THE _ROMANCERO_
The _Romancero_ has been described, in a phrase attributed to Lope
de Vega, as ‘an _Iliad_ without a Homer.’ More prosaically, it is a
collection of _romances_; and, before going further, it may be as
well to observe that the meaning of the word _romance_ has become
much restricted in course of time. Originally used to designate the
varieties of speech derived from Latin, it was applied later only to
the body of written literature in the different vernaculars of Romania,
and then, by another limitation, it was applied solely to poems written
in these languages. Lastly, the meaning of the word was still further
narrowed in Spanish, and a _romance_ has now come to mean a special
form of verse-composition—an epical-lyric poem arranged primarily in
lines of sixteen syllables with one assonance sustained throughout.
There are occasional variants from the type. Some few _romances_ have
a refrain; in some of the oldest _romances_ there is a change of
assonance: but the normal form of the genuine popular _romances_ is
what I have just described it to be. There should be no mistake on
this point, and yet a mistake may easily be made. Though the metrical
structure of these popular Spanish ballads had been demonstrated
as far back as 1815 by Grimm in his _Silva de romances viejos_, so
good a scholar as Agustín Durán—to whom we owe the largest existing
collection of _romances_—has printed them in such a shape as to give
the impression that they were written in octosyllabics of which only
the even lines (2, 4, 6, 8, etc.) are assonanced. Moreover, he expounds
this theory in his _Discurso preliminar_, and his view is supported
by the high authority of Wolf.[6] Still, it cannot be maintained. It
is undoubtedly true that the later artistic ballads of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, written by professional poets like Lope de
Vega and Góngora, were composed in the form which Durán describes.
We are not concerned this afternoon, however, with these brilliant
artificial imitations, but with the authentic, primitive ballads of the
people. These old Spanish _romances_, I repeat, are written normally in
lines of sixteen syllables, every line ending in a uniform assonance.
They should be printed so as to make this clear, and indeed they are
so printed by the celebrated scholar Antonio de Nebrija who, in his
_Gramática sobre la lengua castellana_ (1492), quotes three lines from
one of the Lancelot ballads:—
Digas tu el ermitaño que hazes la vida santa:
Aquel ciervo del pie blanco donde haze su morada.
Por aqui passo esta noche un hora antes del alva.
There are other erroneous theories respecting the _romances_ against
which you should be warned at the outset. Sancho Panza, in his
pleasant way, informed the Duchess that these ballads were ‘too old
to lie’; but he gives no particulars as to their age, and thereby
shows his wisdom. Most English readers who are not specialists take
their information on the subject from Lockhart’s Introduction to his
_Ancient Spanish Ballads_, a volume containing free translations of
fifty-three _romances_, published in 1823. Lockhart, who drew most of
his material from Depping,[7] probably knew as much about the matter
as any one of his time in England; but, though we move slowly in our
Spanish studies, we make some progress, and Lockhart’s opinions on
certain points relating to the _romances_ are no longer tenable. He
notes, for example, that the _Cancionero general_ contains ‘several
pieces which bear the name of Don Juan Manuel,’ identifies this writer
with the author of the _Conde Lucanor_, states that these pieces ‘are
among the most modern in the collection,’ and naturally concludes that
most of the remaining pieces must have been written long before 1348,
the year of Don Juan Manuel’s death. Lockhart goes on to observe that
the Moors undoubtedly exerted ‘great and remarkable influence over
Spanish thought and feeling—and therefore over Spanish language and
poetry’; and, though he does not say so in precise terms, he leaves
the impression that this reputed Arabic influence is visible in the
Spanish _romances_. These views, widely held in Lockhart’s day, are
now abandoned by all competent scholars; but unfortunately they still
prevail among the general public.
Milá y Fontanals, who incidentally informs us that Corneille was the
first foreigner to quote a Spanish _romance_,[8] states that these
theories as to the antiquity and Arabic origin of the _romances_ were
first advanced by another foreigner—Pierre-Daniel Huet, Bishop of
Avranches—towards the end of the seventeenth century.[9] But they made
little way till 1820, when the theory of Arabic origin was confidently
reiterated by Conde in his _Historia de la dominación de los árabes
en España_. Conde’s scholarship has been declared inadequate by later
Orientalists, and the rest of us must be content to accept the verdict
of these experts who alone have any right to an opinion on the matter.
But it cannot be disputed that Conde had the knack of presenting a
case plausibly, and of passing off a conjecture for a fact. Hence
he made many converts who perhaps exaggerated his views. It is just
possible—though unlikely—that there may be some slight relation between
an Arabic _zajal_ and such a Spanish composition as the _serranilla_
quoted in the last lecture:—
¡Sí ganada es Antequera!
¡Oxalá Granada fuera!
¡Sí me levantara un dia
por mirar bien Antequera!
vy mora con ossadía
passear por la rivera.
Sola va, sin compannera,
en garnachas de un contray.
Yo le dixe: ‘_Alá çulay_.’—
‘_Calema_,’ me respondiera.
But, in the first place, a _serranilla_ is not a _romance_; and, in the
second place, a more probable counter-theory derives the _serranilla_
form from the Portuguese-Galician lyrics which are themselves of
French origin. Beyond this very disputable relation, there is no
basis for Conde’s theory. Dozy has shown conclusively that nothing
could be more unlike than the elaborately learned conventions of
Arabic verse and the untutored methods of the Spanish _romances_,
the artless expression of spontaneous popular poetry. It may be taken
as established that there is no trace of Arabic influence in the
_romances_, and there is no sound reason for thinking that any existing
_romance_ is of remote antiquity. So far from there being many extant
specimens dating from before the time of Don Juan Manuel, there are
none. What some have believed to be the oldest known _romance_—
Alburquerque, Alburquerque, bien mereces ser honrado[10]—
refers to an incident which occurred in 1430, almost a century after
Don Juan Manuel’s death; and even if we take for granted that one of
the _romances fronterizos_ or border-ballads—
Cercada tiene á Baeza ese arráez Audalla Mir[11]—
was first written as early as 1368, we are still twenty years after
Don Juan Manuel’s time. There may be _romances_ which in their
original form were written before these two; but, if so, they are
unrecognisable. The authentic _romances_ lived only in oral tradition;
they were not thought worth writing down, and they were not printed
till late in the day. The older a _romance_ is, the more unlikely it
is to reach us unchanged. No existing _romance_, in its present form,
can be referred to any period earlier than the fifteenth century, and
_romances_ of this date are comparatively rare.
