Por la calle de su dama paseando se halla Zaide.
In a preliminary note he says:—‘The Spanish editor pretends (how truly I know not) that they are translations from the Arabic or Morisco language. Indeed the plain, unadorned nature of the verse, and the native simplicity of language and sentiment, which runs through these poems, prove that they are ancient; or, at least, that they were written before the Castillians began to form themselves on the model of the Tuscan poets, and had imported from Italy that fondness for conceit and refinement which has for these two centuries past so miserably infected the Spanish poetry, and rendered it so unnatural, affected, and obscure.’
[63] Primavera, No. 85a; Durán, No. 1064. Byron’s adaptation is entitled A Very Mournful Ballad on the Siege and Conquest of Alhama, which, in the Arabic language is to the following purport:—
The Moorish king rides up and down,
Through Granada’s royal town;
From Elvira’s gates to those
Of Bivarambla on he goes.
Woe is me, Alhama!
Letters to the monarch tell,
How Alhama’s city fell: