Con el marinero
A ser marinera.
I long to go, dear mother mine,
Aboard yon galley fair,
With that young sailor that I love,
His sailor life to share.
[56] There is no need of authorities to prove the universal prevalence of ballads in the seventeenth century; for the literature of that century often reads like a mere monument of it. But if I wished to name any thing, it would be the Don Quixote, where Sancho is made to cite them so often; and the Novelas of Cervantes, especially “The Little Gypsy,” who sings her ballads in the houses of the nobles and the church of Santa María; and “Rinconete and Cortadillo,” where they make the coarse merriment of the thieves of Seville. Indeed, as the puppet-showman says, in Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 26,) “They were in the mouths of every body,—of the very boys in the streets.”
[57] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 28.
[58] The laws of the “Partidas,” about 1260, afford abundant illustrations of the extent and importance of the pastoral life in Spain at that period, and for a long time before.
[59] Ginguené, Hist. Litt. d’Italie, Tom. X., par Salvi, pp. 87, 92.