Creciendo tus años,
Creceran tus penas;
Y si no lo sabes,
Escucha esta letra:
Si eres niña y has amor,
Que haras quando mayor?”
Sexta Parte de Flor de Romances, Toledo, 1594, 18mo, f. 27.
[226] If we choose to strike more widely, and institute a comparison with the garrulous old Fabliaux, or with the overdone refinements of the Troubadours and Minnesingers, the result would be yet more in favor of the early Spanish ballads, which represent and embody the excited poetical feeling that filled the whole nation during that period when the Moorish power was gradually broken down by an enthusiasm that became at last irresistible, because, from the beginning, it was founded on a sense of loyalty and religious duty.
[227] See Appendix, B.
[228] In the code of the Partidas, (circa A. D. 1260,) good knights are directed to listen at their meals to the reading of “las hestorias de los grandes fechos de armas que los otros fecieran,” etc. (Parte II. Título XXI. Ley 20.) Few knights at that time could understand Latin, and the “hestorias” in Spanish must probably have been the Chronicle now to be mentioned, and the ballads or gestes on which it was, in part, founded.