Legends & Romances of Spain Part 32

London, 1896.

History of Spanish Literature, by Bouterwek. Bohn Library.

See further the exhaustive bibliography of chivalric literature in vol. iv of Ormsby's Don Quixote (1885), and the bibliography of Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly's Spanish Literature.

NOTES

[1] The moro latinado, or Spanish-speaking Moor, is a prominent figure in later Spanish story.

[2] Bishop Odoor's will (747) shows the break-up of Hispanic Latin, and Charles the Bald in an edict of 844 alludes to the usitato vocabulo of the Spaniards--their "customary speech." On the Gothic period see Pere Jules Tailham, in the fourth volume of Cahier and Martin's Nouveaux Melanges d'Archeologie, d'Histoire, et de Litterature sur le Moyen Age (1877).

[3] This jargon owed much more to the lingua rustica than to Gothic, which has left its mark more deeply upon the p.r.o.nunciation and syntax of Spanish than on its vocabulary.

[4] Catalan differed slightly in a dialectic sense from Provencal. It was divided into pla Catala and Lemose, the common speech and the literary tongue.

[5] "On the whole," says Professor Saintsbury, "the ease, accomplishment, and, within certain strict limits, variety of the form, are more remarkable than any intensity or volume of pa.s.sion or of thought" (Flourishing of Romance and Rise of Allegory, pp. 368-369). He further remarks that the Provencal rule "is a rule of 'minor poetry,'

accomplished, scholarly, agreeable, but rarely rising out of minority."

[6] D. 1214.

[7] It was ent.i.tled El Arte de Trobar, and is badly abridged in Mayan's Origenes de la Lengua Espanola (Madrid, 1737).

[8] On Provencal influence upon Castilian literature see Manuel Mila y Fonta.n.a.l, Trovadores en Espana (Barcelona, 1887); and E. Baret, Espagne et Provence (1857), on a lesser scale.

[9] Still they found many Spanish-speaking people in that area; and it was the Romance speech of these which finally prevailed in Spain.

[10] Madrid, 1839.

[11] In the Cancionero de Romances (Antwerp, 1555).

[12] See the article on Alfonso XI in N. Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus.

[13] English translation by James York.

[14] Reigned 1407-54.

[15] Gaston Paris, La Litterature Francaise au Moyen Age (Paris, 1888), and Leon Gautier, Les epopees Francaise (Paris, 1878-92), are the leading authorities upon the chansons de gestes. Accounts of these in English can be found in Ludlow's Popular Epics of the Middle Ages (1865) and in my Dictionary of Medieval Romance (1913).

[16] See W. Wentworth Webster, in the Boletin of the Academia de Historia for 1883.

[17] See Manuel Mila y Fonta.n.a.l, Poesia heroico-popular Castellana (Barcelona, 1874).

[18] The term, first employed by Count William of Poitiers, the earliest troubadour, at first implied any work written in the vernacular Romance languages. Later in Spain it was used as an equivalent for cantar, and finally indicated a lyrico-narrative poem in octosyllabic a.s.sonants.

[19] In German it was known from 1583, and in English from 1619. Southey's translation (London, 1803) is (happily) an abridgment, and has been reprinted in the "Library of Old Authors" (1872). I provide full bibliographical details when dealing with the romance more fully.

[20] Omniana, t. ii, p. 219 (London, 1812).

[21] Don Quixote, Part I, chap. vi.

[22] English translation by Southey, 4 vols. (London, 1807).

[23] In the chapter ent.i.tled "Moorish Romances of Spain" the reader will find specimens of the romantic fictions of that people, from which he can judge for himself of their affinity or otherwise with the Spanish romances.

[24] See Dozy, History of the Moors in Spain, Eng. trans., and Recherches sur l'Histoire politique et litteraire de l'Espagne (1881); F. J. Simonet, Introduction to his Glosario de Voces iberias y latinas usadas entre los Muzarabes (1888); Renan, Averroes et Averrosme (1866). Gayangos' Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain (London, 1843) is somewhat obsolete, as is Conde's Dominacion de los Arabes.

[25] "The Raid," an old Spanish poem.

[26] Ormsby (The Poem of the Cid), who wrote in 1879, seems to have had the most elementary notions of what a cantar was, and states that the Poema "was nearly contemporary with the first chansons de gestes." But he is probably at least a century out in his reckoning, as the first chansons date from about the middle of the eleventh century. Of trovador and juglar he had evidently never heard. Yet he is anything but superficial, and on the whole his book is the best we have in English on the Poema. It is unlucky, too, as Saintsbury remarks, that neither Ticknor nor Southey, who wrote so widely on ancient Spanish literature, were acquainted with the chansons de gestes. Still more luckless is it that so much in the way of Spanish translation was left to Longfellow, who shockingly mangled and Bowdlerized many fine ballads. Probably no poet was so well qualified as he to divest a ballad of all pith and virility in the course of translation. Bad as are his Spanish renderings, however, they are adequate when compared with his exploits in the field of Italian translation.

