Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
this seems to be a façon de parler, for the Lorelei legend was invented by Clemens Brentano barely twenty years before Heine wrote his famous ballad. However this may be, in producing his effect of mystic weirdness the German artist does not eclipse the anonymous Spanish singer who lived four centuries earlier. This is a bold thing to say; yet nobody who reads El Conde Arnaldos will think it much too bold.
Passing by a pleasing song (not in the romance form),[85] we come to the incomplete Julianesa ballad which Lockhart printed, so he tells us, chiefly because it contained an allusion to the pretty Spanish custom of picking flowers on St. John’s Day:—
¡Arriba, canes, arriba! ¡que rabia mala os mate![86]
But, so far from being (like its immediate predecessor in Lockhart’s book) an artistic performance, the Julianesa ballad is one of the most primitive in the Gayferos group. Its robust inspiration is in striking contrast to the too dulcet Song of the Galley,[87] which is followed by The Wandering Knight’s Song, a capital version of a romance famous all the world over owing to its quotation by Don Quixote at the inn:—
Mis arreos son las armas, mi descanso es pelear.[88]
[118]We need say nothing of the Serenade,[89] The Captive Knight and the Blackbird,[90] Valladolid,[91] and Dragut the Corsair.[92] We should gladly exchange these translations of late and mediocre originals for versions of
Fonte-frida, fonte-frida, fonte-frida y con amor;[93]
or of one of the few but interesting ballads belonging to the Breton cycle, such as the old romance on Lancelot from which Antonio de Nebrija quotes—
Tres hijuelos habia el rey, tres hijuelos, que no mas;[94]