Legends & Romances of Spain
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Title: Legends & Romances of Spain
Author: Lewis Spence
Illustrator: Otway McCannell
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LEGENDS & ROMANCES OF SPAIN
By
LEWIS SPENCE F.R.A.I.
Author of "Legends and Romances of Brittany"
"Hero-Tales and Legends of the Rhine"
"A Dictionary of Medieval Romance and Romance-writers"
Etc. Etc.
London
George G. Harrap & Company Ltd.
2 & 3 Portsmouth Street Kingsway W.C.
and at Sydney
PREFACE
Since the days of Southey the romantic literature of Spain has
not received from English writers and critics the amount of study
and attention it undoubtedly deserves. In no European country did
the seeds of Romance take root so readily or blossom so speedily
and luxuriantly as in Spain, which perhaps left the imprint of its
national character more deeply upon the literature of chivalry than did
France or England. When we think of chivalry, do we not think first of
Spain, of her age-long struggle against the pagan invaders of Europe,
her sensitiveness to all that concerned personal and national honour,
of the names of the Cid Campeador, Gayferos, and Gonzalvo de Cordova,
gigantic shadows in harness, a pantheon of heroes, which the martial
legends of few lands can equal and none surpass. The epic of our
British Arthur, the French chansons de gestes, are indebted almost
as much to folklore as to the imagination of the singers who first
gave them literary shape. But in the romances of Spain we find
that folklore plays an inconsiderable part, and that her chivalric
fictions are either the offspring of historic happenings or of that
brilliant and glowing imagination which illumines the whole expanse
of Peninsular literature.
I have given more space to the proofs of connexion between the French
chansons de gestes and the Spanish cantares de gesta than most of my
predecessors who have written of Castilian romantic story. Indeed,
with the exception of Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly, whose admirable work
in the field of Spanish letters forms so happy an exception to our
national neglect of a great literature, I am aware of no English
writer who has concerned himself with this subject. My own opinion
regarding the almost total lack of Moorish influence upon the Spanish
romanceros is in consonance with that of critics much better qualified
to pass judgment upon such a question. But for my classification of
the ballad I am indebted to no one, and this a long devotion to the
study of ballad literature perhaps entitles me to make. I can claim,
too, that my translations are not mere paraphrases, but provide
renderings of tolerable accuracy.
I have made an earnest endeavour to provide English readers with
a conspectus of Spanish romantic literature as expressed in its
cantares de gesta, its chivalric novels, its romanceros or ballads,
and some of its lighter aspects. The reader will find full accounts and
summaries of all the more important works under each of these heads,
many of which have never before been described in English.
If the perusal of this book leads to the more general study of the
noble and useful Castilian tongue on the part of but a handful of
those who read it, its making will have been justified. The real
brilliance and beauty of these tales lie behind the curtains of a
language unknown to most British people, and can only be liberated
by the spell of study. This book contains merely the poor shadows
and reflected wonders of screened and hidden marvels.
L. S.
Edinburgh
June 1920
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I The Sources of Spanish Romance 11
II The "Cantares de Gesta" and the "Poema del Cid" 48
III "Amadis de Gaul" 90
IV The Sequels to "Amadis de Gaul" 139
V The Palmerin Romances 169
VI Catalonian Romances 187
VII Roderic, Last of the Goths 201
VIII "Calaynos the Moor," "Gayferos," and
"Count Alarcos" 213
IX The Romanceros, or Ballads 222
X The Romanceros, or Ballads--continued 245
XI Moorish Romances of Spain 263
XII Tales of Spanish Magic and Sorcery 333
XIII Humorous Romances of Spain 351
Bibliography 407
CHAPTER I: THE SOURCES OF SPANISH ROMANCE
Romance, Romance, the songs of France,
The gestes of fair Britaine,
The legends of the sword and lance
That grew in Alemaine,
Pale at thy rich inheritance,
Thou splendour of old Spain!
Anon.
If, spent with journeying, a stranger should seat himself in some
garden in old Granada, and from beneath a tenting of citron and
mulberry leaves open his ears to the melody of the waters of the City
of Pomegranates and his spirit to the sorcery of its atmosphere,
he will gladly believe that in the days when its colours were less
mellow and its delicious air perhaps less reposeful the harps of its
poets were the looms upon which the webs of romance were woven. Almost
instinctively he will form the impression that the Spaniard, having
regained this paradise after centuries of exile, and stirred by the
enchanted echoes of Moorish music which still lingered there, was
roused into passionate song in praise of those heroes of his race who
had warred so ceaselessly and sacrificed so much to redeem it. But
if he should climb the Sierra del Sol and pass through the enchanted
chambers of the Alhambra as a child passes through the courts of dream,
he will say in his heart that the men who builded these rooms from the
rainbow and painted these walls from the palette of the sunset raised
also the invisible but not less gorgeous palace of Spanish Romance.
Or if one, walking in the carven shadows of Cordova, think on the
mosque Maqsura, whose doors of Andalusian brass opened to generations
of poets and astrologers, or on the palace of Azzahra, built of
rose and sea-coloured marbles rifled from the Byzantine churches of
Ifrikia, will he not believe that in this city of shattered splendours
and irretrievable spells the passion-flower of Romance burst forth
full-blown?
But we cannot trace the first notes of the forgotten musics nor piece
together the mosaic of broken harmonies in the warm and sounding
cities of the Saracens, neither in "that mine of silk and silver," old
Granada, nor among the marble memories of Cordova, whose market-place
overflowed with the painted parchments of Moorish song and science. We
must turn our backs on the scarlet southern land and ascend to the
bare heights of Castile and Asturias, where Christian Spain, prisoned
for half a thousand years upon a harsh and arid plateau, and wrought
to a high passion of sacrifice and patriotism, burst into a glory of
martial song, the echoes of which resound among its mountains like
ghostly clarions on a field of old encounter.
Isolation and devotion to a national cause are more powerful as
incentives to the making of romance than an atmosphere of Eastern
luxuriance. The breasts of these stern sierras were to give forth
milk sweeter than the wine of Almohaden, and song more moving if less
fantastic arose in Burgos and Carrión than ever inspired the guitars
of Granada. But the unending conflict of Arab and Spaniard brought
with it many interchanges between the sensuous spirit of the South
and the more rugged manliness of the North, so that at last Saracen
gold damascened the steel of Spanish song, and the nets of Eastern
phantasy wound themselves about the Spanish soul. In a later day
an openly avowed admiration for the art and culture of the Moslem
leavened the ancient hate, and the Moorish cavalier imitated the
chivalry, if not the verse, of the Castilian knight. [1]
The Cradle of Spanish Song
The homeland of Spanish tradition was indeed a fitting nursery for the
race which for centuries contested every acre of the Peninsula with
an enemy greatly more advanced in the art of warfare, if inferior in
resolution and the spirit of unity. Among the flinty wastes of the
north of Spain, which are now regarded as rich in mineral resources,
are situated at intervals luxuriant and fertile valleys sunk deep
between the knees of volcanic ridges, the lower slopes of which
are covered with thick forests of oak, chestnut, and pine. These
depressions, sheltered from the sword-like winds which sweep down
from the Pyrenees, reproduce in a measure the pleasant conditions of
the southern land. Although their distance one from another tended
to isolation, it was in these valleys that Christian Spain received
the respite which enabled her to collect her strength and school her
spirit for the great struggle against the Saracen.
In this age-long contest she was undoubtedly inspired by that subtle
sense of nationhood and the possession of a common tongue which have
proved the salvation of many races no less desperately situated, and
perhaps her determination to redeem the lost Eden of the South is the
best measure of the theory that, prior to the era of Saracen conquest,
the Castilian tongue was a mere jargon, composed of the elements of
the Roman lingua rustica and the rude Gothic, and, according to some
authorities, still lacking in grammatical arrangement and fixity
of idiom. [2] It is certainly clear that the final phases in the
evolution of Castilian took place subsequently to the Arabic invasion,
but it is a straining of such scanty evidence as we possess to impute
to the form of Castilian speech current immediately before that time
the character of an undisciplined patois.
Roman and Visigoth
When in the early part of the fifth century the Visigoths, following
in the wake of the Vandal folk, entered Romanized Spain, they did not
build upon the ruins of its civilization, but retained the habits of
their northern homeland and for some generations seem to have been
little impressed with Roman culture. Nor did the Latin speech of the
people they had conquered at first find favour among them, although,
dwelling as they had done on the very flanks of the Empire, they were
certainly not ignorant of it. They found the people of the Peninsula
as little inclined to relinquish the cultivated language in which their
compatriots Martial, Lucan, and Seneca had contributed to the triumphs
of Roman letters. A military autocracy is not usually successful
in imposing its language upon a subject people unless it possesses
the dual advantages of an ascendancy in arms and literary capacity,
and the Visigoths, unable to compete in this latter respect with the
highly civilized colonists of Hispania, fell, with the passing of
the generations, into the easy acceptance of the Roman tongue. Their
illiteracy, however, was not the sole reason for their partial defeat
in the give-and-take of linguistic strife, for, though powerful in
military combination, they were greatly outmatched in numbers. As
invaders they had brought few women with them, and had perforce to
intermarry with native wives, who taught their children the Roman
tongue. The necessary intercourse between conqueror and conquered in
time produced a sort of pidgin-Latin, which stood in much the same
relation to the classic speech of Rome as the trade languages of the
Pacific did to English. [3]
The use of Latin as a literary tongue in that part of Spain where the
Castilian speech was evolved considerably retarded its development
from the condition of a patois to a language proper. Nevertheless it
continued to advance. The processes by which it did so are surprisingly
obscure, but the circumstance of its literary fixity in the early
eleventh century is proof that it must have achieved colloquial
perfection at least before the era of the Moorish invasion. The
Saracen conquest, by forcing it into the bleak north-west, did it
small disservice, for there it had to contend with other dialects
of the Roman tongue, which enriched its vocabulary, and over which,
ultimately, it gained almost complete ascendancy as a literary
language.
The Romance Tongues of Spain
Three Romance or Roman languages were spoken in that portion of
Spain which remained in Christian hands: in Catalonia and Aragon the
Provençal, Catalan, or Limousin; in Asturias, Old Castile, and Leon
the Castilian; and in Galicia the Gallego, whence the Portuguese had
its origin. The Catalan was almost entirely similar to the Provençal or
langue d'oc of Southern France, and the accession of Raymond Berenger,
Count of Barcelona, to the throne of Provence in 1092 united the
Catalonian and Provençal peoples under one common rule. Provençal,
the language of the Troubadours, was of French origin, and bears
evidence of its evolution from the Latin of Provincial Gaul. It
appears to have been brought into Catalonia by those Hispani who
had fled to Provence from Moorish rule, and who gradually drifted
southward again as the more northerly portions of Spain were freed from
Arab aggression. The political connexion of Catalonia with Provence
naturally brought about a similarity of custom as well as of speech,
and indeed we find the people of the Catalan coast and the province
of Aragon deeply imbued with the chivalry and gallantry of the more
northerly home of the Gai Saber.
Throughout the whole Provençal-Catalan [4] tract were held those
romantic courts of love in which the erotic subtleties of its men
and women of song were debated with a seriousness which shows that
the art of love had entered into competition with the forces of law
and religion, and had, indeed, become the real business of life with
the upper classes of the country. Out of this glorification of the
relations of the sexes arose the allied science of chivalry, no less
punctilious or extravagant in its code and spirit. This spirit of
Provençal chivalry gradually found its way into Castile, heightened
and quickened the imagination of its people, and prepared the Spanish
mind for the acceptance and appreciation of Romantic literature. But at
no time was Castilian imagination passively receptive. It subjected
every literary force which invaded it to such a powerful alchemy
of transmutation that in time all foreign elements lost their alien
character and emerged from the crucible of Spanish thought as things
almost wholly Castilian.
The perfection of rhyming verse was undoubtedly accomplished by the
Troubadour poets of Provence and Catalonia, and opened the way for a
lyric poetry which, if it never attained any loftiness of flight or
marked originality of expression, has seldom been surpassed in melody
and finish. But it is remarkable that this extensive body of verse,
if a few political satires be excepted, has but one constant theme--the
exaltation of love. A perusal of the poetry of the pleasant Provençal
tongue pleases the ear and appeals to the musical sense. The melody is
never at fault, and we can count upon the constancy of a pavane-like
stateliness, which proceeds, perhaps, as much from the genius of
the language as from the metrical excellences of its singers. But
the monotonous repetition of amatory sentiment, for the expression
of which the same conceptions and even the same phrases are again
and again compelled to do duty, the artificial spirit which inspires
these uniform cadences, and the lack of real human warmth soon weary
and disappoint the reader, who will gladly resign the entire poetical
kingdom of Provence to the specialist in prosody or the literary
antiquary in exchange for the freer and less formal beauties of a
music better suited to human needs and less obviously designed for
the uses of a literary caste. The poetry of Provence reminds us of
those tapestries in which the scheme is wholly decorative, where
stiff, brocaded flowers occupy regular intervals in the pattern and a
monotonous sameness of colour is the distinctive note. No episode of
the chase nor pastoral scene charms us by its liveliness or reality,
nor do we find the silken hues distributed in a natural and pleasing
manner. [5]
The Provençal and Catalan troubadours had, indeed, a certain influence
upon the fortunes of Castilian poetry and romance, and proofs of their
early intercourse with Castile are numerous. The thirteenth-century
Book of Apollonius, an anonymous poem, is full of Provençalisms, as
is the rather later History of the Crusades. During the persecution
they suffered at the period of the Albigensian wars numbers of them
fled into Spain, where they found a refuge from their intolerant
enemies. Thus Aimeric de Bellinai fled to the Court of Alfonso IX,
[6] and was later at the Court of Alfonso X, as were Montagnagunt and
Folquet de Lunel, as well as Raimond de Tours and Bertrand Carbunel,
who, with Riquier, either dedicated their works to that monarch or
composed elegies on the occasion of his death. King Alfonso himself
wrote verses of a decidedly Provençal cast, and even as late as 1433
the Marquis de Villena, a kinsman of the famous Marquis de Santillana,
whom we shall encounter later, wrote a treatise upon the art of
the Troubadours, [7] which, following the instincts of a pedant,
he desired to see resuscitated in Castile. [8]
The Galician, a Romance language which sprang from the same root as the
Portuguese, is nearly allied to the Castilian. But it is not so rich in
guttural sounds, from which we may be correct in surmising that it has
less of the Teutonic in its composition than the sister tongue. Like
Portuguese, it possesses an abundance of hissing sounds, and a nasal
pronunciation not unlike the French, which was in all probability
introduced by the early establishment of a Burgundian dynasty upon
the throne. But Galician influence upon Castilian literature ceased
at an early period, although the reverse was by no means the case.
