Sempres est morte. Deus ait mercit de l’anme!
Another famous ballad in the Charlemagne cycle, translated by Lockhart under the title of The Admiral Guarinos—
Mala la vistes, franceses, la caza de Roncesvalles[80]—
is also universally known from its being quoted in Don Quixote. [114] Its origin is not clear, but it seems to be related to Ogier le Danois, and it has certainly lived long and travelled far if, as Georg Adolf Erman reports, it was sung in Russian in Siberia as recently as 1828. A more special interest attaches to the fine elfin ballad—
A cazar va el caballero, á cazar como solía[81]—
which Lockhart entitles The Lady of the Tree. It is, as he says, ‘one of the few old Spanish ballads in which mention is made of the Fairies,’ and the seven years’ enchantment reminded him of ‘those Oriental fictions, the influence of which has stamped so many indelible traces on the imaginative literature of Spain.’ The theory of Oriental influence is not brought forward so often nowadays, and is challenged in what was thought to be its impregnable stronghold. The melancholy Kelt has taken the place of the slippery Oriental; but theories come and go, and we can only hope that our grandchildren will smile as indulgently at our Kelts as we smile at our grandfathers’ Arabs.
Hélo, hélo por do viene el infante vengador[82]
is the original of The Avenging Childe, a superb ballad which is better represented in Gibson’s version. Compare, for instance, the following translation with Lockhart’s:—
’Tis a right good spear, with a point so sharp, the toughest plough-share might pierce,
For seven times o’er was it tempered fine, in the blood of a dragon fierce,