, etc., and in Mariana, Historia, Lib. XIII. c. 7.
The genuine ballad-book thus published was so successful, that, in
less than five years, three editions or recensions of it appeared; that
of 1555, commonly called the Cancionero of Antwerp, being the last,
the amplest, and the best known. Other similar collections followed;
particularly, one in nine parts, which, between 1593 and 1597, were
separately published at Valencia, Burgos, Toledo, Alcalá, and Madrid; a
variety of sources, to which we no doubt owe, not only the preservation
of so great a number of old ballads, but much of the richness
and diversity we find in their subjects and tone;--all the great
divisions of the kingdom, except the southwest, having sent in their
long-accumulated wealth to fill this first great treasure-house of the
national popular poetry. Like its humbler predecessor, it had great
success. Large as it was originally, it was still further increased
in four subsequent recensions, that appeared in the course of about
fifteen years; the last being that of 1605-1614, in thirteen parts,
constituting the great repository called the “Romancero General,” from
which, and from the smaller and earlier ballad-books, we still draw
nearly all that is curious and interesting in the old popular poetry of
Spain. The whole number of ballads found in these several volumes is
considerably over a thousand.[201]
[201] See Appendix (B), on the Romanceros.
But since the appearance of these collections, above two centuries ago,
little has been done to increase our stock of old Spanish ballads.
Small ballad-books on particular subjects, like those of the Twelve
Peers and of the Cid, were, indeed, early selected from the larger
ones, and have since been frequently called for by the general favor;
but still it should be understood, that, from the middle and latter
part of the seventeenth century, the true popular ballads, drawn
from the hearts and traditions of the common people, were thought
little worthy of regard, and remained until lately floating about
among the humbler classes that gave them birth. There, however, as if
in their native homes, they have always been no less cherished and
cultivated than they were at their first appearance, and there the old
ballad-books themselves were oftenest found, until they were brought
forth anew, to enjoy the favor of all, by Quintana, Depping, and Duran,
who, in this, have but obeyed the feeling of the age in which we live.
The old collections of the sixteenth century, however, are still
the only safe and sufficient sources in which to seek the true old
ballads. That of 1593-1597 is particularly valuable, as we have already
intimated, from the circumstance, that its materials were gathered
so widely out of different parts of Spain; and if to the multitude
of ballads it contains we add those found in the Cancionero of 1511,
and in the ballad-book of 1550, we shall have the great body of the
anonymous ancient Spanish ballads, more near to that popular tradition
which was the common source of what is best in them than we can find it
anywhere else.
But, from whatever source we may now draw them, we must give up, at
once, all hope of arranging them in chronological order. They were
originally printed in small volumes, or on separate sheets, as they
chanced, from time to time, to be composed or found,--those that were
taken from the memories of the blind ballad-singers in the streets by
the side of those that were taken from the works of Lope de Vega and
Góngora; and just as they were first collected, so they were afterwards
heaped together in the General Romanceros, without affixing to them
the names of their authors, or attempting to distinguish the ancient
ballads from the recent, or even to group together such as belonged
to the same subject. Indeed, they seem to have been published at all
merely to furnish amusement to the less cultivated classes at home,
or to solace the armies that were fighting the battles of Charles the
Fifth and Philip the Second, in Italy, Germany, and Flanders; so that
an orderly arrangement of any kind was a matter of small consequence.
Nothing remains for us, therefore, but to consider them by their
_subjects_; and for this purpose the most convenient distribution will
be, first, into such as relate to fictions of chivalry, and especially
to Charlemagne and his peers; next, such as regard Spanish history
and traditions, with a few relating to classical antiquity; then such
as are founded on Moorish adventures; and lastly, such as belong to
the private life and manners of the Spaniards themselves. What do not
fall naturally under one of these divisions are not, probably, ancient
ballads; or, if they are such, are not of consequence enough to be
separately noticed.
CHAPTER VII.
BALLADS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH CHIVALRY.--BALLADS FROM SPANISH
HISTORY.--BERNARDO DEL CARPIO.--FERNAN GONZALEZ.--THE LORDS OF
LARA.--THE CID.--BALLADS FROM ANCIENT HISTORY AND FABLE, SACRED AND
PROFANE.--BALLADS ON MOORISH SUBJECTS.--MISCELLANEOUS BALLADS, AMATORY,
BURLESQUE, SATIRICAL, ETC.--CHARACTER OF THE OLD SPANISH BALLADS.
_Ballads of Chivalry._--The first thing that strikes us, on opening any
one of the old Spanish ballad-books, is the national air and spirit
that prevail throughout them. But we look in vain for many of the
fictions found in the popular poetry of other countries at the same
period, some of which we might well expect to find here. Even that
chivalry, which was so akin to the character and condition of Spain
when the ballads appeared, fails to sweep by us with the train of its
accustomed personages. Of Arthur and his Round Table the old ballads
tell us nothing at all, nor of the “Mervaile of the Graal,” nor of
Perceval, nor of the Palmerins, nor of many other well-known and famous
heroes of the shadow land of chivalry. Later, indeed, some of these
personages figure largely in the Spanish prose romances. But, for a
long time, the history of Spain itself furnished materials enough for
its more popular poetry; and therefore, though Amadis, Lancelot du Lac,
Tristan de Leonnais, and their compeers, present themselves now and
then in the ballads, it is not till after the prose romances, filled
with their adventures, had made them familiar. Even then, they are
somewhat awkwardly introduced, and never occupy any well-defined place;
for the stories of the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio were much nearer to
the hearts of the Spanish people, and had left little space for such
comparatively cold and unsubstantial fancies.
The only considerable exception to this remark is to be found in
the stories connected with Charlemagne and his peers. That great
sovereign--who, in the darkest period of Europe since the days of
the Roman republic, roused up the nations, not only by the glory
of his military conquests, but by the magnificence of his civil
institutions--crossed the Pyrenees in the latter part of the eighth
century, at the solicitation of one of his Moorish allies, and
ravaged the Spanish marches as far as the Ebro, taking Pamplona and
Saragossa.[202] The impression he made there seems to have been the
same he made everywhere; and from this time the splendor of his great
name and deeds was connected in the minds of the Spanish people
with wild imaginations of their own achievements, and gave birth to
that series of fictions which is embraced in the story of Bernardo
del Carpio, and ends with the great rout, when, according to the
persuasions of the national vanity,
“Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia.”
[202] Sismondi, Hist. des Français, Paris, 1821, 8vo, Tom. II.
pp. 257-260.
These picturesque adventures, chiefly without countenance from history,
in which the French paladins appear associated with fabulous Spanish
heroes, such as Montesinos and Durandarte,[203] and once with the noble
Moor Calaynos, are represented with some minuteness in the old Spanish
ballads. The largest number, including the longest and the best, are
to be found in the ballad-book of 1550-1555, to which may be added a
few from that of 1593-1597, making together somewhat more than fifty,
of which only twenty occur in the collection expressly devoted to the
Twelve Peers, and first published in 1608. Some of them are evidently
very old; as, for instance, that on the Conde d’ Irlos, that on the
Marquis of Mantua, two on Claros of Montalban, and both the fragments
on Durandarte, the last of which can be traced back to the Cancionero
of 1511.[204]
[203] Montesinos and Durandarte figure so largely in Don
Quixote’s visit to the cave of Montesinos, that all relating to
them is to be found in the notes of Pellicer and Clemencin to
Parte II. cap. 23, of the history of the mad knight.
[204] These ballads begin, “Estabase el Conde d’ Irlos,” which is
the longest I know of; “Assentado esta Gayferos,” which is one
of the best, and cited more than once by Cervantes; “Media noche
era por hilo,” where the counting of time by the dripping of
water is a proof of antiquity in the ballad itself; “A caça va el
Emperador,” also cited repeatedly by Cervantes; and “O Belerma,
O Belerma,” translated by M. G. Lewis; to which may be added,
“Durandarte, Durandarte,” found in the Antwerp Romancero, and in
the old Cancioneros Generales.
The ballads of this class are occasionally quite long, and approach
the character of the old French and English metrical romances; that
of the Conde d’ Irlos extending to about thirteen hundred lines. The
longer ballads, too, are generally the best; and those, through large
portions of which the same _asonante_, and sometimes, even, the same
_consonante_ or full rhyme, is continued to the end, have a solemn
harmony in their protracted cadences, that produces an effect on the
feelings like the chanting of a rich and well-sustained recitative.
Taken as a body, they have a grave tone, combined with the spirit of
a picturesque narrative, and entirely different from the extravagant
and romantic air afterwards given to the same class of fictions in
Italy, and even from that of the few Spanish ballads which, at a later
period, were constructed out of the imaginative and fantastic materials
found in the poems of Bojardo and Ariosto. But in all ages and in all
forms, they have been favorites with the Spanish people. They were
alluded to as such above five hundred years ago, in the oldest of
the national chronicles; and when, at the end of the last century,
Sarmiento notices the ballad-book of the Twelve Peers, he speaks of
it as one which the peasantry and the children of Spain still knew by
heart.[205]
[205] Memorias para la Poesía Española, Sect. 528.
* * * * *
_Historical Ballads._--The most important and the largest division of the
Spanish ballads is, however, the historical. Nor is this surprising.
The early heroes in Spanish history grew so directly out of the
popular character, and the early achievements of the national arms
so nearly touched the personal condition of every Christian in the
Peninsula, that they naturally became the first and chief subjects of
a poetry which has always, to a remarkable degree, been the breathing
of the popular feelings and passions. It would be easy, therefore, to
collect a series of ballads,--few in number as far as respects the
Gothic and Roman periods, but ample from the time of Roderic and the
Moorish conquest of Spain down to the moment when its restoration was
gloriously fulfilled in the fall of Granada,--a series which would
constitute such a poetical illustration of Spanish history as can be
brought in aid of the history of no other country. But, for our present
purpose, it is enough to select a few sketches from these remarkable
ballads devoted to the greater heroes,--personages half-shadowy,
half-historical,--who, between the end of the eighth and the beginning
of the twelfth century, occupy a wide space in all the old traditions,
and serve alike to illustrate the early popular character in Spain,
and the poetry to which that character gave birth.
The first of these, in the order of time, is Bernardo del Carpio,
concerning whom we have about forty ballads, which, with the accounts
in the Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise, have constituted the foundations
for many a drama and tale, and at least three long heroic poems.
According to these early narratives, Bernardo flourished about the year
800, and was the offspring of a secret marriage between the Count de
Saldaña and the sister of Alfonso the Chaste, at which the king was
so much offended, that he kept the Count in perpetual imprisonment,
and sent the Infanta to a convent; educating Bernardo as his own son,
and keeping him ignorant of his birth. The achievements of Bernardo,
ending with the victory of Roncesvalles,--his efforts to procure
the release of his father, when he learns who his father is,--the
falsehood of the king, who promises repeatedly to give up the Count de
Saldaña and as often breaks his word,--with the despair of Bernardo,
and his final rebellion, after the Count’s death in prison,--are all
as fully represented in the ballads as they are in the chronicles,
and constitute some of the most romantic and interesting portions of
each.[206]
[206] The story of Bernardo is in the “Crónica General,” Parte
III., beginning at f. 30, in the edition of 1604. But it must be
almost entirely fabulous.