The Rise of Castilian
The evolution of Castilian from the original Latin spoken by the Roman
colonists in Spain was complicated by many local circumstances. Thus
in contracting the vocables of the Roman tongue it did not omit the
same syllables as the Italian, nor did it give such brevity to them
as Provençal or Galician. Probably because of the greater admixture
of Gothic blood among those who spoke it, it is rich in aspirates, and
has a stronger framework than almost any of the Romance tongues. Thus
the Latin f is in Castilian frequently altered to h, as hablar =
fabulari, 'to speak.' The letter j, which is strongly aspirated, is
frequently substituted for the liquid l, so that filius, 'a son,'
becomes hijo. Liquid ll in its turn takes the place of Latin pl,
and we find Latin planus, 'smooth,' appearing in Castilian as llano
(pron. lyáh-no). The Spanish ch supplies the place of the Latin ct,
as facto = hecho, dictu = dicho, and so on.
Other proofs of Teutonic association are not lacking. Thus the g
before c and i, which in Gothic and German is a guttural, has the
same character in Castilian. The Spanish conversion of o into ue also
resembles the similar change in German, if, for example, we compare
Castilian cuerpo and pueblo with the German Körper and Pöbel.
Southward Spread of Castilian
The rise of Castilian as a colloquial and literary tongue was achieved
by the ceaseless struggle of the hardy race who spoke it against the
Saracen occupation of their native land. As the Castilian warriors by
generations of hard fighting gradually regained city after city and
district by district rather than province by province, their language
encroached by degrees upon the area of that of their Arab enemies,
[9] until at length the last stronghold of the Moors fell and left
them not a foothold in the Peninsula. "It was indeed a rude training
which our forefathers, mighty and hardy, had as a prelude to so many
glories and to the conquest of the world," says Martinez in his novel
Isabel de Solis. [10] "Weighed down by their harness and with sword
in hand, they slept at ease no single night for eight centuries."
From the period of the defeat of Roderic, "last of the Visigoths,"
at the battle of Xerez de la Frontera in 711 until the fall of Granada
in 1492, Spain was indeed a land of battles. Almost immediately after
their first defeat by Arab arms the armies of the Visigoths were
pursued to the north-western limits of the Peninsula, where they,
found a rallying-place in the mountains of Biscay and Asturias. There,
like the Welsh after the Saxon invasion of Britain, they might have
become reconciled to the comparatively narrow area left to them,
but the circumstances of their virtual imprisonment served only to
unite them more closely in a common nationality and a common resolve
to win back their original possessions.
For many generations their efforts were confined to border forays
and guerrilla fighting, in which they were by no means uniformly
successful, for the fiery courage of the Saracens would permit of no
mere defensive policy, and nearly every victory of which the Castilians
could boast was counterbalanced by reverses and losses which their
inferior numbers could ill sustain. But by degrees their valorous
obstinacy was rewarded, and ere a century had passed they had regained
the greater part of Old Castile. The very name of this province,
meaning as it does 'the Land of Castles,' shows that even when regained
it was held only by fortifying its every hill-top with strongholds,
so that at last this castellated tract gave its name to the race
which held it so dearly. Before another twenty years had passed the
Castilian warriors had established a footing in New Castile, and from
this time onward seem to have been assured of ultimate success.
The fall of Toledo in 1085, after three centuries and a half of
Saracen occupation, marked a further epoch in the southern advance of
the Castilians, and by the taking of Saragossa in 1118 the tables were
turned upon the Arab invaders, who were now driven into a more confined
part of the country, to the south and south-west. This circumstance,
however, seems to have consolidated rather than crippled their
resisting powers, and they had yet to be reckoned with for nearly four
centuries ere, with the fall of Granada, Boabdil, or Abu-Abdallah, the
last of the Moorish kings, gave up its keys to Ferdinand of Castile,
looked his last upon the city, and crossed to Africa to fling away
his life in battle.
In these circumstances of constant strife and unrest the Romantic
literature of Spain was born. It is by no means remarkable that its
development coincided with the clash of arms. Trumpets re-echo in its
every close. As it expresses the spirit of a martial race, it was also
the nursling of necessity, for from the songs and fables of mighty
heroes the knights of Castile drew a new courage and experienced an
emulous exhilaration which nerved them on the day of battle. Well
might the wandering knight of Castile chant, as in the old ballad:
Oh, harness is my only wear,
The battle is my play:
My pallet is the desert bare,
My lamp yon planet's ray. [11]
Border warfare, with its frequent change of scene and constant alarms,
was a fitting introduction to errantry.
The Literary Development of Castilian
Castilian, although more than one alien influence impinged upon it,
evolved a literary shape peculiarly its own, especially as regards
its verse, as will be seen when we come to deal separately with
its several Romantic forms. Thus it owed nothing to the literary
methods of Provençal or Catalan, though much to their spirit and
outward manners. When the courtly and rather pedantic poetic system
of the Troubadours encountered the grave and vigorous Castilian, it
was ill fitted to make any prolonged resistance. As political causes
had hastened their encounter, so they quickened the victory of the
Castilian. The ruling power in Aragon had from an early period been
connected with Castilian royalty, and Ferdinand the Just, who came
to the throne of Aragon in 1412, was a Castilian prince. The Courts
of Valencia and Burgos were, therefore, practically open to the same
political influences. If our conclusions are correct, it was during
the reigns of Ferdinand the Just and Alfonso V (1412-58) that the
influence of Castilian first invaded the sphere of Catalan. We find
it definitely recognized as a poetic tongue on the occasion of a
contest of song in honour of the Madonna held at Valencia in 1474,
the forty poems sung at which were afterward collected in the first
book printed in Spain. Four of these are in the Castilian tongue,
which was thus evidently regarded as a literary medium sufficiently
developed to be represented at such a contest. Valencia, indeed,
at first wholly Catalan in speech and art, seems to have possessed
a school of Castilian poets of its own from 1470 to 1550, who did
much to popularize their adopted tongue. But the Catalonians were
not minded that their language should lose the literary hegemony
of Spain so easily, and they made every endeavour to sustain it by
instituting colleges of professional troubadours and vaunting its
beauties at their great public contests of song. It was in vain. They
had encountered a language more vigorous, more ample in vocabulary,
more rich in idiomatic construction, and backed by a stronger political
power than their own.
The Poetical Courts of Castile
The evolution of Castilian as a literary language was also
assiduously fostered by the scholarly character of many of the rulers
of Castile. Alfonso the Wise was himself a poet, and cultivated his
native tongue with judiciousness and care, affording it purity and
precision of expression. Under his supervision the Scriptures were
translated into Castilian, and a General Chronicle of Spain as well as
a history of the First Crusade were undertaken at his instance. He made
it the language of the law-courts, and attempted to infuse into its
verse a more exact spirit and poetical phraseology by the imitation
of Provençal models.
Alfonso XI composed a General Chronicle in the easy, flowing rhyme of
the native redondillas, instead of the stiff, monkish Alexandrines
then current in literary circles, and caused books to be written
in Castilian prose on the art of hunting and the genealogy of the
nobility. [12] His relative Don Juan Manuel did much to discipline
Spanish imagination and give fixity to Spanish prose in his Conde
Lucanor, [13] a volume of ethical and political maxims, the morals
of which are well pointed by tales and fables drawn from history and
classical literature. Juan II, [14] although a weak and idle monarch,
was a great patron of letters, wrote verses, associated with poets,
and caused a large collection of the best existing Spanish verse to
be made in 1449. But the spirit of his Court was a pedantic one; it
strayed after Italian models, and he himself affected the Provençal
manner. Despite such artificial barriers, however, Castilian speech
continued to advance upon its conquering way. It had definitely become
the language of Romance, and Romance, within a generation of this
period, was to become the most powerful literary form in the Peninsula.
The Rise of Romance
The development of Romance in Spain, its evolution and the phases
through which it passed, has not, as a theme, met with that painstaking
treatment at the hands of English writers on Spanish literature
that might have been expected at this late day, when the literary
specialist has to search diligently into the remotest corners of
the earth if he seek new treasures to assay. Its several phases are
rather hinted at than definitely laid down, not because of the poverty
or dubiety of the evidential material so much as through the laxity
and want of thoroughness which characterize most Britannic efforts
at epochal fixation or attempts to elucidate the connexion between
successive literary phases. I can scarcely hope to succeed in a task
which other and better equipped authorities have neglected, perhaps
for sound reasons. But I had rather fail in an attempt to reduce the
details of the evolution of Spanish Romance to orderly sequence than
place before the reader an array of unrelated facts and isolated tags
of evidence which, however interesting, present no definite picture,
permit of no reasonable deduction, and are usually accompanied by a
theoretical peradventure or so by way of dubious enlightenment.
If we regard the literary map of Europe from the eleventh to
the thirteenth century we behold the light shining from two
quarters--Jewish-Arabic Spain and France. With the first we have,
at the moment, no concern. Its literature was at the time alien and
inimical to Christian Spain, which, as we shall see later, did not
regard anything Saracen with complacence until its sword crossed no
longer with the scimitar. But in France Castile had an illustrious
exemplar, whose lessons it construed in its own peculiar manner--a
manner dictated both by national pride and political necessity.
With the influence of Southern France we have already dealt. At the
era alluded to, Northern France, the country of the langue d'oïl,
although in a measure disturbed by unrest, was yet in a much better
case to produce great literature than Castile, whose constant vendetta
with the Moslem left her best minds only a margin of leisure for the
production of pure literature--a margin, however, of which the fullest
advantage was taken. The rise of a caste of itinerary poets in France
supplied the popular demand for story-telling, and the trouvères of
the twelfth century recognized in the glorious era of Charlemagne a
fitting and abundant source for heroic fiction such as would appeal
to medieval audiences. The poems, or rather epics, which they based
upon the history of the Carlovingian period were known as chansons de
gestes, 'songs of the deeds' of the great Frankish emperor and his
invincible paladins, or, to the trouvères themselves, as matière de
France, as the Arthurian tales were designated matière de Bretagne,
and those based upon classical history matière de Rome.
Until comparatively recent times these immense works, many of which
comprise six or seven thousand lines of verse, were practically
unknown, even to the generality of literary authorities. [15] As
we now possess them they are comparatively late in form, and have
undergone much revisal, probably for the worse. But they are the
oldest examples of elaborate verse in any modern language, with the
exception of English and Norse, and undoubtedly stand in an ancestral
relation to all modern European literature.
These chansons were intended to be sung in the common halls of feudal
dwellings by the itinerant trouvères, who composed or passed them
on to one another. Their subject-matter deals more with the clash of
arms than the human emotions, though these are at intervals depicted
in a masterly manner. The older examples among them are written in
batches of lines, varying from one to several score, each of which
derives unity from an assonant vowel-rhyme, and known as laisses or
tirades. Later, however, rhyme crept into the chansons, the entire
laisse, or batch, ending in a single rhyme-sound.
Castilian Opposition to the Chansons de Gestes
In these poems, which probably originated in the north of France,
the genre spreading southward as time progressed, Charlemagne is
represented as the great bulwark of Christianity against the Saracens
of Spain. Surrounded by his peers, Roland, Oliver, Naymes, Ogier,
and William of Orange, he wages constant warfare against the Moors
or the 'Saracens' (pagans) of Saxony. Of these poems Gautier has
published a list of one hundred and ten, a moiety of which date from
the twelfth century. A number of the later chansons are in Provençal,
but all attempts to refer the entire cycle in its original condition
to that literature have signally failed.
That this immense body of romantic material found its way into
Castile is positively certain. Whether it did so by way of Provence
and Catalonia is not clear, but it is not impossible that such was the
case. It might be thought that Christian Spain, in the throes of her
struggle with the Moors, took kindly to a literature so constant in its
reference to the discomfiture of her hereditary foes. At first she did
so, and certainly accepted the chanson form. But two barriers to her
undivided appreciation of it presently appeared. In the first place,
the Castilian of the twelfth century seems to have been aware that
if Charlemagne invaded Spain at all, he encountered not only the Moor
but the Spaniard as well. This is not borne out, as some authorities
imply, by a piece in the popular poetry of the Basques known as the
Altobiskarko Cantar, or Song of Altobiskar, which tacitly asserts that
the defeat of Charlemagne's rearguard at Roncesvalles was due not to
Saracens, but to Basques, who resented the passage of the Frankish
army through their mountain passes. The whole piece is an effusion
written in Basque by a Basque student named Duhalde, who translated
it from the French of François Garay de Montglave (c. 1833). [16]
A second battle of Roncesvalles took place in the reign of Louis le
Debonair in 824, when two Frankish counts returning from Spain were
again surprised and defeated by the Pyrenean mountaineers. But there
appears to have been a still earlier battle between Franks and Basques
in the Pyrenees in the reign of Dagobert I (631-638). The folk-memory
of these contests seems to have been kept alive, so that the Spaniard
felt that the Frank was somewhat of a traditional enemy. Archbishop
Roderic of Toledo inveighed against those Spanish juglares who sang
the battles of Charlemagne in Spain, and Alfonso the Learned belittles
the mythical successes of the Frankish emperor.
But this was not all. The idea that Charlemagne had entered Spain
as a conqueror, carrying all before him, was offensive to the highly
wrought pride and patriotism of the Castilians, who chose to interpret
the spirit of the chansons de gestes in their own way, and, instead
of copying them slavishly, raised an opposing body of song to their
detriment. Accepting as the national hero of the Carlovingian era an
imaginary knight, Bernaldo de Carpio, they hailed him as the champion
of Castile, and invented songs of their own in which he is spoken
of as slaying and defeating Roland at Roncesvalles at the head of a
victorious army composed not of Arabs or Basques, but Castilians.
The Cantares de Gesta
But if the Castilians did not accept the matter of the chansons, they
assuredly adopted their form. Their literary revolt against the alien
spirit and politics of the chansons seems to have taken place at some
time soon after the diffusion of these throughout Spain. A Spanish
priest of the early twelfth century wrote the fabulous chronicle
of Archbishop Turpin of Rheims, which purported to be the work of
that warlike cleric, but in reality was intended to popularize the
pilgrimage to Compostella to which it had reference. Many Franks
travelled to the shrine, among them trouvères, who in all likelihood
passed on to the native Castilian singers the spirit and metrical
system of the chansons, so that later we hear of Spanish cantares de
gesta, most of which, however, unlike their French models, are lost
to us. The famous Poema del Cid, dealing with the exploits of a great
Castilian hero, is nothing but a cantar de gesta in form and spirit,
and we possess good evidence that many of the late romanceros or
ballads upon such heroes as Bernaldo de Carpio, Gonzalvo de Cordova,
and Gayferos are but ancient cantares 'rubbed down,' or in a state
of attrition.
