Muy grande llanto hacia,
Vistióse paños de luto,
Y delante el Rey se iba.
El Rey quando asi le vió,
Desta suerte le decía:
“Bernaldo, por aventura
Cobdicias la muerte mia?”
The Chronicle reads thus: “E el [Bernardo] quandol supo, que su padre era preso, pesol mucho de coraçon, e bolbiosele la sangre en el cuerpo, e fuesse para su posada, faziendo el mayor duelo del mundo; e vistióse paños de duelo, e fuesse para el Rey Don Alfonso; e el Rey, quando lo vido, dixol: ‘Bernaldo, cobdiciades la muerte mia?’” It is plain enough, in this case, that the Chronicle is the original of the ballad; but it is very difficult, if not impossible, from the nature of the case, to show that any particular ballad was used in the composition of the Chronicle, because, we have undoubtedly none of the ballads in the form in which they existed when the Chronicle was compiled in the middle of the thirteenth century, and therefore a correspondence of phraseology like that just cited is not to be expected. Yet it would not be surprising, if some of these ballads on Bernardo, found in the Sixth Part of the “Flor de Romances,” (Toledo, 1594, 18mo,) which Pedro Flores tells us he collected far and wide from tradition, were known in the time of Alfonso the Wise, and were among the Cantares de Gesta to which he alludes. I would instance particularly the three beginning, “Contandole estaba un dia,” “Antesque barbas tuviesse,” and “Mal mis servicios pagaste.” The language of those ballads is, no doubt, chiefly that of the age of Charles V. and Philip II., but the thoughts and feelings are evidently much older.
[210] Among the ballads taken from the “Crónica General” is, I think, the one in the ballad-book of 1555, beginning “Preso esta Fernan Gonzalez,” though the Chronicle says (Parte III. f. 62, ed. 1604) that it was a Norman count who bribed the castellan, and the ballad says it was a Lombard. Another, which, like the two last, is very spirited, is found in the “Flor de Romances,” Séptima Parte, (Alcalá, 1597, 18mo, f. 65,) beginning “El Conde Fernan Gonzalez,” and contains an account of one of his victories over Almanzor not told elsewhere, and therefore the more curious.
[211] The story of the Infantes de Lara is in the “Crónica General,” Parte III., and in the edition of 1604 begins at f. 74. I possess, also, a striking volume, containing forty plates, on their history, by Otto Vaenius, a scholar and artist, who died in 1634. It is entitled “Historia Septem Infantium de Lara” (Antverpiae, 1612, fol.); the same, no doubt, an imperfect copy of which Southey praises in his notes to the “Chronicle of the Cid” (p. 401). Sepúlveda (1551-84) has a good many ballads on the subject; the one I have partly translated in the text beginning,—