“That Pedro was accessory to the violent death of the young and innocent princess whom he had married, and immediately afterward deserted for ever, there can be no doubt,” says Lockhart, referring to the marriage of Pedro with Blanche de Bourbon. But whether he murdered his queen or not, his paramour, Maria de Padilla, was innocent of all complicity in the affair, although the ballad makes her the instigator of the horrid deed, and it is plain that the poems which refer to her were written with a sinister political motive.
Mariana, who is sufficiently reliable, states that Pedro’s conduct toward his queen had aroused the anger of many of his nobles, who presented him with a remonstrance in writing. His fierce and homicidal temper aroused to fury at what he considered an unwarranted interference in his private concerns, he immediately gave the order that his unfortunate French consort should be put to death by poison in the prison where she, was confined. The poem makes Pedro and his paramour plot upon the death of the unhappy Queen in the crude manner of the balladeer all the world over.
“Maria de Padilla, be not thus of dismal mood,
For if I twice have wedded me, it all was for thy good,”
may be good ballad-writing, but I confess the barbarous inversion in the second line appears to me to be unnecessary.
“But if upon Queen Blanche ye will that I some scorn should show,
For a banner to Medina my messenger shall go.—
The work shall be of Blanche’s tears, of Blanche’s blood the ground,
Such pennon shall they weave for thee, such sacrifice be found.”
With the example of many enchanted passages of allusion no less recondite occurring in the ballads of his own country-side, Lockhart might reasonably have been expected to have done much better than the last couplet.