The first to mention this class of composition is Santillana in his
well-known letter to the Constable of Portugal written shortly before
1450, and he dismisses the popular balladists with all the disdain of
a gentleman who writes at his ease. ‘Contemptible poets are those who
without any order, rule or rhythm make those songs and _romances_ in
which low folk, and of menial station, take delight.’ A cause must be
prospering before it is denounced in this fashion, and it may therefore
be assumed that many _romances_ were current when Santillana delivered
judgment. Writing in 1492 and quoting from the Lancelot ballad already
mentioned, Nebrija speaks of it as ‘aquel romance antiguo’; but ‘old’
has a very relative meaning, and Nebrija may have thought that a ballad
composed fifty years earlier deserved to be called ‘old.’ At any rate,
the oldest _romances_ no doubt took their final form between the time
of Santillana’s youth and Nebrija’s, and the introduction of printing
into Spain has saved some of these for us. But—it must be said again
and again—they are comparatively few in number, and no Spanish ballad
is anything like as ancient as our own _Judas_ ballad which exists in a
thirteenth-century manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Santillana slightly overstates his case when he speaks of those who
composed _romances_ as ‘contemptible poets’ catering for the rabble.
We have seen that Rodrígue de la Cámara and Carvajal both wrote
_romances_ in the fourth or fifth decade of the fifteenth century.
Santillana cannot have meant to speak contemptuously of his two
contemporaries, one a poet at the Castilian court of Juan II., and
the other a poet at the Neapolitan court of Alfonso V. of Aragón; he
evidently knew nothing of these artistic _romances_, and would have
been pained to hear that educated men countenanced such stuff. No
doubt other educated men besides Rodríguez de la Cámara and Carvajal
wrote in the popular manner; possibly the Lancelot ballad quoted by
Nebrija is the work of some court-poet: the conditions were changing,
and—though Santillana was perhaps unaware of it—the _romances_ were
rising in esteem. But Santillana is right as regards the earlier
period. The primitive writers of popular _romances_ were men of humble
station, the impoverished representatives of those who had sung the
_cantares de gesta_. These _cantares de gesta_ were worked into the
substance of histories and chronicles, and then went out of fashion.
The _juglares_ or singers came down in the world; in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries they had been welcome at courts and castles where
they chanted long epics; by the fourteenth century they sang corrupt
abridgments of these epics to less distinguished audiences; by the
fifteenth century the epical songs were broken up. The themes were kept
alive by oral tradition in the shape of shorter lyrical narratives,
and these transformed fragments of the old epics were the primitive
_romances_ condemned by Santillana.
The subjects of these popular ballads were historical or legendary
characters like Roderick, Bernardo del Carpio, the Counts of Castile,
Fernán González, the Infantes of Lara, the Cid and his lieutenant, and
other local heroes. Later on, the nameless poets of the people were
tempted to deal with the sinister stories which crystallised round
the name of Peter the Cruel, the long struggle against the Moors,
episodes famous in the Arthurian legends and the books of chivalry,
exploits recorded in the chronicles of foreign countries, miscellaneous
incidents borrowed from diverse sources. It was gradually recognised
that the popular instinct had discovered a most effective vehicle
of poetic expression; more educated versifiers followed the lead of
Rodríguez de la Cámara and Carvajal, but with a certain shamefaced
air. The collections of _romances_ published by Alonso de Fuentes
and Lorenzo de Sepúlveda (in 1550 and 1551 respectively) are mainly
the work of lettered courtiers who, like the ‘Cæsarean Knight’—the
_Caballero Cesáreo_ who contributed to the second edition of
Sepúlveda’s book—are conscious of their condescension, and withhold
their names, under the quaint delusion that they are ‘reserved for
greater things.’
But this bashfulness soon wore off. Before the end of the sixteenth
century famous writers like Lope de Vega and Góngora proved themselves
to be masters of the ballad-form, and within a comparatively short
while there came into existence the mass of _romances_ which fill the
two volumes of the _Romancero general_ published in 1600 and 1605.
The best of these are brilliant performances; but they are late,
artistic imitations. For genuine old popular _romances_ we must look
in broadsides, or in the collections issued at Antwerp and Saragossa
in the middle of the sixteenth century by Martín Nucio and Esteban de
Nájera respectively. We may also read them (with a good deal more) in
the _Primavera y Flor de romances_ edited by Wolf and Hofmann; and,
most conveniently of all, in the amplified reprint of the _Primavera_
for which we are indebted to Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo, the most eminent
of living Spanish scholars. But the _romances_—not all of them very
ancient—in the amplified _Primavera_ fill three volumes; and, as
it would be impossible to examine them one by one, it has occurred
to me that the only practical plan is to take Lockhart as a basis,
and to comment briefly on the ballads represented in his volume of
translations—which I see some of you consulting. There may be occasion,
also, to point out some omissions.
Lockhart begins with a translation of a _romance_ quoted in _Don
Quixote_ by Ginés de Pasamonte, after the destruction of his
puppet-show by the scandalised knight:—
Las huestes de don Rodrigo desmayaban y huian.[12]
The English rendering, though not very exact throughout, is adequate and
spirited enough:—
The hosts of Don Rodrigo were scattered in dismay,
When lost was the eighth battle, nor heart nor hope had they;
He, when he saw that field was lost, and all his hope was flown,
He turned him from his flying host, and took his way alone.
In a prefatory note to his version, Lockhart says that this ballad
‘appears to be one of the oldest among the great number relating to
the Moorish conquest of Spain.’ This is somewhat vague, but the remark
might easily lead an ingenuous reader to think that the ballad was
very ancient. This is not so. There is a thirteenth-century French
epic, entitled _Anséis de Carthage_,[13] which represents Charlemagne
as establishing in Spain a vassal king named Anséis. Anséis dishonours
Letise, daughter of Ysorés de Conimbre, and Ysorés takes vengeance by
introducing the Arabs into Spain. Clearly this is another version of
the legend concerning the dishonour of ‘La Cava,’ daughter of Count
Julian (otherwise Illán or Urbán) by Roderick. Anséis is manifestly
Roderick, Letise is ‘La Cava,’ Ysorés is Julian, and Carthage may
be meant for Cartagena. The transmission of this story to France,
and a passage in the chronicle of the Moor Rasis—which survives
only in a Spanish translation made from a Portuguese version during
the fourteenth century by a certain Maestro Muhammad (who dictated
apparently to a churchman called Gil Pérez)—would point to the
existence of ancient Spanish epics on Roderick’s overthrow. But no
vestige of these epics survives.
The oldest extant _romances_ relating to Roderick are derived from
the _Crónica Sarrazyna_ of Pedro del Corral, ‘a lewd and presumptuous
fellow,’ who trumped up a parcel of lies, according to Pérez de
Guzmán. Corral’s book is not all lies: he compiled it from the
_Crónica general_, the chronicle of the Moor Rasis, and the _Crónica
Troyana_, and padded it out with inventions of his own. But the point
that interests us is that Corral made his compilation about the year
1443, and it follows that the _romances_ derived from it must be of
later date. They are much later: the oldest were not written till
the sixteenth century, and therefore they are not really ancient nor
popular. But some of them have a few memorable lines. For instance, in
the first ballad translated by Lockhart:—
Last night I was the King of Spain—to-day no king am I;
Last night fair castles held my train,—to-night where shall I lie?