Of the ballads which contain this story, and which generally suppose
the whole of it to have passed in one reign, though the Chronicle
spreads it over three, none, perhaps, is finer than the one in which
the Count de Saldaña, in his solitary prison, complains of his son,
who, he supposes, must know his descent, and of his wife, the Infanta,
who, he presumes, must be in league with her royal brother. After a
description of the castle in which he is confined, the Count says:--
The tale of my imprisoned life
Within these loathsome walls,
Each moment, as it lingers by,
My hoary hair recalls;
For when this castle first I saw,
My beard was scarcely grown,
And now, to purge my youthful sins,
Its folds hang whitening down.
Then where art thou, my careless son?
And why so dull and cold?
Doth not my blood within thee run?
Speaks it not loud and bold?
Alas! it may be so, but still
Thy mother’s blood is thine;
And what is kindred to the king
Will plead no cause of mine:
And thus all three against me stand;--
For the whole man to quell,
’T is not enough to have our foes,
Our heart’s blood must rebel.
Meanwhile, the guards that watch me here
Of thy proud conquests boast;
But if for me thou lead’st it not,
For whom, then, fights thy host?
And since thou leav’st me prisoned here,
In cruel chains to groan,
Or I must be a guilty sire,
Or thou a guilty son!
Yet pardon me, if I offend
By uttering words so free;
For while oppressed with age I moan,
No words come back from thee.[207]
[207]
Los tiempos de mi prision
Tan aborrecida y larga,
Por momentos me lo dizen
Aquestas mis tristes canas.
Quando entre en este castillo,
Apenas entre con barbas,
Y agora por mis pecados
Las veo crecidas y blancas.
Que descuydo es este, hijo?
Como a vozes no te llama
La sangre que tienes mia,
A socorrer donde falta?
Sin duda que te detiene
La que de tu madre alcanças,
Que por ser de la del Rey
Juzgaras qual el mi causa.
Todos tres sois mis contrarios;
Que a un desdichado no basta
Que sus contrarios lo sean,
Sino sus propias entrañas.
Todos los que aqui me tienen
Me cuentan de tus hazañas:
Si para tu padre no,
Dime para quien las guardas?
Aqui estoy en estros hierros,
Y pues dellos no me sacas,
Mal padre deuo de ser,
O mal hijo pues me faltas.
Perdoname, si te ofendo,
Que descanso en las palabras,
Que yo como viejo lloro,
Y tu como ausente callas.
Romancero General, 1602, f. 46.
But it was printed as early as 1593.
The old Spanish ballads have often a resemblance to each other in their
tone and phraseology; and occasionally several seem imitated from some
common original. Thus, in another, on this same subject of the Count
de Saldaña’s imprisonment, we find the length of time he had suffered,
and the idea of his relationship and blood, enforced in the following
words, not of the Count himself, but of Bernardo, when addressing the
king:--
The very walls are wearied there,
So long in grief to hold
A man whom first in youth they saw,
And now see gray and old.
And if, for errors such as these,
The forfeit must be blood,
Enough of his has flowed from me,
When for your rights I stood.[208]
[208] This is evidently among the older ballads. The earliest
printed copy of it that I know is to be found in the “Flor de
Romances,” Novena Parte, (Madrid, 1597, 18mo, f. 45,) and the
passage I have translated is very striking in the original:--
Cansadas ya las paredes
De guardar en tanto tiempo
A un hombre, que vieron moço
Y ya le ven cano y viejo.
Si ya sus culpas merecen,
Que sangre sea en su descuento,
Harta suya he derramado,
Y toda en servicio vuestro.
It is given a little differently by Duran.
In reading the ballads relating to Bernardo del Carpio, it is
impossible not to be often struck with their resemblance to the
corresponding passages of the “General Chronicle.” Some of them are
undoubtedly copied from it; others possibly may have been, in more
ancient forms, among the poetical materials out of which we know
that Chronicle was in part composed.[209] The best are those which
are least strictly conformed to the history itself; but all, taken
together, form a curious and interesting series, that serves strikingly
to exhibit the manners and feelings of the people in the wild times of
which they speak, as well as in the later periods when many of them
must have been written.
[209] The ballad beginning “En Corte del casto Alfonso,” in the
ballad-book of 1555, is taken from the “Crónica General,” (Parte
III. ff. 32, 33, ed. 1604,) as the following passage, speaking
of Bernardo’s first knowledge that his father was the Count of
Saldaña, will show:--
_Quando_ Bernaldo _lo supo
Pesóle_ a gran demasia,
Tanto que _dentro en el cuerpo
La sangre se le volvia_.
Yendo _para su posada_
Muy grande llanto hacia,
_Vistióse paños de luto_,
Y delante el Rey se iba.
_El Rey quando_ asi _le vió_,
Desta suerte le decía:
“_Bernaldo_, por aventura
_Cobdicias la muerte mia_?”
