[12] Thus, in one of their romances, we have a Moorish lady "shedding drops of liquid silver, and scattering her hair of Arabian gold" over the corpse of her murdered husband!
"Sobre el cuerpo de Albencayde
Destila liquida plata,
Y convertida en cabellos
Esparce el oro de Arabia."
Can anything be more Oriental than this imagery? In another we have "an hour of years of impatient hopes;" a passionate sally, that can scarcely be outmatched by Scriblerus. This taint of exaggeration, however, so far from being peculiar to the popular minstrelsy, has found its way, probably through this channel in part, into most of the poetry of the Peninsula.
[13] The redondilla may be considered as the basis of Spanish versification. It is of great antiquity, and compositions in it are still extant, as old as the time of the infante Don Manuel, at the close of the thirteenth century. (See Cancionero General, fol. 207.) The redondilla admits of great variety; but in the romances it is most frequently found to consist of eight syllables, the last foot, and some or all of the preceding, as the case may be, being trochees. (Rengifo, Arte Poetica Espanola, (Barcelona, 1727,) cap. 9, 44.) Critics have derived this delightful measure from various sources. Sarmiento traces it to the hexameter of the ancient Romans, which may be bisected into something analogous to the redondillas. (Memorias, pp. 168-171.) Bouterwek thinks it may have been suggested by the songs of the Roman soldiery. (Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit, band iii., Einleitung, p. 20.)—Velazquez borrows it from the rhyming hexameters of the Spanish Latin poets, of which he gives specimens of the beginning of the fourteenth century. (Poesía Castellana, pp. 77, 78.) Later critics refer its derivation to the Arabic. Conde has given a translation of certain Spanish-Arabian poems, in the measure of the original, from which it is evident, that the hemistich of an Arabian verse corresponds perfectly with the redondilla. (See his Dominacion de los Arabes, passim.) The same author, in a treatise, which he never published, on the "poesía oriental," shows more precisely the intimate affinity subsisting between the metrical form of the Arabian and the old Castilian verse. The reader will find an analysis of his manuscript in Part I. Chap. 8, Note 49, of this History.
This theory is rendered the more plausible by the influence which the Arabic has exercised on Castilian versification in other respects, as in the prolonged repetition of the rhyme, for example, which is wholly borrowed from the Spanish Arabs; whose superior cultivation naturally affected the unformed literature of their neighbors, and through no channel more obviously than its popular minstrelsy.
[14] The asonante is a rhyme made by uniformity of the vowels, without reference to the consonants; the regular rhyme, which obtains in other European literatures, is distinguished in Spain by the term consonante. Thus the four following words, taken at random from a Spanish ballad, are consecutive asonantes; regozijo, pellico, luzido, amarillo. In this example, the two last syllables have the assonance; although this is not invariable, it sometimes falling on the antepenultima and the final syllable. (See Rengifo, Arte Poética Española, pp. 214, 215, 218.) There is a wild, artless melody in the asonante, and a graceful movement coming somewhere, as it does, betwixt regular rhyme and blank verse, which would make its introduction very desirable, but not very feasible, in our own language. An attempt of the kind has been made by a clever writer, in the Retrospective Review. (Vol. iv. art. 2.) If it has failed, it is from the impediments presented by the language, which has not nearly the same amount of vowel terminations, nor of simple uniform vowel sounds, as the Spanish; the double termination, however full of grace and beauty in the Castilian, assumes, perhaps from the effect of association, rather a doggerel air in the English.
[15] This may be still further inferred from the tenor of a humorous, satirical old romance, in which the writer implores the justice of Apollo on the heads of the swarm of traitor poets, who have deserted the ancient themes of song, the Cids, the Laras, the Gonzalez, to celebrate the Ganzuls and Abderrahmans and the fantastical fables of the Moors.
"Tanta Zayda y Adalifa, tanta Draguta y Daraxa, tanto Azarque y tanto Adulce, tanto Gazul, y Abenamar, tanto alquizer y marlota, tanto almayzar, y almalafa, tantas emprisas y plumas, tantas cifras y medallas, tanta roperia Mora. Y en vanderillas y adargas, tanto mote, y tantas motas muera yo sino me cansan."
* * * * *
"Los Alfonsos, los Henricos, los Sanchos, y los de Lara, que es dellos, y que es del Cid? tanto olvido en glorias tantas? ninguna pluma las buela, ninguna Musa las canta? Justicia, Apollo, justicia, vengadores rayos lança contra Poetas Moriscos."