Legends & Romances of Spain

by Lewis Spence

Romantic Ballads

We now come to consider the romantic ballads, the third and last section of Lockhart’s collection. “The Moor Calaynos” we have already described, and the same applies to “Gayferos” and “Melisendra,” its sequel. The ballad which follows these, “Lady Alda’s Dream,” is alluded to by Lockhart as “one of the most admired of all the Spanish ballads.” It is no favourite of mine. I may judge it wrongly, but it seems to me inferior, and I much prefer the stirring “Admiral Guarinos,” which treads upon its halting heels with all the impatience of a warlike rhythm to spur it on.

Guarinos was admiral to King Charlemagne. In my boyhood days the condition of the British Navy was a newspaper topic of almost constant recurrence, and I was wont to speculate upon the awful inefficiency which must have crept into the Frankish fleet during the enforced absence of its chief in the country of the Moors, for Guarinos was captured by the Saracens at Roncesvalles. His captor, King Marlotes, treated him in a princely manner, but pressed him to become a convert to Islam, promising to give him his two daughters in marriage did he consent to the proposal. But the Admiral was adamant and refused to be bribed or coaxed into the acceptance of the faith of Mohammed and Termagaunt. Working himself up into one of those passions which seem to be the especial privilege of Oriental potentates, Marlotes commanded that Guarinos should be incarcerated in the lowest dungeon in his castle keep.

It was the Moorish custom to hale captives to the light of day three times in every year for the popular edification and amusement. On one of these occasions, the Feast of St John, the King raised a high target beneath which the Moorish knights rode in an attempt to pierce it with their spears. But so lofty was it that none of them might succeed in the task, and the King, annoyed at their want of skill, refused to permit the banquet to commence until the target was transfixed. Guarinos boasted that he could accomplish the feat. The royal permission was accorded him to try, and his grey charger and the armour he had not worn for seven long years were brought to him.

They have girded on his shirt of mail, his cuisses well they’ve clasp’d,

And they’ve barred the helm on his visage pale, and his hand the lance hath grasped,

And they have caught the old grey horse, the horse he loved of yore,

And he stands pawing at the gate—caparisoned once more.

Guarinos whispered in the old horse’s ear, and it recalled the voice of its master.

Oh! lightly did Guarinos vault into the saddle-tree,

And slowly riding down made halt before Marlotes’ knee;

Again the heathen laughed aloud—“All hail, sir knight,” quoth he,

“Now do thy best, thou champion proud. Thy blood I look to see.”

With that Guarinos, lance in rest, against the scoffer rode,

Pierced at one thrust his envious breast, and down his turban trode.

Now ride, now ride, Guarinos—nor lance nor rowel spare—

Slay, slay, and gallop for thy life—the land of France lies there!

There would seem to be some connexion between this ballad and the French romance of “Ogier the Dane,” and Erman tells us that it was sung in Russian in Siberia as late as 1828.

“The Lady of the Tree” tells how a princess was stolen by the fairies, and how a knight to whom she appealed for rescue turned a deaf ear to her request and was afterward scorned by her when she returned to her rightful station. “The False Queen” is a mere fragment, but “The Avenging Childe” is both complete and vivid. Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly declares that Gibson’s version of this ballad is superior to that of Lockhart. Let us compare a verse of both.

Avoid that knife in battle strife, that weapon short and thin;

The dragon’s gore hath bath’d it o’er, seven times ’twas steeped therein;

Seven times the smith hath proved its pith, it cuts a coulter through—

In France the blade was fashioned, from Spain the shaft it drew.

Gibson renders this:

’Tis a right good spear with a point so sharp, the toughest plough-share might pierce.

For seven times o’er it was tempered fine in the blood of a dragon fierce,

And seven times o’er it was whetted keen, till it shone with a deadly glance,

For its steel was wrought in the finest forge, in the realm of mighty France.

My preference is for Lockhart’s rendering. Gibson’s first line is extraordinarily clumsy and cacophonous, and the ugly inversions in the second line could scarcely be tolerated outside the boundaries of the nursery. The remaining lines are well enough, but no improvement, I think, upon those of Lockhart, only the whole has a better swing, a livelier lilt, even if in the first line this is roughened by the crudity occasioned by the juxtaposition of so many sibilants and explosives. The Avenging Childe duly accounts for his enemy.

Right soon that knife hath quenched his life—the head is sundered sheer,

Then gladsome smiled the Avenging Childe, and fix’d it on his spear.

Pity it is that a sense of humour seldom chimes with a sense of the romantic. An ‘avenging childe’ who could smile gladly when fixing the head of a foe on his spear seems more fitted for a Borstal institution than for the silken atmosphere of Courts. Yet he married the Infanta, and was knighted and honoured by the King. Possibly they found in him a kindred soul, if all we read in romance regarding kings and infantas be true.