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INTRODUCTION.

THE intention of this Publication is to furnish the English reader with some notion of that old Spanish minstrelsy, which has been preserved in the different Cancioneros and Romanceros of the sixteenth century.

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That great mass of popular poetry has never yet received in its ow country the attention to which it is entitled. While hundreds of volumes have been written about authors who were, at the best, ingenious imitators of classical or Italian models, not one, of the least critical merit, has been bestowed upon those older and simpler poets who were contented with the native inspirations of Castilian pride. No Spanish Percy, or Ellis, or Ritson, has arisen to perform what no one but a Spaniard can entertain the smallest hope of achieving.

Mr Bouterweck, in his excellent History of Spanish Literature, complained that no attempt had ever been made even to arrange the

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old Spanish ballads in any thing like chronological order.* An ingenious countryman of his own, Mr Depping, has since, in some measure, supplied this defect: He has arranged the historical ballads according to the chronology of the persons and events which they celebrate-for even this obvious matter had not been attended to by the original Spanish collectors-but he has modestly and judiciously refrained from attempting the chronological arrangement of them as compositions; feeling, of course, that no person can ever acquire such a delicate knowledge of a language not his own, as might enable him to distinguish, with accuracy, between the different shades of antiquity— or even perhaps to draw, with certainty and precision, the broader line between that which is of genuine antiquity, and that which is mere modern imitation. By far the greater part of the following translations are from pieces which the reader may find in Mr Depping's Collection, published at Leipsig in 1817.+

It is therefore, in the present state of things, quite impossible to determine to what period the composition of the oldest Spanish ballads now extant ought to be referred. The first Cancionero, that of Ferdinand de Castillo, was published so early as 1510. In it a considerable number both of the historical and of the romantic class of ballads are included; and as the title of the book itself bears" Obras de

*Book I. sect. 1.

+"Sammlung der besten alt-Spanischen Historischen-Ritter-und-Maurischen Romanzen, &c. von Cî. Depping.”

todos o de los mas principales Trobadores de España, assi antiguos como modernos," it is clear that at least a certain number of these pieces were considered as entitled to the appellation of "ancient," in the year 1510.

The Cancionero de Romances, published at Antwerp in 1555, and afterwards often reprinted under the name of Romancero, was the earliest collection that admitted nothing but ballads. The Romancero Historiado of Lucas Rodriguez, appeared at Alcala in 1579;— the Collection of Lorenzo de Sepulveda, at Antwerp, in 1566. The ballads of the Cid were first published in a collected form in 1615, by Escobar.

But there are not wanting circumstances which would seem to establish, for many of the Spanish ballads, a claim to antiquity much higher than is to be inferred from any of these dates. In the oldest edition of the Cancionero General, for example, there are several pieces which bear the name of Don Juan Manuel. If they were composed by the celebrated author of Count Lucanor, (and it appears very unlikely that any person of less distinguished rank should have assumed that style without some addition or distinction,) we must carry them back at least as far as the year 1362, when the Prince Don Juan Manuel died. But this is not all. The ballads bearing the name of that illustrious author, are so far from appearing to be among the most ancient in the Cancionero that even a very slight examination must be sufficient to establish exactly the reverse. The

regularity and completeness of their rhymes alone are in fact quite enough to satisfy any one who is acquainted with the usual style of the redondillas, that the ballads of Don Juan Manuel are among the most modern in the whole collection.*

But indeed, whatever may be the age of the ballads now extant, that the Spaniards had ballads of the same general character, and on the same subjects, at a very early period of their national history, is quite certain. In the General Chronicle of Spain, which was compiled in the thirteenth century, at the command of Alphonzo the Wise, allusions are perpetually made to the popular songs of the Minstrels, or Joglares. Now, it is evident that the phraseology of compositions handed down orally from one generation to another, must have undergone, in the course of time, a great many alterations; yet, in point of fact, the language of by far the greater part of the Historical Ballads in the Romancero, does appear to carry the stamp of an antiquity quite as remote as that used by the compilers of the

* A single stanza of one of them will be enough.

"Gritando va el caballero publicando su gran mal,
Vestidas ropas de luto, aforradas en sayal;
Por las montes sin camino con dolor y suspirar,
Llorando a pie descalço, jurando de no tornar," &c.

Compare this with such a ballad as

"No te espantes, caballero, ni tengas tamaña grima ;
Hija soy del buen Rey y de la Reyna de Castilla," &c.

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