CHAPTER VI

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FOUR CLASSES OF THE MORE POPULAR EARLY LITERATURE.--FIRST CLASS, BALLADS.--OLDEST FORM OF CASTILIAN POETRY.--THEORIES ABOUT THEIR ORIGIN.--NOT ARABIC.--THEIR METRICAL FORM.--REDONDILLAS.-- ASONANTES.--NATIONAL.--SPREAD OF THE BALLAD FORM.--NAME.--EARLY NOTICES OF BALLADS.--BALLADS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, AND LATER.--TRADITIONAL AND LONG UNWRITTEN.--APPEARED FIRST IN THE CANCIONEROS, THEN IN THE ROMANCEROS.--THE OLD COLLECTIONS THE BEST.

Everywhere in Europe, during the period we have just gone over, the courts of the different sovereigns were the principal centres of refinement and civilization. From accidental circumstances, this was peculiarly the case in Spain, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. On the throne of Castile, or within its shadow, we have seen a succession of such poets and prose-writers as Alfonso the Wise, Sancho, his son, Don John Manuel, his nephew, and the Chancellor Ayala, to say nothing of Saint Ferdinand, who preceded them all, and who, perhaps, gave the first decisive impulse to letters in the centre of Spain and at the North.[164]

[164] Alfonso el Sabio says of his father, St. Ferdinand: “And, moreover, he liked to have men about him who knew how to make verses (_trobar_) and sing, and Jongleurs, who knew how to play on instruments. For in such things he took great pleasure, and knew who was skilled in them and who was not.” (Setenario, Paleographía, pp. 80-83, and p. 76.) See, also, what is said hereafter, when we come to speak of Provençal literature in Spain, Chap. XVI.

But the literature produced or encouraged by these and other distinguished men, or by the higher clergy, who, with them, were the leaders of the state, was by no means the only literature that then existed within the barrier of the Pyrenees. On the contrary, the spirit of poetry was, to an extraordinary degree, abroad throughout the whole Peninsula, so far as it had been rescued from the Moors, animating and elevating all classes of its Christian population. Their own romantic history, whose great events had been singularly the results of popular impulse, and bore everywhere the bold impress of the popular character, had breathed into the Spanish people this spirit; a spirit which, beginning with Pelayo, had been sustained by the appearance, from time to time, of such heroic forms as Fernan Gonzalez, Bernardo del Carpio, and the Cid. At the point of time, therefore, at which we are now arrived, a more popular literature, growing directly out of the enthusiasm which had so long pervaded the whole mass of the Spanish people, began naturally to appear in the country, and to assert for itself a place, which, in some of its forms, it has successfully maintained ever since.

What, however, is thus essentially popular in its sources and character,--what, instead of going out from the more elevated classes of the nation, was neglected or discountenanced by them,--is, from its very wildness, little likely to take well-defined forms, or to be traced, from its origin, by the dates and other proofs which accompany such portions of the national literature as fell earlier under the protection of the higher orders of society. But though we may not be able to make out an exact arrangement or a detailed history of what was necessarily so free and always so little watched, it can still be distributed into four different classes, and will afford tolerable materials for a notice of its progress and condition under each.

These four classes are, first, the BALLADS, or the poetry, both narrative and lyrical, of the common people, from the earliest times; second, the CHRONICLES, or the half-genuine, half-fabulous histories of the great events and heroes of the national annals, which, though originally begun by authority of the state, were always deeply imbued with the popular feelings and character; third, the ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY, intimately connected with both the others, and, after a time, as passionately admired as either by the whole nation; and, fourth, the DRAMA, which, in its origin, has always been a popular and religious amusement, and was hardly less so in Spain than it was in Greece or in France.

These four classes compose what was generally most valued in Spanish literature during the latter part of the fourteenth century, the whole of the fifteenth, and much of the sixteenth. They rested on the deep foundations of the national character, and therefore, by their very nature, were opposed to the Provençal, the Italian, and the courtly schools, which flourished during the same period, and which will be subsequently examined.

* * * * *

THE BALLADS.--We begin with the ballads, because it cannot reasonably be doubted that poetry, in the present Spanish language, appeared earliest in the ballad form. And the first question that occurs in relation to them is the obvious one, why this was the case. It has been suggested, in reply, that there was probably a tendency to this most popular form of composition in Spain at an age even much more remote than that of the origin of the present Spanish language itself;[165] that such a tendency may, perhaps, be traced back to those indigenous bards of whom only a doubtful tradition remained in the time of Strabo;[166] and that it may be seen to emerge again in the Leonine and other rhymed Latin verses of the Gothic period,[167] or in that more ancient and obscure Basque poetry, of which the little that has been preserved to us is thought to breathe a spirit countenancing such conjectures.[168] But these and similar suggestions have so slight a foundation in recorded facts, that they can be little relied on. The one more frequently advanced is, that the Spanish ballads, such as we now have them, are imitations from the narrative and lyrical poetry of the Arabs, with which the whole southern part of Spain for ages resounded; and that, in fact, the very form in which Spanish ballads still appear is Arabic, and is to be traced to the Arabs in the East, at a period not only anterior to the invasion of Spain, but anterior to the age of the Prophet. This is the theory of Conde.[169]

[165] The Edinburgh Review, No. 146, on Lockhart’s Ballads, contains the ablest statement of this theory.

[166] The passage in Strabo here referred to, which is in Book III. p. 139, (ed. Casaubon, fol., 1620,) is to be taken in connection with the passage (p. 151) in which he says that both the language and its poetry were wholly lost in his time.

[167] Argote de Molina (Discurso de la Poesía Castellana, in Conde Lucanor, ed. 1575, f. 93. a) may be cited to this point, and one who believed it tenable might also cite the “Crónica General,” (ed. 1604, Parte II. f. 265,) where, speaking of the Gothic kingdom, and mourning its fall, the Chronicle says, “Forgotten are its songs, (_cantares_,)” etc.

