Chapters on Spanish Literature

by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

And here ye have the story of my Cid Campeador.

The Poema is the oldest and most important existing epic on the Cid, but there is ample proof that his deeds were sung in other cantares de gesta of early date—earlier than the compilation of Alfonso the Learned’s Crónica general, which was finished in 1268. Recent investigations place this beyond doubt. It was long supposed that the chapters on the Cid in the Crónica general were largely derived from the Poema, but Sr. D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal’s researches into the history of the text of the Crónica general have shown that this view is untenable. The printed text of the Crónica general, issued by Florián de Ocampo at Zamora in 1541, is not what it was thought to be—namely, the original compiled by order of Alfonso the Learned: it lies at three removes from that original, and this fact throws new light on the history of epic poetry in Spain. Briefly stated, the results of the recent researches are these: the First Crónica general was utilised in another chronicle compiled in 1344; this Second Crónica general was condensed in an abridgment which has disappeared; this last abridgment of the Second Crónica general is now represented by three derivatives—the Third Crónica general issued by Ocampo, the Crónica de Castilla, and the Crónica de Veinte Reyes. And it is further established that pre-existing cantares de gesta on the Cid were utilised in the chronicles as follows: the Poema del Cid (from verse 1094 onwards) was used only in the Crónica de Veinte Reyes, while what concerns the Cid in the first Crónica general comes principally—not (as was believed) from the Poema del Cid as we know it, but—from another epic, no longer in existence, which began and continued in very much the same way as the Poema for about 1250 lines, where the resemblance ended. The chapters on the Cid in the Second Crónica general derive mainly from another vanished cantar de gesta which coincided to some extent with a surviving epic on the Cid known as the Crónica rimada, or (less generally) as the Cantar de Rodrigo.

This Crónica rimada, apparently written by a juglar in the diocese of Palencia, was thought by Dozy to be older than the Poema del Cid, and Dozy has been made to feel his error. But let us not reproach him, as though we were infallible. Dozy undeniably overestimated the age of the Crónica rimada as a whole; still the critical instinct of this great scholar led him to conclude that it was a composite work, that its component parts were not all of the same period, and (a conclusion afterwards confirmed by Milá y Fontanals) that the passage relating to King Fernando (v. 758 ff.)—

El buen rey don Fernando par fue de emperador—

is the oldest fragment embodied in the text. In these respects Dozy’s views are admitted to be correct. The Crónica rimada, which in its present form is assigned to about the end of the fourteenth century, is an amalgam of diverse and inappropriate materials, and scarcely deserves to be regarded as an original poem at all. If it is probable that the author of the Poema del Cid had heard the Chanson de Roland, it is still more probable that the author of the Crónica rimada had heard Garin le Lohérain. Not only does he incorporate part of a lost cantar de gesta on King Fernando; he borrows from other lost Spanish epics, from the existing Poema del Cid, from degraded oral traditions, and perhaps from foreign sources not yet identified. The patchwork is a poor thing pieced together by an imitator who has lost the secret of the primitive epic, and insincerely commemorates exploits which he must have known to be fabulous—such as the Cid’s expedition to France, and his triumph under the walls of Paris. But, though greatly [23]inferior to the Poema, the Crónica rimada is interesting in substance and manner. It includes primitive versions of legends which, in more refined and elaborate forms, were destined to become famous throughout Europe: the quarrel between the Cid’s father and Count Gómez de Gormaz (not in consequence of a blow, or anything connected with an extravagantly artificial code of honour, but over a matter of sheep-stealing); the death of the Count at the hands of the Cid, not yet thirteen years of age; and the marriage of the Count’s daughter Jimena to her father’s slayer, who is represented as a reluctant bridegroom:—

Ally despossavan a doña Ximena Gomes con Rodrigo el Castellano.

Rodrigo respondió muy sannudo contra el rey Castellano:

Señor, vos me despossastes mas a mi pessar que de grado.

The Cid in the Poema is a loyal subject, faithful to his alien King under extreme provocation. In the Crónica rimada he is transformed into a haughty, turbulent feudal baron, more like the Cid of the later Spanish ballads or romances; and it is worth noting that the irregular versification of the Crónica rimada, in which lines of sixteen syllables predominate, approximates roughly to the metre of the romances, to which I shall return in a later lecture. For the moment it is enough to say that by 1612 there were enough ballads on the Cid to form a romancero, and that in the most complete modern collection they amount to 205. Southey and Ormsby, both ardent admirers of the Poema, thought that the romances on the Cid impressed ‘more by their number than their light,’ and no doubt these ballads vary greatly in merit. But a few are really admirable—such as the romance adapted with masterly skill by Lope de Vega in Las Almenas de Toro.