The only considerable exception to this remark is to be found in the stories connected with Charlemagne and his peers. That great sovereign—who, in the darkest period of Europe since the days of the Roman republic, roused up the nations, not only by the glory of his military conquests, but by the magnificence of his civil institutions—crossed the Pyrenees in the latter part of the eighth century, at the solicitation of one of his Moorish allies, and ravaged the Spanish marches as far as the Ebro, taking Pamplona and Saragossa.[202] The impression he made there seems to have been the same he made everywhere; and from this time the splendor of his great name and deeds was connected in the minds of the Spanish people with wild imaginations of their own achievements, and gave birth to that series of fictions which is embraced in the story of Bernardo del Carpio, and ends with the great rout, when, according to the persuasions of the national vanity,
“Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia.”
These picturesque adventures, chiefly without countenance from history, in which the French paladins appear associated with fabulous Spanish heroes, such as Montesinos and Durandarte,[203] and once with the noble Moor Calaynos, are represented with some minuteness in the old Spanish ballads. The largest number, including the longest and the best, are to be found in the ballad-book of 1550-1555, to which may be added a few from that of 1593-1597, making together somewhat more than fifty, of which only twenty occur in the collection expressly devoted to the Twelve Peers, and first published in 1608. Some of them are evidently very old; as, for instance, that on the Conde d’ Irlos, that on the Marquis of Mantua, two on Claros of Montalban, and both the fragments on Durandarte, the last of which can be traced back to the Cancionero of 1511.[204]
The ballads of this class are occasionally quite long, and approach the character of the old French and English metrical romances; that of the Conde d’ Irlos extending to about thirteen hundred lines. The longer ballads, too, are generally the best; and those, through large portions of which the same asonante, and sometimes, even, the same consonante or full rhyme, is continued to the end, have a solemn harmony in their protracted cadences, that produces an effect on the feelings like the chanting of a rich and well-sustained recitative.
Taken as a body, they have a grave tone, combined with the spirit of a picturesque narrative, and entirely different from the extravagant and romantic air afterwards given to the same class of fictions in Italy, and even from that of the few Spanish ballads which, at a later period, were constructed out of the imaginative and fantastic materials found in the poems of Bojardo and Ariosto. But in all ages and in all forms, they have been favorites with the Spanish people. They were alluded to as such above five hundred years ago, in the oldest of the national chronicles; and when, at the end of the last century, Sarmiento notices the ballad-book of the Twelve Peers, he speaks of it as one which the peasantry and the children of Spain still knew by heart.[205]
Historical Ballads.—The most important and the largest division of the Spanish ballads is, however, the historical. Nor is this surprising. The early heroes in Spanish history grew so directly out of the popular character, and the early achievements of the national arms so nearly touched the personal condition of every Christian in the Peninsula, that they naturally became the first and chief subjects of a poetry which has always, to a remarkable degree, been the breathing of the popular feelings and passions. It would be easy, therefore, to collect a series of ballads,—few in number as far as respects the Gothic and Roman periods, but ample from the time of Roderic and the Moorish conquest of Spain down to the moment when its restoration was gloriously fulfilled in the fall of Granada,—a series which would constitute such a poetical illustration of Spanish history as can be brought in aid of the history of no other country. But, for our present purpose, it is enough to select a few sketches from these remarkable ballads devoted to the greater heroes,—personages half-shadowy, half-historical,—who, between the end of the eighth and the beginning of the twelfth century, occupy a wide space in all the old traditions, and serve alike to illustrate the early popular character in Spain, and the poetry to which that character gave birth.
The first of these, in the order of time, is Bernardo del Carpio, concerning whom we have about forty ballads, which, with the accounts in the Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise, have constituted the foundations for many a drama and tale, and at least three long heroic poems. According to these early narratives, Bernardo flourished about the year 800, and was the offspring of a secret marriage between the Count de Saldaña and the sister of Alfonso the Chaste, at which the king was so much offended, that he kept the Count in perpetual imprisonment, and sent the Infanta to a convent; educating Bernardo as his own son, and keeping him ignorant of his birth. The achievements of Bernardo, ending with the victory of Roncesvalles,—his efforts to procure the release of his father, when he learns who his father is,—the falsehood of the king, who promises repeatedly to give up the Count de Saldaña and as often breaks his word,—with the despair of Bernardo, and his final rebellion, after the Count’s death in prison,—are all as fully represented in the ballads as they are in the chronicles, and constitute some of the most romantic and interesting portions of each.[206]
Of the ballads which contain this story, and which generally suppose the whole of it to have passed in one reign, though the Chronicle spreads it over three, none, perhaps, is finer than the one in which the Count de Saldaña, in his solitary prison, complains of his son, who, he supposes, must know his descent, and of his wife, the Infanta, who, he presumes, must be in league with her royal brother. After a description of the castle in which he is confined, the Count says:—
The tale of my imprisoned life