[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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):—