l. 21. ficiera, i.e., hiciera.
[Page 122].—l. 9. Martín González: the champion of the king of Aragon, whom the Cid, as representative of the king of Castile, was to meet in battle upon his return from his pilgrimage.
l. 11. This romance deals with the sad history of Blanche of Bourbon, the French wife of Pedro el Cruel, whom he deserted for his mistress, María de Padilla. Blanche was poisoned in 1366. Cf. Lockhart’s version and the accompanying note.
[Page 124].—l. 1. sospiros, i.e., suspiros.
l. 2. terné, i.e., tendré.
l. 8. The Moorish ballads are more romantic and lyric, as a rule, than those dealing with the purely Christian side of Spanish history. This one on the conquest of Alhama—a city of the province of Granada, taken from the Moors by the marquis of Cadiz, Feb. 28, 1482—has been done into English verse by Byron (Oxford edition, 1896, p. 97), who wrongly translated the refrain as “Woe is me, Alhama.”—el rey moro: Muley Hassan, the father of Boabdil.
[Page 124].—l. 20. el Zacatín: a street of Granada now leading to the Plaza Nueva.
[Page 125].—l. 7. batalla, battalion.
l. 10. hablara: as numerous instances have already shown the verbal form in -ara, -iera is regularly used in the ballad as an aorist or preterite of the indicative. This use is a living one.
l. 24. Abencerrajes: one of the two leading tribes among the Moors. They were dominant until the fifteenth century, when, assembled in one of the courts of the Alhambra, they were there murdered by their rivals, the Cegríes. Cf. Le dernier des Abencerrages of Chateaubriand and the modern Spanish poem Granada of Zorrilla.