The wonderful tale of Cleomades and Claremond is almost certainly of Moorish origin in a secondary sense. In his preface to Adenès’ Berte aux grans Piés (Paris, 1832), M. Paulin Paris says: “I am strongly inclined to believe that the original of the fiction of Cleomades is really Spanish or Moorish. All the personages are Saracens or Spaniards; the scene is in Spain; the character of the fiction is akin to that of the fictions of the East.” Keightley believed that Blanche of Castile, the wife of Louis VIII of France, had heard the tale in Spain, and had narrated it to the French poet Adenès, who cast it into literary form.
Ectriva, Queen of Southern Spain, held a great tournament at Seville, at which Marchabias, Prince of Sardinia, so distinguished himself as to win her heart. She bestowed her hand upon the youthful champion, and their union was a happy one, being blessed in time with three daughters and a son. To the boy they gave the name of Cleomades, while his sisters were called Melior, Soliadis, and Maxima.
Cleomades was dispatched upon his travels at an early age. But after he had visited several foreign countries he was summoned home to be present at the wedding of his sisters, who were about to be married to three great princes, all of whom were famous as practitioners of the magic art. They were Melicandus, King of Barbary; Bardagans, King of Armenia; and Croppart, King of Hungary. The last-named monarch was so unfortunate as to be a hunchback, and to his deformity he added a bitter tongue and a wicked heart.
The three monarchs had encountered one another while still some distance from Seville, and had agreed to give such presents to the King and Queen as would necessitate a gift in return. Melicandus presented the royal pair with the golden image of a man, holding in his right hand a trumpet of the same metal, which he sounded if treason came near him. Bardagans gave a hen and six chickens of gold, so skilfully made that they picked up grain and seemed to be alive. Every third day the hen laid an egg of pearl. Croppart gave a large wooden horse magnificently caparisoned, which he told his hosts could travel over land and sea at the rate of fifty leagues an hour.
The King and Queen, generous to a fault, invited the strangers to ask anything that it was in their power to bestow. Melicandus requested the hand of the Princess Melior, Bardagans that of Soliadis, while Croppart demanded that Maxima should be given him as a consort. The two elder sisters were pleased with their suitors, who were both handsome and amiable, but when Maxima beheld the hideous and deformed Croppart she ran to her brother Cleomades and begged him to deliver her from such an unsightly monster.
Cleomades represented to his father the wrong done by him in consenting to such a match. But Croppart insisted that the King’s word had been passed and that he could not retire from his promise. Cleomades, casting about for an argument, told the Hungarian king that the value of the gifts of Melicandus and Bardagans had been proved, but that, so far as any one knew, his story about the wooden horse might be a mere fable. Croppart offered to test the capacity of his wooden steed. At this the golden man blew his trumpet loudly, but all were so interested in the proposed trial that no one noticed it. The prince mounted the gaudily harnessed hobby, and at the request of Croppart turned a pin of steel in its head, and was immediately carried into the air with such velocity that in a few moments he was lost to sight.
The King and Queen, filled with indignation, had Croppart seized, but he argued that the prince should have waited until he had shown him how to manage the wooden horse. Meanwhile Cleomades sped onward for miles and miles. His strange steed continued to cleave the air at a terrific speed, and at length darkness fell without any signs of its slackening its pace. All night Cleomades continued to fly, and during the hours of gloom had plenty of time to ponder upon his awkward situation. Recollecting that there were pins upon the horse’s shoulders like those upon its head, he resolved to try their effect. He found that by turning one of them to right or left the horse went in either direction, and that when the other was turned the wooden hippogriff slackened speed and descended. Morning now broke, and he saw that he was over a great city. By skilful manipulation of his steed he managed to alight upon a lofty tower which stood in the garden of a great palace.
Descending through a trap-door in the roof, he entered a gorgeous sleeping apartment, and beheld a beautiful lady reclining on a sumptuous couch. At his entrance she awoke, and cried out: “Rash man, how have you presumed to enter this apartment? Are you perchance that King Liopatris to whom my father has affianced me?”
“I am that monarch,” replied Cleomades. “May I not speak with you?” he continued, for on beholding the princess he had at once fallen violently in love with her.
“Retire to the garden,” she said, “and I will come to you there.”