[168] W. von Humboldt, in the Mithridates of Adelung and Vater, Berlin, 1817, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 354, and Argote de Molina, ut sup., f. 93;--but the Basque verses the latter gives cannot be older than 1322, and were, therefore, quite as likely to be imitated from the Spanish as to have been themselves the subjects of Spanish imitation.

[169] Dominacion de los Árabes, Tom. I., Prólogo, pp. xviii.-xix., p. 169, and other places. But in a manuscript preface to a collection which he called “Poesías Orientales traducidas por Jos. Ant. Conde,” and which he never published, he expresses himself yet more positively: “In the versification of our Castilian ballads and _seguidillas_, we have received from the Arabs _an exact type_ of their verses.” And again he says, “From the period of the infancy of our poetry, we have rhymed verses according to _the measures used by the Arabs before the times of the Koran_.” This is the work, I suppose, to which Blanco White alludes (Variedades, Tom. II. pp. 45, 46). The theory of Conde has been often approved. See Retrospective Review, Tom. IV. p. 31, the Spanish translation of Bouterwek, Tom. I. p. 164, etc.

But though, from the air of historical pretension with which it presents itself, there is something in this theory that bespeaks our favor, yet there are strong reasons that forbid our assent to it. For the earliest of the Spanish ballads, concerning which alone the question can arise, have not at all the characteristics of an imitated literature. Not a single Arabic original has been found for any one of them; nor, so far as we know, has a single passage of Arabic poetry, or a single phrase from any Arabic writer, entered directly into their composition. On the contrary, their freedom, their energy, their Christian tone and chivalrous loyalty, announce an originality and independence of character that prevent us from believing they could have been in any way materially indebted to the brilliant, but effeminate, literature of the nation to whose spirit every thing Spanish had, when they first appeared, been for ages implacably opposed. It seems, therefore, that they must, of their own nature, be as original as any poetry of modern times; containing, as they do, within themselves proofs that they are Spanish by their birth, natives of the soil, and stained with all its variations. For a long time, too, subsequent to that of their first appearance, they continued to exhibit the same elements of nationality; so that, until we approach the fall of Granada, we find in them neither a Moorish tone, nor Moorish subjects, nor Moorish adventures; nothing, in short, to justify us in supposing them to have been more indebted to the culture of the Arabs than was any other portion of the early Spanish literature.

Indeed, it does not seem reasonable to seek, in the East or elsewhere, a foreign origin for the mere _form_ of the Spanish ballads. Their metrical structure is so simple, that we can readily believe it to have presented itself as soon as verse of any sort was felt to be a popular want. They consist merely of those eight-syllable lines which are composed with great facility in other languages as well as the Castilian, and which in the old ballads are the more easy, as the number of feet prescribed for each verse is little regarded.[170] Sometimes, though rarely, they are broken into stanzas of four lines, thence called _redondillas_ or roundelays; and some of them have rhymes in the second and fourth lines of each stanza, or in the first and fourth, as in the similar stanzas of other modern languages. Their prominent peculiarity, however, and one which they have succeeded in impressing upon a very large portion of all the national poetry, is one which, being found to prevail in no other literature, may be claimed to have its origin in Spain, and becomes, therefore, an important circumstance in the history of Spanish poetical culture.[171]

[170] Argote de Molina (Discurso sobre la Poesía Castellana, in Conde Lucanor, 1575, f. 92) will have it that the ballad verse of Spain is quite the same with the eight-syllable verse in Greek, Latin, Italian, and French; “but,” he adds, “it is properly native to Spain, in whose language it is found earlier than in any other modern tongue, and in Spanish alone it has all the grace, gentleness, and spirit that are more peculiar to the Spanish genius than to any other.” The only example he cites in proof of this position is the Odes of Ronsard,--“the most excellent Ronsard,” as he calls him,--then at the height of his euphuistical reputation in France; but Ronsard’s odes are miserably unlike the freedom and spirit of the Spanish ballads. (See Odes de Ronsard, Paris, 1573, 18mo, Tom. II. pp. 62, 139.) The nearest approach that I recollect to the mere _measure_ of the ancient Spanish ballad, where there was no thought of imitating it, is in a few of the old French Fabliaux, in Chaucer’s “House of Fame,” and in some passages of Sir Walter Scott’s poetry. Jacob Grimm, in his “Silva de Romances Viejos,” (Vienna, 1815, 18mo,) taken chiefly from the collection of 1555, has printed the ballads he gives us as if their lines were originally of fourteen or sixteen syllables; so that one of his lines embraces two of those in the old Romanceros. His reason was, that their epic nature and character required such long verses, which are in fact substantially the same with those in the old “Poem of the Cid.” But his theory, which was not generally adopted, is sufficiently answered by V. A. Huber, in his excellent tract, “De Primitivâ Cantilenarum Popularium Epicarum (vulgo, _Romances_) apud Hispanos Formâ,” (Berolini, 1844, 4to,) and in his preface to his edition of the “Chrónica del Cid,” 1844.

[171] The only suggestion I have noticed affecting this statement is to be found in the Repertorio Americano, (Lóndres, 1827, Tom. II. pp. 21, etc.,) where the writer, who, I believe, is Don Andres Bello, endeavours to trace the _asonante_ to the “Vita Mathildis,” a Latin poem of the twelfth century, reprinted by Muratori, (Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Mediolani, 1725, fol., Tom. V. pp. 335, etc.,) and to a manuscript Anglo-Norman poem, of the same century, on the fabulous journey of Charlemagne to Jerusalem. But the Latin poem is, I believe, singular in this attempt, and was, no doubt, wholly unknown in Spain; and the Anglo-Norman poem, which has since been published by Michel, (London, 1836, 12mo,) with curious notes, turns out to be _rhymed_, though not carefully or regularly. Raynouard, in the Journal des Savants, (February, 1833, p. 70,) made the same mistake with the writer in the Repertorio; probably in consequence of following him. The imperfect rhyme of the ancient Gaelic seems to have been different from the Spanish _asonante_, and, at any rate, can have had nothing to do with it. Logan’s Scottish Gael, London, 1831, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 241.