Last night a hundred pages did serve me on the knee,—
To-night not one I call mine own:—not one pertains to me.
There is charm, also, in the _romance_ which begins with the line:—
Los vientos eran contrarios, la luna estaba crecida.[14]
And as Lockhart omits this, I may quote the opening in Gibson’s
excellent version[15]:—
The winds were sadly moaning, the moon was on the change,
The fishes they were gasping, the skies were wild and strange,
’Twas then that Don Rodrigo beside La Cava slept.
Within a tent of splendour, with golden hangings deckt.
Three hundred cords of silver did hold it firm and free,
Within a hundred maidens stood passing fair to see;
The fifty they were playing with finest harmonie,
The fifty they were singing with sweetest melodie.
A maid they called Fortuna uprose and thus she spake:
‘If thou sleepest, Don Rodrigo, I pray thee now awake;
Thine evil fate is on thee, thy kingdom it doth fall,
Thy people perish, and thy hosts are scattered one and all,
Thy famous towns and cities fall in a single day,
And o’er thy forts and castles another lord bears sway.’
The _romances_ of this series have perhaps met with rather more success
than they deserved on their intrinsic merits. The second ballad
translated by Lockhart—
Despues que el rey don Rodrigo á España perdido habia[16]—
is quoted by Doña Rodríguez in _Don Quixote_; and the simple chance
that these _romances_ were lodged in Cervantes’s memory has made them
familiar to everybody. Nor is this the end of their good fortune, for
the first ballad translated by Lockhart caught the attention of Victor
Hugo, who incorporated a fragment of it in _La Bataille perdue_.[17]
Among the twenty-five _romances_ on Roderick in Durán’s collection,
those by Timoneda, Lorenzo de Sepúlveda, and Gabriel Lobo Lasso de la
Vega can, of course, be no older than the middle or the latter half
of the sixteenth century. Others, though anonymous, can be shown to
belong, at the earliest, to the extreme end of the sixteenth century.
In a note to the eighth poem in his anthology—_The Escape of Count
Fernan Gonzalez_—Lockhart mentions ‘La Cava,’ and remarks that ‘no
child in Spain was ever christened by that ominous name after the
downfall of the Gothic Kingdom.’ Sweeping statements of this kind
are generally dangerous, but in this particular case one might
safely go further, and say that no child in Spain, or anywhere else,
was ever christened ‘La Cava’ at any time. ‘Cava’ appears to be an
abbreviation or variant of the name ‘Alataba,’ and it is first given
as the name of Count Julian’s daughter by the Moor Rasis, an Arab
historian who lived two centuries after the downfall of the Gothic
kingdom, and whose chronicle, as I have already said, survives only in
a fourteenth-century Spanish translation made through the Portuguese.
We cannot feel sure that the name ‘Cava’ occurred in the original
Arabic; and, even if it did, no testimony given two hundred years after
an event can be decisive. But why does Lockhart think that ‘Cava’
was an ominous name? Perhaps because he took it to be the Arabic
word for a wanton. This is, in fact, the explanation given in the
_Historia verdadera del rey don Rodrigo y de la pérdida de España_,
which purports to be a translation from the Arabic of Abulcacim Tarif
Abentarique. It is nothing of the kind. Abentarique is a mythical
personage, and his supposititious chronicle was fabricated at Granada
by a _morisco_ called Miguel de Luna who, by the way, was the first to
assert that ‘La Cava’s’ real name was Florinda. These circumstances
enable us to assign a modern date to certain _romances_ which are
popularly supposed to be ancient. If a _romance_ speaks of Roderick’s
alleged victim as ‘La Cava’ in a derogatory sense, we know at once that
it was written after the publication of Luna’s forgery in 1589: and
accordingly we must reject as a late invention the notorious ballad
beginning—
De una torre de palacio se salió por un postigo.[18]
In Lockhart’s second group of _romances_ the central figure is Bernardo
del Carpio who, says the translator, ‘belongs exclusively to Spanish
History, or rather perhaps to Spanish Romance.’ The word ‘perhaps’
may be omitted. Bernardo del Carpio was a fabulous paladin invented
by the popular poets of Castile, who, either through the _Chanson de
Roland_, or some similar poem, had heard of Charlemagne’s victories
in the Peninsula. It is not absolutely certain that Charlemagne ever
invaded Spain; still, his expedition is recorded by Arab historians
as well as by Castilian chroniclers, and no doubt it was commonly
believed to be an historical fact. But, as time went on, the idea
that Charlemagne had carried all before him offended the patriotic
sentiment of the Castilian folk-poets, and this led them to give the
story a very different turn. What happened precisely is not clear,
but the explanation suggested by Milá y Fontanals and Sr. Menéndez
y Pelayo is ingenious and probable. Attracted perhaps by the French
name of Bernardo, the _juglares_ seem to have seized upon the far-off
figure of a certain Bernardo (son of Ramón, Count of Ribagorza),
who had headed successful raids against the Arabs. They removed the
scene of his exploits from Aragón to Castile, transformed him into
the son of the Count de Saldaña and Thiber, Charlemagne’s sister—or,
alternatively, the son of the Count Don Sancho and Jimena, sister of
Alfonso the Chaste—called him Bernardo del Carpio, and hailed him
as the champion of Castile. The childless Alfonso is represented
as inviting Charlemagne to succeed him when he dies; the mythical
Bernardo protests in the name of Alfonso’s subjects, and the offer is
withdrawn; thereupon Charlemagne invades Spain, and is defeated at
Roncesvalles—not, as in the _Chanson de Roland_, by the Arabs, but—by
Spaniards from the different provinces united under the leadership of
Bernardo del Carpio. The _Crónica general_ speaks of Bernardo’s slaying
with his own hand ‘un alto ome de Francia que avie nombre Buesso,’
and this was developed later into a personal combat between Roland and
Bernardo del Carpio who, of course, is the victor. These imaginary
exploits were celebrated in _cantares de gesta_ of which fragments
are believed to be embedded in the _Crónica general_, and these are
represented by three _romances_. None of the forty-six ballads in the
Bernardo del Carpio series can be regarded as ancient with the possible
exception of—
Con cartas y mensajeros el rey al Carpio envió[19]—
quoted in the Second Part of _Don Quixote_. This _romance_, as Sr.
Menéndez y Pelayo thinks, is derived from a _cantar de gesta_ written
after the compilation of the _Crónica general_. Of the Bernardo
_romances_ printed in Duran’s collection four are by Lorenzo de
Sepúlveda, four by Gabriel Lobo Lasso de la Vega, and three by Lucas
Rodríguez. Lockhart’s four examples are all modern, and his renderings
are not specially successful; but in the original the first of the four—
Con tres mil y mas leoneses deja la ciudad Bernardo[20]—
is a capital imitation of a popular ballad. It makes its earliest
appearance in the 1604 edition of the _Romancero general_, and that is
enough to prove its modernity.
