Iliads without a Homer.
Lope de Vega
The word romancero in modern Spanish is more or less strictly applied
to a special form of verse composition, a narrative poem written
in lines of sixteen syllables which adhere to one single assonance
throughout. Originally the term was applied to those dialects or
languages which were the offspring of the Roman or Latin tongue--the
spoken language of old Rome in its modernized forms. Later it came
to imply only the written forms of those vernaculars, and lastly
the poetic lyrico-narrative form alone, as above indicated. The
romancero therefore differs from the romance in that it is written
in verse, and it is plain from what has just been said that the name
'romance' was the product of the transition period when the term was
intended to describe the written output of the more modern forms of
Latin-Castilian, Portuguese, French, and Provençal, whether couched in
prose or verse. We have seen that practically all the romances proper,
as apart from the cantares de gesta--that is, such compositions as
Amadis, Palmerin, and Partenopex--were written in prose. But the
romancero was first and last a narrative in verse. Indeed, the three
tales recounted in the last chapter are of the romancero type--a form,
as we shall see, which gained quite as strong a hold upon the lower
classes of the Peninsula as the romance proper did upon the affections
of the hidalgo and the caballero. In a word, the romancero is the
popular ballad of Spain.
In a previous chapter I attempted to outline the several types of
the Spanish ballad, or romancero, as follows:
(1) Those of spontaneous popular origin and early date.
(2) Those based upon passages in the chronicles or cantares
de gesta.
(3) Folk-ballads of a relatively late date.
(4) Those later ballads which were the production of conscious art.
We can thus class Spanish ballads more broadly into:
(1) Those of popular origin.
(2) Those which have their rise in literary sources.
As regard class (1) of the first quaternion, like Sancho Panza I
have no intention of indicating how old these may be. The fiercest
controversy has raged round this question, but, as I have already
indicated, it would be strange indeed if no vestiges of early Castilian
folk-song had come down to us in an altered form. Folk-song, in my
view, has as great a chance of survival as custom or legend, and we
know how persistent these are in undisturbed areas, so I see no reason
to doubt that a certain number of the original ballads of Spain have
come down to us in such an altered form as would, perhaps, render
them unrecognizable to their makers, just as the ancient Scottish
romance of Thomas the Rhymer would not have been recognized in its
later form by the singer who composed it.
All the arguments, archæological and philological, erected and advanced
by mere erudition will not convince me to the contrary. To some people
antiquity is a living thing, a warm and glowing environment, a world
with the paths and manners of which they are better acquainted than
with the streets of every day. To others it is--a museum. I have no
quarrel with the curators of that museum, and I enjoy reading their
books--records of a land which few of them have visited. But when they
insist upon controverting the evidence supplied by senses which they do
not possess they become merely tiresome. Like art, archæology has also
its inspirations, its higher vision. Alas that those who do not share
it should attempt to justify their conclusions by lifeless logic alone!
Therefore I shall say no more concerning the age of the ballads of
Old Spain, but will only remark with Sancho that "they are too old
to lie." I have clearly shown, too, that a number of them were based
on passages in the chronicles and cantares, a circumstance which in
itself vouches for their relative antiquity. With the later artificial
imitations of Góngora and Lope de Vega, and others of similar stamp,
we are not concerned here. After all, we can only take the ballads of
Spain as we find them in the cancioneros. It is much too late in the
day now to do anything else. Like the ballads of Scotland and Denmark,
those of Spain have been collected and published for centuries, and
in the pages of the cancioneros old and new, popular and literary,
are mingled together in almost inextricable confusion. Let us glance,
then, at the history of these cancioneros, these treasure-houses
of a people's poetry, and attempt to realize their plan and scope
as perhaps the best method by which to approach the subject of the
Spanish ballad generally. Having done this, we can then discuss
matters of origin with critics of insight and sympathy.
