Miraba de Campo-Viejo el rey de Aragón un dia.[56]
This is thought by Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo to be, possibly, the production of some soldier serving at Naples under Alfonso v. of Aragón, and in any case it is of popular inspiration. Lorenzo de Sepúlveda’s text contains an allusion to a page—un pajecico—whom Alfonso is said to have loved better than himself, and the translator was naturally puzzled by it. It is precisely by attention to some such detail that we are often enabled to fix the date of composition; and so it happens in the present instance. A fuller and better text is given by Esteban de Nájera, who reads un tal hermano for the incomprehensible un pajecico. This reading makes the matter clear. The reference is to the death of Alphonso v.’s brother Pedro; this occurred in 1438, and the romance was probably written not long afterwards.
At this point Lockhart enters upon the series of border-ballads called romances fronterizos, and he begins with a translation of
Reduan, bien se te acuerda que me distes la palabra,[57]
quoted by Ginés Pérez de Hita in the first part of his Guerras civiles de Granada, published in 1595 under the title of Historia de los bandos de los Zegríes y Abencerrajes. [105] Pérez de Hita speaks of it as ancient, and Lockhart is, of course, not to blame for translating the ballad precisely as he found it in the text before him. Any translator would be bound to do the same to-day if he attempted a new rendering of the poem; but he would doubtless think it advisable to state in a note the result of the critical analysis which had scarcely been begun when Lockhart wrote. It now seems fairly certain that Pérez de Hita ran two romances into one, and that the verses from the fourth stanza onwards in Lockhart—
They passed the Elvira gate, with banners all displayed—
are part of a ballad on Boabdil’s expedition against Lucena in 1483. This martial narrative, describing the gorgeous squadrons of El Rey Chico as they file past the towers of the Alhambra packed with applauding Moorish ladies, reduces to insignificance The Flight from Granada, though the translation is an improvement on Lorenzo de Sepúlveda’s creaking original:—
En la ciudad de Granada grandes alaridos dan.[58]
The next in order is The Death of Don Alonso de Aguilar, a rendering of
Estando el rey don Fernando en conquista de Granada.[59]