The Poem of the Cid is but a fragment of 3744 lines; written in a barbarous style, in rugged assonant rhymes, and a rude Alexandrine measure, but it glows with the pure fire of poetry, and is full of a noble simplicity and a true epical grandeur, invaluable as a living picture of the age. The ballads relating to the Cid, of which nearly two hundred are extant, are greatly inferior in merit, though some of them are not unworthy to be ranked with the best in this kind. Duran believes the greater part of them to have been written in the 16th century. A few betray, not more by the antiquity of their language than by their natural and simple tone, traces of an earlier age and a freer national life. They all take great liberties with history, thus belying the opinion of Sancho Panza that “the ballads are too old to tell lies.” Such of them as are not genuine relics of the 12th century are either poetical versions of the leading episodes in the hero’s life as contained in the Chronicle, that Chronicle itself having been doubtless composed out of still earlier legends as sung by the wandering juglares, or pure inventions of a later time, owing their inspiration to the romances of chivalry. In these last the ballad-mongers, not to let their native hero be outdone by the Amadises, the Esplandians, and the Felixmartes, engage him in the most extravagant adventures—making war upon the king of France and upon the emperor, receiving embassies from the soldan of Persia, bearding the pope at Rome, and performing other feats not mentioned even in the Poem or the Chronicle. The last and the worst of the Cid ballads are those which betray by their frigid conceits and feeble mimicry of the antique the false taste and essentially unheroic spirit of the age of Philip II. As for the innumerable other poems, dramas and tales which have been founded on the legend of the Cid, from the days of Guillen de Castro and Diamante to those of Quintana and Trueba, they serve merely to prove the abiding popularity of the national hero in his native land.
The chief sources from which the story of the Cid is to be gathered are, first, the Latin chronicle discovered by Risco in the convent of San Isidro at Leon, proved by internal evidence to have been written before 1258; the Cronica General, composed by Alphonso X. in the second half of the 13th century, partly (so far as relates to the Cid) from the above, partly from contemporary Arabic histories, and partly from tradition; the Cronica del Cid, first published in 1512, by Juan de Velorado, abbot of the monastery of San Pedro at Cardeña, which is a compilation from the last, interlarded with new fictions due to the piety of the compiler; lastly, various Arabic manuscripts, some of contemporary date, which are examined and their claims weighed in the second volume of Professor Dozy’s Recherches sur l’histoire politique et littéraire de l’Espagne pendant le moyen âge (Leiden, 1849). Huber, Müller, and Ferdinand Wolf are among the leading authorities in the history and literature of the Cid. M. Damas Hinard has published the poem, with a literal French translation and notes, and John Hookham Frere has rendered it into English with extraordinary spirit and fidelity. The largest collection of the Cid ballads is that of Durant, in the Romancero general, in two volumes, forming part of Rivadeneyra’s Biblioteca de autores españoles.
(H. E. W.)
CIDER, or Cyder (from the Fr. cidre, derived from the Lat. sicera or cisera, Gr. σίκερα, Heb. shēkār, strong drink), an alcoholic beverage made from apples.
Cider and perry (the corresponding beverage made from pears) are liquors containing from as little as 2% of alcohol to 7 or 8%, seldom more, and rarely as much, produced by the vinous fermentation of the expressed juice of apples and pears; but cider and perry of prime quality can only be obtained from vintage fruit, that is, apples and pears grown for the purpose and unsuited for the most part for table use. A few table apples make good cider, but the best perry is only to be procured from pears too harsh and astringent for consumption in any other form. The making of perry is in England confined, in the main, to the counties of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester. These three counties, together with Somerset and Devon, constitute, too, the principal cider-making district of the country; but the industry, which was once more widely spread, still survives an Norfolk, and has lately been revived in Kent, though, in both these counties, much of the fruit used in cider-making is imported from the west country and some from the continent. Speaking generally, the cider of Herefordshire is distinguished for its lightness and briskness, that of Somerset for its strength, and that of Devonshire for its lusciousness.
Cider used to be made in the south of Ireland, but the industry had almost become extinct until revived by the Department of Agriculture, which in 1904 erected a cider-making plant at Drogheda, Co. Louth, gave assistance to private firms at Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, and Fermoy, Co. Cork, and provided a travelling mill and press to work in the South Riding of Co. Tipperary. The results have been highly satisfactory, a large quantity of good cider having been produced.
Inasmuch as English orchards are crowded with innumerable varieties of cider apples, many of them worthless, a committee composed of members of the Herefordshire Fruit-Growers’ Association and of the Fruit and Chrysanthemum Society was appointed in 1899 to make a selection of vintage apples and pears best suited to Herefordshire and the districts adjoining. The following is the list drawn up by the committee:—
Apples.—Old Foxwhelp, Cherry Pearmain, Cowarne Red, Dymock Red, Eggleton Styre, Kingston Black or Black Taunton, Skyrme’s Kernel, Spreading Redstreak, Carrion apple, Cherry Norman, Cummy Norman, Royal Wilding, Handsome Norman, Strawberry Norman, White Bache or Norman, Broad-leaved Norman, Argile Grise, Bramtôt, De Boutville, Fréquin Audièvre, Medaille d’Or, the last five being French sorts introduced from Normandy about 1880, and now established in the orchards of Herefordshire.
Pears.—Taynton Squash, Barland, Oldfield, Moorcroft or Malvern Hill, Red-pear, Thurston’s Red, Longland, Pine pear.