Another modern ballad, which is also first found in the _Romancero
general_, is translated by Lockhart under the title of _The Maiden
Tribute_. Neither the translation nor the original—
En consulta estaba un dia con sus grandes y consejo[21]—
calls for comment. A similar legend is associated with the name of
Fernán González, the hero of the eighth poem in Lockhart’s book.
Fernán González, Count of Castile, was an historical personage more
remarkable as a political strategist than as a leader in the field.
However, he makes a gallant figure in the _Poema de Fernán González_,
a thirteenth-century poem written in the _quaderna vía_, which appears
to have been imitated a hundred years later by the French author of
_Hernaut de Beaulande_. But no extant _romance_ on Fernán González is
based on the _Poema_. The ballad translated by Lockhart—
Preso está Fernán González el gran conde de Castilla[22]—
comes from the _Estoria del noble caballero Fernán González_, a popular
arrangement of the _Crónica general_ as recast in 1344. The _romance_
is a good enough piece of work, but it is more modern than the ballad
beginning
Buen conde Fernán González el rey envia por vos;[23]
and this last _romance_ is less interesting than another ballad of the
same period:—
Castellanos y leoneses tienen grandes divisiones.[24]
Both of these are thought to represent a lost epic which was worked
into the _Crónica general_ of 1344.
Lockhart prints translations of two _romances_ relating to the Infantes
of Lara, one of them being modern,[25] and the other the famous
A cazar va don Rodrigo y aun don Rodrigo de Lara.[26]
This was quoted by Sancho Panza, and—as M. Foulché-Delbosc was the
first to point out—it has had the distinction of being splendidly
adapted by Victor Hugo in the _Orientales_ (xxx.) under the fantastic
title of _Romance Mauresque_:—
Don Rodrigue est à la chasse
Sans épée et sans cuirasse,
Un jour d’été, vers midi,
Sous la feuillée et sur l’herbe
Il s’assied, l’homme superbe,
Don Rodrigue le hardi.
In this instance we have to do with a genuine old _romance_
derived—more or less indirectly—from a lost epic on the Infantes of
Lara written between 1268 and 1344, or perhaps from a lost recast of
this lost epic. And Lockhart might have chosen other ballads of even
more energetic inspiration which spring from the same source. Among
these are—
A Calatrava la Vieja la combaten castellanos[27]—
in which Rodrigo de Lara vows vengeance for the insult offered to his
wife by Gonzalo González, the youngest of the Infantes of Lara; and
that genuine masterpiece of barbaric but poignant pathos in which
Gonzalo Gustios kisses the severed heads of his seven murdered sons:—
Pártese el more Alicante víspera de sant Cebrián.[28]
And to these Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo would add a third ballad beginning
with the line:—
Ya se salen de Castilla castellanos con gran saña.[29]
But, if a foreigner may be allowed an opinion, this falls far short of
the others in force and fire.
The next ballad given by Lockhart, entitled _The Wedding of the Lady
Theresa_, is a translation of
En los reinos de León el Quinto Alfonso reinaba[30]—
first printed by Lorenzo de Sepúlveda, who may perhaps have written
it. Whatever doubt there may be as to the authorship, there is none as
to the date of this composition: it is no earlier than the sixteenth
century. There would seem to be some basis of fact for the story that
some Christian princess married some prominent Arab chief; but there
is a confusion between Almanzor and the Toledan governor Abdallah
on the one hand, and a confusion between Alfonso V. of León and his
father Bermudo II. on the other hand, not to speak of chronological
difficulties and the like. But we need not try to unravel the tangle,
for there is no authentic old _romance_ on the Infanta Teresa, though a
poem on the subject—
Casamiento se hacia que á Dios ha desagradado[31]—
has crept into the collection edited by Wolf and Hofmann, This is not
unimpressive as a piece of poetic narrative; yet as it is written—not
in assonances, but—in perfect rhyme, it is not a _romance_ at all,
according to the definition with which we began.
In his choice of _romances_ on the Cid Lockhart has not been altogether
happy. He begins well with a translation of the admirable
Cabalga Diego Laínez al buen rey besar la mano.[32]
This is probably no older than the sixteenth century, yet, apart from
its poetic beauty, it has a special interest as deriving from a lost
_Cantar de Rodrigo_ which differed from the extant _Crónica rimada_.
But the remaining poems in Lockhart’s group are mostly poor and recent
imitations. _Ximena demands vengeance_ is translated from
Grande rumor se levanta de gritos, armas, y voces.[33]
But this _romance_ appears for the first time in Escobar’s collection
published as late as 1612. Then, again. _The Cid and the Five Moorish
Kings_ is translated from
Reyes moros en Castilla entran con gran alarido.[34]
And this is first given by Lorenzo de Sepúlveda who also prints the
original of the next ballad, _The Cid’s Courtship_—
De Rodrigo de Vivar muy grande fama corria.[35]
Upon this follows a translation of a ballad which, says Lockhart,
‘contains some curious traits of rough and antique manners,’ and ‘is
not included in Escobar’s collection.’ The ballad, which Lockhart
entitles _The Cid’s Wedding_, is translated from
A su palacio de Burgos, como buen padrino honrado.[36]
But there is nothing antique about it; it was written in Escobar’s
own time, and appeared first in the _Romancero general_. Nor is there
anything antique in the original of _The Cid and the Leper_—
Ya se parte don Rodrigo, que de Vivar se apellida.[37]
This is first printed by Lorenzo de Sepúlveda, who is also the first to
give
Ya se parte de Toledo ese buen Cid afamado,[38]
which Lockhart, whose version begins at the eleventh line, calls
_Bavieca_. These are, of course, no older than the sixteenth century,
and this is also the date of
A concilio dentro en Roma, á concilio bien llamado,[39]
entitled _The Excommunication of the Cid_ in the English version.
There is a note of disrespect in the original which need cause no
surprise, for our Spanish friends, though incorruptibly orthodox, keep
their religion and their politics more apart than one might think, and
at this very period Charles V. had shown unmistakably that he knew
how to put a Pope in his place as regards temporal matters. But it
need scarcely be said that the Spanish contains nothing equivalent to
Lockhart’s—
The Pope he sitteth above them all, _that they may kiss his toe_—
a Protestant interpolation so grotesque as to be wholly out of keeping
in any Spanish poem.
You will see, then, that most of the Cid ballads translated by Lockhart
are unrepresentative. He might have given us a version of
Dia era de los reyes, dia era señalado[40]—
one of three _romances_[41] which are taken from the same source as the
first in his group—
Cabalga Diego Laínez al buen rey besar la mano.
