Estaba en mesa pobre · buen gesto è buena cara,
Con la poca vianda · buena voluntad para,
A los pobres manjares · el plaser los repara,
l’agos del buen talante · mur de Guadalaxara.
And so on through eight more stanzas. Now, besides the Greek attributed to Æsop and the Latin of Horace, there can be found above twenty versions of this fable, among which are two in Spanish, one by Bart. Leon. de Argensola, and the other by Samaniego; but I think the Archpriest’s is the best of the whole.
[141] There are at least two manuscripts of the poems of this Jew, from which nothing has been published but a few poor extracts. The one commonly cited is that of the Escurial, used by Castro, (Biblioteca Española, Tom. I. pp. 198-202,) and by Sanchez (Tom. I. pp. 179-184, and Tom. IV. p. 12, etc.). The one I have used is in the National Library, Madrid, marked B. b. 82, folio, in which the poem of the Rabbi is found on leaves 61 to 81. Conde, the historian of the Arabs, preferred this manuscript to the one in the Escurial, and held the Rabbi’s true name to be given in it, viz. Santob, and not Santo, as it is in the manuscript of the Escurial; the latter being a name not likely to be taken by a Jew in the time of Peter the Cruel, though very likely to be written so by an ignorant monkish transcriber. The manuscript of Madrid begins thus, differing from that of the Escurial, as may be seen in Castro, ut sup.:—
Señor Rey, noble, alto,
Oy este Sermon,
Que vyene desyr Santob,
Judio de Carrion.