The Chronicle reads thus: “E el [Bernardo] _quandol supo_, que
su padre era preso, _pesol_ mucho de coraçon, e _bolbiosele la
sangre en el cuerpo_, e fuesse _para su posada_, faziendo el
mayor duelo del mundo; e _vistióse paños de duelo_, e fuesse
para el Rey Don Alfonso; e _el Rey, quando lo vido_, dixol:
‘_Bernaldo, cobdiciades la muerte mia?_’” It is plain enough,
in this case, that the Chronicle is the original of the ballad;
but it is very difficult, if not impossible, from the nature
of the case, to show that any particular ballad was used in
the composition of the Chronicle, because, we have undoubtedly
none of the ballads in the form in which they existed when the
Chronicle was compiled in the middle of the thirteenth century,
and therefore a correspondence of phraseology like that just
cited is not to be expected. Yet it would not be surprising, if
some of these ballads on Bernardo, found in the Sixth Part of
the “Flor de Romances,” (Toledo, 1594, 18mo,) which Pedro Flores
tells us he collected far and wide from tradition, were known
in the time of Alfonso the Wise, and were among the Cantares de
Gesta to which he alludes. I would instance particularly the
three beginning, “Contandole estaba un dia,” “Antesque barbas
tuviesse,” and “Mal mis servicios pagaste.” The language of those
ballads is, no doubt, chiefly that of the age of Charles V. and
Philip II., but the thoughts and feelings are evidently much
older.
The next series is that on Fernan Gonzalez, a popular chieftain, whom
we have already mentioned, when noticing his metrical chronicle; and
one who, in the middle of the tenth century, recovered Castile anew
from the Moors, and became its first sovereign Count. The number of
ballads relating to him is not large; probably not twenty. The most
poetical are those which describe his being twice rescued from prison
by his courageous wife, and those which relate his contest with King
Sancho, where he displayed all the turbulence and cunning of a robber
baron, in the Middle Ages. Nearly all their facts may be found in the
Third Part of the “General Chronicle”; and though only a few of the
ballads themselves appear to be derived from it as distinctly as some
of those on Bernardo del Carpio, still two or three are evidently
indebted to that Chronicle for their materials and phraseology, while
yet others may possibly, in some ruder shape, have preceded it, and
contributed to its composition.[210]
[210] Among the ballads taken from the “Crónica General” is, I
think, the one in the ballad-book of 1555, beginning “Preso esta
Fernan Gonzalez,” though the Chronicle says (Parte III. f. 62,
ed. 1604) that it was a Norman count who bribed the castellan,
and the ballad says it was a Lombard. Another, which, like the
two last, is very spirited, is found in the “Flor de Romances,”
Séptima Parte, (Alcalá, 1597, 18mo, f. 65,) beginning “El Conde
Fernan Gonzalez,” and contains an account of one of his victories
over Almanzor not told elsewhere, and therefore the more curious.
The ballads which naturally form the next group are those on the Seven
Lords of Lara, who lived in the time of Garcia Ferrandez, the son of
Fernan Gonzalez. Some of them are beautiful, and the story they contain
is one of the most romantic in Spanish history. The seven Lords of
Lara, in consequence of a family quarrel, are betrayed by their uncle
into the hands of the Moors, and put to death; while their father,
by the basest treason, is confined in a Moorish prison, where, by a
noble Moorish lady, he has an eighth son, the famous Mudarra, who
at last avenges all the wrongs of his race. On this story there are
about thirty ballads; some very old, and exhibiting either inventions
or traditions not elsewhere recorded, while others seem to have come
directly from the “General Chronicle.” The following is a part of one
of the last, and a good specimen of the whole:--[211]
[211] The story of the Infantes de Lara is in the “Crónica
General,” Parte III., and in the edition of 1604 begins at f.
74. I possess, also, a striking volume, containing forty plates,
on their history, by Otto Vaenius, a scholar and artist, who
died in 1634. It is entitled “Historia Septem Infantium de Lara”
(Antverpiae, 1612, fol.); the same, no doubt, an imperfect copy
of which Southey praises in his notes to the “Chronicle of the
Cid” (p. 401). Sepúlveda (1551-84) has a good many ballads on the
subject; the one I have partly translated in the text beginning,--
Quien es aquel caballero
Que tan gran traycion hacia?
Ruy Velasquez es de Lara,
Que à sus sobrinos vendia.
The corresponding passage of the Chronicle is at f. 78, ed. 1604.
What knight goes there, so false and fair,
That thus for treason stood?
Velasquez hight is that false knight,
Who sold his brother’s blood.
Where Almenar extends afar,
He called his nephews forth,
And on that plain he bade them gain
A name of fame and worth.
The Moors he shows, the common foes,
And promises their rout;
But while they stood, prepared for blood,
A mighty host came out.
Of Moorish men were thousands ten,
With pennons flowing fair;
Whereat each knight, as well he might,
Inquired what host came there.
“O, do not fear, my kinsmen dear,”
The base Velasquez cried,
“The Moors you see can never be
Of power your shock to bide;
I oft have met their craven set,
And none dared face my might;
So think no fear, my kinsmen dear,
But boldly seek the fight.”
Thus words deceive, and men believe,
And falsehood thrives amain;
And those brave knights, for Christian rights,
Have sped across the plain;
And men ten score, but not one more,
To follow freely chose:
So Velasquez base his kin and race
Has bartered to their foes.
