These popular ditties, it cannot be denied, are slippery authorities for any important fact, unless supported by more direct historic testimony. When composed, however, by contemporaries, or those who lived near the time, they may very naturally record many true details, too insignificant in their consequences to attract the notice of history. The ballad translated with so much elaborate simplicity by Percy, is chiefly taken up, as the English reader may remember, with the exploits of a Sevillian hero named Saavedra. No such personage is noticed, as far as I am aware, by the Spanish chroniclers. The name of Saavedra, however, appears to have been a familiar one in Seville, and occurs two or three times in the muster-roll of nobles and cavaliers of that city, who joined King Ferdinand's army in the preceding year, 1500. Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, eodem anno.
[26] Mendoza notices these splenetic effusions (Guerra de Granada, p. 13); and Bleda (Corónica, p. 636) cites the following couplet from one of them.
"Decid, conde de Ureña,
Don Alonso donde queda."
[27] The Venetian ambassador, Navagiero, saw the count of Ureña at Ossuna, in 1526. He was enjoying a green old age, or, as the minister expresses it, "molto vecchio e gentil corteggiano però." "Diseases," said the veteran good-humoredly, "sometimes visit me, but seldom tarry long; for my body is like a crazy old inn, where travellers find such poor fare, that they merely touch and go." Viaggio, fol. 17.
[28] Guerra de Granada, p. 301.—Compare the similar painting of Tacitus, in the scene where Germanicus pays the last sad offices to the remains of Varus and his legions. "Dein semiruto vallo, humili fossa, accisae jam reliquiae consedisse intelligebantur: medio campi albentia ossa, ut fugerant, ut restiterant, disjecta vel aggerata; adjacebant fragmina telorum, equorumque artus, simul truncis arborum antefixa ora."(Annales, lib. 1, sect. 61.) Mendoza falls nothing short of this celebrated description of the Roman historian;
"Pan etiam Arcadiâ dicat se judice victum."
[29] Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, pp. 300-302.
The Moorish insurrection of 1570 was attended with at least one good result, in calling forth this historic masterpiece, the work of the accomplished Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, accomplished alike as a statesman, warrior, and historian. His "Guerra de Granada," confined as it is to a barren fragment of Moorish history, displays such liberal sentiments, (too liberal, indeed, to permit its publication till long after its author's death,) profound reflection, and classic elegance of style, as well entitled him to the appellation of the Spanish Sallust.
[30] Pragmáticas del Reyno, fol. 6.
[31] Pragmáticas del Reyno, fol. 7.