Instead of Cuento, later editions read Leyendas.
The introductory quotation is taken from the "Don Quijote," Part I, chap. 45. The words were addressed by Don Quijote to members of the rural police who were arresting him for depredations committed on the highway. The full sentence in Ormsby's translation reads: "Who was he that did not know that knights-errant are independent of all jurisdictions, that their law is their sword, their charter their prowess, and their edicts their will?" This Spanish declaration of independence was frequently used as a slogan by the Romanticists. Espronceda is here making the quotation apply more particularly to his lawless hero.
[1. ]Era más de media noche: the poet begins with a characteristic Romantic landscape, gloomy, medieval, fantastic, uncanny. He is trying to create a mood of horror. He follows the Horatian precept of beginning the plot in the middle (in medias res). The situation here introduced is not resumed until Part Four is reached. Parts Two and Three supply the events leading up to the duel. The Duque de Rivas's "Candil" begins in similar fashion:
Más ha de quinientos años
En una torcida calle,
Que de Sevilla en el centro
Da paso a otras principales;
Cerca de la media noche,
Cuando la ciudad más grande
Es de un grande cementerio