[27] See his Poema del Cid (1898).

[28] See Manuel Rivadeneyra, Biblioteca de Autores espanoles, vol. xvi (1846-80).

[29] A good deal of controversy has arisen concerning the metre of the Poema. Professor Cornu of Prague (see M. Gaston Paris, in Romania, xxii, pp. 153, 531) has stated that the basis of it is the ballad octosyllable, full or catalectic, arranged as hemistichs of a longer line, but this theory presupposes that the copyists of the original MS. must have mistaken such a simple measure, which is scarcely credible. Professor Saintsbury (Flourishing of Romance, p. 403) gives it as his opinion that "n.o.body has been able to get further in a generalization of the metre than that the normal form is an eight and six (better a seven and seven) 'fourteener,' trochaically cadenced, but admitting contraction and extension with a liberality elsewhere unparalleled." No absolute system of a.s.sonance or rhyme appears, and we are almost forced to the conclusion that the absence of this is in a measure due to the kind offices of Abbot Pedro.

[30] By this phrase the Cid seems to have been widely known; in fact it appears to have served him as a sort of cognomen or nickname.

[31] The pa.s.sage in the Poema del Cid which tells of the combat that followed has perhaps a better right than any other in the epic to the t.i.tle 'Homeric' The translation which I furnish of it may not be so exact as those of Frere or Ormsby. But although I am only too conscious of its many shortcomings, I cannot bring myself to make use of the pedestrian preciseness of the one or the praiseworthy version of the other of my predecessors, both of which, in my view, fail to render the magnificent spirit and chivalric dash of the original. All that I can claim for my own translation is that it does not fail so utterly as either in this regard. I have in places attempted the restoration of lines which seemed to me omitted or coalesced with others, and I must admit that this rendering of a great pa.s.sage is more consciously artificial than the others--a fault which I am unable to rectify. But allowances must be made for the rendition of such a pa.s.sage, and the whole must be accepted by the reader faute de mieux.

[32] Throughout the Poema and elsewhere the Cid is constantly alluded to as "Mio Cid" ("My lord"). I deal with the etymology of the name farther on, but hold to the form 'the Cid' as being most familiar to English readers.

[33] This pa.s.sage is reminiscent of the saying of the famous Border outlaw Jock Eliot, when he and his men came upon a large haystack of which they resolved to make fodder for their horses. "Eh, man,"

exclaimed the humorous raider, "if ye had legs, wouldna' ye run!"

[34] The commencement of the pa.s.sage in question is as follows (lines 1741-50):

The heraldz laften here prikyng up and doun; Now ryngede the tromp and clarioun: Ther is no more to say, but est and west In goth the speres ful sadly in arest; Ther seen men who can juste, and who can ryde; In goth the scharpe spore into the side, Ther schyveren schaftes upon schuldres thykke; He feeleth through the herte-spon the prikke.

Up sprengen speres on twenty foot on hight; Out goon the swerdes as the silver bright.

The balance is, however, greatly in favour of Chaucer, whose lines, if properly accented, beat the original Spanish on its own ground, and this notwithstanding the absurd remark of Swinburne that "Chaucer and Spenser scarcely made a good poet between them."

[35] See the work of Rivadeneyra, Biblioteca de Autores espanoles, vol. xl (1846-48), where the romance is prefaced in a brilliant and scholarly manner by Gayangos. Its origins are ably discussed by Eugene Baret, etudes sur la Redaction Espagnole de l'Amadis de Gaule (1853); T. Braga, Historia das Novellas Portuguezas de Cavalleria (1873); and L. Braunfels, Kritischer Versuch uber den Roman Amadis von Gallien (1876).

[36] Anstruther, in Fife? The Spaniards would know the place through their intercourse with the Flemings, who traded considerably with it. A Spanish vessel put into Anstruther during the flight of the Armada round the coasts of Scotland.

[37] I think I can see in this giant Albadan the giant Albiona, one of the two monsters, sons of Neptune, who, according to Pomponius Mela, attacked Hercules in Liguria. The name Albion was once given to the whole of Britain, and later, as Alba and Albany, to Scotland, whose people were known as Albannach. This is said to mean 'the White,'

in allusion to the cliffs of Dover! It is much more probable that it signified 'the place or region of the G.o.d Alba,' 'the country of the white G.o.d.' All the Scottish G.o.ds were giants, like the Fomorians of Ireland.

[38] Strange that a sword and a ring should so often be the test of ident.i.ty in such tales! So it was, as regards the first of these tokens at least, with Theseus, Arthur, and many another hero. On this head see Hartland, The Legend of Perseus (1894-96).