The "Cancionero General"
If we except the fragmentary collection of Juan Fernández de
Constantina, the Cancionero General, or "Universal Song-book," as it
might be translated, was originally brought together and published
at the beginning of the sixteenth century by a certain Fernando
del Castillo. The arrangement of the ballads it contains is neither
chronological nor thoroughly systematic, although the productions of
each author are kept distinct. Later editions of this work quickly
multiplied, and as the collection extended the additions were always
inserted at the end of the book. The collection consists for the most
part of the ballads of authors of the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, such as Tallante, Nicolas Núñez, Juan de Mena, Porticarrero,
and the still earlier Marquis de Santillana.
The first portion of the work is confined to the spiritual songs
(obras de devoción). These are monotonous and informed with a
rigid fanaticism. Nor are the "Moral Poems" which follow any more
attractive, allegorizing virtues and vices according to the definitions
of scholastic philosophy. The amatory verses in the collection are
more ingenious than truly poetic; they lack true feeling, and appear
stiff and artificial in their reiteration of burning passion and the
overwhelming woes of unrequited love, mingled with pseudo-philosophical
appeals to reason. But gay and graceful love songs are not lacking,
as, for example, the "Muy más clara que de luna" of Juan de Meux or
the "Pensamienti, pues mostrays" of Diego Lopez de Haro. But these
trail off into philosophical disquisition, and the tender sentiment
in which they were conceived and commenced is lost in the shallows
of paltry argument.
Much more promising are the canciones, or lyrical poems of a
semi-conventional cast, which have a character and metrical form all
their own. They usually consist of twelve lines, divided into two
parts. The first four lines comprehend the idea on which the song
is founded, and this is developed or applied in the eight succeeding
lines. The Cancionero General contains one hundred and fifty-six of
these little songs, some of which are the best poems contained in it,
and perhaps they owe their excellence to the verbal restraint which
their form compels. An allied form is the villancico, or conceit,
usually of three or four lines, a fugitive piece, enshrining some
fleeting emotion, and often packed with the matter of poesy.
The "Romancero General"
The title Romancero General was applied to many collections of
Spanish songs and narrative romances in verse published during
the seventeenth century and later. Of these only the older require
illustration here. The first in point of date was the collection of
Miguel de Madrigal, published in 1604, although another work containing
upward of a thousand romances and songs was produced in the same year,
and bears the same title. Another collection of primary importance
is that of Pedro de Flores (1614). This is obviously a bookseller's
compilation, but is none the worse for that, save that it pretends to
embrace the entire sum of Spanish romanceros, whereas it contains not
one of those appearing in the Cancionero General. All of these works
contain numerous amatory poems of the kind so liberally exemplified
in the Cancionero General, but with these we have little concern,
and our attention may be better employed in examining the romanceros
proper which it contains. These for the most part would seem to belong
to the fifteenth century, and relate to the civil wars of Granada,
the last Moorish principality in Spain, and the heroic and gallant
adventures of Moorish knights. It is, indeed, in this work that we
first perceive the trend toward a literary fashion in things Moorish
to which we have referred in a previous chapter, but, as has been
indicated, this is very far from saying that these poems owe their
origin to Moorish models. But there are not wanting Castilian themes
and stories, such as those relating to Roderic, Bernaldo de Carpio,
Fernán González, the Infantes of Lara, and the Cid. Most of these
were written by men of humble station, the true poets of the people,
the late representatives of those juglares who had sung or recited
the cantares de gesta. [51]
Mr James Fitzmaurice Kelly is at once the best informed and most
sympathetic of modern critics on the subject of the romancero. In
his admirable Chapters on Spanish Literature, a delightful series
of excursions into several of the most interesting provinces of
Spanish letters, he reviews the romancero in some forty vivid pages,
remarkable alike for critical insight and the sanity of the conclusions
to which they point. Taking Lockhart's Spanish Ballads as a basis for
comment, he addresses himself to the racy criticism of the collection
of the Scottish translator. A better plan for the initiation of the
English-speaking reader into the mysteries of the romancero could
scarcely be conceived, for there are few who possess no acquaintance
with Lockhart's work, one of the most persistent of the drawing-room
books of Victorian days. Following Mr Kelly's admirable lead, then,
though not in the spirit of base imitation, let us take Lockhart as
our 'document' and examine the more interesting of his translations,
not only as regards their subject-matter, but their excellences
and shortcomings, comparing them also with those of Bowring and
others. Following Depping, Lockhart divides his volume of ballads into
three sections: Historical, Moorish, and Romantic. With the first two
groups of poems, or rather with their subject-matter--those relating
to King Roderic and Bernaldo de Carpio--we have dealt elsewhere.
The Maiden Tribute
The next in order, "The Maiden Tribute," deals with a demand of the
Moorish monarch Abderahman that a hundred Christian virgins should
annually be delivered into his hands. King Ramíro refused to comply
with such a shameful custom, and marched to meet the Moor. A two days'
battle was fought near Alveida, and at the conclusion of the first
day's hostilities the superior discipline of the Saracens had told
heavily against the Castilians. During the night, St Iago, the patron
saint of Spain, appeared to the King in a vision and promised his
aid in the field next day. With morning the battle was joined once
more, the Saint, true to his word, led the Spanish charge, and the
Saracens were cast into headlong rout. The maiden tribute was never
afterward paid.
Lockhart's ballad, or rather translation, certainly does not enhance
the original.
If the Moslem must have tribute, make men your tribute-money,
Send idle drones to tease them within their hives of honey,
is the commonest of crambo, and
Must go, like all the others, the proud Moor's bed to sleep in--
In all the rest they're useless, and nowise worth the keeping,
is reminiscent of the pantomime days of our youth. Mr Fitzmaurice
Kelly contents himself by remarking about this ballad that it scarcely
calls for comment.
Count Fernán González
"The Escape of the Count Fernán González, which is based on the old
Estoria del noble caballero Fernán González," a popular arrangement
of the Crónica General (1344), is later than two other ballads which
Mr Kelly and others believe represent a lost epic which was worked
into the Crónica in question. A wealth of legend certainly clustered
round the name of this cavalier, and he has a string of romanceros to
his credit. But are we to believe that in every case where ballads
crystallize round a great name these are the broken lights of a
disintegrated epic, worn down by attrition into popular songs? Is
there, indeed, irrefragable proof that such a process ever took place
anywhere? Or its reverse, for that matter? Practical writers of verse
(if a writer of verse can be practical) do not take kindly to the
hypothesis. They recognize the generic differences between the spirit
of epic and that of folk-poetry, and prefer to believe that when both
have fixed upon the same subject the choice was fortuitous and not
necessarily evolutionary.
Fernán González of Castile owed not a little of his romantic
reputation to his wife, who delivered him from captivity on at least
two occasions. On that celebrated in the ballad she played the part of
a faithful lover and a true heroine. González, taken by his enemies,
had been carried to a stronghold in Navarre. A Norman knight passing
through that country requested the governor of the castle for an
audience with the captive, and as he offered a suitable bribe the
official gladly conceded the request. The interview over, the knight
departed and sought the palace of King Garcia of Navarre, who held
González in bondage. One of the counts against the prisoner seems
to have been that he had asked Garcia for the hand of his daughter,
and to this princess, who secretly loved the captive, the knight now
addressed himself:
The Moors may well be joyful, but great should be our grief,
For Spain has lost her guardian when Castile has lost her chief.
The Moorish host is pouring like a river o'er the land:
Curse on the Christian fetters that bind González' hand!
At 'mirk of night' the Infanta rose, and, proceeding alone to the
castle where González was confined, proffered such a heavy bribe to
the governor to set him at liberty that he permitted his prisoner to
go free. But the hero was still hampered by his chains, and when the
pair were stopped by a hunter-priest who threatened to reveal their
whereabouts to the King's foresters unless the Infanta paid him a
shameful ransom, González was unable to punish him as he deserved. But
as the wretch embraced the princess she seized him by the throat, and
González grasped the spear which he had let fall and drove it through
his body. Shortly afterward they encountered a band of González'
own men-at-arms, with which incident their night of adventure came
to a close.