But the deficiency has been made good by Gibson who notes as a proof of
the ballad’s modernity—it is no older than the sixteenth century—the
inclusion of a passage from the Lara legend—
It was the feast-day of the Kings,
A high and holy day,
Venn all the dames and damosels
The King for hansel pray.
All save Ximena Gomez,
The Count Lozano’s child,
And she has knelt low at his feet,
And cries with dolour wild:
‘My mother died of sorrow, King,
In sorrow still live I;
I see the man who slew my Sire
Each day that passes by.
A horseman on a hunting horse,
With hawk in hand rides he;
And in my dove-cot feeds his bird,
To show his spite at me....
I sent to tell him of my grief,
He sent to threaten me,
That he would cut my skirts away,
Most shameful for to see!
That he would put my maids to scorn,
The wedded and to wed,
And underneath my silken gown
My little page strike dead!...’
Of the two hundred and five _romances_ on the Cid printed by Madame
Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, probably one hundred and eighty at least may
be considered modern, and some we know to have been written by Lorenzo
de Sepúlveda, Lucas Rodríguez, and Juan de la Cueva. But the rest
are doubtless ancient (as _romances_ go), and it is unfortunate that
Lockhart gives no specimen of the ballads on the siege of Zamora. For
example, the celebrated ballad that begins
Riberas del Duero arriba cabalgan dos Zamoranos[42]—
a splendid _romance_ the opening of which may be quoted from Gibson’s
rendering:—
Along the Douro’s bank there ride
Two gallant Zamorese
On sorrel steeds; their banners green
Are fluttering in the breeze.
Their armour is of finest steel,
And rich their burnished brands;
They bear their shields before their breasts,
Stout lances in their hands.
They ride their steeds with pointed spurs,
And bits of silver fine;
More gallant men were never seen,
So bright their arms do shine.
Then follow their challenge to any two knights in Sancho’s camp (except
the King himself and the Cid), its acceptance by the two Counts, the
Cid’s mocking intervention, and the encounter:—
The Counts arrive; one clad in black,
And one in crimson bright;
The opposing ranks each other meet,
And furious is the fight.
The youth has quick unhorsed his man,
With sturdy stroke and true;
The Sire has pierced the other’s mail,
And sent his lance right through.
The horseless knight, pale at the sight,
Ran hurrying from the fray;
Back to Zamora ride the twain,
With glory crowned that day!
And another _romance_ worth giving from the Zamora series is the
impressive
Por aquel postigo viejo que nunca fuera cerrado.[43]
Fortunately, Lockhart’s omission has been made good by
Gibson, though of course no translation can do more than give a hint of
the original:—
On through the ancient gateway,
That had nor lock nor bar,
I saw a crimson banner come,
With three hundred horse of war;
I saw them bear a coffin,
And black was its array;
And placed within the coffin
A noble body lay....
These ballads are included in the _Romancero del Cid_, and they are
particularly interesting as being the _débris_ of a lost epic on the
siege of Zamora which has apparently been utilised in the _Crónica
general_; but perhaps a translator might excuse himself for not dealing
with them on the ground that the Cid only appears incidentally. Indeed
in
Por aquel postigo viejo que nunca fuera cerrado,
the Cid does not appear at all. The same excuse might be given for
omitting the well-known
Doliente estaba, doliente, ese buen rey don Fernando,[44]
of which Gibson, however, gives a fairly adequate rendering, so far as
the difference of language allows:—
The King was dying, slowly dying,
The good King Ferdinand;
His feet were pointed to the East,
A taper in his hand.
Beside his bed, and at the head,
His four sons took their place,
The three were children of the Queen,
The fourth of bastard race.
The bastard had the better luck,
Had rank and noble gains;
Archbishop of Toledo he,
And Primate of the Spains....
So, again, the Cid does not appear in the often-quoted _romance_
beginning—
Rey don Sancho, rey don Sancho, no digas que no te aviso.[45]
Nor does he figure in the still more celebrated ballad which records
Diego Ordóñez’ challenge to the garrison of Zamora after Sancho’s
assassination:—
Ya cabalga Diego Ordóñez, del real se habia salido.[46]
But we may thank Gibson for enabling English readers to form some idea
of both. His version of the Ordóñez ballad is by no means unhappy:—
Don Diego Ordóñez rides away
From the royal camp with speed,
Armed head to foot with double mail,
And on a coal-black steed.
He rides to challenge Zamora’s men,
His breast with fury filled;
To avenge the King Don Sancho
Whom the traitor Dolfos killed.
He reached in haste Zamora’s gate,
And loud his trumpet blew;
And from his mouth like sparks of fire
His words in fury flew:
‘Zamorans, I do challenge ye,
Ye traitors born and bred;
I challenge ye all, both great and small,
The living and the dead.
I challenge the men and women,
The unborn and the born;
I challenge the wine and waters,
The cattle and the corn.
Within your town that traitor lives
Our King who basely slew;—
Who harbour traitors in their midst
Themselves are traitors too.
I’m here in arms against ye all
The combat to maintain;
Or else with five and one by one,
As is the use in Spain!’...
To Gibson’s fine instinct we are also indebted for an English rendering
of
En las almenas de Toro, allí estaba una doncella[47]—
a ballad of doubtful date which is superbly ‘glossed’ in _Las Almenas
de Toro_ by Lope de Vega, who uses the old _romances_ with astonishing
felicity. But the most ancient poem in the whole series of the Cid
ballads is a composition, said to be unconnected with any antecedent
epic, and possibly dating (in its primitive form) from the fourteenth
century:—
Hélo, hélo por dó viene el moro por la calzada.[48]
This _romance_ has been done into English by Gibson with considerable
success, as you may judge by the opening stanzas:—
He comes, he comes, the Moorman comes
Along the sounding way;
With stirrup short, and pointed spur,
He rides his gallant bay....
He looks upon Valencia’s towers,
And mutters in his ire:
‘Valencia, O Valencia,
Burn thou with evil fire!
Although the Christian holds thee now,
Thou wert the Moor’s before;
And if my lance deceive me not,
Thou’lt be the Moor’s once more!’...
There is still much to be said concerning the Cid _romances_ which
Southey dismissed too cavalierly; but my time is running out, and I
must pass on to the next ballads translated by Lockhart. _Garci Perez
de Vargas_ is a rendering of
Estando sobre Sevilla el rey Fernando el tercero;[49]
and _The Pounder_, which was referred to by Don Quixote when he
proposed to tear up an oak by the roots and use it as a weapon, is a
version of
Jerez, aquesa nombrada, cercada era de cristianos.[50]
Neither need detain us; both are modern, and the latter is by Lorenzo
de Sepúlveda. Much more curious are the group of ballads on Peter
the Cruel. In the Spanish drama Peter is represented as the _Rey
Justiciero_, the autocrat of democratic sympathies, dealing out
summary justice to the nobles and the wealthy, who grind the poor
man’s face. But this is merely what the sophisticated middle class
supposed to be the democratic point of view. The democracy, as we see
from the anonymous popular poets, believed Peter to be much worse than
he actually was, and the _romances_ record the deliberate calumnies
invented by the partisans of Peter’s triumphant bastard brother, Henry
of Trastamara. This is noticeable in the translation of
Yo me estabá allá en Coimbra que yo me la hube ganado,[51]
which Lockhart calls _The Murder of the Master_. It is true that Peter
had his brother, Don Fadrique, Master of the Order of Santiago, put to
death at Seville in 1358; it is also true that Fadrique was a tricky
and dangerous conspirator, who had already been detected and pardoned
by his brother more than once. The _romance_ passes over Fadrique’s
plots in silence, and this is common enough with political hacks;
but it goes on to imply that the crime was suggested to Peter by his
mistress. This is almost certainly false, and not a vestige of evidence
can be produced in favour of it; but no one is asked to swear to the
truth of a song, and the dramatic power of the _romance_—which is
supposed to be recited by the murdered man—is undeniable.
A similar perversion of historical truth is found in _The Death of
Queen Blanche_, which Lockhart translates from
Doña María de Padilla, no os mostredes triste, no.[52]
Lockhart, indeed, says: ‘that Pedro was accessory to the violent
death of this young and innocent princess whom he had married, and
immediately after deserted for ever, there can be no doubt.’ But the
matter is by no means so free from doubt as Lockhart would have us
believe. It is true that Peter’s conduct to Blanche de Bourbon was
inhuman, but the circumstances—and even the place—of her death are
uncertain. Assuming that she was murdered, however, it is certain
that María de Padilla had no share in this crime. María appears to
have been a gentle and compassionate creature, whose only fault was
that she loved Peter too well. But justice is not greatly cultivated
by political partisans, and the vindictiveness of the _romances_
is poetically effective. Lockhart closes the series with a version
(apparently by Walter Scott) of
Los fieros cuerpos revueltos entre los robustos brazos,[53]
and with a disappointing translation of a very striking ballad, in
which an undercurrent of sympathy for Peter is observable:—
A los pies de don Enrique yace muerto el rey don Pedro.[54]
Refrains of any kind are exceptional in the _romances_, but in this
instance a double refrain is artistically used:—
Y los de Enrique
Cantan, repican y gritan:
¡Viva Enrique!
Y los de Pedro
Clamorean, doblan, lloran
Su rey muerto.
This is indeed a most brilliant performance, worthy, as Sr. Menéndez y
Pelayo says, of Góngora himself at his best; but the very brilliance of
the versification is enough to prove that the ballad cannot have been
written by a poet of the people. Still, though it is neither ancient
nor popular, we may be grateful to Lockhart for including it in his
volume.
He was less happy in deciding to give us _The Lord of Buitrago_, a
version of a ballad beginning
Si el caballo vos han muerto, subid, rey, en mi caballo.[55]
This is not of any great merit, nor is it in any sense popular or
ancient: it appears to be the production of Alfonso Hurtado de Velarde,
a Guadalajara dramatist who lived towards the end of the sixteenth
century, and much of its vogue is due to the fact that it struck the
fancy of Vélez de Guevara who used the first six words as the title of
one of his plays. Lockhart was better advised in choosing _The King of
Aragon_, a translation of
Miraba de Campo-Viejo el rey de Aragón un dia.[56]
This is thought by Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo to be, possibly, the
production of some soldier serving at Naples under Alfonso v. of
Aragón, and in any case it is of popular inspiration. Lorenzo de
Sepúlveda’s text contains an allusion to a page—_un pajecico_—whom
Alfonso is said to have loved better than himself, and the translator
was naturally puzzled by it. It is precisely by attention to some
such detail that we are often enabled to fix the date of composition;
and so it happens in the present instance. A fuller and better text
is given by Esteban de Nájera, who reads _un tal hermano_ for the
incomprehensible _un pajecico_. This reading makes the matter clear.
The reference is to the death of Alphonso v.’s brother Pedro; this
occurred in 1438, and the _romance_ was probably written not long
afterwards.
At this point Lockhart enters upon the series of border-ballads called
_romances fronterizos_, and he begins with a translation of
Reduan, bien se te acuerda que me distes la palabra,[57]
quoted by Ginés Pérez de Hita in the first part of his _Guerras civiles
de Granada_, published in 1595 under the title of _Historia de los
bandos de los Zegríes y Abencerrajes_.
Pérez de Hita speaks of it as ancient, and Lockhart is, of course, not
to blame for translating the ballad precisely as he found it in the
text before him. Any translator would be bound to do the same to-day if
he attempted a new rendering of the poem; but he would doubtless think
it advisable to state in a note the result of the critical analysis
which had scarcely been begun when Lockhart wrote. It now seems fairly
certain that Pérez de Hita ran two _romances_ into one, and that the
verses from the fourth stanza onwards in Lockhart—
They passed the Elvira gate, with banners all displayed—
are part of a ballad on Boabdil’s expedition against Lucena in 1483.
This martial narrative, describing the gorgeous squadrons of El
Rey Chico as they file past the towers of the Alhambra packed with
applauding Moorish ladies, reduces to insignificance _The Flight from
Granada_, though the translation is an improvement on Lorenzo de
Sepúlveda’s creaking original:—
En la ciudad de Granada grandes alaridos dan.[58]
The next in order is _The Death of Don Alonso de Aguilar_, a rendering
of
Estando el rey don Fernando en conquista de Granada.[59]
This ballad commemorates the death of Alonso de Aguilar, elder brother
of ‘the great Captain’ Gonzalo de Córdoba, which took place in action
at Sierra Bermeja on May 18, 1501. This date is important. A serious
chronological mistake occurs in the opening line of the ballad, which
places Aguilar’s death before the surrender of Granada in 1492; and
this points to the conclusion that the _romance_ was not written till
long after the event, when the exact details had been forgotten. It
is of popular inspiration, no doubt, but it is clearly not ancient.
Still, in default of any other _romances fronterizos_, we receive it
gratefully. This section of Lockhart’s book is certainly the least
adequate.[60] The border-ballads which he gives are most of them
excellent, but unfortunately he gives us far too few of them. Some of
his omissions may be explained. He tells us in almost so many words
that he leaves out a later ballad on Aguilar’s death:—
¡Río Verde, río Verde, tinto vas en sangre viva![61]—
because there was already in existence an ‘exquisite version’ by the
Bishop of Dromore[62]—whom some of you may not instantly identify with
Thomas Percy, the editor of the _Reliques_. Most probably Lockhart
omitted a ballad with an effective refrain (perhaps borrowed from some
Arabic song)—
Paseábase el ray moro per la ciudad de Granada—
because it had been translated, though with no very striking success,
by Byron a little while before.[63] Nor can Lockhart be blamed for
omitting the oldest of the _romances fronterizos_:—
Cercada tiene á Baeza ese arráez Audalla Mir.[64]
Hidden in Argote de Molina’s _Nobleza de Andalucía_,[65] this ballad
was generally overlooked till 1899 when Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo did
us the good service of reprinting it. It still awaits an English
translator who, when he takes it in hand, may perhaps have something
destructive to say respecting its alleged date (1368). Such a
translator might also give us an English version of
Moricos, los mis moricos, los que ganáis mi soldada,[66]
which is thought to be the next oldest of these _romances fronterizos_.
