Much more promising are the canciones, or lyrical poems of a semi-conventional cast, which have a character and metrical form all their own. They usually consist of twelve lines, divided into two parts. The first four lines comprehend the idea on which the song is founded, and this is developed or applied in the eight succeeding lines. The Cancionero General contains one hundred and fifty-six of these little songs, some of which are the best poems contained in it, and perhaps they owe their excellence to the verbal restraint which their form compels. An allied form is the villancico, or conceit, usually of three or four lines, a fugitive piece, enshrining some fleeting emotion, and often packed with the matter of poesy.
The “Romancero General”
The title Romancero General was applied to many collections of Spanish songs and narrative romances in verse published during the seventeenth century and later. Of these only the older require illustration here. The first in point of date was the collection of Miguel de Madrigal, published in 1604, although another work containing upward of a thousand romances and songs was produced in the same year, and bears the same title. Another collection of primary importance is that of Pedro de Flores (1614). This is obviously a bookseller’s compilation, but is none the worse for that, save that it pretends to embrace the entire sum of Spanish romanceros, whereas it contains not one of those appearing in the Cancionero General. All of these works contain numerous amatory poems of the kind so liberally exemplified in the Cancionero General, but with these we have little concern, and our attention may be better employed in examining the romanceros proper which it contains. These for the most part would seem to belong to the fifteenth century, and relate to the civil wars of Granada, the last Moorish principality in Spain, and the heroic and gallant adventures of Moorish knights. It is, indeed, in this work that we first perceive the trend toward a literary fashion in things Moorish to which we have referred in a previous chapter, but, as has been indicated, this is very far from saying that these poems owe their origin to Moorish models. But there are not wanting Castilian themes and stories, such as those relating to Roderic, Bernaldo de Carpio, Fernán González, the Infantes of Lara, and the Cid. Most of these were written by men of humble station, the true poets of the people, the late representatives of those juglares who had sung or recited the cantares de gesta.[1]
Mr James Fitzmaurice Kelly is at once the best informed and most sympathetic of modern critics on the subject of the romancero. In his admirable Chapters on Spanish Literature, a delightful series of excursions into several of the most interesting provinces of Spanish letters, he reviews the romancero in some forty vivid pages, remarkable alike for critical insight and the sanity of the conclusions to which they point. Taking Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads as a basis for comment, he addresses himself to the racy criticism of the collection of the Scottish translator. A better plan for the initiation of the English-speaking reader into the mysteries of the romancero could scarcely be conceived, for there are few who possess no acquaintance with Lockhart’s work, one of the most persistent of the drawing-room books of Victorian days. Following Mr Kelly’s admirable lead, then, though not in the spirit of base imitation, let us take Lockhart as our ‘document’ and examine the more interesting of his translations, not only as regards their subject-matter, but their excellences and shortcomings, comparing them also with those of Bowring and others. Following Depping, Lockhart divides his volume of ballads into three sections: Historical, Moorish, and Romantic. With the first two groups of poems, or rather with their subject-matter—those relating to King Roderic and Bernaldo de Carpio—we have dealt elsewhere.
The Maiden Tribute
The next in order, “The Maiden Tribute,” deals with a demand of the Moorish monarch Abderahman that a hundred Christian virgins should annually be delivered into his hands. King Ramíro refused to comply with such a shameful custom, and marched to meet the Moor. A two days’ battle was fought near Alveida, and at the conclusion of the first day’s hostilities the superior discipline of the Saracens had told heavily against the Castilians. During the night, St Iago, the patron saint of Spain, appeared to the King in a vision and promised his aid in the field next day. With morning the battle was joined once more, the Saint, true to his word, led the Spanish charge, and the Saracens were cast into headlong rout. The maiden tribute was never afterward paid.
Lockhart’s ballad, or rather translation, certainly does not enhance the original.
If the Moslem must have tribute, make men your tribute-money,