If I meet with Mudara, my spear brings him down.
As I read these lines I recall a big drawing-room, the narrow casements of which look upon a wilderness of garden woodland made magical by the yellow shadows of the hour when it is neither evening nor afternoon. Upon a table of mottled rosewood lies a copy of the Spanish Ballads in the embossed and fretted binding of the days when such books were given as presents and intended for exhibition. A child of ten, I had stolen into this Elysium redolent of rose-leaves and potpourri, and, opening the book at random, came upon the lines just quoted. For the first time I tasted the delights of rhythm, of music in words. The verses photographed themselves on my brain. Searching through the book until darkness fell, it seemed to me that I could find nothing so good, nothing that swung along with such a gallop. But the cup had been held to my lips, and my days and nights became a quest for words wedded to music. I had to look for some time before I encountered anything better than, or equal to, the haunting rhythm of “The Vengeance of Mudara.” The years have brought discoveries beside which the first pales into insignificance, adventures in books of a spirit more subtle, carrying the thrill of a keener amazement; but none came with the force of such revelation as was vouchsafed by that page in an unforgotten book in an unforgettable room.
The first of the ballads in which Lockhart deals with the subject of the Infantes of Lara—for the one we have been discussing follows it—is entitled “The Seven Heads,” and details the circumstance of the massacre of the unhappy princes. From the Historia de España of Juan de Marinia (1537–1624) we learn that in the year 986 Ruy Velásquez, lord of Villaren, celebrated his marriage with Donna Lombra, a lady of high birth, at Burgos. The festivities were on a scale of great splendour, and among the guests were Gustio González, lord of Salas of Lara, and his seven sons. These young men, of the blood of the Counts of Castile, were celebrated for their chivalric prowess, and had all been knighted on the self-same day.
As evil chance would have it, a quarrel arose between González, the youngest of the seven brothers, and one Alvar Sanchez, a relation of the bride. Donna Lombra thought herself insulted, and in order to avenge herself, when the young knights rode in her train as she took her way to her lord’s castle, she ordered one of her slaves to throw at González a wild cucumber soaked in blood, “a heavy insult and outrage, according to the then existing customs and opinions of Spain.” What this recondite insult signified does not matter. But surely, whatever its meaning, and making all allowance for the rudeness of the age of which she was an ornament, the lady did greater despite to herself than to her enemy by the perpetration of such an act of crude vulgarity. The slave, having done as he was bid, fled for protection to his mistress’s side. But that availed him nothing, for the outraged Infantes slew him “within the very folds of her garment.”
Ruy Velásquez, burning with Latin anger at what he deemed an insult to his bride, and therefore to himself, was determined upon a dreadful vengeance. But he studiously concealed his intention from the young noblemen, and behaved to them as if nothing of moment had occurred. Some time after these events he sent Gustio González, the father of the seven young champions, on a mission to Cordova, the ostensible object of which was to receive on his behalf a tribute of money from the Moorish king of that city. He made Gustio the bearer of a letter in Arabic, which he could not read, the purport of which was a request to the Saracen chieftain to have him executed. But the infidel displayed more humanity than the Christian, and contented himself with imprisoning the unsuspecting envoy.
In furtherance of his plans Velásquez pretended to make an incursion into the Moorish country, in which he was accompanied by the Infantes of Lara with two hundred of their followers. With fiendish ingenuity he succeeded in leading them into an ambuscade. Surrounded on all sides by the Saracen host, they resolved to sell their lives at the highest possible price rather than surrender. Back to back they stood, taking a terrible toll of Moorish lives, and one by one they fell, slain but unconquered. Their heads were dispatched to Velásquez as an earnest of a neighbourly deed by the Moorish king, and were paraded before him and in front of their stricken father, who had been released in order that Velásquez might gloat over his grief. When he had satisfied his vengeance the lord of Villaren permitted the stricken father to return to his empty home.
But Ruy Velásquez was not destined to go unpunished. While Gustio González had been imprisoned in the dungeons of the Moorish King of Cordova he had contracted an alliance with that monarch’s sister, by whom he had a son, Mudarra. When this young man had attained the age of fourteen years his mother prevailed upon him to go in search of his father, and when he had found his now aged parent he learned of the act of treachery by which his brothers had been slain. Determined to avenge the cowardly deed, he bided his time, and, encountering Ruy Velásquez when on a hunting expedition, slew him out of hand. Gathering around him a band of resolute men, he attacked the castle of Villaren, and executed a fearful vengeance upon the haughty Donna Lombra, whom he stoned and burnt at the stake. In course of time he was adopted by his father’s wife, Donna Sancha, who acknowledged him as heir to the estates of his father.
We have already indicated the stirring nature of the ballad in which Mudarra takes vengeance upon the slayers of his brethren. Its predecessor in Lockhart’s collection, that in which the agonized father beholds the seven heads of his murdered sons, falls far short of it in power.
“My gallant boys,” quoth Lara, “it is a heavy sight
These dogs have brought your father to look upon this night;