The peculiarity to which we refer is that of the _asonante_,--an imperfect rhyme confined to the vowels, and beginning with the last accented one in the line; so that it embraces sometimes only the very last syllable, and sometimes goes back to the penultimate or even the antepenultimate. It is contradistinguished from the _consonante_, or full rhyme, which is made both by the consonants and vowels in the concluding syllable or syllables of the line, and which is, therefore, just what _rhyme_ is in English.[172] Thus, _feróz_ and _furór_, _cása_ and _abárca_, _infámia_ and _contrária_, are good _asonantes_ in the first and third ballads of the Cid, just as _mál_ and _desleál_, _voláre_ and _caçáre_, are good _consonantes_ in the old ballad of the Marquis of Mantua, cited by Don Quixote. The _asonante_, therefore, is something between our blank verse and our rhyme, and the art of using it is easily acquired in a language like the Castilian, abounding in vowels, and always giving to the same vowel the same value.[173] In the old ballads, it generally recurs with every other line; and, from the facility with which it can be found, the same _asonante_ is frequently continued through the whole of the poem in which it occurs, whether the poem be longer or shorter. But even with this embarrassment, the structure of the ballad is so simple, that, while Sarmiento has undertaken to show how Spanish prose from the twelfth century downwards is often written unconsciously in eight-syllable _asonantes_,[174] Sepúlveda in the sixteenth century actually converted large portions of the old chronicles into the same ballad measure, with little change of their original phraseology;[175] two circumstances which, taken together, show indisputably that there can be no wide interval between the common structure of Spanish prose and this earliest form of Spanish verse. If to all this we add the national recitatives in which the ballads have been sung down to our own days, and the national dances by which they have been accompanied,[176] we shall probably be persuaded, not only that the form of the Spanish ballad is as purely national in its origin as the _asonante_, which is its prominent characteristic, but that this form is more happily fitted to its especial purposes, and more easy in its practical application to them, than any other into which popular poetry has fallen in ancient or modern times.[177]

[172] Cervantes, in his “Amante Liberal,” calls them _consonancias_ or _consonantes dificultosas_. No doubt, their greater difficulty caused them to be less used than the _asonantes_. Juan de la Enzina, in his little treatise on Castilian Verse, Cap. 7, written before 1500, explains these two forms of rhyme, and says that the old romances “no van verdaderos consonantes.” Curious remarks on the _asonantes_ are to be found in Renjifo, “Arte Poetica Española,” (Salamanca, 1592, 4to, Cap. 34,) and the additions to it in the edition of 1727 (4to, p. 418); to which may well be joined the philosophical suggestions of Martinez de la Rosa, Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. I. pp. 202-204.

[173] A great poetic license was introduced before long into the use of the _asonante_, as there had been, in antiquity, into the use of the Greek and Latin measures, until the sphere of the _asonante_ became, as Clemencin well says, extremely wide. Thus, _u_ and _o_ were held to be _asonante_, as in Ven_u_s and Min_o_s; _i_ and _e_, as in Par_i_s and mal_e_s; a diphthong with a vowel, as gr_a_c_ia_ and _a_lm_a_, c_ui_t_a_s and b_u_rl_a_s; and other similar varieties, which, in the times of Lope de Vega and Góngora, made the permitted combinations all but indefinite, and the composition of _asonante_ verses indefinitely easy. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. III. pp. 271, 272, note.

[174] Poesía Española, Madrid, 1775, 4to, sec. 422-430.

[175] It would be easy to give many specimens of ballads made from the old chronicles, but for the present purpose I will take only a few lines from the “Crónica General,” (Parte III. f. 77. a, ed. 1604,) where Velasquez, persuading his nephews, the Infantes de Lara, to go against the Moors, despite of certain ill auguries, says, “_Sobrinos estos agueros_ que oystes mucho son buenos; _ca nos dan a entender que ganaremos muy gran_ algo de lo ageno, e _de lo nuestro non perderemos_; e _fizol muy mal Don Nuño_ Salido _en non venir combusco_, e _mande Dios que se arrepienta_,” etc. Now, in Sepúlveda, (Romances, Anvers, 1551, 18mo, f. 11), in the ballad beginning “Llegados son los Infantes,” we have these lines:--

_Sobrinos esos agueros_ Para nos gran bien serian, Porque _nos dan a entender_ Que bien nos sucediera. _Ganaremos grande_ victoria, _Nada no se perdiera_, _Don Nuño lo hizo mal Que convusco non venia_, _Mande Dios que se arrepienta_, etc.

[176] Duran, Romances Caballerescos, Madrid, 1832, 12mo, Prólogo, Tom. I. pp. xvi., xvii., with xxxv., note (14).

[177] The peculiarities of a metrical form so entirely national can, I suppose, be well understood only by an example; and I will, therefore, give here, in the original Spanish, a few lines from a spirited and well-known ballad of Góngora, which I select, because they have been translated into _English asonantes_, by a writer in the Retrospective Review, whose excellent version follows, and may serve still further to explain and illustrate the measure:--

Aquel rayo de la guerra, Alferez mayor del r_é_yn_o_, Tan galan como valiente, Y tan noble como fi_é_r_o_, De los mozos embidiado, Y admirado de los vi_é_j_o_s, Y de los niños y el vulgo Señalado con el d_é_d_o_, El querido de las damas, Por cortesano y discr_é_t_o_, Hijo hasta alli regalado De la fortuna y el ti_e_mp_o_, etc.

Obras, Madrid, 1654, 4to, f. 83.

This rhyme is perfectly perceptible to any ear well accustomed to Spanish poetry, and it must be admitted, I think, that, when, as in the ballad cited, it embraces two of the concluding vowels of the line, and is continued through the whole poem, the effect, even upon a foreigner, is that of a graceful ornament, which satisfies without fatiguing. In English, however, where our vowels have such various powers, and where the consonants preponderate, the case is quite different. This is plain in the following translation of the preceding lines, made with spirit and truth, but failing to produce the effect of the Spanish. Indeed, the rhyme can hardly be said to be perceptible except to the eye, though the measure and its cadences are nicely managed.

“He the thunderbolt of battle, He the first Alferez t_i_tl_e_d, Who as courteous is as valiant, And the noblest as the f_i_erc_e_st; He who by our youth is envied, Honored by our gravest anc_ie_nts, By our youth in crowds distinguished By a thousand pointed f_i_ng_e_rs; He beloved by fairest damsels, For discretion and pol_i_ten_e_ss, Cherished son of time and fortune, Bearing all their gifts div_i_n_e_st,” etc.

Retrospective Review, Vol. IV. p. 35.

Another specimen of English _asonantes_ is to be found in Bowring’s “Ancient Poetry of Spain” (London, 1824, 12mo, p. 107); but the result is substantially the same, and always must be, from the difference between the two languages.

A metrical form so natural and obvious became a favorite at once, and continued so. From the ballads it soon passed into other departments of the national poetry, especially the lyrical. At a later period, the great mass of the true Spanish drama came to rest upon it; and before the end of the seventeenth century more verses had probably been written in it than in all the other measures used by Spanish poets. Lope de Vega declared it to be fitted for all styles of composition, even the gravest; and his judgment was sanctioned in his own time, and has been justified in ours, by the application of this peculiar form of verse to long epic stories.[178] The eight-syllable _asonante_, therefore, may be considered as now known and used in every department of Spanish poetry; and since it has, from the first, been a chief element in that poetry, we may well believe it will continue such as long as what is most original in the national genius continues to be cultivated.

[178] Speaking of the ballad verses, he says, (Prólogo á las Rimas Humanas, Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV., Madrid, 1776, 4to, p. 176,) “I regard them as capable, not only of expressing and setting forth any idea whatever with easy sweetness, but carrying through _any_ grave action in a versified poem.” His prediction was fulfilled in his own time by the “Fernando” of Vera y Figueroa, a long epic published in 1632, and in ours by the very attractive narrative poem of Don Ángel de Saavedra, Duke de Rivas, entitled “El Moro Exposito,” in two volumes, 1834. The example of Lope de Vega, in the latter part of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, no doubt did much to give currency to the _asonantes_, which, from that time, have been more used than they were earlier.

Some of the ballads embodied in this genuinely Castilian measure are, no doubt, very ancient. That such ballads existed in the earliest times, their very name, _Romances_, may intimate; since it seems to imply that they were, at some period, the only poetry known in the _Romance_ language of Spain; and such a period can have been no other than the one immediately following the formation of the language itself. Popular poetry of some sort--and more probably ballad poetry than any other--was sung concerning the achievements of the Cid as early as 1147.[179] A century later than this, but earlier than the prose of the “Fuero Juzgo,” Saint Ferdinand, after the capture of Seville in 1248, gave allotments or _repartimientos_ to two poets who had been with him during the siege, Nicolas _de los Romances_, and Domingo Abad _de los Romances_, the first of whom continued for some time afterwards to inhabit the rescued city and exercise his vocation as a poet.[180] In the next reign, or between 1252 and 1280, such poets are again mentioned. A _joglaressa_, or female ballad-singer, is introduced into the poem of “Apollonius,” which is supposed to have been written soon after the year 1250;[181] and in the Code of Laws of Alfonso the Tenth, prepared about 1260, good knights are commanded to listen to no poetical tales of the ballad-singers except such as relate to feats of arms.[182] In the “General Chronicle,” also, compiled soon afterwards by the same prince, mention is made more than once of poetical gestes or tales; of “what the ballad-singers (_juglares_) sing in their chants, and tell in their tales”; and “of what we hear the ballad-singers tell in their chants”;--implying that the achievements of Bernardo del Carpio and Charlemagne, to which these phrases refer, were as familiar in the popular poetry used in the composition of this fine old chronicle as we know they have been since to the whole Spanish people through the very ballads we still possess.[183]

[179] See the barbarous Latin poem printed by Sandoval, at the end of his “Historia de los Reyes de Castilla,” etc. (Pamplona, 1615, fol., f. 193). It is on the taking of Almeria in 1147, and seems to have been written by an eyewitness.

[180] The authority for this is sufficient, though the fact itself of a man being named from the sort of poetry he composed is a singular one. It is found in Diego Ortiz de Zuñiga, “Anales Ecclesiasticos y Seglares de Sevilla,” (Sevilla, 1677, fol., pp. 14, 90, 815, etc.). He took it, he says, from the _original_ documents of the _repartimientos_, which he describes minutely as having been used by Argote de Molina, (Preface and p. 815,) and from documents in the archives of the Cathedral. The _repartimiento_, or distribution of lands and other spoils in a city, from which, as Mariana tells us, a hundred thousand Moors emigrated or were expelled, was a serious matter, and the documents in relation to it seem to have been ample and exact. (Zuñiga, Preface, and pp. 31, 62, 66, etc.) The meaning of the word _Romance_ in this place is a more doubtful matter. But if _any_ kind of popular poetry is meant by it, what was it likely to be, at so early a period, but ballad poetry? The verses, however, which Ortiz de Zuñiga, on the authority of Argote de Molina, attributes (p. 815) to Domingo Abad de los Romances, are not his; they are by the Arcipreste de Hita. See Sanchez, Tom. IV. p. 166.

[181] Stanzas 426, 427, 483-495, ed. Paris, 1844, 8vo.

[182] Partida II. Tít. XXI. Leyes 20, 21. “Neither let the singers (_juglares_) rehearse before them other songs (_cantares_) than those of military gestes, or those that relate feats of arms.” The _juglares_--a word that comes from the Latin _jocularis_--were originally strolling ballad-singers, like the _jongleurs_, but afterwards sunk to be jesters and _jugglers_. See Clemencin’s curious note to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 31.

[183] Crónica General, Valladolid, 1604, Parte III. ff. 30, 33, 45.

It seems, therefore, not easy to escape from the conclusion, to which Argote de Molina, the most sagacious of the early Spanish critics, arrived nearly three centuries ago, that “in these old ballads is, in truth, perpetuated the memory of times past, and that they constitute a good part of those ancient Castilian stories used by King Alfonso in his history”;[184] a conclusion at which we should arrive, even now, merely by reading with care large portions of the Chronicle itself.[185]

[184] El Conde Lucanor, 1575. Discurso de la Poesía Castellana por Argote de Molina, f. 93. a.

[185] The end of the Second Part of the General Chronicle, and much of the third, relating to the great heroes of the early Castilian and Leonese history, seem to me to have been indebted to older poetical materials.

One more fact will conclude what we know of their early history. It is, that ballads were found among the poetry of Don John Manuel, the nephew of Alfonso the Tenth, which Argote de Molina possessed, and intended to publish, but which is now lost.[186] This brings our slight knowledge of the whole subject down to the death of Don John in 1347. But from this period--the same with that of the Archpriest of Hita--we almost lose sight, not only of the ballads, but of all genuine Spanish poetry, whose strains seem hardly to have been heard during the horrors of the reign of Peter the Cruel, the contested succession of Henry of Trastamara, and the Portuguese wars of John the First. And even when its echoes come to us again in the weak reign of John the Second, which stretches down to the middle of the fifteenth century, it presents itself with few of the attributes of the old national character.[187] It is become of the court, courtly; and therefore, though the old and true-hearted ballads may have lost none of the popular favor, and were certainly preserved by the fidelity of popular tradition, we find no further distinct record of them until the end of this century and the beginning of the one that followed, when the mass of the people, whose feelings they embodied, rose to such a degree of consideration, that their peculiar poetry came into the place to which it was entitled, and which it has maintained ever since. This was in the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Charles the Fifth.

[186] Discurso, Conde Lucanor, ed. 1575, ff. 92. a, 93. b. The poetry contained in the Cancioneros Generales, from 1511 to 1573, and bearing the name of Don John Manuel, is, as we have already explained, the work of Don John Manuel of Portugal, who died in 1524.

[187] The Marquis of Santillana, in his well-known letter, (Sanchez, Tom. I.,) speaks of the _Romances e cantares_, but very slightly.

But these few historical notices of ballad poetry are, except those which point to its early origin, too slight to be of much value. Indeed, until after the middle of the sixteenth century, it is difficult to find ballads written by known authors; so that, when we speak of the Old Spanish Ballads, we do not refer to the few whose period can be settled with some accuracy, but to the great mass found in the “Romanceros Generales” and elsewhere, whose authors and dates are alike unknown. This mass consists of above a thousand old poems, unequal in length and still more unequal in merit, composed between the period when verse first appeared in Spain and the time when such verse as that of the ballads was thought worthy to be written down; the whole bearing to the mass of the Spanish people, their feelings, passions, and character, the same relations that a single ballad bears to the character of the individual author who produced it.

For a long time, of course, these primitive national ballads existed only in the memories of the common people, from whom they sprang, and were preserved through successive ages and long traditions only by the interests and feelings that originally gave them birth. We cannot, therefore, reasonably hope that we now read any of them exactly as they were first composed and sung, or that there are many to which we can assign a definite age with any good degree of probability. No doubt, we may still possess some which, with little change in their simple thoughts and melody, were among the earliest breathings of that popular enthusiasm which, between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, was carrying the Christian Spaniards onward to the emancipation of their country; ballads which were heard amidst the valleys of the Sierra Morena, or on the banks of the Turia and the Guadalquivir, with the first tones of the language that has since spread itself through the whole Peninsula. But the idle minstrel, who, in such troubled times, sought a precarious subsistence from cottage to cottage, or the thoughtless soldier, who, when the battle was over, sung its achievements to his guitar at the door of his tent, could not be expected to look beyond the passing moment; so that, if their unskilled verses were preserved at all, they must have been preserved by those who repeated them from memory, changing their tone and language with the changed feelings of the times and events that chanced to recall them. Whatever, then, belongs to this earliest period belongs, at the same time, to the unchronicled popular life and character of which it was a part; and although many of the ballads thus produced may have survived to our own day, many more, undoubtedly, lie buried with the poetical hearts that gave them birth.

This, indeed, is the great difficulty in relation to all researches concerning the oldest Spanish ballads. The very excitement of the national spirit that warmed them into life was the result of an age of such violence and suffering, that the ballads it produced failed to command such an interest as would cause them to be written down. Individual poems, like that of the Cid, or the works of individual authors, like those of the Archpriest of Hita or Don John Manuel, were, of course, cared for, and, perhaps, from time to time transcribed. But the popular poetry was neglected. Even when the special “Cancioneros”--which were collections of whatever verses the person who formed them happened to fancy, or was able to find[188]--began to come in fashion, during the reign of John the Second, the bad taste of the time caused the old national literature to be so entirely overlooked, that not a single ballad occurs in either of them.

[188] _Cancion_, _Canzone_, _Chansos_, in the Romance language, signified originally any kind of poetry, because all poetry, or almost all, was then sung. (Giovanni Galvani, Poesia dei Trovatori, Modena, 1829, 8vo, p. 29.) In this way, _Cancionero_ in Spanish was long understood to mean simply a collection of poetry,--sometimes all by one author, sometimes by many.