Or he might attempt to render
Álora la bien cercada, tu que estás á par del río,[67]
which commemorates the death of Diego de Ribera during the siege of
Álora in 1434. A passage in the _Laberinto de Fortuna_ implies that
Ribera’s death was the theme of many popular songs in the time of
Juan de Mena,[68] and possibly the extant _romance_ may be taken to
represent them. There is another fine ballad on the historic victory of
the Infante Fernando (the first regent during Juan II.’s minority) at
Antequera in 1410:—
De Antequera partió el moro tres horas antes del dia.[69]
This also calls for translation, for all that we possess is Gibson’s
version of Timoneda’s recast, a copy of verses disfigured by superfine
interpolations:—
His words were mingled with the tears
That down his cheeks did roll:
‘Alas! Narcissa of my life,
Narcissa of my soul.’
Nymphs called Narcissa are never met with in popular primitive
poetry; but Gibson (from whose version of Timoneda I have just quoted)
has happily translated some genuine specimens of the _romances
fronterizos_. Thus he has given us a version of the justly celebrated
¡Abenámar, Abenámar, moro de la morería!—[70]
in which Juan II. questions the Moor, and declares himself, according
to an Arabic poetical convention, the suitor of Granada:—
‘Abenámar, Abenámar,
Moor of Moors, and man of worth,
On the day when thou wert cradled,
There were signs in heaven and earth....
Abenámar, Abenámar,
With thy words my heart is won!
Tell me what these castles are,
Shining grandly in the sun!’
‘That, my lord, is the Alhambra,
This the Moorish mosque apart,
And the rest the Alixares
Wrought and carved with wondrous art.’...
Up and spake the good King John,
To the Moor he thus replied:
‘Art thou willing, O Granada,
I will woo thee for my bride,
Cordova shall be thy dowry,
And Sevilla by its side.’
‘I’m no widow, good King John,
I am still a wedded wife;
And the Moor, who is my husband,
Loves me better than his life!’
Gibson has missed an opportunity in not translating one of the popular
ballads on the precocious Master of the Order of Calatrava, Rodrigo
Girón, who was killed at the siege of Loja in 1482:—
¡Ay, Dios qué buen caballero el Maestre de Calatrava![71]
But he makes amends with a version of a sixteenth-century _romance_[72]
which he entitles _The Lady and the Lions_: the story has been
versified by Schiller, and has been still more admirably retold by
Browning in _The Glove_. And we have also from Gibson a version of a
rather puzzling _romance_ given by Pérez de Hita:—
Cercada está Santa Fe, con mucho lienzo encerado.[73]
The fact that full rhymes take the place of assonants is a decisive
argument against the antiquity, and also against the popular origin,
of this ballad in which, as Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo points out, a rather
insignificant Garcilaso de la Vega of the end of the fifteenth century
is confused with a namesake and relative who fell at Baza in 1455, and
is further represented as the hero of a feat of arms—the slaying of a
Moor who insultingly attached the device _Ave Maria_ to his horse’s
tail—which was really performed by an ancestor of his about a hundred
and fifty years earlier. This later Garcilaso was a favourite of
fortune, for, at the end of the sixteenth century, Gabriel Lobo Lasso
de la Vega wrote a _romance_ ascribing to him Hernando del Pulgar’s
daring exploit—his riding into Granada, fastening with his dagger a
placard inscribed _Ave Maria_ to the door of the chief mosque, and thus
proclaiming his intention of converting it into a Christian church.
It is needless to discuss Lockhart’s group of so-called
‘Moorish ballads.’[74] If any one wishes to translate a _romance_
of this kind, let him try to convey to us the adroitly suggested
orientalism of
Yo me era mora Moraima, morilla de un bel catar:
cristiano vino á mi puerta, cuitada, per me engañar.[75]
With scarcely an exception, the ‘Moorish ballads’ show no trace of
Moorish origin, and with very few exceptions, they are not popular
ballads. They are clever, artificial presentations of the picturesque
Moor as suggested in the anonymous _Historia de Abindarraez_, and
elaborated by Pérez de Hita. We do not put it too high in saying that
Pérez de Hita’s _Guerras civiles de Granada_—the earliest historical
novel—is responsible for all the impossible Moors and incredible
Moorish women of poetry and fiction.
Unmask me now these faces,
Unmuffle me these Moorish men, and eke these dancing Graces...
To give ye merry Easter I’ll make my meaning plain,
Mayhap it never struck you, we have Christians here in Spain.
But Góngora’s voice was as the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
The tide rose, overflowed the Pyrenees, floated Mademoiselle de
Scudéri’s _Almahide_ and Madame de Lafayette’s _Zaïde_ into fashion,
and did not ebb till long after Washington Irving followed Pérez de
Hita’s lead by ascribing his graceful, fantastic _Chronicle of the
Conquest of Granada_ to a non-existent historian whom he chose to call
Fray Antonio Agapida. The Moor of fiction is so much more attractive
than the Moor of history that he has imposed himself upon the world.
Most of us still see him, with the light of other days around him,
as we first met him in Scott’s _Talisman_, or in Chateaubriand’s
_Aventures du dernier Abencérage_. Still the fact remains that he is a
conventional lay-figure, and that a Spanish poem in which he appears
transfigured and glorified is neither ancient nor popular, but is
necessarily the work of some late Spanish writer who knows no more of
Moors than he can gather from Pérez de Hita’s gorgeously imaginative
pages.
No serious fault can be found with Lockhart’s selection of what he
calls ‘Romantic Ballads.’ Most of them are excellent examples, though
_The Moor Calaynos_, an abbreviated rendering of
Ya cabalga Calaynos á la sombra de una oliva,[76]
is no longer ‘generally believed to be among the most ancient’ ballads.
It was certainly widely known, as Lockhart says, for tags from it
have become proverbs; but it mentions Prester John and the Sultan
of Babylon, and these personages are unknown to genuine old popular
poetry. According to Milá y Fontanals and Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo, the
Calaínos ballad is one of the latest in the
Charlemagne cycle, and is derived from a Provençal version of
_Fierabras_. On the other hand, the original of _The Escape of
Gayferos_—
Estábase la condesa en su estrado asentada[77]—
is an authentic old popular _romance_ derived, it is believed, more
or less directly from the _Roman de Berthe_, while the much later
_Melisendra_ ballad—
El cuerpo preso en Sansueña y en Paris cautiva el alma[78]—
owes most of its celebrity to the fact that it is quoted by Ginés de
Pasamonte when he acts as showman of the puppets in _Don Quixote_.