As in France, so in Spain, degeneration overtook the cantares de
gesta. In course of time they were forced into the market-place and
the scullions' hall. Many of them were worked into the substance of
chronicles and histories; but the juglares who now sang them altered
them, when they passed out of fashion, into corrupt abridgments,
or broke them up into ballads to suit the taste of a more popular
audience. [17]
The Chronicles
But if the majority of the cantares de gesta are irreplaceable as
regards their original form, we find fragments of them in the ancient
chronicles of Spain. Thus the General Chronicle of Spain (c. 1252),
which, according to the latest research, is believed to have undergone
at least three specific alterations or rearrangements of its text,
tells the stories of Bernaldo de Carpio, Fernán González, and the
seven Children of Lara, and provides sketches of Charlemagne, while
its latter portion recounts the history of the Cid, and at times
even appeals to the cantares as its authority for such and such an
episode. Many of the passages in the chronicles, too, are obviously
copied in their entirety from certain cantares. So strongly, indeed,
do they retain the assonant verse-formation typical of the cantares
that many of the later balladeers seem easily to have cast them into
verse again, especially those relating to Bernaldo de Carpio and the
Infantes de Lara, and in this manner they appeared once more in the
cancioneros, or collections of folk-songs.
The Ballads
The immortal ballads of Spain have been the subject of the sharpest
controversy, and their importance as Romantic material demands
special treatment in a separate chapter. Regarding the period
to which they belong and their relations to the larger narrative
poems and chronicles, we must deal briefly with them here. Some
authorities ascribe them to an early age and insist upon their
priority to such poems as the Poema del Cid and such chronicles as
that of Alfonso the Learned, while others are equally assured of
the late date of the greater number. It seems to me that the truth
resides in both hypotheses, and that in this case, as frequently
in literary navigation, it is wise to steer a middle course. In my
view the ballads of Spain are of four fundamental types: those which
arose spontaneously in Northern Spain at some time subsequent to
the formation of the Castilian language, and which, if we possess
any remnants of them at all, have probably come down to us in such
a form as would render them unrecognizable to those who first sang
them; ballads which are based on passages in cantares de gesta as
chronicles; folk-ballads of a later date, more or less altered; and,
lastly, the more modern productions of conscious art.
I also believe that the ballads or romanceros are again of two broad
classes: those of spontaneous folk-origin, owing nothing to literary
sources, and those which are mainly cantares de gesta, or chronicle
passages in a lyric state of attrition. With the great body of
authorities upon ancient Spanish literature I do not believe that the
cantares or chronicles owe anything to the ballads of any age, which
seem to me wholly of popular origin. Of course the two classes lastly
indicated do not include the more 'poetic' or sophisticated ballads
written after the ballad became an accepted form for experiments
in conscious versification, and it is plain that such efforts could
belong to neither category.
No definite proof exists as to the degree of sophistication and
alteration which the ballads underwent before their ultimate collection
and publication. It would be strange, however, if no ballads of
relatively early date had reached us, altered or otherwise, and it
seems to me merely a piece of critical affectation to deny antiquity
to a song solely because it found its way into print at a late period,
or because it is not encountered in ancient MSS., just as it would be
to throw doubt upon the antiquity of a legend or folk-custom current
in our own day--unless; indeed, such should display obvious marks of
recent manufacture. At the same time few of these ballads seem to
me to bear the stamp of an antiquity more hoary than, for example,
those of Scotland or Denmark.
Few of the ballad systems of Europe are better worthy of study than
that of Spain. But in this place we are considering it merely from
the point of view of its bearings upon Romance. That it has a close
affinity with the Romantic literature of the Peninsula is evident
from the name given to these poems by the Spaniards, who call them
romanceros. [18] Some of them are, indeed, romances or cantares de
gesta in little, and in fact they deal with all the great subjects
sung of in the cantares or prosed upon in the chronicles, such as the
Cid, Bernaldo de Carpio, Count Alarcos, and so forth. But they seem to
have little in common with the later romances proper, such as Amadis,
Palmerin, or Felixmarte, for the good reason that by the time these
were in fashion the ballad had become the sole property of the common
people. As the Marquis de Santillana (1398-1458), himself a poet
of note, remarks in a letter famous for the light it throws on the
condition of Spanish literature in his day: "There are contemptible
poets who, without order, rule, or rhythm, make those songs and
romances in which vulgar folk and menials take delight." So might
Lovelace or Drummond of Hawthornden have written of our own balladeers.
The ballads thus relegated to the peasantry and lower classes, those of
the upper classes who found time for reading were accordingly thrown
back upon the chronicles and the few cantares de gesta which had been
reduced to writing. But on the destruction of the Moorish states in
Spain the increase in wealth and leisure among the upper classes,
and the introduction of printing, aroused a demand for books which
would provide amusement. A great spirit of invention was abroad. At
first it resuscitated the Romantic matter lying embedded and almost
fossilized in the chronicles. It is, indeed, but a step from some
of these to the romances proper. But Spain hungrily craved novelty,
and the eyes of romance-makers were turned once more to France, whose
fictional wealth began to be exploited by Spanish writers about the
beginning of the fifteenth century.
The Heyday of Romance
Perhaps the first literary notice that we possess of the romance
proper in Spain is that by Ayala, Chancellor of Castile (d. 1407), who,
in his Rimado de Palacio, deplores the time he has wasted in reading
such "lying stuff" as Amadis de Gaul. He might have been much worse
occupied, but, be that as it may, in his dictum we scarcely have a
forecast of the manner in which this especial type of romance was to
seize so mightily upon the Castilian imagination, which, instead of
being content with mere servile copying from French models, was to
re-endow them with a spirit and genius peculiarly Spanish. Perhaps
in no other European country did the seed of Romance find a soil so
fitting for its germination and fruition, and certainly nowhere did
it blossom and burgeon in such an almost tropical luxuriance of fruit
and flower.
Amadis had for sequel a long line of similar tales, all of which the
reader will encounter later in these pages. By general consent of
critics, from Cervantes onward, it is the best and most distinctive
of the Spanish romances, and was translated into French, Italian, and
indeed into most European languages, [19] a special translation, it
is said, even being made for Jewish readers. At a stroke Peninsular
romanticism had beaten French chivalric fiction upon its own
ground. But Amadis was not, as Cervantes seems to think, the first
book of chivalry printed in Spain, for this distinction belongs to
Tirante the White (1490) which, according to Southey, is lacking in
the spirit of chivalry. [20] Among other figures it introduces that
of Warwick the King-maker, who successfully withstands an invasion
of England by the King of the Canary Islands, and ultimately slays
the invader single-handed and routs his forces. But if Cervantes
errs in his bibliography, his barber's summing-up of Amadis as "the
best of all books of its kind that has been written" is not far from
the truth. [21] Tasso thought it "the most beautiful and perhaps the
most profitable story of its kind that can be read." Did he merely
follow the tonsorial critic's opinion, as his language would tempt
one to believe?
Amadis was followed by a host of imitations. Its enormous success,
from a popular point of view, brought into being a whole literature
of similar stamp and intention, if not of equal quality. The first of
such efforts, in consequence if not in chronology, is that of Palmerin
de Oliva, the earliest known edition of which appeared at Seville in
1525, and was followed, like the Amadis, by similar continuations,
Primaleón, Platir, and Palmerin of England, perhaps the best of the
series. [22] Regarding the alleged Portuguese origin of Amadis and
Palmerin I have more to say elsewhere, and will content myself here by
observing that no Portuguese original, printed or manuscript, exists,
although the priority of such seems undoubted. But these romances
became as Castilian as the Arthurian series became English, despite the
latter's Brythonic or other origin, and Spanish they have remained in
the belief and imagination of all Europe, popular as well as critical.
The Palmerin series only fed and increased the passion for romantic
fiction, so hungry was Spain for a literary diet which seemed so
natural and acceptable to her appetite that those who sought to
provide her with romantic reading could scarce cope with the call
for it. The natural result ensued. A perfect torrent of hastily
written and inferior fiction descended upon the public. Invention,
at first bold, became shameless, and in such absurdities of distorted
imagination as Belianis of Greece, Olivante de Laura, and Felixmarte
of Hyrcania the summit of romantic extravagance was reached. But
ridiculous and insulting to human intelligence and decent taste as
most of these productions were, still they found countless thousands
of readers, and there is every indication that publishing in the
Spain of the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries must have
been extremely lucrative. These preposterous and chimerical tales,
lacking the beauty and true imaginative skill and simplicity of the
older romances, stood in much the same relation to them as a host
of imitative novels published in the early years of the nineteenth
century did to the romances of Scott. Mexia, the sarcastic historian of
Charles V, writing of romance in 1545, deplores the public credulity
which battened on such feeble stuff. "For," he says, "there be men
who think all these things really happened, just as they read or hear
them, though the greater part of the things themselves are absurd." So
might a critic of our own day descant upon the popular predilection
for the cheap novel, or the whole desert of sensation-fodder which
pours from the all too rapid machines of the Fiction Trusts.
Still another extravagant and more unpleasant manifestation of
the popular craze for romance arose in such religious tales as
The Celestial Chivalry, The Knight of the Bright Star, and others
of little worth, in which Biblical characters are endowed with the
attributes of chivalry and go on adventure bound. The time occupied
by the appearance of these varying types, and indeed in the whole
latter-day evolution of Spanish romance, was strikingly brief. But
half a century elapsed between the publication of Amadis and the
most extreme of its worthless imitations. But it is not difficult to
account for the rapid manufacture and dissemination of such a mass
of literature, good and bad, when we recall that Spain had been for
ages the land of active knighthood, that her imagination had been
wrought to a high pitch of fervour in her long struggle with her pagan
enemies, and that in the tales of chivalry she now gazed upon with
such admiration she saw the reflection of her own courtly and heroic
spirit--the most sensitive and most fantastically chivalrous in Europe.
Possible Moorish Influence on Spanish Romance
There is indeed evidence--pressed down and flowing over--that the
age-long death-grapple with the Saracen powerfully affected Spanish
romantic fiction. But was this influence a direct one, arising out of
the contiguity and constant perusal of the body of Moorish fiction,
or did it proceed from the atmosphere of wonder which the Saracen left
behind him in Spain, the illusions of which were mightily assisted by
the marvels of his architecture and his art? One can scarcely find
a Spanish romance that is not rich in reference to the Moor, who is
usually alluded to as a caballero and a worthy foe. But is it the real
Moor whom we encounter in these tall folios, which beside our modern
volumes seem as stately galleons might in the company of ocean-going
tramps, or is it the Saracen of romance, an Oriental of fiction,
like the Turk of Byronic literature? The question of the influence
of Moorish literature upon Spanish romance has been shrouded by the
most unfortunate popular misconceptions. Let us briefly examine the
spirit of Arabic literary invention, and see in how far it was capable
of influencing Castilian art and imagination.
The history of the development of the Arabic language from the dialect
of a wandering desert people to a tongue the poetic possibilities and
colloquial uses of which are perhaps unrivalled is in itself sufficient
to furnish a whole volume of romantic episode. The form in which it
was introduced into Spain in the early eighth century can scarcely
fail to arouse the admiration of the lover of literary perfection. As
a literary medium its development was rapid and effective. It is,
indeed, as if the tones of a harsh trumpet had by degrees become
merged into those of a silver clarion whose notes ring out ever more
clearly, until at length they arrive at a keenness so intense as to
become almost intolerably piercing. This eloquent language, the true
speech of the literary aristocrat, has through the difficulty of its
acquirement and the bewildering nature of its written characters
remained almost unknown to the great mass of Europeans--unknown,
too, because the process of translation is inadequate to the proper
conveyance of its finer shades and subtler intimations. Even to the
greater number of the Arabs of Spain the highly polished verse in
which their literature was so rich was unknown. How much more, then,
was it a force removed from the Castilian or the Catalan?
Arabic Poetry
The desert life of the Arabs while they were yet an uncultured people,
although it did not permit of the development of a high standard of
literary achievement, fostered the growth of a spirit of observation so
keen as to result in the creation of a wealth of synonyms, by means of
which the language became greatly enriched. Synonymous meaning and the
discovery of beautiful and striking comparisons are the very pillars
of poetry, and within a century of the era of Moslem ascendancy in
the East we find the brilliant dynasty of the Abbassides (c. A.D. 750)
the generous patrons of a poetic literature which the language was so
well prepared to express. Story-telling had been a favourite amusement
among the Arabs of the desert, and they now found the time-honoured,
spontaneous exercise of the imaginative faculty stand them in good
stead. The rapidity of the progress of Arabic literature at this
period is, indeed, difficult of realization. Poetry, which we are
now assured has 'no market value,' was to the truly enlightened upper
classes of this people an art of the first importance, more precious
than those bales of the silks of Damascus, those gems of Samarkand,
or those perfumes of Syria the frequent allusion to which in their
legends encrusts them, like the walls of the cavern of Ala-ed-din,
with fairy jewels. But words were jewels to the Arab. When Al-Mamoun,
the son of Haroun-al-Raschid, dictated terms of peace to the Greek
emperor Michael the Stammerer, the tribute which he demanded from his
conquered enemy was a collection of manuscripts of the most famous
Greek authors. A fitting indemnity to be demanded by the prince of
a nation of poets!
But conquered Spain was more especially the seat and centre of
Arabian literature and learning. Cordova, Granada, Seville--indeed,
all the cities of the Peninsula occupied by the Saracens--rivalled
one another in the celebrity of their schools and colleges, their
libraries, and other places of resort for the scholar and man of
letters. The seventy libraries of Moorish Spain which flourished
in the twelfth century put to shame the dark ignorance of Europe,
which in time rather from the Arab than from fallen Rome won back its
enlightenment. Arabic became not only the literary but the colloquial
tongue of thousands of Spaniards who dwelt in the south under Moorish
rule. Even the canons of the Church were translated into Arabic,
about the middle of the eighth century, for the use of those numerous
Christians who knew no other language. The colleges and universities
founded by Abderahman and his successors were frequented by crowds
of European scholars. Thus the learning and the philosophy if not the
poetry of the Saracens were enabled to lay their imprint deeply upon
plastic Europe. If, however, we inquire more closely into the local
origins of this surprising enlightenment, we shall find it owing even
more to the native Jews of Spain than to the Moors themselves.