The first printed ballads, therefore, are to be sought in the earliest edition of the “Cancioneros Generales,” compiled by Fernando del Castillo, and printed at Valencia in 1511. Their number, including fragments and imitations, is thirty-seven, of which nineteen are by authors whose names are given, and who, like Don John Manuel of Portugal, Alonso de Cartagena, Juan de la Enzina, and Diego de San Pedro, are known to have flourished in the period between 1450 and 1500, or who, like Lope de Sosa, appear so often in the collections of that age, that they may be fairly assumed to have belonged to it. Of the remainder, several seem much more ancient, and are, therefore, more curious and important.

The first, for instance, called “Count Claros,” is the fragment of an old ballad afterwards printed in full. It is inserted in this Cancionero on account of an elaborate gloss made on it in the Provençal manner by Francisco de Leon, as well as on account of an imitation of it by Lope de Sosa, and a gloss upon the imitation by Soria; all of which follow, and leave little doubt that the ballad itself had long been known and admired. The fragment, which alone is curious, consists of a dialogue between the Count Claros and his uncle, the Archbishop, on a subject and in a tone which made the name of the Count, as a true lover, pass almost into a proverb.

“It grieves me, Count, it grieves my heart, That thus they urge thy fate; Since this fond guilt upon thy part Was still no crime of state. For all the errors love can bring Deserve not mortal pain; And I have knelt before the king, To free thee from thy chain. But he, the king, with angry pride Would hear no word I spoke; ‘The sentence is pronounced,’ he cried; ‘Who may its power revoke?’ The Infanta’s love you won, he says, When you her guardian were. O cousin, less, if you were wise, For ladies you would care. For he that labors most for them Your fate will always prove; Since death or ruin none escape, Who trust their dangerous love.” “O uncle, uncle, words like these A true heart never hears; For I would rather die to please Than live and not be theirs.”[189]

[189] The whole ballad, with a different reading of the passage here translated, is in the Cancionero de Romances, Saragossa, 1550, 12mo, Parte II. f. 188, beginning “Media noche era por hilo.” Often, however, as the adventures of the Count Claros are alluded to in the old Spanish poetry, there is no trace of them in the old chronicles. The fragment in the text begins thus, in the Cancionero General (1535, f. 106. a):--

Pesame de vos, el Conde, Porque assi os quieren matar; Porque el yerro que hezistes No fue mucho de culpar; Que los yerros por amores Dignos son de perdonar. Suplique por vos al Rey, Cos mandasse de librar; Mas el Rey, con gran enojo, No me quisiera escuchar, etc.

The beginning of this ballad in the complete copy from the Saragossa Romancero shows that it was composed before clocks were known.

The next is also a fragment, and relates, with great simplicity, an incident which belongs to the state of society that existed in Spain between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the two races were much mingled together and always in conflict.

I was the Moorish maid, Morayma, I was that maiden dark and fair,-- A Christian came, he seemed in sorrow, Full of falsehood came he there. Moorish he spoke,--he spoke it well,-- “Open the door, thou Moorish maid, So shalt thou be by Allah blessed, So shall I save my forfeit head.” “But how can I, alone and weak, Unbar, and know not who is there?” “But I’m the Moor, the Moor Mazote, The brother of thy mother dear. A Christian fell beneath my hand, The Alcalde comes, he comes apace, And if thou open not thy door, I perish here before thy face.” I rose in haste, I rose in fear, I seized my cloak, I missed my vest, And, rushing to the fatal door, I threw it wide at his behest.[190]

[190] The forced alliteration of the first lines, and the phraseology of the whole, indicate the rudeness of the very early Castilian:--

Yo mera mora Morayma, Morilla d’un bel catar; Christiano vino a mi puerta, Cuytada, por me enganar. Hablome en algaravia, Como aquel que la bien sabe: “Abras me las puertas, Mora, Si Ala te guarde de mal!” “Como te abrire, mezquina, Que no se quien tu seras?” “Yo soy el Moro Maçote, Hermano de la tu madre, Que un Christiano dejo muerto; Tras mi venia el alcalde. Sino me abres tu, mi vida, Aqui me veras matar.” Quando esto oy, cuytada, Comenceme a levantar; Vistierame vn almexia, No hallando mi brial; Fuerame para la puerta, Y abrila de par en par.

Cancionero General, 1535, f. 111. a.

The next is complete, and, from its early imitations and glosses, it must probably be quite ancient. It begins “Fonte frida, Fonte frida,” and is, perhaps, itself an imitation of “Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,” another of the early and very graceful lyrical ballads which were always so popular.

Cooling fountain, cooling fountain, Cooling fountain, full of love! Where the little birds all gather, Thy refreshing power to prove; All except the widowed turtle Full of grief, the turtle-dove. There the traitor nightingale All by chance once passed along, Uttering words of basest falsehood In his guilty, treacherous song: “If it please thee, gentle lady, I thy servant-love would be.” “Hence, begone, ungracious traitor, Base deceiver, hence from me! I nor rest upon green branches, Nor amidst the meadow’s flowers; The very wave my thirst that quenches Seek I where it turbid pours. No wedded love my soul shall know, Lest children’s hearts my heart should win; No pleasure would I seek for, no! No consolation feel within;-- So leave me sad, thou enemy! Thou foul and base deceiver, go! For I thy love will never be, Nor ever, false one, wed thee, no!”

The parallel ballad of “Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca,” is no less simple and characteristic; Rosa being the name of the lady-love.

“Rose, fresh and fair, Rose, fresh and fair, That with love so bright dost glow, When within my arms I held thee, I could never serve thee, no! And now that I would gladly serve thee, I no more can see thee, no!”

“The fault, my friend, the fault was thine,-- Thy fault alone, and not mine, no! A message came,--the words you sent,-- Your servant brought it, well you know. And naught of love, or loving bands, But other words, indeed, he said: That you, my friend, in Leon’s lands A noble dame had long since wed;-- A lady fair, as fair could be; Her children bright as flowers to see.”