But, as might be anticipated, the Cid was seized upon with the first
formation of the language as the subject of popular poetry, and has
been the occasion of more ballads than any other of the great heroes of
Spanish history or fable.[212] They were first collected in a separate
ballad-book as early as 1612, and have continued to be published and
republished at home and abroad down to our own times.[213] It would
be easy to find a hundred and sixty; some of them very ancient; some
poetical; many prosaic and poor. The chronicles seem to have been
little resorted to in their composition.[214] The circumstances of
the Cid’s history, whether true or fictitious, were too well settled
in the popular faith, and too familiar to all Christian Spaniards,
to render the use of such materials necessary. No portion of the old
ballads, therefore, is more strongly marked with the spirit of their
age and country; and none constitutes a series so complete. They give
us apparently the whole of the Cid’s history, which we find nowhere
else entire; neither in the ancient poem, which does not pretend to
be a life of him; nor in the prose chronicle, which does not begin so
early in his story; nor in the Latin document, which is too brief and
condensed. At the very outset, we have the following minute and living
picture of the mortification and sufferings of Diego Laynez, the Cid’s
father, in consequence of the blow he had received from Count Lozano,
which his age rendered it impossible for him to avenge:--
[212] In the barbarous rhymed Latin poem, printed with great
care by Sandoval, (Reyes de Castilla, Pamplona, 1615, f. 189,
etc.,) and apparently written, as we have noticed, by some one
who witnessed the siege of Almeria in 1147, we have the following
lines:--
Ipse Rodericus, _Mio Cid_ semper vocatus,
_De quo cantatur_, quod ab hostibus haud superatus,
Qui domuit Moros, comites quoque domuit nostros, etc.
These poems must, by the phrase _Mio Cid_, have been in Spanish;
and, if so, could hardly have been any thing but ballads.
[213] Nic. Antonio (Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 684) gives 1612 as
the date of the oldest Romancero del Cid. The oldest I possess
is of Pamplona (1706, 18mo); but the Madrid edition, (1818,
18mo,) the Frankfort, (1827, 12mo,) and the collection in Duran,
(Caballerescos, Madrid, 1832, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 43-191,) are
more complete. The most complete of all is that by Keller,
(Stuttgard, 1840, 12mo,) and contains 154 ballads. But a few
could be added even to this one.
[214] The ballads beginning, “Guarte, guarte, Rey Don Sancho,”
and “De Zamora sale Dolfos,” are indebted to the “Crónica del
Cid,” 1593, c. 61, 62. Others, especially those in Sepúlveda’s
collection, show marks of other parts of the same chronicle, or
of the “Crónica General,” Parte IV. But the whole amount of such
indebtedness in the ballads of the Cid is small.
Sorrowing old Laynez sat,
Sorrowing on the deep disgrace
Of his house, so rich and knightly,
Older than Abarca’s race.
For he saw that youthful strength
To avenge his wrong was needed;
That, by years enfeebled, broken,
None his arm now feared or heeded.
But he of Orgaz, Count Lozano,
Walks secure where men resort;
Hindered and rebuked by none,
Proud his name, and proud his port.
While he, the injured, neither sleeps,
Nor tastes the needful food,
Nor from the ground dares lift his eyes,
Nor moves a step abroad,
Nor friends in friendly converse meets,
But hides in shame his face;
His very breath, he thinks, offends,
Charged with insult and disgrace.[215]
[215] The earliest place in which I have seen this
ballad--evidently very old in its _matériel_--is “Flor de
Romances,” Novena Parte, 1597, f. 133.
Cuydando Diego Laynez
En la mengua de su casa,
Fidalga, rica y antigua,
Antes de Nuño y Abarca,
Y viendo que le fallecen
Fuerças para la vengança,
Porque por sus luengos años,
Por si no puede tomalla,
Y que el de Orgaz se passea
Seguro y libre en la plaça,
Sinque nadie se lo impida,
Loçano en nombre y en gala.
Non puede dormir de noche,
Nin gustar de las viandas,
Nin alçar del suelo los ojos,
Nin osa salir de su casa,
Nin fablar con sus amigos,
Antes les niega la fabla,
Temiendo no les ofenda
El aliento de su infamia.
The pun on the name of Count _Lozano_ (Haughty or Proud) is of
course not translated.
In this state of his father’s feelings, Roderic, a mere stripling,
determines to avenge the insult by challenging Count Lozano, then the
most dangerous knight and the first nobleman in the kingdom. The result
is the death of his proud and injurious enemy; but the daughter of the
fallen Count, the fair Ximena, demands vengeance of the king, and the
whole is adjusted, after the rude fashion of those times, by a marriage
between the parties, which necessarily ends the feud.
The ballads, thus far, relate only to the early youth of the Cid in
the reign of Ferdinand the Great, and constitute a separate series,
that gave to Guillen de Castro, and after him to Corneille, the
best materials for their respective tragedies on this part of the
Cid’s story. But at the death of Ferdinand, his kingdom was divided,
according to his will, among his four children; and then we have
another series of ballads on the part taken by the Cid in the wars
almost necessarily produced by such a division, and in the siege of
Zamora, which fell to the share of Queen Urraca, and was assailed by
her brother, Sancho the Brave. In one of these ballads, the Cid, sent
by Sancho to summon the city, is thus reproached and taunted by Urraca,
who is represented as standing on one of its towers, and answering him
as he addressed her from below:--
Away! away! proud Roderic!
Castilian proud, away!
Bethink thee of that olden time,
That happy, honored day,
When, at Saint James’s holy shrine,
Thy knighthood first was won;
When Ferdinand, my royal sire,
Confessed thee for a son.
He gave thee then thy knightly arms,
My mother gave thy steed;
Thy spurs were buckled by these hands,
That thou no grace might’st need.