The phase of Arabian culture with which we are most nearly concerned
is its poetic achievement, and the ultimate influence which it brought
to bear upon Spanish literary composition. The poetry of this richly
endowed and imaginative people had at the period of their entrance
into Spain arrived, perhaps, at the apogee of splendour. Its warm
and luxuriant genius was wholly antagonistic to the more restrained
and disciplined verse of Greece and Rome, which it regarded as cold,
formal, and quite unworthy of translation. It surpassed in bold and
extravagant hyperbole, fantastic imagery, and emotional appeal. The
Arab poet heaped metaphor upon metaphor. He was incapable of seeing
that that which was intrinsically beautiful in itself might appear
superfluous and lacking in taste when combined with equally graceful
but discordant elements. Many critics hasten to reassure us regarding
his judgment and discrimination. But even a slight acquaintance
with Arabic literature will show that they have been carried away
by their prejudice in favour of the subject on which they wrote. In
the garden of the Arabian poet every flower is a jewel, every plot
is a silken carpet, tapestried with the intricate patterns of the
weavers of Persia, and every maiden is a houri, each of whose physical
attributes becomes in turn the subject of a glowing quatrain. The
constant employment of synonym and superlative, the extravagance of
amorous emotion, and the frequent absence of all message, of that
large utterance in which the poets of the West have indicated to the
generation they served how it might best grapple with problems of
mind and soul--these were the weaknesses of the Arab singers. They
made apophthegm take the place of message. They were unaware that
the fabric of poetry is not only a palace of pleasure, but a great
academy of the soul.
The true love of nature, too, seems to have been as much lacking in
the Arab as in the Greek and the Roman. He enamelled his theme with the
meticulous care of a jeweller. Not content with painting the lily, he
burnished it until it seemed a product of the goldsmith's art. To him
nature was a thing not only to be improved upon, but to be surpassed,
a mine of gems in the rough, to be patiently polished.
But it would be wrong to refuse to the imaginative literature of the
Arabs a high place among the world's achievements, and we must regret
that, for causes into which we cannot enter here, opportunities for
development and discipline were not vouchsafed it. As we read the
history of the Arabian states with their highly developed civilization,
their thronged academies, and their far-flung dominions, reaching
from Central Asia to the western gates of the Mediterranean, and turn,
to-day to the scenes where such things flourished, we must indeed be
unimaginative if we fail to be impressed by the universal wreck and
ruin to which these regions have been exposed. The great, emulous,
and spirited race which conquered and governed them gathered the world
to its doors, and the rude peoples of Europe clustered about its knees
to listen to the magical tales of unfolding science which fell from
its lips. From the desert it came, and to the desert it has returned.
Djamshîd, the palace is a lions' lair
Where ye held festival with houris fair;
The desert ass bounds upon Barlaam's tomb:
Where are the pomps of yesterday, ah, where?
Moorish 'Fashion' in Spanish Romance
Of Moorish grandeur of thought and luxuriance of emotion we find
little in Spanish literature, at least until the beginning of the
fifteenth century. Its note is distinctively, nay almost aggressively,
European, as will be readily understood from the circumstances of its
origin. [23] But it would seem that with the Castilian occupation
of the Moorish parts of Spain the atmosphere which the Saracen had
left behind him powerfully affected the Spaniard, who appears to
have cast a halo of romance round the character of his ancient foe,
with whose civilization, as expressed in its outward manifestations
of architecture and artifact, he could scarcely have failed to
be deeply impressed. If our conclusions are well founded it would
appear that about the era alluded to a Moorish 'fashion' set in in
Spanish literature, just as did an Oriental craze in the England of
Byron and Moore, when English people began to travel in the Levantine
countries. But this fashion was in great measure pseudo-Saracenic,
unaffected by literary models and derived indirectly more from
atmosphere and art than directly from men or books. Long before the
fifteenth century, however, with its rather artificial mania for
everything Moresque, the Arab spirit had been at work upon Spanish
literature, although in a feeble and unconscious manner. Spanish
literary forms, whether in verse or prose, owe absolutely nothing
to it, and especially is this the case in regard to the assonance
which characterizes Castilian poetry, a prosodic device found in the
verse of all Romance tongues at an early period. The Moors, however,
seem to have sophisticated, if they did not write, the ballads of
the Hispano-Moorish frontiers, especially those which have reference
to the loss of Alhamia. In any case these are founded upon Moorish
legends. Certain metrical pedants, like the Marquis de Santillana,
toyed with Arabic verse-forms as Swinburne did with the French rondeau
or Dobson with the ballade, or as the dry-as-dusts of our universities
with Greek hexameters, neglecting for the alien and recondite the
infinite possibilities of their mother-tongue. These preciosities, to
which many men of letters in all ages have been addicted, had no more
effect upon the main stream of Castilian literature than such attempts
ever have upon the literary output of a country. Some of the popular
coplas, or couplets, however, seem to be direct translations from
the Arabic, which is not surprising when we remember the considerable
number of half-breeds to be found in the Peninsula until the middle of
the seventeenth century. There can be no doubt, too, that Arabic was
the spoken language of thousands of Christians in Southern Spain. But
that it had a determined opponent in the native Spanish is becoming
more and more clear--an opponent which it found as merciless as the
Moor found the Spaniard. [24]
Perhaps the best measure of the decline of Arabic as a spoken language
in Spain is the fact that the authors of many romances declare them to
be mere translations from the Arabic--usually the writings of Moorish
magicians or astrologers. These pretensions are easily refuted by
means of internal evidence. But regarding the question broadly and
sanely, Spanish literature could no more remain unaffected by Arab
influence than could Spanish music, architecture, or handicrafts. All
such influences, however, were undoubtedly late, and, as regards the
romances, were much more 'spiritual' than 'material.' Christian Spain
had held off the Saracen for eight hundred years, and when at last
she consented to drink out of the Saracen cup she filled it with her
own wine. But the strange liquor which had brimmed it before left
behind it the mysterious odours and scents of the Orient, faint,
yet unmistakable.
The Type of Spanish Romance
The type of Spanish romance at its best is that in which the spirit
of wonder is mingled with the spirit of chivalry. Old Spain, with
her glorious ideas of honour, her finely wrought sense of chivalry,
and her birthright of imagination, provided almost a natural crucible
for the admixture of the elements of romance. Every circumstance
of climate and environment assisted and fostered the illusions with
which Spanish story teemed, and above all there was a more practical
interest in the life chivalric in Spain than, perhaps, in any other
country in Europe. The Spaniard carried the insignia of chivalry more
properly than Frenchman or Englishman. It was his natural apparel, and
he brought to its wearing a dignity, a gravity, and a consciousness of
fitness unsurpassed. If he degenerated into a Quixote it was because of
the whole-hearted seriousness with which he had embraced the knightly
life. He was certainly the first to laugh when he found that his
manners, like his mail, had become obsolete. But even the sound of
that laughter is knightly, and the book which aroused it has surely
won at least as many hearts for romanticism as ever it disillusioned.
The history of Spanish conquest is a chronicle of champions, of
warriors almost superhuman in ambition and endurance, mighty carvers
of kingdoms, great remodellers of the world's chart, who, backed by a
handful of lances, and whether in Valencia, Mexico, Italy, or Araucan,
surpassed the fabulous deeds of Amadis or Palmerin. In a later day the
iron land of Castile was to send forth iron men who were to carry her
banners across an immensity of ocean to the uttermost parts of the
earth. What inspired them to live and die in harness surrounded by
dangers more formidable than the enchantments of malevolent sorcerers
or than ever confronted knights-errant in the quest of mysterious
castles? What heartened them in an existence of continuous strife,
privation, and menace? Can we doubt that the hero-tales of their
native land magically moved and inspired them--that when going into
battle the exploits of the heroes of romance rang in their ears like
a fanfare from the trumpets of heralds at a tournament?
And as we gat us to the fight
Our armour and our hearts seemed light
Thinking on battle's cheer,
Of fierce Orlando's high prowess,
Of Felixmarte's knightliness
And the death of Olivier. [25]
CHAPTER II: THE "CANTARES DE GESTA" AND THE "POEMA DEL CID"
When meat and drink is great plentye
Then lords and ladyes still will be,
And sit and solace lythe.
Then it is time for mee to speake
Of kern knights and kempes great,
Such carping for to kythe.
"Guy and Colbrand," a romance
The French origin of the cantares de gesta has already been alluded
to. Their very name, indeed, bespeaks a Gallic source. But in justice
to the national genius of Spain we trust that it has been made
abundantly clear that the cantares speedily cast off the northern
mode and robed themselves in Castilian garb. Some lands possess an
individuality so powerful, a capacity for absorption and transmutation
so exceptional, that all things, both physical and spiritual, which
invade their borders become transfigured and speedily metamorphosed to
suit their new environment. Of this magic of transformation Spain,
with Egypt and America, seems to hold the especial secret. But
transfigure the chansons of France as she might, the mould whence
they came is apparent to those who are cognisant of their type and
machinery. Nor could the character of their composers and professors
be substantially altered, so that we must not be surprised to find
in Spain the trouvères and jongleurs of France as trovadores and
juglares. The trovador was the poet, the author, the juglar merely
the singer or declaimer, although no very hard-and-fast line was drawn
betwixt them. Some juglares of more than ordinary distinction were also
the authors of the cantares they sang, while an unsuccessful trovador
might be forced to chant the verses of others. Instrumentalists or
accompanists were known as juglares de péñola in contradistinction
to the reciters or singers, juglares de boca.
The Singers of Old Spain
With the juglar, indeed, was left the final form of the cantar, for he
would shape and shear it, add to or suppress, as his instinct told him
the taste of his audience demanded. Not infrequently he would try to
pour the wine of a cantar into the bottle of a popular air, and if it
overflowed and was spilt, so much the worse for the cantar. Frequently
he was accompanied not only by an instrumentalist, but by a remendador,
or mimic, who illustrated his tale in dumb show. These sons of the
gay science were notoriously careless of their means of livelihood,
and lived a hand-to-mouth existence. A crust of bread and a cup of wine
sufficed them when silver was scarce. Unsullied by the lust of hire,
they journeyed from hall to hall, from castle to castle, unmindful
of all but their mission--to soothe the asperities of a barbarous age.
Our long-dead brothers of the roundelay,
Whose meed was wine, who held that praise was pay,
Hearten ye by their lives, ye singers of to-day!
But this simple state did not last. As the taste for the cantares grew,
the trovadores and their satellites, after the manner of mankind,
became clamorous for the desirable things of life, making the age-long
plea of the artist that the outward insignia of beauty are his very
birthright, and forgetting how fatal it is to
Stain with wealth and power
The poet's free and heavenly mind.
These "spirits from beyond the moon" did not, alas! "refuse the
boon." Kings, infantes, and peers indulged the trovador out of full
purses, flattered him by imitating his art and his life, and even
enrolled themselves in his brotherhood. Few men of genius are so
constituted as to be able to control altogether a natural hauteur
and superiority. In these early days poetical arrogance seems to
have been as unchecked as military boastfulness, and the trovadores,
pampered and fêted by prince and noble, at length grew insufferable
in their insolence and rapacity. The land swarmed with singers, real
and pretended, the manner of whose lives became a scandal, even in a
day when scandal was cheap. The public grew weary of the repetition of
the cantares and the harping on a single string. It became fashionable
to read romances instead of listening to them, and eventually we see
the juglares footing it on the highways of Spain, and declaiming at
street-corners in a state of mendicancy more pitiable by far than
their old indigent yet dignified conditions.
Few of the ancient cantares of Spain have survived, in
contradistinction to the hundred or more chansons that France can
show. But what remains of them suffices to distinguish their type with
sufficient clearness. As has been indicated, we owe our knowledge of
more than one of them to the circumstance that they became embedded
in the ancient chronicles of Spain. An excellent illustration of
this process of literary embalming is provided by the manner in which
the cantar of Bernaldo de Carpio has become encrusted in the rather
dreary mass of the General Chronicle of Spain which was compiled
by King Alfonso the Wise (c. 1260), in which it will be found in
the seventh and twelfth chapters of the third part. The poet-king
states that he has founded his history of Bernaldo upon "old lays,"
and in the spirit as well as the form of his account of the legendary
champion we can trace the influence of the cantar.
The Story of Bernaldo de Carpio
Young Bernaldo de Carpio, when he arrived at manhood, was, like many
another hero of romance, unaware that he was of illustrious parentage,
for his mother was a sister of Don Alfonso of Castile, and had wed in
secret the brave and noble Count de Sandias de Saldaña. King Alfonso,
bitterly offended that his sister should mate with one who was her
inferior in rank, cast the Count into prison, where he caused him to be
deprived of sight, and immured the princess in a cloister. Their son
Bernaldo, however, he reared with care. While still a youth, Bernaldo
rendered his uncle important services, but when he learned that his
father languished in prison a great melancholy settled upon him, and
he cared no more for the things that had once delighted him. Instead
of mingling in the tourney or the dance, he put on deep mourning,
and at last presented himself before King Alfonso and beseeched him
to set his father at liberty.
Now Alfonso was greatly troubled when he knew that Bernaldo was aware
of his lineage and of his father's imprisonment, but his hatred for the
man who had won his sister was greater than his love for his nephew. At
first he made no reply, but sat plucking at his beard, so taken aback
was he. But kings are not often at a loss, and Alfonso, thinking to
brush the matter aside by brusque words, frowned, and said sternly:
"Bernaldo, as you love me, speak no more of this matter. I swear to
you that never in all the days of my life shall your father leave
his prison."
"Sire," replied Bernaldo, "you are my king and may do whatsoever you
shall hold for good, but I pray God that He will change your heart
in this matter."
King Alfonso had no son of his own, and in an ill moment proposed that
Charlemagne, the mighty Emperor of the Franks, should be regarded
as his successor. But his nobles remonstrated against his choice,
and refused to receive a Frank as heir to the throne of Christian
Spain. Charlemagne, learning of Alfonso's proposal, prepared to invade
Spain on the pretext of expelling the Moors, but Alfonso, repenting of
his intention to leave the crown to a foreigner, rallied his forces
around him and allied himself with the Saracens. A battle, fierce
and sustained, took place in the Pass of Roncesvalles, in which the
Franks were signally defeated, chiefly by the address of Bernaldo,
who slew the famous champion Roland with his own hand.
These and the other services of Bernaldo King Alfonso endeavoured to
reward. But neither gift nor guerdon would young Bernaldo receive at
his hands, save only the freedom of his father. Again and again did the
King promise to fulfil his request, but as often found an excuse for
breaking his word, until at last Bernaldo, in bitter disappointment,
renounced his allegiance and declared war against his treacherous
uncle. The King, in dread of his nephew's popularity and warlike
ability, at last had recourse to a stratagem of the most dastardly
kind. He assured Bernaldo of his father's release if he would agree
to the surrender of the great castle of Carpio. The young champion
immediately gave up its keys in person, and eagerly requested that
his father might at once be restored to him. The treacherous Alfonso
in answer pointed to a group of horsemen who approached at a gallop.