“Who told that tale, who spoke those words, No truth he spoke, my lady, no! For Castile’s lands I never saw, Of Leon’s mountains nothing know, Save as a little child, I ween, Too young to know what love should mean.”[191]

[191] These two ballads are in the Cancionero of 1535, ff. 107 and 108; both evidently very old. The use of _carta_ in the last for an unwritten message is one proof of this. I give the originals of both for their beauty. And first:--

Fonte frida, fonte frida, Fonte frida, y con amor, Do todas las avezicas Van tomar consolacion, Sino es la tortolica, Que esta biuda y con dolor. Por ay fue a passar El traydor del ruyseñor; Las palabras que el dezia Llenas son de traicion: “Si tu quisiesses, Señora, Yo seria tu seruidor.” “Vete de ay, enemigo, Malo, falso, engañador, Que ni poso en ramo verde Ni en prado que tenga flor; Que si hallo el agua clara, Turbia la bebia yo: Que no quiero aver marido, Porque hijos no haya, no; No quiero plazer con ellos, Ni menos consolacion. Dejame, triste enemigo, Malo, falso, mal traidor, Que no quiero ser tu amiga, Ni casar contigo, no.”

The other is as follows:--

“Rosa fresca, Rosa fresca, Tan garrida y con amor; Quando yos tuve en mis brazos, No vos supe servir, no! Y agora quos serviria, No vos puedo aver, no!” “Vuestra fue la culpa, amigo, Vuestra fue, que mia, no! Embiastes me una carta, Con un vuestro servidor, Y en lugar de recaudar, El dixera otra razon: Querades casado, amigo, Alla en tierras de Leon; Que teneis muger hermosa, Y hijos como una flor.” “Quien os lo dixo, Señora, No vos dixo verdad, no! Que yo nunca entre en Castilla, Ni alla en tierras de Leon, Si no quando era pequeño, Que no sabia de amor.”

Several of the other anonymous ballads in this little collection are not less curious and ancient, among which may be noted those beginning, “Decidme vos pensamiento,”--“Que por Mayo era por Mayo,”--and “Durandarte, Durandarte,”--together with parts of those beginning, “Triste estaba el caballero,” and “Amara yo una Señora.”[192] Most of the rest, and all whose authors are known, are of less value and belong to a later period.

[192] These ballads are in the edition of 1535, on ff. 109, 111, and 113.

The Cancionero of Castillo, where they appeared, was enlarged and altered in eight subsequent editions, the last of which was published in 1573; but in all of them this little collection of ballads, as originally printed in the first edition, remained by itself, unchanged, though in the additions of newer poetry a modern ballad is occasionally inserted.[193] It may, therefore, be doubted whether the General Cancioneros did much to attract attention to the ballad poetry of the country, especially when we bear in mind that they are almost entirely filled with the works of the conceited school of the period that produced them, and were probably little known except among the courtly classes, who placed small value on what was old and national in their poetical literature.[194]

[193] One of the most spirited of these later ballads in the edition of 1573, begins thus (f. 373):--

Ay, Dios de mi tierra, Saqueis me de aqui! Ay, que Ynglaterra Ya no es para mi.

God of my native land, O, once more set me free! For here, on England’s soil, There is no place for me.

It was probably written by some homesick follower of Philip II.

[194] Salvá (Catalogue, London, 1826, 8vo, No. 60) reckons nine Cancioneros Generales, the principal of which will be noticed hereafter.

But while the Cancioneros were still in course of publication, a separate effort was made in the right direction to preserve the old ballads, and proved successful. In 1550, Stevan G. de Nagera printed, at Saragossa, in two successive parts, what he called a “Silva de Romances,” the errors of which he partly excuses in his Preface, on the ground that the memories of those from whom he gathered the ballads he publishes were often imperfect. Here, then, is the oldest of the proper ballad-books; one obviously taken from the traditions of the country. It is, therefore, the most curious and important of them all. A considerable number of the short poems it contains must, however, be regarded only as fragments of popular ballads already lost; while, on the contrary, that on the Count Claros is the complete one, of which the Cancionero, published forty years earlier, had given only such small portions as its editor had been able to pick up; both striking facts, which show, in opposite ways, that the ballads here collected were obtained, as the Preface says they were, from the memories of the people.

As might be anticipated from such an origin, their character and tone are very various. Some are connected with the fictions of chivalry, and the story of Charlemagne; the most remarkable of which are those on Gayferos and Melisendra, on the Marquis of Mantua and on Count Irlos.[195] Others, like that of the cross miraculously made for Alfonso the Chaste, and that on the all of Valencia, belong to the early history of Spain,[196] and may well have been among those old Castilian ballads which Argote de Molina says were used in compiling the “General Chronicle.” And finally, we have that deep, domestic tragedy of Count Alarcos, which goes back to some period in the national history or traditions of which we have no other early record.[197] Few among them, even the shortest and least perfect, are without interest; as, for instance, the obviously old one in which Virgil figures as a person punished for seducing the affections of a king’s daughter.[198] As specimens, however, of the national tone which prevails in most of the collection, it is better to read such ballads as that upon the rout of Roderic on the eighth day of the battle that surrendered Spain to the Moors,[199] or that on Garci Perez de Vargas, taken, probably, from the “General Chronicle,” and founded on a fact of so much consequence as to be recorded by Mariana, and so popular as to be referred to for its notoriety by Cervantes.[200]

[195] Those on Gayferos begin, “Estabase la Condessa,” “Vamonos, dixo mi tio,” and “Assentado esta Gayferos.” The two long ones on the Marquis of Mantua and the Conde d’ Irlos begin, “De Mantua salió el Marqués,” and “Estabase el Conde d’ Irlos.”