Again, _The Lady Alda’s Dream_—
En Paris está doña Alda la esposa de don Roldan[79]—
is an ancient _romance_ of intensely pathetic beauty suggested by the
famous passage in the _Chanson de Roland_ describing Charlemagne’s
announcement of Roland’s death to his betrothed Alde, Oliver’s sister:—
‘Soer, chere amie, d’hume mort me demandes...’
Alde respunt: ‘Cist moz mei est estranges.
Ne placet Deu ne ses seinz ne ses angles
Après Rollant que jo vive remaigne!’
Pert la culur, chiet as piez Carlemagne,
Sempres est morte. Deus ait mercit de l’anme!
Another famous ballad in the Charlemagne cycle, translated by Lockhart
under the title of _The Admiral Guarinos_—
Mala la vistes, franceses, la caza de Roncesvalles[80]—
is also universally known from its being quoted in _Don_
_Quixote_. Its origin is not clear, but it seems to be related to
_Ogier le Danois_, and it has certainly lived long and travelled far
if, as Georg Adolf Erman reports, it was sung in Russian in Siberia as
recently as 1828. A more special interest attaches to the fine elfin
ballad—
A cazar va el caballero, á cazar como solía[81]—
which Lockhart entitles _The Lady of the Tree_. It is, as he says,
‘one of the few old Spanish ballads in which mention is made of the
Fairies,’ and the seven years’ enchantment reminded him of ‘those
Oriental fictions, the influence of which has stamped so many indelible
traces on the imaginative literature of Spain.’ The theory of Oriental
influence is not brought forward so often nowadays, and is challenged
in what was thought to be its impregnable stronghold. The melancholy
Kelt has taken the place of the slippery Oriental; but theories come
and go, and we can only hope that our grandchildren will smile as
indulgently at our Kelts as we smile at our grandfathers’ Arabs.
Hélo, hélo por do viene el infante vengador[82]
is the original of _The Avenging Childe_, a superb ballad which is
better represented in Gibson’s version. Compare, for instance, the
following translation with Lockhart’s:—
’Tis a right good spear, with a point so sharp, the toughest
plough-share might pierce,
For seven times o’er was it tempered fine, in the blood of a
dragon fierce,
And seven times o’er was it whetted keen, till it shone with
a deadly glance,
For its steel was wrought in the finest forge, in the realm
of mighty France.
Its shaft was made of the Aragon wood, as straight as the straightest
stalk,
And he polished the steel, as he galloped along, on the wings of his
hunting hawk;
‘Don Quadros, thou traitor vile, beware! I’ll slay thee where thou dost
stand,
At the judgment seat, by the Emperor’s side, with the rod of power
in his hand.’
This is more faithful, and consequently more vivid; and the retention
of the Emperor, whom Lockhart (for metrical purposes) reduces to a
King, gives the English reader a useful hint that the ballad belongs to
the Charlemagne series. But its source is obscure, and its symbolism is
as perplexing as symbolism is apt to be.
All who have read _Birds of Passage_—that is to say, everybody who
reads anything—will
remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free;
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships
And the magic of the sea.
These lines are recalled by _Count Arnaldos_, Lockhart’s translation
of the enchanting _romance_ which Longfellow has incorporated in _The
Seaside and the Fireside_[83]:—
¡Quien hubiese tal ventura sobre las aguas del mar,
como hubo el Conde Arnaldos la mañana de san Juan![84]
Probably nine out of every ten readers would turn to the _Buch der
Lieder_ for the loveliest lyric on the witchery of song:—
Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr goldnes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar.
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme,
Und singt ein Lied dabei;
Das hat eine wundersame,
Gewaltige Melodei....
Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn!
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lore-Ley gethan.
They may be right, but, if the tenth reader preferred _El
Conde Arnaldos_, I should not think him wrong. Though Heine speaks of
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
this seems to be a _façon de parler_, for the Lorelei legend was
invented by Clemens Brentano barely twenty years before Heine wrote his
famous ballad. However this may be, in producing his effect of mystic
weirdness the German artist does not eclipse the anonymous Spanish
singer who lived four centuries earlier. This is a bold thing to say;
yet nobody who reads _El Conde Arnaldos_ will think it much too bold.
Passing by a pleasing song (not in the _romance_ form),[85] we come to
the incomplete _Julianesa_ ballad which Lockhart printed, so he tells
us, chiefly because it contained an allusion to the pretty Spanish
custom of picking flowers on St. John’s Day:—
¡Arriba, canes, arriba! ¡que rabia mala os mate![86]
But, so far from being (like its immediate predecessor in Lockhart’s
book) an artistic performance, the _Julianesa_ ballad is one of the
most primitive in the Gayferos group. Its robust inspiration is in
striking contrast to the too dulcet _Song of the Galley_,[87] which
is followed by _The Wandering Knight’s Song_, a capital version of
a _romance_ famous all the world over owing to its quotation by Don
Quixote at the inn:—
Mis arreos son las armas, mi descanso es pelear.[88]
We need say nothing of the _Serenade_,[89] _The Captive Knight and
the Blackbird_,[90] _Valladolid_,[91] and _Dragut the Corsair_.[92]
We should gladly exchange these translations of late and mediocre
originals for versions of
Fonte-frida, fonte-frida, fonte-frida y con amor;[93]
or of one of the few but interesting ballads belonging to the Breton
cycle, such as the old _romance_ on Lancelot from which Antonio de
Nebrija quotes—
Tres hijuelos habia el rey, tres hijuelos, que no mas;[94]
or of the curious _romance_ glossed by Gil Vicente, Cristóbal de
Castillejo, and Jorge de Montemôr—
La bella mal maridada, de las lindas que yo ví;[95]
or of the well-known ballad which seems to have strayed out of the
series of _romances fronterizos_—
Mi padre era de Ronda, y mi madre de Antequera.[96]
Fortunately these have been translated by Gibson. But we must not part
from Lockhart on bad terms, for he ends with the ballad of _Count
Alarcos and the Infante Solisa_:—
Retraída está la Infanta bien así como solía.[97]
This _romance_, which is often ascribed to a certain Pedro de Riaño,
is certainly not older than the sixteenth century, and is rather an
artistic than a popular poem; but it is unquestionably an impressive
composition remarkable for concentrated and pathetic beauty.
Though I have far outrun my allotted time, I have merely brushed the
fringe of the subject; still, perhaps enough has been said to stir your
interest, and to set you reading the _Romancero_ under the sagacious
guidance of Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo. That will occupy you for many a long
day. To those who have not the time to read everything, but who wish to
read the very best of the best, I cannot be wrong in recommending the
exquisite selection of _romances_ published by M. Foulché-Delbosc a few
months ago.[98]