Y los de Enrique
Cantan, repican y gritan:
¡Viva Enrique!
Y los de Pedro
Clamorean, doblan, lloran
Su rey muerto.
This is indeed a most brilliant performance, worthy, as Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo says, of Góngora himself at his best; but the very brilliance of the versification is enough to prove that the ballad cannot have been written by a poet of the people. Still, though it is neither ancient nor popular, we may be grateful to Lockhart for including it in his volume.
He was less happy in deciding to give us The Lord of Buitrago, a version of a ballad beginning
Si el caballo vos han muerto, subid, rey, en mi caballo.[55]
This is not of any great merit, nor is it in any sense popular [104] or ancient: it appears to be the production of Alfonso Hurtado de Velarde, a Guadalajara dramatist who lived towards the end of the sixteenth century, and much of its vogue is due to the fact that it struck the fancy of Vélez de Guevara who used the first six words as the title of one of his plays. Lockhart was better advised in choosing The King of Aragon, a translation of