[196] Compare the story of the angels in disguise, who made the miraculous cross for Alfonso, A. D. 794, as told in the ballad, “Reynando el Rey Alfonso,” in the Romancero of 1550, with the same story as told in the “Crónica General” (1604, Parte III. f. 29);--and compare the ballad, “Apretada està Valencia,” (Romancero, 1550,) with the “Crónica del Cid,” 1593, c. 183, p. 154.

[197] It begins, “Retrayida està la Infanta,” (Romancero, 1550,) and is one of the most tender and beautiful ballads in any language. There are translations of it by Bowring (p. 51) and by Lockhart (Spanish Ballads, London, 1823, 4to, p. 202). It has been at least four times brought into a dramatic form;--viz., by Lope de Vega, in his “Fuerza Lastimosa”; by Guillen de Castro; by Mira de Mescua; and by José J. Milanes, a poet of Havana, whose works were printed there in 1846 (3 vols. 8vo);--the three last giving their dramas simply the name of the ballad,--“Conde Alarcos.” The best of them all is, I think, that of Mira de Mescua, which is found in Vol. V. of the “Comedias Escogidas” (1653, 4to); but that of Milanes contains passages of very passionate poetry.

[198] “Mandó el Rey prender Virgilios” (Romancero, 1550). It is among the very old ballads, and is full of the loyalty of its time. Virgil, it is well known, was treated, in the Middle Ages, sometimes as a knight, and sometimes as a wizard.

[199] Compare the ballads beginning, “Las Huestes de Don Rodrigo,” and “Despues que el Rey Don Rodrigo,” with the “Crónica del Rey Don Rodrigo y la Destruycion de España” (Alcalá, 1587, fol., Capp. 238, 254). There is a stirring translation of the first by Lockhart, in his “Ancient Spanish Ballads,” (London, 1823, 4to, p. 5,)--a work of genius beyond any of the sort known to me in any language.

[200] Ortiz de Zuñiga (Anales de Sevilla, Appendix, p. 831) gives this ballad, and says it had been printed two hundred years. If this be true, it is, no doubt, the oldest _printed_ ballad in the language. But Ortiz is uncritical in such matters, like nearly all of his countrymen. The story of Garci Perez de Vargas is in the “Crónica General,” Parte IV., in the “Crónica de Fernando III.,” c. 48, etc., and in Mariana, Historia, Lib. XIII. c. 7.

The genuine ballad-book thus published was so successful, that, in less than five years, three editions or recensions of it appeared; that of 1555, commonly called the Cancionero of Antwerp, being the last, the amplest, and the best known. Other similar collections followed;

## particularly, one in nine parts, which, between 1593 and 1597, were

separately published at Valencia, Burgos, Toledo, Alcalá, and Madrid; a variety of sources, to which we no doubt owe, not only the preservation of so great a number of old ballads, but much of the richness and diversity we find in their subjects and tone;--all the great divisions of the kingdom, except the southwest, having sent in their long-accumulated wealth to fill this first great treasure-house of the national popular poetry. Like its humbler predecessor, it had great success. Large as it was originally, it was still further increased in four subsequent recensions, that appeared in the course of about fifteen years; the last being that of 1605-1614, in thirteen parts, constituting the great repository called the “Romancero General,” from which, and from the smaller and earlier ballad-books, we still draw nearly all that is curious and interesting in the old popular poetry of Spain. The whole number of ballads found in these several volumes is considerably over a thousand.[201]

[201] See Appendix (B), on the Romanceros.

But since the appearance of these collections, above two centuries ago, little has been done to increase our stock of old Spanish ballads. Small ballad-books on particular subjects, like those of the Twelve Peers and of the Cid, were, indeed, early selected from the larger ones, and have since been frequently called for by the general favor; but still it should be understood, that, from the middle and latter part of the seventeenth century, the true popular ballads, drawn from the hearts and traditions of the common people, were thought little worthy of regard, and remained until lately floating about among the humbler classes that gave them birth. There, however, as if in their native homes, they have always been no less cherished and cultivated than they were at their first appearance, and there the old ballad-books themselves were oftenest found, until they were brought forth anew, to enjoy the favor of all, by Quintana, Depping, and Duran, who, in this, have but obeyed the feeling of the age in which we live.

The old collections of the sixteenth century, however, are still the only safe and sufficient sources in which to seek the true old ballads. That of 1593-1597 is particularly valuable, as we have already intimated, from the circumstance, that its materials were gathered so widely out of different parts of Spain; and if to the multitude of ballads it contains we add those found in the Cancionero of 1511, and in the ballad-book of 1550, we shall have the great body of the anonymous ancient Spanish ballads, more near to that popular tradition which was the common source of what is best in them than we can find it anywhere else.

But, from whatever source we may now draw them, we must give up, at once, all hope of arranging them in chronological order. They were originally printed in small volumes, or on separate sheets, as they chanced, from time to time, to be composed or found,--those that were taken from the memories of the blind ballad-singers in the streets by the side of those that were taken from the works of Lope de Vega and Góngora; and just as they were first collected, so they were afterwards heaped together in the General Romanceros, without affixing to them the names of their authors, or attempting to distinguish the ancient ballads from the recent, or even to group together such as belonged to the same subject. Indeed, they seem to have been published at all merely to furnish amusement to the less cultivated classes at home, or to solace the armies that were fighting the battles of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, in Italy, Germany, and Flanders; so that an orderly arrangement of any kind was a matter of small consequence. Nothing remains for us, therefore, but to consider them by their _subjects_; and for this purpose the most convenient distribution will be, first, into such as relate to fictions of chivalry, and especially to Charlemagne and his peers; next, such as regard Spanish history and traditions, with a few relating to classical antiquity; then such as are founded on Moorish adventures; and lastly, such as belong to the private life and manners of the Spaniards themselves. What do not fall naturally under one of these divisions are not, probably, ancient ballads; or, if they are such, are not of consequence enough to be separately noticed.

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