Don Alonzo de Aguilar
Upon the fall of Granada the Catholic zeal of Ferdinand and Isabella insisted upon the conversion of the Moors of that province. Most of the defeated pagans concurred, outwardly at least, with the royal decree, but in the Sierra of Alpuxarra there remained a leaven of the infidel blood who refused baptism at the hands of the priests who were sent to seal them of the faith. A royal order at length went forth to carry out the ceremony by force of arms. For a season the Moors resisted with the stubborn courage of their race, but at length they were subdued and almost extirpated. But their ruin was not accomplished without severe losses on the side of their would-be proselytizers, one of the most notable of whom was Don Alonzo de Aguilar, brother of that Gonzalvo Hernández de Cordova of Aguilar who gained widespread renown as ‘the Great Captain.’ But the ballad does not seem to square with the facts of history. Indeed it places Aguilar’s death before the surrender of Granada, whereas in reality it took place as late as 1501. Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly thinks that “this points to the conclusion that the romance was not written till long after the event, when the exact details had been forgotten.” But why blame an entire people for what may have been a lapsus memoriæ on the part of a single balladeer? On the other hand, Mr Kelly might justly ask one to indicate any ballad springing from folk-sources the details of which square with the circumstances as known to history or ascertained by research.
Lockhart, as usual upon first mounting his destrier, dashes the spurs in its sides with a flourish:
Fernando, King of Arragon, before Granada lies,
With dukes and barons many a one, and champions of emprise;
With all the captains of Castile that serve his lady’s crown,
He drives Boabdil from his gates, and plucks the crescent down.
So far good. Now for the conclusion:
The Moorish maidens, while she spoke, around her silence kept,
But her master dragged the dame away—then loud and long they wept:
They wash’d the blood, with many a tear, from dint of dart and arrow,
And buried him near the waters clear of the bank of Alpuxarra.
It will not serve to point out that this is just what one might expect in a ballad, for it bears not the shadow of resemblance to the original.
Que de chiquito en la cuna
A sus pechos le criara.
A las palabras que dice,
Cualquiera Mora lloraba:
“Don Alonso, Don Alonso,
Dios perdone la tu alma,
Pues te mataron los Moros,
Los Moros de el Alpujarra.”
I am sometimes tempted to think that the weary giant at Abbotsford wrote all Lockhart’s first verses, as one heads a copy-book for a child!
Lockhart omits from his collection the very fine ballad beginning:
Río verde, Río verde,
Tinto vas en sangre viva;
Entre tí y Sierra Bermeja
Murió gran caballería
Murieron duques y condes,
Señores de gran valía;
Allí muriera Urdiales,
Hombre de valor y estima,
which was rather inaccurately rendered by Bishop Percy as follows:
Gentle river, gentle river,
Lo, thy streams are stained with gore;
Many a brave and noble captain
Floats along thy willow’d shore.
All beside thy limpid waters,
All beside thy sands so bright,
Moorish chiefs and Christian warriors
Joined in fierce and mortal fight.
Perhaps a more accurate though less finished rendering of these opening verses might be:
Emerald river, emerald river,
Stained with slaughter’s evil cheer,
’Twixt Bermeja and thy meadows
Perished many a cavalier.
Duke and count and valiant esquire
Fell upon thy fatal shore;
There died noble Urdiales
Who the stainless title bore.
I have translated these two verses chiefly for the purpose of showing how very freely those English authors who have attempted to render verse from the Castilian have dealt with the originals. And, as I have said before, I suspect that the principal reason for this looseness is a lack of idiomatic grasp. Indeed, it is obvious from most English translations that the sense of the original has been gathered rather than fully apprehended.
We can pass over “The Departure of King Sebastian,” with its daring rhythm of
It was a Lusitanian lady, and she was lofty in degree,
recalling in some measure the irregular lilt of the old Scots ballads, and enter the division entitled by Lockhart “Moorish Ballads.”