campéador. The Spanish word campeador, derived from campear, to be eminent in the field, signifies excellent, pre-eminent, and was the title given to their champion by the Spaniards, The Moors called him the Cid, i.e. Seid, an Arabic word for chief.
pavois, an old word for a large shield, which protected the whole body, and on which the Franks raised the king whom they had elected.
richomme, from the Spanish ricohombre, a title given to the Barons of Aragon.
servidumbre (Spanish), an establishment of servants. In Spanish the last syllable is sounded.
EVIRADNUS.
As far as is known, the story is of Hugo's own invention. The epoch may be supposed to be the later Middle Ages, the place anywhere in Teuton lands. The proper names are mostly of Hugo's own invention; some are, however, echoes from German mediaeval history. The poem and another called Le Petit Roi de Galice form a section of the Légende called Les Chevaliers Errants.
l 1. There was a Ladislaus, King of Poland, in the fourteenth, and a Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, in the fifteenth century. But the personages of the poem are in reality wholly imaginary.
stryge (written also strige), a vampire or demon that wanders about at night. Derived from Latin striga, a bird of night, or a witch.
lémure: Lémures (the singular is very rare) is the Latin lemures, the disembodied spirits which haunted houses and caused terror to the living.
val, valley, The word is now little used and only in poetry, except in the phrase par monts et par vaux.