"Yonder, Bernaldo, is thy father," he said mockingly. "Go and
embrace him."
"Bernaldo," says the chronicle, "went toward him and kissed his
hand. But when he found it cold and saw that all his colour was black,
he knew that he was dead; and with the grief he had from it he began
to cry aloud and to make great moan, saying: 'Alas! Count Sandias,
in an evil hour was I born, for never was man so lost as I am now for
you; for since you are dead and my castle is gone, I know no counsel
by which I may do aught.'" Some say in their cantares de gesta that
the King then said: "Bernaldo, now is not the time for much talking,
and therefore I bid you go straightway forth from my land."
Broken-hearted and utterly crushed by this final blow to his hopes,
Bernaldo turned his horse's head and rode slowly away. And from that
day his banner was not seen in Christian Spain, nor the echoes of his
horn heard among her hills. Hopeless and desperate, he took service
with the Moors. But his name lives in the romances and ballads of
his native country as that of a great champion foully wronged by the
treachery of an unjust and revengeful King.
Although the cantares of Fernán González and the Children of Lara also
lie embedded in the chronicles, I have preferred to deal with them
in the chapter on the ballads, the form in which they are undoubtedly
best known.
The "Poema del Cid"
But by far the most complete and characteristic of the cantares
de gesta is the celebrated Poema del Cid, the title which has
become attached to it in default of all knowledge of its original
designation. That it is a cantar must be plain to all who possess
even a slight familiarity with the chansons de gestes of France. Like
many of the chansons heroes, the Cid experiences royal ingratitude,
and is later taken back into favour. The stock phrases of the
chansons, too, are constantly to be met with in the poem, and the
atmosphere of boastful herohood arising from its pages strengthens
the resemblance. There is also pretty clear proof that the author
of the Poema had read or heard the Chanson de Roland. This is not
to say that he practised the vile art of adaptation or the viler
art of paraphrase, or in any way filched from the mighty epic
of Roncesvalles. But superficial borrowings of incident appear,
which are, however, amply redeemed by originality of treatment and
inspiration. The thought and expression are profoundly national; nor
does the language exhibit French influence, save, as has been said,
in the matter of well-worn expressions, the clichés of medieval epic.
Its Only Manuscript
But one manuscript of the Poema del Cid is known, the handiwork of
a certain Per or Pedro the Abbot. About the third quarter of the
eighteenth century, Sanchez, the royal librarian, was led to suspect
through certain bibliographical references that such a manuscript might
exist in the neighbourhood of Bivar, the birthplace of the hero of
the poem, and he succeeded in unearthing it in that village. The date
at the end is given as Mille CCXLV, and authorities are not agreed
as to its significance, some holding that a vacant space showing an
erasure after the second C is intentional, and that it should read
1245 (1207 new style). Others believe that 1307 is the true date of
the MS. However that may be, the poem itself is referred to a period
not earlier than the middle of the twelfth nor later than the middle
of the thirteenth century.
As we possess it, the manuscript is in a rather mutilated and damaged
condition. The commencement and title are lost, a page in the middle
is missing, and the end has been sadly patched by an unskilful
hand. Sanchez states, in his Poesías Castellanas anteriores al Siglo
XV (1779-90) that he had seen a copy made in 1596 which showed that
the MS. had the same deficiencies then as now.
Its Authorship Unknown
The personality of the author of the Poema del Cid will probably
for ever remain unknown. He may have been a churchman, as Ormsby
suggests, but I am inclined to the opinion that he was a professional
trovador. The trouvères, rather than ecclesiastics, were responsible
for such works in France, and why not the trovadores in Spain? [26]
That the writer lived near the time of the events he celebrated
is plain, probably about half a century after the Cid sheathed his
famous sword Colada for the last time. On the ground of various local
allusions in the poem he has been claimed as a native of the Valle de
Arbujuelo and as a monk of the monastery of Cardeña, near Burgos. But
these surmises have nothing but textual references to recommend them,
and are only a little more probable than that which would make him
an Asturian because he does not employ the diphthong ue. We have good
grounds, however, for the assumption that he was at least a Castilian,
and these are to be found in his fierce political animus against the
kingdom of Leon and all that pertained to it. That Pedro the Abbot
was merely a copyist is clear from his mishandling of the manuscript;
for though we have to thank him for the preservation of the Poema,
our gratitude is dashed with irritation at the manner in which he has
passed it on to us, for his copy is replete with vain repetitions,
he frequently runs two lines into one, and occasionally even transfers
the matter of one line to another in his haste to be free of his task.
Other Cantares of the Cid
That other cantares relating to the Cid existed is positively
known through the researches of Señor Don Ramón Menéndez Pidal,
who has demonstrated that one of them was used in the most ancient
version of the Crónica General, of which three recensions evidently
existed at different periods, and it is now clear that the passage in
question does not come from the Poema as we have it, as was formerly
believed. [27] The passages on the Cid in the second version of the
Crónica are also derived from still another cantar on the popular
hero, known as the Crónica Rimada, [28] or Cantar de Rodrigo,
evidently the work of a juglar of Palencia, and which seems to be a
mélange of several lost cantares relating to the Cid, as well as to
other Spanish traditions. This version, however, is much later than
the Poema, and is chiefly interesting as enshrining many traditions
relative to the Cid as well as to the ancient folk-tales of Spain.
Metre of the "Poema del Cid"
It would certainly seem as if, like all cantares, the poem had been
especially written for public recitation. The expression "O señores,"
encountered in places, may be taken as the equivalent of the English
"Listen, lordings," of such frequent occurrence in our own lays and
romances, which was intended to appeal to the attention or spur the
flagging interest of a medieval audience. The metre in which the poem
is written is almost as unequal as its poetic quality. The prevailing
line is the Alexandrine or fourteen-syllabled verse, but some lines
run far over this average, while others are truncated in barbarous
fashion, probably through the inattention or haste of the copyist. [29]
It seems to me that the Poema, although of the highest merit in many
of its finest passages, has received the most extravagant eulogy, and
I suspect that many of the English critics who descant so glibly upon
its excellences have never perused it in its entirety. Considerable
tracts of it are of the most pedestrian description, and in places
it descends to a doggerel which recalls the metrical barbarities of
the pantomime. But when the war-trump gives him the key it arouses
the singer as it arouses Scott--the parallel is an apt and almost
exact one--and it is a mighty orchestra indeed which breaks upon our
ears. The lines surge and swell in true Homeric tempest-sound, and
as we listen to the crash of Castilian spears upon the Moorish ranks
we are reminded of those sounding lines in Swinburne's Erechtheus
beginning:
With a trampling of drenched, red hoofs and an earthquake of men
that meet,
Strong war sets hand to the scythe, and the furrows take fire
from his feet.
But the music of the singer of the Poema does not depend upon
reverberative effect alone. His is the true music of battle, burning
the blood with keenest fire, and he has no need to rely solely upon
the gallop of his metrical war-horse to excite our admiration, as
does the English poet.
The Poem Opens
The opening of the Poema del Cid, as we possess it, is indeed
sufficiently striking and dramatic to console us for the loss of the
original commencement. The great commander, banished (c. 1088) by
royal order from the house of his father through the treachery of the
Leonese party at the Court of King Alfonso, rides away disconsolately
from the broken gates of his castle. A fairly accurate translation
of this fine passage might read as follows:
He turns to see the ruined hold, the tears fall thick and fast,
The empty chests, the broken gates, all open to the blast.
Sans raiment are the wardrobes, reft of mantle and of vair,
The empty hollow of the hall of tapestry is bare.
No feather in the falconry, no hawk to come to hand,
A noble beggar must the Cid renounce his fathers' land.
He sighed, but as a warrior sighs. "Now I shall not repine.
All praise to Thee, our Father, for Thy grace to me and mine.
The slanderous tongue, the lying tale, have wrought my wreck to-day,
But Thou in Thy good time, O Lord, the debt wilt sure repay."
As they rode out of Bivar flew a raven to the right,
By Burgos as they bridled the bird was still in sight.
The Cid he shrugged his shoulders as the omen he espied;
"Greetings, Cousin Alvar Fañez, we are exiles now," he cried.
The sixty lances of the Cid rode clattering through the town;
From casement and from turret-top the burgher-folk looked down.
Sore were their hearts and salt their eyen as Roderick rode by;
"There goes a worthy vassal who has known bad mastery."
And many a roof that night had sheltered Roderick and his band
But for the dread in Burgos of Alfonso's heavy hand.
The missive broad with kingly seals had run throughout the town:
"Who aids the Cid in banishment, his house shall be cast down."
So as the train rode through the streets each eye was turned aside,
All silent was the town-house where the Cid was wont to bide;
Both lock and bar were on the gates, he might not enter there.
Then from a casement spoke a maid who had the house in care:
"My lord Don Roderick, who took the sword in happy hour,
The King hath sent a letter broad to ban from hall and bower
Both thee and all thy company, 'tis doom to shelter one;
Never again who aids thee shall his eyes look on the sun.
Now go, and Goddës help with thee, thy pity we implore;
In all broad Spain thou canst not lack, O Cid Campéador."
Finding no place to lay their heads within the town, the Cid with his
men rode disconsolately to the plain of Glera, to the east of Burgos,
where he pitched his tents on the banks of the river Arlanzon. To him
came Martin Antolinez, one of his former vassals, who brought food
and wine for all his train and strove to comfort him. Not a maravedi
had the Cid, and how to furnish his men with arms and food he knew
not. But he and Antolinez took counsel together, and hit upon a plan
by which they hoped to procure the necessary sinews of war. Taking two
large chests, they covered them with red leather and studded them with
gilt nails, so that they made a brave outward show. Then they filled
the chests with sand from the river-banks and locked them securely.
Money-lending in the Eleventh Century
"Martin Antolinez," said the Cid, "thou art a true man and a good
vassal. Go thou to the Jews Raquel and Vidas, and tell them I have much
treasure which I desire to leave with them since it is too weighty
to carry along with me. Pledge thou these chests with them for what
may seem reasonable. I call God and all His saints to witness that
I do this thing because I am driven to extremity and for the sake of
those who depend upon me." Antolinez, rather fearful of his mission,
sought out the Jews Raquel and Vidas where they counted out their
wealth and their profits. He told them that the Cid had levied much
tribute which he found it impossible to carry with him, and that he
would pledge this with them if they would lend him a reasonable sum
upon it. But he stipulated that they must solemnly bind themselves not
to open the chests for a year to come. The Jews took counsel together,
and consented to hide the chests and not to look upon their contents
for a year at least.
"But tell us," they said, "what sum will content the Cid, and what
interest will he give us for the year?"
"Needy men gather to my lord the Cid from all sides," replied
Antolinez. "He will require at least six hundred marks."
"We will willingly give that sum," said Raquel and Vidas, "for the
treasure of such a great lord as the Cid must indeed be immense."
"Hasten then," said Antolinez, "for night approaches, and my lord
the Cid is under decree of banishment to quit Castile at once."
"Nay," said the Jews, after the manner of their kind. "Business is not
done thus, but by first taking and then giving." They then requested
to be taken to where the Cid lay, and having greeted him, paid over
the sum agreed upon. They were surprised and delighted at the weight
of the chests, and departed well satisfied, giving Antolinez a present
or commission of thirty golden marks for the share he had taken in
the business.
Donna Ximena
When they had gone the Cid struck his camp and galloped through the
night to the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, where his lady, Donna
Ximena, and his two young daughters lay. He found them deeply engaged
in prayer for his welfare, and they received him with heartfelt
expressions of joy. Taking the Abbot aside, the Cid explained to
him that he was about to fare forth on adventure in the country of
the Moors, and tendered him such a sum as would provide for the
maintenance of Donna Ximena and her daughters until his return,
as well as a goodly bounty for the convent's sake.
By this time tidings of the Cid's banishment had gone through the land
broadcast, and so great was the fame of his prowess that cavaliers from
near and far flocked to his banner. When he put foot in stirrup at
the bridge of Arlanza a hundred and fifty gentlemen had assembled to
follow his fortunes. The parting with his wife and daughters presents
a poignant picture of leave-taking:
Sharp as the pain when finger-nails are wrenched from off the hand,
So felt the Cid this agony, but turned him to his band,
And vaulted in the saddle, and forth led his menie,
But ever and anon he turned his streaming eyes to see
Dear faces he might see no more, till blunt Minaya, irked
To see the yearning and regret that on his heartstrings worked,
Cried out, "O born in happy hour, [30] let not thy soul be sad:
The heart of knight on venture bound should never but be glad.
The heavy sorrow of to-day will prove to-morrow's joy.
What grief can bide the trumpets' sound, what woe the battle's
ploy?"
Giving rein to their steeds, they galloped forth of the bounds of
Christian Spain and, crossing the river Duero on rafts, stood upon
Moorish soil. Far to the west they could see the slender minarets
of the Saracen city of Ahilon glittering in the high sun of noon,
emblematic of the rich treasure they had come to win in the land
of the paynim. At Higeruela still more good lances rallied to the
Cid's banners, border men to whom the foray was a holiday and the
breaking of spears the sweetest music. As he slept that night the
Cid dreamed that the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him and said:
"Mount, O Cid Campeador, mount and ride. Thy cause is just. Whilst
thou livest thou shalt prosper!"
With three hundred lances behind him, the Cid rode into the land
of the Moors. He lay in ambush while Alvar Fañez and other knights
made a foray toward Alcalá. In their absence the Cid observed that
the men of Castijon, a Moorish town hard by, came out of the place
to work in the fields, leaving the gates open. He and his men made
a dash at the gates, slew the handful of heathens who guarded them,
and took the town without striking a score of blows. The men were
well content at the treasure of gold and silver they found in the
quaint Moorish houses. But they were merciful to the inhabitants,
of whom they made servitors rather than slaves.