The Infantes of Lara
Few Spanish romanceros celebrate incidents more tragic or memorable
than those which cluster round the massacre of the unfortunate
Infantes or Princes of Lara by their treacherous uncle, Ruy or Roderigo
Velásquez. Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly thinks that one of these originated
from a lost epic written between 1268 and 1344, "or perhaps from
a lost recast of this lost epic." Strange that such epics should
all be lost! He pleads that Lockhart might have utilized other more
'energetic' ballads to illustrate this legend, but I think in this
does some despite to the very fine and spirited translation entitled
"The Vengeance of Mudara":
Oh, in vain have I slaughter'd the Infants of Lara;
There's an heir in his halls--there's the bastard Mudara,
There's the son of the renegade--spawn of Mahoun:
If I meet with Mudara, my spear brings him down.
As I read these lines I recall a big drawing-room, the narrow
casements of which look upon a wilderness of garden woodland made
magical by the yellow shadows of the hour when it is neither evening
nor afternoon. Upon a table of mottled rosewood lies a copy of the
Spanish Ballads in the embossed and fretted binding of the days when
such books were given as presents and intended for exhibition. A child
of ten, I had stolen into this Elysium redolent of rose-leaves and
potpourri, and, opening the book at random, came upon the lines just
quoted. For the first time I tasted the delights of rhythm, of music
in words. The verses photographed themselves on my brain. Searching
through the book until darkness fell, it seemed to me that I could
find nothing so good, nothing that swung along with such a gallop. But
the cup had been held to my lips, and my days and nights became a
quest for words wedded to music. I had to look for some time before I
encountered anything better than, or equal to, the haunting rhythm of
"The Vengeance of Mudara." The years have brought discoveries beside
which the first pales into insignificance, adventures in books of
a spirit more subtle, carrying the thrill of a keener amazement;
but none came with the force of such revelation as was vouchsafed by
that page in an unforgotten book in an unforgettable room.
The first of the ballads in which Lockhart deals with the subject
of the Infantes of Lara--for the one we have been discussing follows
it--is entitled "The Seven Heads," and details the circumstance of the
massacre of the unhappy princes. From the Historia de España of Juan
de Marinia (1537-1624) we learn that in the year 986 Ruy Velásquez,
lord of Villaren, celebrated his marriage with Donna Lombra, a lady
of high birth, at Burgos. The festivities were on a scale of great
splendour, and among the guests were Gustio González, lord of Salas
of Lara, and his seven sons. These young men, of the blood of the
Counts of Castile, were celebrated for their chivalric prowess,
and had all been knighted on the self-same day.
As evil chance would have it, a quarrel arose between González, the
youngest of the seven brothers, and one Alvar Sanchez, a relation
of the bride. Donna Lombra thought herself insulted, and in order to
avenge herself, when the young knights rode in her train as she took
her way to her lord's castle, she ordered one of her slaves to throw at
González a wild cucumber soaked in blood, "a heavy insult and outrage,
according to the then existing customs and opinions of Spain." What
this recondite insult signified does not matter. But surely, whatever
its meaning, and making all allowance for the rudeness of the age of
which she was an ornament, the lady did greater despite to herself than
to her enemy by the perpetration of such an act of crude vulgarity. The
slave, having done as he was bid, fled for protection to his mistress's
side. But that availed him nothing, for the outraged Infantes slew him
"within the very folds of her garment."
