Bring me my horse and my buckler blue,
That I may go to fight to retake my children.
"My children are at Guadia, my wife at Jolfata;
Thou hast caused my ruin, O Setti Omm el Fata.
My children are at Guadia, my wife at Jolfata,
Thou hast caused my ruin, O Setti Omm el Fata!"
As may be seen, these verses have no resemblance to those called Moorish. These are of a purely Spanish diction.[47]
Some romances, but not of these last-named, have kept traces of the real legends of the Arabs. There is among them one which treats of the adventures of Don Rodrigues, the last king of the Visigoths--"The Closed House of Toledo."[48] "The Seduction of la Cava," "The Vengeance of Count Julien," "The Battle of Guadalete," are brought back in the same fashion by the historians and writers of Mussulman romances.
The romance on the construction of the Alhambra has preserved the character of an Arabic legend which dates from before the prophet.[49] There is also a romance on the conquest of Spain, attributed to an Arab writer, the same man whom Cervantes somewhat later feigned to present as the author of Don Quixote, the Moor, Cid Hamet ben Engels.[50]