Ya se parte de Toledo ese buen Cid afamado,[38]
which Lockhart, whose version begins at the eleventh line, calls Bavieca. These are, of course, no older than the sixteenth century, and this is also the date of
A concilio dentro en Roma, á concilio bien llamado,[39]
entitled The Excommunication of the Cid in the English version. There is a note of disrespect in the original which need cause no surprise, for our Spanish friends, though incorruptibly orthodox, keep their religion and their politics more apart than one might think, and at this very period Charles V. had shown unmistakably that he knew how to put a Pope in his place as regards temporal matters. But it need scarcely be said that the Spanish contains nothing equivalent to Lockhart’s—
The Pope he sitteth above them all, that they may kiss his toe—
a Protestant interpolation so grotesque as to be wholly out of keeping in any Spanish poem.
You will see, then, that most of the Cid ballads translated by Lockhart are unrepresentative. He might have given us a version of
Dia era de los reyes, dia era señalado[40]—
one of three romances[41] which are taken from the same source as the first in his group—