For Spain has lost her guardian when Castile has lost her chief.
The Moorish host is pouring like a river o’er the land:
Curse on the Christian fetters that bind González’ hand!
At ‘mirk of night’ the Infanta rose, and, proceeding alone to the castle where González was confined, proffered such a heavy bribe to the governor to set him at liberty that he permitted his prisoner to go free. But the hero was still hampered by his chains, and when the pair were stopped by a hunter-priest who threatened to reveal their whereabouts to the King’s foresters unless the Infanta paid him a shameful ransom, González was unable to punish him as he deserved. But as the wretch embraced the princess she seized him by the throat, and González grasped the spear which he had let fall and drove it through his body. Shortly afterward they encountered a band of González’ own men-at-arms, with which incident their night of adventure came to a close.
The Infantes of Lara
Few Spanish romanceros celebrate incidents more tragic or memorable than those which cluster round the massacre of the unfortunate Infantes or Princes of Lara by their treacherous uncle, Ruy or Roderigo Velásquez. Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly thinks that one of these originated from a lost epic written between 1268 and 1344, “or perhaps from a lost recast of this lost epic.” Strange that such epics should all be lost! He pleads that Lockhart might have utilized other more ‘energetic’ ballads to illustrate this legend, but I think in this does some despite to the very fine and spirited translation entitled “The Vengeance of Mudara”:
Oh, in vain have I slaughter’d the Infants of Lara;
There’s an heir in his halls—there’s the bastard Mudara,
There’s the son of the renegade—spawn of Mahoun: