This, indeed, is the great difficulty in relation to all researches concerning the oldest Spanish ballads. The very excitement of the national spirit that warmed them into life was the result of an age of such violence and suffering, that the ballads it produced failed to command such an interest as would cause them to be written down. Individual poems, like that of the Cid, or the works of individual authors, like those of the Archpriest of Hita or Don John Manuel, were, of course, cared for, and, perhaps, from time to time transcribed. But the popular poetry was neglected. Even when the special “Cancioneros”—which were collections of whatever verses the person who formed them happened to fancy, or was able to find[188]—began to come in fashion, during the reign of John the Second, the bad taste of the time caused the old national literature to be so entirely overlooked, that not a single ballad occurs in either of them.
The first printed ballads, therefore, are to be sought in the earliest edition of the “Cancioneros Generales,” compiled by Fernando del Castillo, and printed at Valencia in 1511. Their number, including fragments and imitations, is thirty-seven, of which nineteen are by authors whose names are given, and who, like Don John Manuel of Portugal, Alonso de Cartagena, Juan de la Enzina, and Diego de San Pedro, are known to have flourished in the period between 1450 and 1500, or who, like Lope de Sosa, appear so often in the collections of that age, that they may be fairly assumed to have belonged to it. Of the remainder, several seem much more ancient, and are, therefore, more curious and important.
The first, for instance, called “Count Claros,” is the fragment of an old ballad afterwards printed in full. It is inserted in this Cancionero on account of an elaborate gloss made on it in the Provençal manner by Francisco de Leon, as well as on account of an imitation of it by Lope de Sosa, and a gloss upon the imitation by Soria; all of which follow, and leave little doubt that the ballad itself had long been known and admired. The fragment, which alone is curious, consists of a dialogue between the Count Claros and his uncle, the Archbishop, on a subject and in a tone which made the name of the Count, as a true lover, pass almost into a proverb.
“It grieves me, Count, it grieves my heart,
That thus they urge thy fate;
Since this fond guilt upon thy part
Was still no crime of state.
For all the errors love can bring
Deserve not mortal pain;
And I have knelt before the king,