The Taking of Alcocer
After they had rested at Castijon, the Cid and his array rode down
the valley of the Henares, passing by way of Alhamia to Bubierca and
Ateca, and as he was in unknown country, and environed round by hosts
of enemies, he took up a position upon a "round hill" near the strong
Saracen city of Alcocer, to which he set siege. But the place was
well guarded, and he saw that if he were to penetrate its defences
it must be by stratagem and not by fighting alone. So one morning,
after he had beleaguered Alcocer for full fifteen weeks, he withdrew
his men as if retreating in disgust, leaving but one pavilion behind
him. When the Moors beheld his withdrawal they exulted, and in their
eagerness to see what spoil the solitary tent might contain they
rushed out of the town, leaving the gates open and unguarded. Now
when the Cid saw that there was a wide space between the Moors and
the gates of Alcocer, he ordered his men to turn and fall upon the
excited rabble of Saracens. Small need had he to ask them to smite
the paynim. Dashing among the dense crowd with levelled lances, the
cavaliers of Castile did fearful execution. The wretched Moors, taken
completely by surprise, fled wildly in all directions, and soon the
plain was littered with white-robed corpses. Meanwhile the Cid himself,
with a few trusted followers, galloped to the gates and secured them,
so that with, much triumph the Spaniards entered Alcocer. As before,
the Campeador was merciful to such of the Moors as made full surrender,
saying: "We cannot sell them, and we shall gain nothing by cutting
off their heads. Let us make them rather serve us."
The Saracens of the neighbouring towns of Ateca and Zerrel were
aghast at the manner in which Alcocer had been taken, and sent word
to the Moorish King of Valencia how one called Roderigo Diaz of
Bivar, a Castilian outlaw, had come into their land to spoil it,
and had already taken the strong city of Alcocer. When King Tamin
of Valencia heard these tidings he was greatly wroth, and sent an
army of three thousand well-appointed men against the Campeador. In
his anger he charged his captains that they should take this Spanish
renegade alive, and bring him where justice might be done upon him.
The Cid knew nothing of the coming of this host, and one morning his
sentinels, pacing the walls of Alcocer, were surprised to see the
surrounding country alive with Moorish scouts, flitting from point
to point upon their active jennets, and shaking their scimitars in
menace. His own outposts soon brought in word that he was surrounded,
and his knights and men-at-arms clamoured to be led forth to do battle
with the infidels. But the Cid was old in Moorish warfare, and denied
them for the moment. For days the enemy paraded around the walls of
Alcocer. But the Cid, with three hundred men, knew well the folly of
attacking three thousand, and bided his time.
The Combat with the Moorish King
At last the Moors succeeded in cutting off the water-supply of
Alcocer. Provisions, too, were running low, and the Cid saw clearly
that such a desperate situation demanded a desperate remedy. Alvar
Fañez, ever panting for the fight like a war-horse that hears the
trumpet, urged an immediate sally in force, and the Cid, knowing the
high spirit of his men, consented. First he sent all the Moors out
of the city and looked to its defences. Then, leaving but two men to
guard the gate, he marshalled his array and issued forth from Alcocer
with dressed ranks and in strict order of battle. And here prose must
once more give place to verse. [31]
Huzza! huzza! the Moorman mounts and waves his crescent blade
Hark to the thunder of the drums, the trump's fanfaronade!
Around two glittering gonfanons the paynim take their stand,
Beneath each waving banner's folds is massed a swarthy band.
The turbaned sons of Termagaunt sweep onward like the sea;
So trust they to engulf and drown the Christian chivalry.
"Now gentles, keep ye fast your seats," cries the Campeador,
"And hold your ranks, for such a charge saw never knight before."
But the fierce heart of Bermuez that echoed to the drum,
Cried, "Santiago, shall I stay the while these heathen come?
With this bold banner shall I pierce yon pride of paynimrie.
So follow, follow, cavaliers, for Spain and Christendie!"
"Nay, comrade, stay!" implored the Cid, but Pero shook his head.
His hand was loose upon the rein. "It may not be," he said;
Then in his destrier's flank he drove the bright speed-making spur:
Like a spray-scattering ship he clove the sands of Alcocer.
Lost in a sea of Saracens, whose turbans surge as foam,
He stands unshaken as a cliff when on its bosom come
Madness of ocean and the wrath of seas that overwhelm.
So rain the hounds of Máhomet fierce blows on shield and helm.
"A rescue, rescue," cries the Cid, "and strike for Holy Rood!
Up, gentlemen of Old Castile, and charge the heathen brood!"
As forth the hound when from the leash the hunter's hand is ta'en,
As the unhooded falcon bounds, her jesses cast amain,
But fiercer far than falcon or the hound's unleashèd zeal
Comes crashing down upon the foe the fury of Castile.
Now rally, rally, to the flash of Roderigo's blade,
The champion of Bivar is here who never was gainsaid.
Three hundred levelled lances strike as one upon the foe.
Down, down in death upon the sand three hundred heathen go.
The lances rise, the lances fall, how fast the deadly play!
Ah, God! the sundered shields that lie in dreadful disarray.
The snow-white bannerets are dyed with blood of Moorish slain,
And chargers rush all masterless across the littered plain.
As lightning circles Roderick's sword above the huddled foe,
With Alvar Fañez, Gustioz, and half a hundred moe
He reaps right bloodily. But stay, the Saracens have slain
Bold Alvar Fañez' destrier; to aid him comes amain
The Cid Campeador, for sore the brave Minaya's need.
His way is barred, his stride is marred by a tall emir's steed.
His falchion swoops, his falchion stoops, down sinks the turbaned
lord.
"Mount in his place, Minaya, mount! I need thy trenchant sword.
The phalanx of the foe is firm, unbroken still they stand."
The stout Minaya leaps in selle, and falchion in hand
Strews death to left and right, his trust to rout the Moor
right soon.
But see, the Cid hath fiercely rid with blood-embroidered shoon
Upon the Moorish capitan, he cleaves his shining shield:
The haughty Moslem turns to fly--that blow hath won the field.
Bold Martin Antolinez aims a stroke at Galve's head;
The jewelled casque it cracks in twain, the infidel hath fled
Rather than bide its fellow; he and Fariz make retreat:
They caracoled to victory, they gallop from defeat.
Ne'er was a field so worthy sung since first men sang of war.
Its laurels unto thee belong, O Cid Campeador!
Fierce and sanguinary was the pursuit. The Moorish rout was complete,
and the little Castilian band had lost but fifteen men. Five hundred
Arab horses, heavily caparisoned, each with a splendid sword at the
saddle-bow, fell into the hands of the Cid, who kept a fifth share for
himself, as was the way with the commanders of such free companies as
he led. But greatly desiring to make his peace with King Alfonso of
Castile, he sent the trusty Alvar Fañez to Court with thirty steeds
saddled and bridled in the Moorish fashion.
But the Moors, even with the dust of defeat in their mouths, were not
minded to leave the Cid the freedom of their borders, and seeing that
he would not be able to hold Alcocer for long against their numbers,
he bargained with the Saracens of the neighbouring cities for the
ransom of Alcocer. This they gladly agreed to for three thousand marks
of gold and silver, so, quitting the place, the Campeador pushed
southward, and took up a position on a hill above the district of
Mont'real. He laid all the Moorish towns in the neighbourhood under
tribute, remaining in his new encampment full fifteen weeks.
Meanwhile Alvar Fañez had journeyed to the Court and had presented
the King with the thirty good steeds taken in battle. "It is yet
too soon to take the Cid back into favour," said Alfonso, "but since
these horses come from the infidel, I scruple not to receive them. I
pardon thee, Alvar Fañez, and withdraw my banishment from thee. But
as to the Cid, I say no more than that any good lance who cares to
join him may do so without hindrance from me."
The War with Raymond Berenger
Now the Count of Barcelona, Raymond Berenger, a haughty and arrogant
lord, conceived the presence of the Cid in a territory so near his
own dominions to be an insult to himself, and in a high passion he
mustered all his forces, Moorish as well as Christian, so that he
might drive the Cid from the lands he held in tribute. The Campeador,
hearing of the advance of this host, sent a courteous message to Count
Raymond, assuring him of pacific intentions toward himself. But the
Count felt that his personal dignity had been offended, and refused
to receive the messenger.
When the Cid beheld the army of Raymond marching against his position
on the heights of Mont'real, he knew that his overtures for peace
had been in vain, and, dressing his ranks for the fierce combat that
he knew must follow, took up a position upon the plain suitable for
cavalry. The lightly armed Moorish horsemen of Berenger's host rushed
precipitately to the attack, but were easily routed by the Castilian
cavaliers. The Count's Frankish men-at-arms, a band of skilful and
warlike mercenaries, then thundered down-hill upon the lances of
the Cid. The shock was terrific, but brief was the combat, for the
knights of Castile, hardened by constant warfare, speedily overthrew
the Frankish horsemen. The Cid himself attacked Count Berenger, took
him prisoner, and forced him to deliver up his famous sword Colada,
which figures so prominently in the mighty deeds which follow. A
falchion which tradition states is none other than this celebrated
blade, the Spanish Excalibur, is still shown at the Armeria at Madrid,
and all pious lovers of chivalry will gladly believe that it is the
sword taken by the Campeador from the haughty Berenger, even though the
profane point out that its hilt is obviously of the fifteenth century!
Greatly content were they of the Cid's company with the victory no
less than with the spoil, and a feast worthy of princes was prepared
to celebrate the occasion.
In courtesy the Cid invited the defeated Count Raymond to feast
with him, but he refused the invitation with hauteur, saying that
his capture by outlaws had taken away his appetite. Nettled at this
display of rudeness, the Cid told him that he would not see his
realms again until he broke bread and drank wine with him. Three
whole days did the Count refuse to touch all provender, and on the
third day the Cid promised him immediate freedom if he would break
his fast. This was too much for the haughty Berenger, whose hunger
now outmatched his scruples. "Powers above!" exclaims the poet,
"with what gust did he eat! His hands plied so quickly that my Cid
[32] might not see their play." The Cid then gave him his liberty,
and they parted on good terms.
"Ride on, ride on, my noble Count, a free Frank as thou art;
For all the spoil thou leavest me I thank thee from my heart.
And if to turn the chance of fate against me thou shalt come,
Right gladly shall I listen for the echoes of thy drum."
"Nay, Roderick, I leave in peace and peace I shall maintain;
From me thou sure hast spoil enow to count a twelvemonth's gain."
He drove the spur, but backward glanced, he feared for treachery;
So black a thought the Cid had harboured not for Christendie.
No, not for all the wealthy world, who kept his soul in light.
Whose heart as his so free from guile, the very perfect knight?
The Cid Makes War Seaward
Turning from Huesca and Montalvan, the Cid began to make war toward the
salt sea. His eastward march struck terror to the hearts of the Moors
of Valencia. They took counsel together, and resolved to send such a
host against him as they thought he might not withstand. But he routed
them with such a slaughter that they dared face him no more. Three
years did the Cid war in that country, and his many conquests there
were long to tell. He and his men sat themselves down in the land as
kings, reaped its corn, and ate its bread. And a great famine came
upon the Moors, so that thousands perished.
Now the Cid sent messengers to Castile and Aragon, who made it known
that all Christians who came to dwell beneath his rule should fare
well. Hearing this, thousands flocked to his banner, and so greatly
was he reinforced that in time he was able to march against Valencia
itself, the capital of the Moors of that country. With all his host he
sat down before that city and beleaguered it. Nine months he environed
it, and in the tenth month the men of Valencia opened the gates and
surrendered the place. Great was the booty of gold and silver and
precious stuffs, so that there fell to his share alone treasure to
the amount of thirty thousand marks, and he grew in greatness so that
not only his own followers but the Moors of Eastern Spain began to
look upon him almost as their rightful lord.
Beholding his puissance, the Moorish King of Seville grew greatly
afraid, and resolved to bring the whole power of his kingdom against
him. Collecting an army of thirty thousand men, he marched against
Valencia. But the Cid encountered him on the banks of the Huerta,
and defeated him so completely that never again was he able to do
him scathe.
The heart of the Cid now began to grow hopeful that his King would
receive him into friendship and confidence once more. And he swore a
great oath that for love of Alfonso he would never let his beard be
shorn. "So," he said, "will my beard be famous among both Moors and
Christians." Once more he sent Alvar Fañez to Court with the gift
of a hundred splendidly appointed horses of the purest Arab blood,
praying that he might be permitted to bring his wife, Donna Ximena,
and their daughters, to the possessions which he had carved out for
himself by his good sword.
Meanwhile there had come to Valencia from the East a holy man, one
Bishop Don Jerome, who had heard afar of the prowess of the Cid and
longed to cross swords with the infidel. The Cid was well pleased with
him, and founded a bishopric of Valencia for the doughty Christian,
whose one thought was but to spread the worship of God and slay
Saracens.
When Alvar Fañez reached the Court, he sought audience of King Alfonso,
who was heartened to hear of the deeds of the Campeador, how he had
routed the Moors in five pitched battles, made their lands subject
to the crown of Castile, and erected a bishopric in the heart of
paynimrie, so that he readily granted permission that Donna Ximena
and the ladies Elvira and Sol should go to Valencia. Hearing this,
Count Garcia Ordoñez, of the Leonese party, who had secured the Cid's
banishment and who cordially hated him, was greatly vexed. But the
two Infantes or Princes of Carrión, in Leon, seeing how the Cid grew
in power and importance, resolved to ask his daughters in marriage
from the King, but meanwhile kept their counsel.
The time had long passed when the Cid should have discharged his debt
to the Jews Raquel and Vidas, and hearing that Alvar Fañez was at
Court they came to him and begged that it might be paid. Fañez assured
them that all should be done as the Cid had promised, and that only
stress of constant warfare had kept his master from fulfilling his
obligation to them. They were perfectly satisfied with this assurance,
and so greatly had they trusted the Cid that they had never opened
the chests to examine the nature of the security he had given them.
The Cid Welcomes his Family
Alvar Fañez now made ready to set out for Valencia with Donna
Ximena and the Cid's daughters, whom he safely conveyed to their new
home. When he heard that they were near at hand, the Cid, who had only
a few days before won his famous steed Babieca in a skirmish with the
Moors, leapt upon the charger's back, and rode off at a gallop to
meet them and welcome them to their new possessions. Greeting them
with much affection, he led them to the castle, from the towers of
which he showed them the lands he had won for them. And they gave
thanks to God for a gift so fair.
Now there was great stirring among the Moors of Africa when they heard
of the deeds of the Cid, and they held it for dishonour that he should
have redeemed so great a part of Spain from their brothers of the
Peninsula. Their king, Yussef, levied a mighty army of fifty thousand
men, and, crossing the seas to Spain, marched upon Valencia, hoping
to regain it for the Crescent. When the Cid heard this, he exclaimed:
"I thank God and the blessed Mother that I have my wife and daughters
here. Now shall they see how we do battle with the Moors and win our
bread in the land of the stranger!"