And had not chance forbid the vow,
I thought with thee to wed;
But Count Lozano’s daughter fair
Thy happy bride was led.
With her came wealth, an ample store,
But power was mine, and state:
Broad lands are good, and have their grace,
But he that reigns is great.
Thy wife is well; thy match was wise;
Yet, Roderic! at thy side
A vassal’s daughter sits by thee,
And not a royal bride![216]
[216] This is a very old, as well as a very spirited, ballad.
It occurs first in print in 1555; but “Durandarte, Durandarte,”
found as early as 1511, is an obvious imitation of it, so that it
was probably old and famous at that time. In the oldest copy now
known it reads thus, but was afterwards changed. I omit the last
lines, which seem to be an addition.
A fuera, a fuera, Rodrigo,
El soberbio Castellano!
Acordarte te debria
De aquel tiempo ya passado,
Quando fuiste caballero
En el altar de Santiago;
Quando el Rey fue tu padrino,
Tu Rodrigo el ahijado.
Mi padre te dio las armas,
Mi madre te dio el caballo,
Yo te calze las espuelas,
Porque fuesses mas honrado,
Que pensé casar contigo.
No lo quiso mi pecado;
Casaste con Ximena Gomez,
Hija del Conde Loçano.
Con ella uviste dineros,
Conmigo uvieras estado.
Bien casaste, Rodrigo,
Muy mejor fueras casado;
Dexaste hija de Rey,
Por tomar la de su vasallo.
This was one of the most popular of the old ballads. It is often
alluded to by the writers of the best age of Spanish literature;
for example, by Cervantes, in “Persiles y Sigismunda,” (Lib. III.
c. 21,) and was used by Guillen de Castro in his play on the Cid.
Alfonso the Sixth succeeded on the death of Sancho, who perished
miserably by treason before the walls of Zamora; but the Cid quarrelled
with his new master, and was exiled. At this moment begins the old
poem already mentioned; but even here and afterwards the ballads form
a more continuous account of his life, carrying us, often with great
minuteness of detail, through his conquest of Valencia, his restoration
to the king’s favor, his triumph over the Counts of Carrion, his old
age, death, and burial, and giving us, when taken together, what
Müller the historian and Herder the philosopher consider, in its main
circumstances, a trustworthy history, but what can hardly be more than
a poetical version of traditions current at the different times when
its different portions were composed.
Indeed, in the earlier part of the period when historical ballads
were written, their subjects seem rather to have been chosen among
the traditional heroes of the country, than among the known and
ascertained events in its annals. Much fiction, of course, was mingled
with whatever related to such personages by the willing credulity of
patriotism, and portions of the ballads about them are incredible to
any modern faith; so that we can hardly fail to agree with the good
sense of the canon in Don Quixote, when he says, “There is no doubt
there was such a man as the Cid and such a man as Bernardo del Carpio,
but much doubt whether they achieved what is imputed to them”;[217]
while, at the same time, we must admit there is no less truth in the
shrewd intimation of Sancho, that, after all, the old ballads are too
old to tell lies. At least, some of them are so.
[217] “En lo que hubo Cid, no hay duda, ni menos Bernardo del
Carpio; pero de que hicieron las hazañas que dicen, creo que hay
muy grande.” (Parte I. c. 49.) This, indeed, is the good sense
of the matter,--a point in which Cervantes rarely fails,--and it
forms a strong contrast to the extravagant faith of those who, on
the one side, consider the ballads good historical documents, as
Müller and Herder are disposed to do, and the sturdy incredulity
of Masdeu, on the other, who denies that there ever was a Cid.
At a later period, all sorts of subjects were introduced into the
ballads; ancient subjects as well as modern, sacred as well as profane.
Even the Greek and Roman fables were laid under contribution, as if
they were historically true; but more ballads are connected with
Spanish history than with any other, and, in general, they are better.
The most striking peculiarity of the whole mass is, perhaps, to be
found in the degree in which it expresses the national character.
Loyalty is constantly prominent. The Lord of Buitrago sacrifices his
own life to save that of his sovereign.[218] The Cid sends rich spoils
from his conquests in Valencia to the ungrateful king who had driven
him thither as an exile.[219] Bernardo del Carpio bows in submission to
the uncle who basely and brutally outrages his filial affections;[220]
and when, driven to despair, he rebels, the ballads and the chronicles
absolutely forsake him. In short, this and the other strong traits of
the national character are constantly appearing in the old historical
ballads, and constitute a chief part of the peculiar charm that invests
them.
[218] See the fine ballad beginning “Si el cavallo vos han
muerto,”--which first appears in the “Flor de Romances,” Octava
Parte (Alcalá, 1597, f. 129). It is boldly translated by Lockhart.
[219] I refer to the ballad in the “Romancero del Cid” beginning
“Llego Alvar Fañez a Burgos,” with the letter following
it,--“El vasallo desleale.” This trait in the Cid’s character
is noticed by Diego Ximenez Ayllon, in his poem on that hero,
1579, where, having spoken of his being treated by the king with
harshness,--“Tratado de su Rey con aspereza,”--the poet adds,--
Jamas le dio lugar su virtud alta
Que en su lealtad viniese alguna falta.
Canto I.
[220] On one of the occasions when Bernardo had been most foully
and falsely treated by the king, he says,--
Señor, Rey sois, y haredes
A vuestro querer y guisa.
A king you are, and you must do,
In your own way, what pleases you.
And on another similar occasion, another ballad, he says to the
king,--
De servir no os dejaré
Mientras que tenga la vida.