Ruy Velásquez, burning with Latin anger at what he deemed an insult
to his bride, and therefore to himself, was determined upon a
dreadful vengeance. But he studiously concealed his intention from
the young noblemen, and behaved to them as if nothing of moment had
occurred. Some time after these events he sent Gustio González, the
father of the seven young champions, on a mission to Cordova, the
ostensible object of which was to receive on his behalf a tribute of
money from the Moorish king of that city. He made Gustio the bearer
of a letter in Arabic, which he could not read, the purport of which
was a request to the Saracen chieftain to have him executed. But the
infidel displayed more humanity than the Christian, and contented
himself with imprisoning the unsuspecting envoy.
In furtherance of his plans Velásquez pretended to make an incursion
into the Moorish country, in which he was accompanied by the Infantes
of Lara with two hundred of their followers. With fiendish ingenuity he
succeeded in leading them into an ambuscade. Surrounded on all sides
by the Saracen host, they resolved to sell their lives at the highest
possible price rather than surrender. Back to back they stood, taking
a terrible toll of Moorish lives, and one by one they fell, slain but
unconquered. Their heads were dispatched to Velásquez as an earnest
of a neighbourly deed by the Moorish king, and were paraded before
him and in front of their stricken father, who had been released in
order that Velásquez might gloat over his grief. When he had satisfied
his vengeance the lord of Villaren permitted the stricken father to
return to his empty home.
But Ruy Velásquez was not destined to go unpunished. While Gustio
González had been imprisoned in the dungeons of the Moorish King of
Cordova he had contracted an alliance with that monarch's sister,
by whom he had a son, Mudarra. When this young man had attained the
age of fourteen years his mother prevailed upon him to go in search
of his father, and when he had found his now aged parent he learned of
the act of treachery by which his brothers had been slain. Determined
to avenge the cowardly deed, he bided his time, and, encountering Ruy
Velásquez when on a hunting expedition, slew him out of hand. Gathering
around him a band of resolute men, he attacked the castle of Villaren,
and executed a fearful vengeance upon the haughty Donna Lombra, whom
he stoned and burnt at the stake. In course of time he was adopted
by his father's wife, Donna Sancha, who acknowledged him as heir to
the estates of his father.
We have already indicated the stirring nature of the ballad in
which Mudarra takes vengeance upon the slayers of his brethren. Its
predecessor in Lockhart's collection, that in which the agonized
father beholds the seven heads of his murdered sons, falls far short
of it in power.
"My gallant boys," quoth Lara, "it is a heavy sight
These dogs have brought your father to look upon this night;
Seven gentler boys, nor braver, were never nursed in Spain,
And blood of Moors, God rest your souls, ye shed on her like rain."
..................................................................
He took their heads up one by one,--he kiss'd them o'er and o'er,
And aye ye saw the tears run down--I wot that grief was sore.
He closed the lids on their dead eyes, all with his fingers frail,
And handled all their bloody curls, and kissed their lips so pale.
"O had ye died all by my side upon some famous day,
My fair young men, no weak tears then had washed your blood away.
The trumpet of Castile had drowned the misbeliever's horn,
And the last of all the Lara's line a Gothic spear had borne."
The Wedding of the Lady Theresa
"The Wedding of the Lady Theresa" is a semi-historical ballad
which tells of the forced alliance of a Christian maiden to a noble
worshipper of Mahoun. Alfonso, King of Leon, desirous of strengthening
his alliance with the infidel, intended to sacrifice his sister,
Donna Theresa, to his political necessities. He paved the way for
this betrayal by pretending that Abdalla, King of the Moors, had
become a Christian, and by indicating to her the benefits of a union
with the pagan prince. Totally deceived by these representations,
the lady consented to the match, was taken to Toledo, and wed to
the Moor with much splendour. But on the day of the marriage she
learned of her brother's perfidy, and when she found herself alone
with the Moorish lord she repulsed him, telling him that she would
never be a wife to him in aught but name until he and his people
embraced the Christian faith. But Abdalla ridiculed her scruples,
and took advantage of her unprotected state. As she had prophesied, a
scourge fell upon him as the consequence of his wicked act. Terrified,
he sent Theresa back to her brother, with an abundance of treasure,
and she entered the monastery of St Pelagius, in Leon, where she
passed the remainder of her days in pious labours and devotions.