The host of Yussef soon came in sight, and environed Valencia so
closely that none might enter or leave it, and when the ladies beheld
the great army which surrounded the city they were much afraid. But
the Cid bade them be of good cheer. "Hearten ye," he said, "for, see,
marvellous great wealth comes to us. Here comes a dowry against the
marriage of your daughters!" [33]
The Battle with King Bucar
Springing upon Babieca, the Cid led his lances against the Moors of
Africa. Then began a contest great and grim. The Spanish spears were
red that day, and the Cid plied his good blade Colada so terribly that
the Saracens fell before his strokes like corn before the sickle. He
aimed a great blow at King Yussef's helm, but the Moorish chieftain,
avoiding it, gave his horse the rein and galloped off the field,
his dusky host following him in headlong rout. Countless was the
spoil in gold, silver, richly caparisoned horses, shields, swords,
and body-armour.
Too wearied with ceaseless slaughter to give chase, the Cid rode back
to where his wife and daughters had sat watching the progress of the
battle, his dripping sword in his hand. "Homage to you, ladies,"
he cried. "Thus are Moors vanquished on the field of battle." But
ever mindful of his King and liege-lord, he at once dispatched Alvar
Fañez and Pero Bermuez to Court, with the tent of King Yussef and two
hundred horses with their caparisons. Greatly pleased was Alfonso. "I
receive the gift of the Cid willingly," he said, "and may the day of
our reconciliation soon arrive."
The Infantes of Carrión, seeing that the reputation of the Cid
increased daily, were now fully resolved to ask the daughters of the
Campeador in marriage from the King. Alfonso agreed to enter into
negotiations with the Cid, not only for the hands of his daughters,
but with the idea of effecting a reconciliation with him, for he was
well aware of all the service which the Campeador had done him. So
he sent for Alvar Fañez and Pero Bermuez and acquainted them with
the offer of the Infantes of Carrión, requesting them to convey it
to the Cid without loss of time and assuring him of his esteem.
The envoys hastened to Valencia and told the Cid how the King had
sent him a gracious message, asking for the hands of his daughters
for the Infantes of Carrión. The Cid was right joyful on hearing
this. "What the King desires is my pleasure," he said, "though the
Infantes of Carrión are haughty, and bad vassals to the Throne. But
be it as God and the King wills."
Then the Campeador made great preparations and set out for the Court,
and when the King knew he was approaching he went out to meet him. And
the Cid went on his knees before the King and took the grass of
the field in his teeth to humble himself before his lord. But Don
Alfonso was troubled at the sight, and, raising him, assured him
of his grace and affection, at which the Cid was greatly moved and
wept joyfully. Then the King feasted the Cid bravely, and when the
banquet was at an end asked for the hands of his daughters for the
Infantes of Carrión. The Cid made reply that he and his daughters
were in the King's hands and that Alfonso himself might give the
damsels in marriage.
The Cid's Daughters Wed
After some days spent in feasting and rejoicing, the Campeador
returned to Valencia with the two Infantes of Carrión. He told his
wife and daughters that the marriage was of the King's making and
not of his, as he was not without misgivings as to the result of
the alliance. Nevertheless he made great preparations, as befitted
the importance of such a ceremony with two of the greatest lords in
Spain, and Donna Elvira and Donna Sol were espoused to the Infantes
of Carrión in the church of Santa Maria by the good warrior-bishop
Jerome. The wedding celebrations lasted fifteen days, and the Cid had
no reason to be dissatisfied with his sons-in-law, who bore themselves
as gallantly in the lists as in the dance.
The Adventure of the Lion
The Infantes of Carrión and their wives had remained in Valencia
for about two years when a mishap befell. One day, during the time
of the afternoon siesta, a lion, kept for baiting in the ring, broke
loose from its cage and made its way into the palace. The Campeador
reclined upon a couch asleep, but his dauntless followers gathered
round him to protect him, all except the Infantes of Carrión, one of
whom crept beneath the couch on which the Cid slept, while the other
made such speed to quit the palace that he fell across the beam of a
wine-press and rent his robes. The clamour awoke the Cid, who rose,
and, going to where the lion crouched, firmly placed his hand on the
brute's bristling mane and led him back to his cage. Nor did the lion
resist, evidently knowing his master.
The Infantes of Carrión, when they knew all danger was past, came
out of hiding, looking so pale and terrified that the hardy soldiers
of the Cid could not restrain their laughter. At this the haughty
northern grandees felt deep insult and resentment and an unmanly
feeling of revenge awoke in their hearts.
Within a few days of this incident news reached Valencia that Abu Bekr,
the commander of the armies of the King of Morocco, was marching upon
the city. The Cid and his captains rejoiced at the news, but not so
the Infantes of Carrión, who took counsel together as to how they
might avoid the fighting and return to their own territories.
Here a break occurs in the narrative, and from a later passage it is
clear that the missing lines relate to a test of the courage of at
least one of the Infantes, who, stung by an imputation of cowardice,
armed himself and set out to fight a Moor, who, however, put him
to flight. But Pero Bermuez, to save the Cid's feelings, slew the
Saracen and made it appear that the Infante had done so.
A 'Secret Service' Story of "The Cid"
A most romantic tale hangs upon the first line of the next passage:
"May the time come when I deserve as much of both of you."
The line is supposed to be the last in the speech of Pero Bermuez
to the Infante Don Ferrando, who had probably expressed gratitude
to him. The first English author to attempt a translation of the
Poema del Cid was John Hookham Frere, the translator of the plays of
Aristophanes, who was for some years British Minister at Madrid. He
made a conjectural reading of the above line, which he communicated
to the Marquis de la Romana. Some years later, in 1808, when the
Marquis was commanding a body of troops in the French service in
Denmark, Frere was able to accredit a confidential messenger to him,
assuring the Spanish commander of the genuineness of the message he
carried by mention of the amended line, the correction in which was
known only to the Marquis and himself. The circumstance led to one
of the most important movements in the war against Napoleon.
The Fighting Bishop
The Infantes of Carrión, who did not relish the idea of a protracted
struggle with the Moors, resolved to betake themselves to the
security of their own estates at the first opportunity. But, as if
to shame them, the warlike Bishop Jerome appeared before the Cid
armed cap-à-pie and entreated his permission to take part in the
fighting. The Cid smilingly gave his assent, and no sooner had he
done so than the doughty churchman mounted a great war-horse and,
issuing out of the gates, galloped headlong against the Saracens. At
the first onset he slew two of them outright, but had the misfortune
to break his lance. Nothing daunted, however, this ardent disciple
of the Church militant drew his sword and, brandishing it about his
head like a trained knight-at-arms, flung himself once more upon the
Moorish ranks with all the weight of his charger. Laying about him
left and right, he killed or wounded a heathen with every blow. But
the enemy closed round him, and it would have gone hard indeed with
the fighting bishop had not the Cid, who had witnessed his gallantry
with all a warrior's admiration for the deeds of another brave man,
laid his lance in rest and, setting spurs to Babieca, plunged into
the thickest of the fray. Beneath his terrific onset the lightly
armed Moors gave way in terror. Wheeling, he came at them again,
crashing through their ranks like a tempest, and dealing death and
destruction wherever he went. The Moors wavered, broke, and fled
amain. The whole army of the Cid now bore down upon them, horse and
man, bursting into their camp, breaking the tent-ropes, and dashing
aside the gaudy Eastern pavilions where they had lodged.
Upon the terror-stricken ranks the horsemen of Castile
Came thundering down; King Bucar's men the iron tempest feel.
And down to dust the severed arm, the severed steel-capped head
Fall lifeless, and the charger's hoofs trample the gory dead.
"Ha! stay, King Bucar!" cries the Cid. "Now tarry, Moorish lord;
You came to seek me o'er the sea, mine is the peaceful word."
"If peace is in thy naked sword and in thy charging steed,
Then I would flee it," cried the King, and spurred his horse
to speed.
With hasty stride the King doth ride straight for the open sea;
Spain's champion is at his side, never again will he
Know the delights of Algiers' halls; Colada shines on high:
Now whether by the sword or sea, King Bucar, wilt thou die?
The good blade shears the Moor in twain, down to the saddle-bow;
So perished the Algerian lord--may every Moor die so!
And thus upon this day of fame the Cid his guerdon won,
Worth many a purse of minted marks, the noble blade Tizon!
Riding back from the fray, the Cid espied the Infantes of Carrión
and welcomed them. "Now that they are brave will they be welcomed by
the brave," he said, rather wistfully, to Alvar Fañez. The proud and
shallow princes were wrathful when they overheard this, and the shadow
of vengeance once more arose within their haughty hearts. "Let us take
our leave of the Cid and return to Carrión," they said. "We have been
flouted and insulted here by these banditti and their leader. On the
way home we shall know how to avenge ourselves upon his daughters."
With this cowardly purpose they smilingly requested the Campeador
to permit them to depart. Sorrowfully he granted it, and loading
them with presents and bestowing upon them the famous swords Colada
and Tizon, which he had himself taken in battle from the Moors, he
requested Feliz Muñoz, his nephew, to accompany the Infantes and his
daughters to Carrión.
The Infantes' Revenge
Great was the grief of the Cid and Donna Ximena at parting with the
ladies Elvira and Sol, and they were not without some misgivings. But
they charged Feliz Muñoz to keep good watch over their daughters,
and this he promised to do. After journeying for some days the party
had to traverse the great forest of Corpes, where in a glade they
pitched pavilions and spent the night. In the morning the Infantes
sent their suite on ahead, and, taking the saddle-girths from the
horses, beat the unfortunate daughters of the Cid most cruelly. The
wretched ladies begged for death rather than suffer such disgrace,
but the cowardly Infantes, laughing scornfully, mocked them, cast them
off, and so dealt with them that they left them for dead. "Thus,"
they said, "the dishonour of the affair of the lion is avenged,"
and mounting their horses they rode off.
As the deserted and dishonoured wives of the cowardly pair lay bleeding
on the grass, Feliz Muñoz, their cousin, who had lodged during
the night in another part of the forest, rode up, and seeing their
piteous condition hastened to their relief. Having dressed their hurts
to the best of his ability, he rode quickly to the nearest town and
purchased clothing and horses for them as befitted their station. When
these tidings reached the Cid in Valencia great anger rose in his
heart. He did not give it vent, however, but sat moodily pondering
upon the dishonour done to his daughters. At last, after many hours,
he spoke. "By my beard!" he cried, "the Infantes of Carrión shall not
profit by this." Soon the ladies Sol and Elvira arrived at Valencia,
and he received them lovingly, but not compassionately. "Welcome, my
daughters," said he. "God keep ye from evil! I accepted this marriage,
for I dared not gainsay it. God grant that I see you better married
hereafter, and that I have my revenge upon my sons-in-law of Carrión."
The Court at Toledo
Then the Cid dispatched messengers to King Alfonso, acquainting him of
the great wrong done to his daughters by the Infantes, and pleading
for justice. The King was greatly wroth at the news, and ordered the
Court to sit at Toledo and the Infantes to be summoned before him to
answer for their crime. They begged to be excused attendance, but
the King peremptorily refused to accept any apology or subterfuge,
and demanded their instant compliance with his summons. With great
misgivings they journeyed to Toledo, taking with them the Count Don
Garcia, Asur González, Gonzalo Asurez, and a great band of dependents,
thinking thereby to overawe the Cid. The Campeador himself soon arrived
at Court, with many a trusted veteran, all armed to the teeth. He wore
a rich robe of red fur broidered with gold, and his beard was bound
with a cord to preserve it. When he entered the Court with his men all
rose to greet him save the Infantes of Carrión and their party, for he
seemed a great baron and the Infantes might not look at him for shame.
"Princes, barons, and hidalgos," said King Alfonso, "I have summoned
ye here that justice may be done the Cid Campeador. As ye all know,
foul wrong has been done his daughters, and I have set judges apart to
moderate in this business and to search out the right, for wrong I will
not have in Christian Spain. I swear by the bones of San Isidro that he
who disturbs my Court shall quit my kingdom and forfeit my love, and
he who shall prove his right, on his side am I. Now let the Cid make
his demand and we shall hear the answer of the Infantes of Carrión."
Then rose the Cid, and in the Court among all these great barons and
lords there was no nobler figure. "My lord the King," he said, "it is
not I alone whom the Infantes of Carrión have wronged, but yourself
also, who gave them my daughters in marriage. Let them first restore
my swords Colada and Tizon, since they are no longer my sons-in-law."
The Infantes, hearing the Cid speak thus, thought that he would urge
no more against them if they restored the swords, and so they formally
handed them over to the King. But it was the Campeador's intention
to punish them by every means in his power, so when he received the
wondrous falchions from the hands of Alfonso he at once presented
them to Feliz Muñoz and Martin Antolinez, thus showing that it was
not for himself that he desired them. Having done this, he turned
once again to the King.
"My liege," he said, "when the Infantes left Valencia I bestowed upon
them three thousand marks in gold and silver. Let them now restore
this, since they are no longer my sons-in-law."
"Nay, if we do this," cried the Infantes, "we must even pay it out of
our lands in Carrión." But the judges demanded that the sum be paid
in Court without delay. The treacherous princelings could not raise
such a treasure in money, so the Court decided that it must be paid in
kind. Then the Infantes saw that there was no help but to acquiesce,
and brought many a steed and trained palfrey with their furniture to
repay the Cid, borrowing from the members of their suite and entering
into such obligations as would burden them for many a day.
Redress by Combat
When this matter had at last been settled, the Cid then advanced his
principal grievance against the Infantes, and asked for redress by
combat in the lists for the great wrong they had done his daughters. At
this Count Garcia, their spokesman, rose to defend the Infantes. He
pleaded that they were of princely degree, and for that reason alone
were justified in casting off the daughters of the Cid. Then Fernán
González, the elder of the Infantes, himself rose to approve the speech
of his vassal, and cast fresh scorn upon the alliance he had made,
justifying his cowardly action by his princely rank as a thing quite
natural and fitting. At this Pero Bermuez opened the vials of his
wrath upon the Infantes, taunting them with cowardice in the affair
of the lion and casting defiance of battle in their teeth.
Enter Asur González
The argument waxed high, when at that moment Asur González, a haughty
vassal of the Infantes, entered the hall.
With early viands and with wine flushed were his face and brow,
Disordered were his garments and his mantle hung full low.
He scanned the Court with bearing rude, right clownish was
his vaunt:
"How now, my lords? What have we here? Thinkst Carrión to daunt?
What bruit is this about the Cid, the lordling of Bivar?
At drawing tithes from dusty millers better is he far
Than ruffling at a Cortés; he to match with Carrión!"
Then up leapt Muño Gustioz: "Ha' done, thou knave, ha' done!
Drunkard, who lookest on the wine before ye tell a bead,
Who never yet did keep thy troth, evil in word and deed,
The only boon I crave is but to have thee where my sword
May cut the false tongue from thy throat and cease thy lying word."
