In Lockhart’s second group of romances the central figure is Bernardo del Carpio who, says the translator, ‘belongs exclusively to Spanish History, or rather perhaps to Spanish Romance.’ The word ‘perhaps’ may be omitted. Bernardo del Carpio was a fabulous paladin invented by the popular poets of Castile, who, either through the Chanson de Roland, or some similar poem, had heard of Charlemagne’s victories in the Peninsula. It is not absolutely certain that Charlemagne ever invaded Spain; still, his expedition is recorded by Arab historians as well as by Castilian chroniclers, and no doubt it was commonly believed to be an historical fact. But, as time went on, the idea that Charlemagne had carried all before him offended the patriotic sentiment of the Castilian folk-poets, and this led them to give the story a very different turn. What happened precisely is not clear, but the explanation suggested by Milá y Fontanals and Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo is ingenious and probable. Attracted perhaps by the French name of Bernardo, the juglares seem to have seized upon the far-off figure of a certain Bernardo (son of Ramón, Count of Ribagorza), who had headed successful raids against the Arabs. They removed the scene of his exploits from Aragón to Castile, transformed him into the son of the Count de Saldaña and Thiber, Charlemagne’s sister—or, alternatively, the son of the Count Don Sancho and Jimena, sister of Alfonso the Chaste—called him Bernardo del Carpio, and hailed him as the champion of Castile. The childless Alfonso is represented as inviting Charlemagne to succeed him when he dies; the mythical Bernardo protests in the name of Alfonso’s subjects, and the offer is withdrawn; thereupon Charlemagne invades Spain, and is defeated at Roncesvalles—not, as in the Chanson de Roland, by the Arabs, but—by Spaniards from the different provinces united under the leadership of Bernardo del Carpio. The Crónica general speaks of Bernardo’s slaying with his own hand ‘un alto ome de Francia que avie nombre Buesso,’ and this was developed later into a personal combat between Roland and Bernardo del Carpio who, of course, is the victor. These imaginary exploits were celebrated in cantares de gesta of which fragments are believed to be embedded in the Crónica general, and these are represented by three romances. None of the forty-six ballads in the Bernardo del Carpio series can be regarded as ancient with the possible exception of—
Con cartas y mensajeros el rey al Carpio envió[19]—
quoted in the Second Part of Don Quixote. This romance, as Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo thinks, is derived from a cantar de gesta written after the compilation of the Crónica general. Of the Bernardo romances printed in Duran’s collection four are by Lorenzo de Sepúlveda, four by Gabriel Lobo Lasso de la Vega, and three by Lucas Rodríguez. Lockhart’s four examples are all modern, and his renderings are not specially successful; but in the original the first of the four—
Con tres mil y mas leoneses deja la ciudad Bernardo[20]—
is a capital imitation of a popular ballad. It makes its earliest appearance in the 1604 edition of the Romancero general, and that is enough to prove its modernity.
Another modern ballad, which is also first found in the Romancero general, is translated by Lockhart under the title of The Maiden Tribute. Neither the translation nor the original—
En consulta estaba un dia con sus grandes y consejo[21]—
[91]calls for comment. A similar legend is associated with the name of Fernán González, the hero of the eighth poem in Lockhart’s book. Fernán González, Count of Castile, was an historical personage more remarkable as a political strategist than as a leader in the field. However, he makes a gallant figure in the Poema de Fernán González, a thirteenth-century poem written in the quaderna vía, which appears to have been imitated a hundred years later by the French author of Hernaut de Beaulande. But no extant romance on Fernán González is based on the Poema. The ballad translated by Lockhart—
Preso está Fernán González el gran conde de Castilla[22]—
comes from the Estoria del noble caballero Fernán González, a popular arrangement of the Crónica general as recast in 1344. The romance is a good enough piece of work, but it is more modern than the ballad beginning