Sad heart had fair Theresa when she their paction knew;
With streaming tears she heard them tell she 'mong the Moors
must go:
That she, a Christian damosell, a Christian firm and true,
Must wed a Moorish husband, it well might cause her woe.
But all her tears and all her prayers, they are of small avail;
At length she for her fate prepares, a victim sad and pale.
This ballad is no earlier than the sixteenth century, and seems to be
based upon historic fact, and, as Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly points out,
it confuses Almanzor and the Toledan governor Abdalla on the one
hand and Alfonso V of Leon with his father, Bermudo II, on the other,
and introduces chronological difficulties.
Passing by the ballads of the Cid, to the subject-matter of which we
have already done ample justice, we come to that of
Garcia Pérez de Vargas
This Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly dismisses in a word, although it seems to
me to merit some attention. De Vargas distinguished himself greatly
at the siege of Seville in the year 1248. One day, while riding by
the banks of the river, accompanied only by a single companion, he
was attacked by a party of seven mounted Moors. His comrade rode off,
but Pérez, closing his visor, and setting his lance in rest, faced the
paynim warriors. They, seeing who awaited them, made all speed back
to their own lines. As he made his way back to camp Pérez noticed
that he had dropped his scarf, and immediately returned to seek for
it. But although he rode far into the danger zone ere he found it,
the Moors still avoided him, and he returned to the Spanish camp
in safety. The ballad makes Pérez recover the scarf from the Moors,
who had found it and "looped it on a spear."
"Stand, stand, ye thieves and robbers, lay down my lady'spledge!"
He cried; and ever as he cried they felt his faulchion's edge.
That day when the Lord of Vargas came to the camp alone,
The scarf, his lady's largess, around his breast was thrown;
Bare was his head, his sword was red, and, from his pommel strung,
Seven turbans green, sore hack'd, I ween, before Don Garci hung.
This last verse shows how strongly Lockhart was indebted to Scott
for the spirit and style of his compositions. [52]
Pedro the Cruel
We come now to those ballads which recount the vivid but sanguinary
history of Don Pedro the Cruel. Many attempts have been made to prove
that Pedro was by no means such an inhuman monster as the balladeers
would have us believe. But probability seems to be on the side of the
singers rather than on that of the modern historians, who have done
their best to remove the stain of his ferocious acts from Pedro's
abhorred name. His first act of atrocity was that celebrated in
the ballad entitled "The Master of St Iago," which refers to his
illegitimate brother. On the death of that nobleman, his father,
well aware of Pedro's vindictive temperament, fled to the city of
Coimbra, in Portugal. But, believing Pedro's asseverations that he
had no intention of offering him violence, he accepted his invitation
to the Court of Seville, where a gallant tournament was about to be
held. No sooner had he arrived, however, than he was secretly put to
death (1358), it is believed at the instance of the notorious Maria
de Padilla, Pedro's mistress.
"Stand off, stand off, thou traitor strong," 'twas thus he said
to me.
"Thy time on earth shall not be long--what brings thee to my knee?
My lady craves a New Year's gift, and I will keep my word;
Thy head, methinks, may serve the shift--Good yeoman, draw
thy sword."
The ballad recounts how Pedro, relenting somewhat, imprisoned the false
Maria de Padilla, but there is no evidence that she either suggested
the crime or suffered for it. Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly gives it as his
opinion that the dramatic power of the romance is undeniable. Had
he spoken of its melodramatic power I might feel inclined to agree
with him.
"That Pedro was accessory to the violent death of the young and
innocent princess whom he had married, and immediately afterward
deserted for ever, there can be no doubt," says Lockhart, referring to
the marriage of Pedro with Blanche de Bourbon. But whether he murdered
his queen or not, his paramour, Maria de Padilla, was innocent of
all complicity in the affair, although the ballad makes her the
instigator of the horrid deed, and it is plain that the poems which
refer to her were written with a sinister political motive.
Mariana, who is sufficiently reliable, states that Pedro's conduct
toward his queen had aroused the anger of many of his nobles,
who presented him with a remonstrance in writing. His fierce and
homicidal temper aroused to fury at what he considered an unwarranted
interference in his private concerns, he immediately gave the order
that his unfortunate French consort should be put to death by poison
in the prison where she, was confined. The poem makes Pedro and his
paramour plot upon the death of the unhappy Queen in the crude manner
of the balladeer all the world over.
"Maria de Padilla, be not thus of dismal mood,
For if I twice have wedded me, it all was for thy good,"
may be good ballad-writing, but I confess the barbarous inversion in
the second line appears to me to be unnecessary.
"But if upon Queen Blanche ye will that I some scorn should show,
For a banner to Medina my messenger shall go.--
The work shall be of Blanche's tears, of Blanche's blood the
ground,
Such pennon shall they weave for thee, such sacrifice be found."
With the example of many enchanted passages of allusion no less
recondite occurring in the ballads of his own country-side, Lockhart
might reasonably have been expected to have done much better than
the last couplet.
Fause luve, ye've shapit a weed for me
In simmer amang the flowers;
I will repay thee back again
In winter amang the showers.
The snow so white shall be your weed,
In hate you shall be drest,
The cauld east wind shall wrap your heid
And the sharp rain on your breist.
But I question if folk-poetry ever captured a lilt more exquisite
than that of the first four lines of "The Gardener" or a sharper note
of anguish than that of the last quatrain. [53] To me at least Old
Scots must always remain the language of the ballad par excellence,
by virtue of the subtlety, the finely wrought and divinely coloured
wealth of expressive idiom which bursts from its treasure-chest in
a profusion of begemmed and enamelled richness, more various, more
magical than any Spanish gold. Much of this Lockhart filched to give
his Castilian bullion a replating. But in places he falls back most
wretchedly upon the poetical trickeries of his day, falls to the level
of Rogers and Southey, to the miserable devices and tinsel beggary of
those bravely bound annuals beloved by the dames and damsels of the
day before yesterday. In places, however, he outballads the ballad
in pure gaucherie.
These words she spake, then down she knelt, and took the bowman's
blow,
Her tender neck was cut in twain, and out her blood did flow.
The next, and not the last of the series, as Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly
has it, is obviously the handiwork of Walter Scott, than whom none
could fail more miserably on occasion. We can picture him doling "The
Death of Don Pedro" from out the great thesaurus of his brain (that
sadly drained mint, ever at the service of a friend or a publisher),
as a dinted and defaced coin. Only in the last verse does the old
fire blaze up.
Thus with mortal gasp and quiver,
While the blood in bubbles well'd,
Fled the fiercest soul that ever
In a Christian bosom dwell'd.
On such a subject the composer of "Bonnie Dundee" might well have felt
the blood run faster, and the pen quiver in his fingers like an arrow
on a tightened bow-string. Two royal brothers strive with hateful
poniards for each other's lives. Pedro, a prisoner in the hands of
Henry of Trastamara, his natural brother, is wantonly insulted by the
victorious noble, and replies by flying at his throat in an outburst
of animal courage and kingly rage. Dumbfounded at the death-struggle
of monarch and usurper, Henry's allies look on, among them the great
Du Guesclin. Pedro pins the lord of Trastamara to the ground. His
dagger flashes upward. Du Guesclin turns to Henry's squire. "Will ye
let your lord die thus, you who eat his bread?" he scoffs. The esquire
throws himself upon Pedro, clings to his arms and turns him over, and,
thus aided, Henry rises, searches for a joint in the King's armour,
and thrusts his dagger deep into that merciless heart. The murderer,
the friend of Jew and Saracen, is slain. His head is hacked off,
and his proud body trampled beneath mailed feet. Surely a subject
for a picture painted in the lights of armour and the red shadows of
blood and hate.
Down they go in deadly wrestle,
Down upon the earth they go.
Fierce King Pedro has the vantage,
Stout Don Henry falls below.
Marking then the fatal crisis,
Up the page of Henry ran,
By the waist he caught Don Pedro,
Aiding thus the fallen man.
They had better have let the ballad alone, those two at Abbotsford. It
does not seem to me "a very striking ballad," as Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly
observes, but in its Castilian dress it is sufficiently dramatic
and exciting.
Los fieros cuerpos revueltos
Entre los rubustos brazos
Está el cruel rey Don Pedro
Y Don Enrique, su hermano.
No son abrazos de amor
Los que los dos se están dando;
Que el uno tiene una daga,
Y otro un puñal acerado.
So run the first two verses, which I leave the reader to translate
for himself, lest further damage be done them.
The proclamation of Don Henry takes up the story where the preceding
ballad left it off. In the translation of this, it seems to me,
Lockhart has been much more successful than his great father-in-law
proved himself in that of its companion ballad. I do not think it
possible, however, to render adequately by an English pen the dignified
rhythm of the Castilian in which this romancero is dressed. But the
second verse,
So dark and sullen is the glare of Pedro's lifeless eyes,
Still half he fears what slumbers there to vengeance may arise.
So stands the brother, on his brow the mark of blood is seen,
Yet had he not been Pedro's Cain, his Cain had Pedro been,
is really fine, expressive, and ascends a whole scale of terrible
thought and realization. Are these awful eyes dead? Can the threat
they hold be imaginary? My hands are wet with brother's blood, but it
is only by virtue of a slender chance that his are not imbrued with
mine. The verse is horribly eloquent of the death-cold atmosphere
of the moment which follows murder--simple, appalling, desperately
tragic. The mad grief of the slain King's paramour is drawn with a
touch almost as successful.
In her hot cheek the blood mounts high, as she stands gazing down,
Now on proud Henry's royal stole, his robe and golden crown,
And now upon the trampled cloak that hides not from her view
The slaughtered Pedro's marble brow, and lips of livid hue.
The Moor Reduan
We may pass by "The Lord of Butrayo" and "The King of Arragon" and
come to the ballad of "The Moor Reduan," a piece based on the siege
of Granada, last stronghold of the Moors, and the first of those in
which Lockhart deals with the romanceros fronterizos, or romances
of the frontier, which, as we have before remarked, may have been
influenced by Moorish ideas, or may even represent borrowings or
données of a kind more or less direct. In his critique of this
romancero Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly says: "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 romanceros into one,
and that the verses from the fourth stanza onward 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 is only partially correct. Lockhart knew perfectly well
that the piece was not homogeneous. Indeed he says, "The following
is a version of certain parts of two ballads," although he seems to
have been unaware that one of them was that dealing with Boabdil's
expedition. That portion, indeed, provides by far the best elements
in the composition.
What caftans blue and scarlet, what turbans pleach'd of green;
What waving of their crescents, and plumages between;
What buskins and what stirrups, what rowels chased in gold,
What handsome gentlemen, what buoyant hearts and bold!
Reduan had registered a rash vow to take the city of Jaen so that he
might win the daughter of the Moorish king. The ninth verse is full
of a grateful music, not too often found in the poetry of the Britain
of 1823:
But since in hasty cheer I did my promise plight,
(What well might cost a year) to win thee in a night,
The pledge demands the paying, I would my soldiers brave
Were half as sure of Jaen as I am of my grave;
although, I confess, the internal rhyming of "paying" and "Jaen"
detracts from the melody of the whole. And this is the besetting sin
of Lockhart, that he mars his happiest efforts by crudities which he
evidently confounded with the simplicity of the ballad form. In all
British balladry, if memory serves me, there is no such vulgarism
as this.