Nor shall I fail to serve your Grace
While life within me keeps its place.
* * * * *
_Ballads on Moorish Subjects._--The Moorish ballads form a brilliant
and large class by themselves, but none of them are as old as the
earliest historical ballads. Indeed, their very subjects intimate
their later origin. Few can be found alluding to known events or
personages that occur before the period immediately preceding the
fall of Granada; and even in these few the proofs of a more recent
and Christian character are abundant. The truth appears to be, that,
after the final overthrow of the Moorish power, when the conquerors
for the first time came into full possession of whatever was most
luxurious in the civilization of their enemies, the tempting subjects
their situation suggested were at once seized upon by the spirit of
their popular poetry. The sweet South, with its picturesque, though
effeminate, refinement; the foreign, yet not absolutely stranger,
manners of its people; its magnificent and fantastic architecture; the
stories of the warlike achievements and disasters at Baza, at Ronda,
and at Alhama, with the romantic adventures and fierce feuds of the
Zegris and Abencerrages, the Gomeles and the Aliatares;--all took
strong hold of the Spanish imagination, and made of Granada, its rich
plain and snowcapped mountains, that fairy land which the elder and
sterner ballad poetry of the North had failed to create. From this
time, therefore, we find a new class of subjects, such as the loves of
Gazul and Abindarraez, with games and tournaments in the Bivarrambla,
and tales of Arabian nights in the Generalife; in short, whatever
was matter of Moorish tradition or manners, or might by the popular
imagination be deemed such, was wrought into Spanish ballad poetry,
until the very excess became ridiculous, and the ballads themselves
laughed at one another for deserting their own proper subjects, and
becoming, as it were, renegades to nationality and patriotism.[221]
[221] In the humorous ballad, “Tanta Zayda y Adalifa,” (first
printed, Flor de Romances, Quinta Parte, Burgos, 1594, 18mo, f.
158,) we have the following:--
Renegaron de su ley
Los Romancistas de España,
Y ofrecieronle a Mahoma
Las primicias de sus galas.
Dexaron los graves hechos
De su vencedora patria,
Y mendigan de la agena
Invenciones y patrañas.
Like renegades to Christian faith,
These ballad-mongers vain
Have given to Mahound himself
The offerings due to Spain;
And left the record of brave deeds
Done by their sires of old,
To beg abroad, in heathen lands,
For fictions poor and cold.
Góngora, too, attacked them in an amusing ballad,--“A mis Señores
poetas,”--and they were defended in another, beginning “Porque,
Señores poetas.”
The period when this style of poetry came into favor was the century
that elapsed after the fall of Granada; the same in which all classes
of the ballads were first written down and printed. The early
collections give full proof of this. Those of 1511 and 1550 contain
several Moorish ballads, and that of 1593 contains above two hundred.
But though their subjects involve known occurrences, they are hardly
ever really historical; as, for instance, the well-known ballad on the
tournament in Toledo, which is supposed to have happened before the
year 1085, while its names belong to the period immediately preceding
the fall of Granada; and the ballad of King Belchite, which, like
many others, has a subject purely imaginary. Indeed, this romantic
character is the prevalent one in the ballads of this class, and gives
them much of their interest; a fact well illustrated by that beginning
“The star of Venus rises now,” which is one of the best and most
consistent in the “Romancero General,” and yet, by its allusions to
Venus and to Rodamonte, and its mistake in supposing a Moor to have
been Alcayde of Seville, a century after Seville had become a Christian
city, shows that there was, in its composition, no serious thought of
any thing but poetical effect.[222]
[222] “Ocho á ocho, diez á diez,” and “Sale la estrella de
Venus,” two of the ballads here referred to, are in the Romancero
of 1593. Of the last there is a good translation in an excellent
article on Spanish Poetry in the Edinburgh Review, Vol. XXXIX. p.
419.
These, with some of the ballads on the famous Gazul, occur in the
popular story of the “Wars of Granada,” where they are treated as if
contemporary with the facts they record, and are beautiful specimens of
the poetry which the Spanish imagination delighted to connect with that
most glorious event in the national history.[223] Others can be found
in a similar tone on the stories, partly or wholly fabulous, of Muça,
Xarifé, Lisaro, and Tarfé; while yet others, in greater number, belong
to the treasons and rivalries, the plots and adventures, of the more
famous Zegris and Abencerrages, which, as far as they are founded in
fact, show how internal dissensions, no less than external disasters,
prepared the way for the final overthrow of the Moorish empire. Some of
them were probably written in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella; many
more in the time of Charles the Fifth; the most brilliant, but not the
best, somewhat later.
[223] Among the fine ballads on Gazul are, “Por la plaza de San
Juan,” and “Estando toda la corte.”
