Sous la feuillée et sur l’herbe
Il s’assied, l’homme superbe,
Don Rodrigue le hardi.
In this instance we have to do with a genuine old romance derived—more or less indirectly—from a lost epic on the Infantes of Lara written between 1268 and 1344, or perhaps from a lost recast of this lost epic. And Lockhart might have chosen other ballads of even more energetic inspiration which spring from the same source. Among these are—
A Calatrava la Vieja la combaten castellanos[27]—
in which Rodrigo de Lara vows vengeance for the insult offered to his wife by Gonzalo González, the youngest of the Infantes of Lara; and that genuine masterpiece of barbaric but poignant pathos in which Gonzalo Gustios kisses the severed heads of his seven murdered sons:—
Pártese el more Alicante víspera de sant Cebrián.[28]
And to these Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo would add a third ballad beginning with the line:—
Ya se salen de Castilla castellanos con gran saña.[29]
But, if a foreigner may be allowed an opinion, this falls far short of the others in force and fire.