| "La furia horrible de los torbellinos |
| Cada momento mas se vee yr creciendo; |
| Cubre la blanca nieve les caminos, |
| Tambien los hombres luego va cubriendo." |
So sings, or rather says, the poet-chronicler Rufo, whose epic of four and twenty cantos shows him to have been much more of a chronicler than a poet. Indeed, in his preface, he avows that strict conformity to truth which is the cardinal virtue of the chronicler.—See the Austriada (Madrid, 1584).
[32] "Pocos sois, i venís presto."—Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, p. 47.
Hita gives a cancion in his work, the burden of which is a complaint that the mountaineers had made their attack too late instead of too early:—
"Pocos sois, y venís tarde."
(Guerras de Granada, tom. ii. p. 32.) The difference is explained by the circumstance that the author of the verses—probably Hita himself—considers that Christmas Eve, not New Year's Eve, was the time fixed for the assault.
[33] Marmol, Rebelion de los Moriscos, tom. i. p. 238.—Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, pp. 45-52.—Miniana, Hist. de España, p. 367.—Herrera, Historia General, tom. i. p. 726.—Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. ix pp. 573-575.
[34] "Creyendo que lo uno y lo otro seria parte para que por bien de paz se diese nueva orden en lo de la prematica, sin aventurar ellos sus personas y haciendas."—Marmol, Rebelion de los Moriscos, tom. i. p. 239.
[35] Beni Umeyyah, in the Arabic, according to an indisputable authority, my learned friend Don Pascual de Gayangos. See his Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, passim.