* * * * *
_Ballads on Manners and Private Life._--But the ballad poetry of Spain
was not confined to heroic subjects drawn from romance or history, or
to subjects depending on Moorish traditions and manners; and therefore,
though these are the three largest classes into which it is divided,
there is yet a fourth, which may be called miscellaneous, and which is
of no little moment. For, in truth, the poetical feelings even of the
lower portions of the Spanish people were spread out over more subjects
than we should anticipate; and their genius, which, from the first,
had a charter as free as the wind, has thus left us a vast number of
records, that prove at least the variety of the popular perceptions,
and the quickness and tenderness of the popular sensibility. Many of
the miscellaneous ballads thus produced--perhaps most of them--are
effusions of love; but many are pastoral, many are burlesque,
satirical, and _picaresque_; many are called _Letrillas_, but have
nothing epistolary about them except the name; many are lyrical in
their tone, if not in their form; and many are descriptive of the
manners and amusements of the people at large. But one characteristic
runs through the whole of them. They are true representations of
Spanish life. Some of those first printed have already been referred
to; but there is a considerable class marked by an attractive
simplicity of thought and expression, united to a sort of mischievous
shrewdness, that should be particularly noticed. No such popular
poetry exists in any other language. A number of these ballads occur
in the peculiarly valuable Sixth Part of the Romancero, that appeared
in 1594, and was gathered by Pedro Flores, as he himself tells us, in
part least, from the memories of the common people.[224] They remind
us not unfrequently of the lighter poetry of the Archpriest of Hita
in the middle of the fourteenth century, and may, probably, be traced
back in their tone and spirit to a yet earlier period. Indeed, they are
quite a prominent and charming part of all the earliest Romanceros, not
a few of them being as simple, and yet as shrewd and humorous, as the
following, in which an elder sister is represented lecturing a younger
one, on first noticing in her the symptoms of love:--
[224] For example, “Que es de mi contento,” “Plega á Dios que si
yo creo,” “Aquella morena,” “Madre, un cavallero,” “Mal ayan mis
ojos,” “Niña, que vives,” etc.
Her sister Miguela
Once child little Jane,
And the words that she spoke
Gave a great deal of pain.
“You went yesterday playing,
A child like the rest;
And now you come out,
More than other girls dressed.
“You take pleasure in sighs,
In sad music delight;
With the dawning you rise,
Yet sit up half the night.
“When you take up your work,
You look vacant and stare,
And gaze on your sampler,
But miss the stitch there.
“You’re in love, people say,
Your actions all show it;--
New ways we shall have,
When mother shall know it.
“She’ll nail up the windows,
And lock up the door;
Leave to frolic and dance
She will give us no more.
“Old aunt will be sent
To take us to mass,
And stop all our talk
With the girls as we pass.
“And when we walk out,
She will bid our old shrew
Keep a faithful account
Of what our eyes do;
“And mark who goes by,
If I peep through the blind,
And be sure and detect us
In looking behind.
“Thus for your idle follies
Must I suffer too,
And, though nothing I’ve done,
Be punished like you.”
“O sister Miguela,
Your chiding pray spare;--
That I’ve troubles you guess,
But not what they are.
“Young Pedro it is,
Old Juan’s fair youth;
But he’s gone to the wars,
And where is his truth?
“I loved him sincerely,
I loved all he said;
But I fear he is fickle,
I fear he is fled!
“He is gone of free choice,
Without summons or call,
And ’t is foolish to love him,
Or like him at all.”
“Nay, rather do thou
To God pray above,
Lest Pedro return,
And again you should love,”
Said Miguela in jest,
As she answered poor Jane;
“For when love has been bought
At cost of such pain,
“What hope is there, sister,
Unless the soul part,
That the passion you cherish
Should yield up your heart?
“Your years will increase,
But so will your pains,
And this you may learn
From the proverb’s old strains:--
“‘If, when but a child,
Love’s power you own,
Pray, what will you do
When you older are grown?’”[225]
[225] The oldest copy of this ballad or _letra_ that I have
seen is in the “Flor de Romances,” Sexta Parte, (1594, f. 27,)
collected by Pedro Flores, from popular traditions, and of which
a less perfect copy is given, by an oversight, in the Ninth Part
of the same collection, 1597, f. 116. I have not translated the
verses at the end, because they seem to be a poor gloss by a
later hand and in a different measure. The ballad itself is as
follows:--
Riño con Juanilla
Su hermana Miguela;
Palabras le dize,
Que mucho le duelan:
“Ayer en mantillas
Andauas pequeña,
Oy andas galana
Mas que otras donzellas.
Tu gozo es suspiros,
Tu cantar endechas;
Al alua madrugas,
Muy tarde te acuestas;
Quando estas labrando,
No se en que te piensas,
Al dechado miras,
Y los puntos yerras.
Dizenme que hazes
Amorosas señas:
Si madre lo sabe,
Aura cosas nueuas.
Clauara ventanas,
Cerrara las puertas;
Para que baylemos,
No dara licencia;
Mandara que tia
Nos lleue a la Yglesia,
Porque no nos hablen
Las amigas nuestras.
Quando fuera salga,
Dirale a la dueña,
Que con nuestros ojos
Tenga mucha cuenta;
Que mire quien passa,
Si miro a la reja,
Y qual de nosotras
Boluio la cabeça.
Por tus libertades
Sere yo sugeta;
Pagaremos justos
Lo que malos pecan.”
“Ay! Miguela hermana,
Que mal que sospechas!
Mis males presumes,
Y no los aciertas.
A Pedro, el de Juan,
Que se fue a la guerra,
Aficion le tuue,
Y escuche sus quexas;
Mas visto que es vario
Mediante el ausencia,
De su fe fingida
Ya no se me acuerda.
Fingida la llamo,
Porque, quien se ausenta,
Sin fuerça y con gusto,
No es bien que le quiera.”
“Ruegale tu a Dios
Que Pedro no buelua,”
Respondio burlando
Su hermana Miguela,
“Que el amor comprado
Con tan ricas prendas
No saldra del alma
Sin salir con ella.
Creciendo tus años,
Creceran tus penas;
Y si no lo sabes,
Escucha esta letra:
Si eres niña y has amor,
Que haras quando mayor?”
Sexta Parte de Flor de Romances, Toledo, 1594, 18mo, f. 27.