"Enough, enough," Alfonso cried, "I give thee my consent
To meet each other in the lists; so ends this Parliament."
The tumult which the King had endeavoured to abate had hardly died
away when two cavaliers entered the Court. The new-comers were
ambassadors from the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon, who had come to
request the King to bestow the hands of the Cid's daughters upon their
masters. Alfonso turned to the Cid and requested his permission to
ratify the marriage at once, and when the Campeador had humbly given
his consent he answered to the assembled nobles that the espousals
would duly take place, adding that the combat between the disputants
would be fought out on the morrow.
This was right woeful news to the Infantes of Carrión, who, in great
fear, requested him to permit them some delay to procure fitting
horses and arms, so that at last the King scornfully fixed the day of
combat at three weeks from that date, and the place where it was to
be fought out as Carrión itself, so that the Infantes should have no
grounds of excuse for absence or be able to plead that the champions
of the Cid had been granted any undue advantage.
The Cid then took his leave of the King, and on parting pressed him to
accept his courser Babieca. But Alfonso refused the proffered gift,
saying courteously that if he accepted it Babieca would not have so
good a lord. Turning to those who were to uphold his cause in the
lists, the Campeador bade them an affectionate farewell, and so he
departed for Valencia, and the King for Carrión to see justice done.
The Trial by Combat
When the time of truce was over the contending parties sought the
lists. The Cid's men did not waste much time in arming themselves,
but the treacherous Infantes of Carrión had brought with them a
number of their vassals in the hope that they might be able to slay
the Cid's champions by night, when they were off their guard. But
Antolinez and his comrades kept good watch and frustrated their
design. When they saw that there was no help for it but to meet their
challengers à outrance, they prayed the King that the Cid's men might
not be permitted to use the famous swords Colada and Tizon, for they
superstitiously dreaded the trenchancy of these marvellous weapons,
and bitterly repented that they had restored them. Alfonso, however,
refused to listen to this appeal.
"Ye have swords of your own," he said brusquely. "Let them suffice
you, and see that you wield them like men, for, believe me, there
will be no shortcoming on the side of the Campeador."
The trumpets sounded and the Cid's three champions leapt upon their
impatient destriers, first having made the sign of the Cross upon
their saddles. The Infantes of Carrión also mounted, but none so
blithely. The marshals or heralds who were to decide the rules of the
combat, and give judgment in case of dispute, took their places. Then
said King Alfonso: "Hear what I say, Infantes of Carrión. This combat
ye should have fought at Toledo, but ye would not, so I have brought
these three cavaliers in safety to the land of Carrión. Take your
right; seek no wrong: who attempts it, ill betide him."
The description of the scene that follows has more than once been
compared with Chaucer's description of the combat between Palamon
and Arcite in The Knight's Tale, and, as will be seen, a resemblance
certainly exists. [34]
And now the marshals quit the lists and leave them face to face;
Their shields are dressed before their breasts, their lances are
in place.
Each charger's flank now feels the spur, each helm is bending low,
The earth doth shake as horse and man hurl them upon the foe.
The echo of their meeting is a sound of meikle dread,
And all who hear the deadly shock count them as good as sped.
The false Ferrando and Bermuez strike lance on either's shield,
The Infant's spear goes through the boss, but the stout shaft
doth yield
And splinters ere the point can pass thorough the other's mail.
But Pero's shaft struck home, nor did the seasoned timber fail;
It pierced Ferrando's corselet and sank into his breast,
And to the trampled ground there drooped the Infant's haughty crest.
Bermuez then drew Tizon's bright blade; ere ever he could smite
The Infant yielded him and cried, "Thou hast the victor's right."
While this combat was proceeding Antolinez and the other Infante
came together. Each of their lances smote the other's shield and
splintered. Then, drawing their swords, they rode fiercely against one
another. Antolinez, flourishing Colada, struck so mightily at Diego
that the good blade shore its way clean through the steel plates of his
casque, and even cut half the hair from Diego's head. The terrified
princeling wheeled his courser and fled, but Antolinez pursued him
with mock fury and struck him across the shoulders with the flat of
his sword. So had the hound the chastisement of cowards. As he felt
the blade across his withers Diego shrieked aloud and spurred past the
boundaries of the lists, thus, according to the rules of the combat,
admitting himself vanquished.
When the trumpets of the pursuivants sounded, Muño Gustioz and Asur
González ran swiftly and fiercely together. The point of Asur's spear
glanced off Muño's armour, but that of the Cid's champion pierced the
shield of his opponent and drove right through his breast, so that
it stuck out a full fathom between the shoulder-blades. The haughty
Asur fell heavily to the ground, but had enough of life left in him
to beg for mercy.
King Alfonso then duly credited the Cid's champions with the victory,
and without loss of time they returned to Valencia to acquaint their
master with the grateful news that his honour had been avenged.
Shortly afterward the espousals of the Cid's daughters to the noble
Infantes of Navarre and Aragon were celebrated with much pomp. The
Poema del Cid, however, concludes as abruptly as it begins:
So in Navarre and Aragon his daughters both did reign,
And princes of his blood to-day sit on the thrones of Spain.
Greater and greater grew his name in honour and in worth;
At last upon a Pentecost he passed away from earth.
Upon him be the grace of Christ, Whom all of us adore.
Such is the story, gentles, of the Cid Campeador.
The Real Cid
Cervantes' summing-up upon the Poema del Cid is perhaps the sanest on
record. The Cid certainly existed in the flesh; what matter, then,
whether his achievements occurred or not? For the Cid of romance is
a very different person from the Cid of history, who was certainly a
born leader of men, but crafty, unscrupulous, and cruel. The Poema
is thus romance of no uncertain type, and as this book deals with
romance and not with history, there is small need in this place to
provide the reader with a chronicle of the rather mercenary story of
Roderigo of Bivar the real.
"Mio Cid," the title under which he is most frequently mentioned, is
a half Arabic, half Spanish rendering of the Arabic Sid-y, "My lord,"
by which he was probably known to his Moorish subjects in Valencia,
and it is unlikely that he was given this appellation in Spain during
his lifetime. But even to this day it is a name to conjure with in
the Peninsula. So long as the heart of the Briton beats faster at the
name of Arthur and the Frenchman is thrilled by the name of Roland
the Spaniard will not cease to reverence that of the great romantic
shadow which looms above the early history of his land like a very
god of war--the Cid Campeador.
CHAPTER III: "AMADIS DE GAUL"
There stands a castle on a magic height
Whose spell-besetten pathways ye may climb
If that ye love fair chivalry sublime.
Come, its enchanted turrets yield the sight,
As long ago to demoiselle and knight,
Of many a satrapy of ancient rhyme,
And in its carven corridors shall Time
Display us trophies of a dead delight:
The damascene of armour in the dusk,
Shadows of banners torn from infidels,
The fragments of an unremembered glory,
Fragrant with faint, imperishable musk
Of Moorish fantasy. Dissolve, ye spells!
Open, ye portals of Castilian story!
L. S.
Many a casement in the grey castle of Spanish Romance opens upon
vistas of fantastic loveliness or gloomy grandeur, but none commands a
prospect so brilliant, so infinitely varied, or so rich in the colours
of fantasy as that aery embrasure overlooking the region of marvel
and high chivalry where is enacted the gallant and glorious history
of Amadis de Gaul. The window of which I speak is perched high in a
turret of the venerable fortalice, and displays such a landscape as
was dear to the weavers of ancient tapestries or the legend-loving
painters of old Florence. Beneath is spread a princely domain of noble
meadow-land, crossed and interlaced by the serpent-silver of narrow
rivers and rising northward to dim, castellated hills. Far beyond
these, remote and seeming more of sky than of earth, soar the blue
and jagged peaks of dragon-haunted mountains. This scene of almost
supernatural beauty presents, at the first glance, an unbroken richness
of colour and radiance. The meadow-land is populous with pavilions
and the air is painted with pennons and gilded with the blazonry of
banners. The glitter of armour thrills the blood like the challenge
of martial music. Strange palaces of marble, white as sculptured ice,
rise at the verges of magic forests, or glitter on the edges of the
promontories, their gardens and terraces sloping to silent and forlorn
beaches. The scene is indeed "Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise."
Such seems the book of Amadis when first we glance through its
rainbow-coloured pages. But when we gain a nearer view by the aid of
the romancer's magical glass we find that the radiant scene is deeply
shadowed in places. Ravines profound as night lie near the castled
hills, in which all manner of noxious things swarm and multiply. The
princely fortresses, the gay palaces, are often the haunts of desperate
outlaws or malignant sorcerers. Hideous giants dwell in the mountains,
or in the shadowy islands which rise from the pale sea, and dragons
have their lairs in fell and forest. But whether it breed light or
gloom, the atmosphere of Amadis is suffused with such a glamour that
we come to love the darker places; we feel that the horror they hold
is but the stronger wine of romance, a vintage which intoxicates.
And if we remain at our point of vantage until nightfall and watch the
illumination of this wondrous region by the necromancy of moonshine
we shall be granted an even more inspiring draught from the strange
chalice of romance. In the mystery of moonlight armour is silvered
to an unearthly whiteness, blood-red lights gleam from the turrets
of the magicians, and the sylph-like shapes of sorceresses flit from
sea to forest like living moonbeams. From the deserts between the
hills and the distant mountains come the cries of ravening monsters,
and all the fantastic world of Faëry is vivid with life.
What marvel then that when this surpassing picture was unveiled to
the eyes of a nation of knights it aroused such a fervour of applause
and appreciation as has been granted to few works in the history of
literary effort? The author of Amadis displayed to the chivalry of
Spain such a world as it had dreamed of. Every knight felt himself
a possible Amadis and every damsel deemed herself an Oriana. The
philosophy and atmosphere of the book took complete possession of the
soul of Spain, banishing grosser ideals and introducing a new code of
manners and sentiment. The main plot and the manifold incidents which
arise from it were coherently and skilfully arranged, and were not
made up of isolated and disconnected accounts of combats, or tedious
descriptions of apparel, appointments, or architecture, interspersed
with the boastful bellowings of rude paladins or vociferous kings,
as the 'plots' of the cantares de gesta had been. Moreover, the
whole was powerfully infused with the love-philosophy of chivalry,
in which woman, instead of being the chattel and plaything of man,
found herself exalted to heights of worship, and even of omnipotence,
undreamed of by the ruder singers of the cantares.
Origin of the "Amadis" Romances
The first Peninsular version of Amadis appeared in a Portuguese dress,
and was the work of a Lusitanian knight, Joham de Lobeira (1261-1325),
who was born at Porto, fought at Aljubarrota, where he was knighted
upon the field by King Joham of happy memory, and died at Elvas. But
Southey's protestations notwithstanding, everything points to France as
being the original home of the romance, and there is even a reference
in Portuguese literature to the circumstance that a certain Pedro de
Lobeira translated Amadis from the French by order of the Infante Dom
Pedro, son of Joham I. The original French tale has vanished without
leaving a trace that it ever existed, save in the Peninsular versions
to which it gave birth, and we are no more fortunate as regards the
Portuguese rendering. A manuscript copy of Lobeira's romance was
known to exist at the close of the sixteenth century in the archives
of the Dukes of Arveiro at Lisbon, and appears to have been extant
as late as 1750. After that period, however, it disappears from the
sight of the bibliophile, and all the evidence points to its having
been destroyed at the earthquake at Lisbon in 1755, along with the
ducal palace in which it was housed.
Its fame, as well as its matter, was, however, kept alive by the
Spanish version, and if we must regard Portugal as the original
home of Amadis in the Peninsula, it is to the genius of Castile that
we owe not only its preservation, but its possible improvement. At
some time between 1492 and 1508 Garcia Ordoñez de Montalvo, governor
of the city of Medina del Campo, addressed himself to the task of
its translation and adaptation. At what precise date it was first
printed is obscure. Early copies are lacking, but we learn that
the Spanish conquerors of Mexico remarked upon the resemblance of
that city to the places of enchantment spoken of in Amadis. This
occurred in 1519, not 1549, as stated by Southey. They may, perhaps,
have referred to the Portuguese version, but in any case an edition
of Amadis is known to have been published in that year, and another
at Seville in 1547. Reference has already been made to the numerous
translations of the romance in all languages, and to the equally
manifold continuations of it by several hands, but it is necessary
to remark that only the first four books of Amadis--that is, those
which constitute the Amadis proper--were written by Montalvo, the
remainder being the independent and original work of imitators. [35]
Elisena and Perion
The action of the romance begins at an obscure and indefinite period,
described as following almost immediately upon the death of our
Redeemer, at which time, we are told, there flourished in Brittany
a Christian king named Garinter, who was blessed with two lovely
daughters. The elder, known as 'the Lady of the Garland,' because of
her fondness for wearing a coronel of flowers, had some years before
the period of the story's commencement been wed to King Languines
(Angus) of Scotland, and had two beautiful children, Agrayes and
Mabilia. Elisena, the younger daughter, was famed for her beauty
throughout the lands of Christendom, but though many powerful monarchs
and princes had asked her hand in marriage, she would wed with none,
but gave herself up to a life of holiness and good works. In the
opinion of all the knights and ladies of her father's realm, one so
fair grievously transgressed the laws of love by remaining single,
and it came to pass that the beautiful and saintly Elisena earned from
the more worldly of her gay critics the name of 'the Lost Devotee.'
If Elisena was devoted to a life of austerity her royal father was
equally partial to the pleasures of the chase, and spent much of
his time in the green forest-land which occupied the greater part
of Lesser Britain in those remote days. On one of those occasions,
as he rode unattended in the greenwood, as was his wont, he chanced
to hear the clash of arms, and, riding to a clearing whence came the
sounds of combat, he saw two knights of Brittany attacking an armed
stranger, whom he guessed by his armour and bearing to be a person
of rank and distinction, and who bore himself with such courage and
address that he succeeded in slaying both his opponents.
As the stranger was in the act of sheathing his weapon he observed
Garinter, and rode forward to meet him, saluting him with a courteous
mien. He complained that in a Christian country an errant knight did
not expect such treatment from its inhabitants as had been meted out
to him, to which the King sagely replied that in all countries evilly
disposed people were to be found as well as good folk, and that the
slain knights had been traitors to their liege lord and well deserved
their fate.
The stranger then proffered the information that he sought the King
of Brittany with tidings of a friend, and on learning this Garinter
revealed his identity. The knight then informed him that he was
King Perion of Gaul, who had long desired his friendship. Garinter
insisted that his brother monarch should accompany him to his palace,
and Perion consenting, they turned their horses' heads toward the city.
Arrived at the palace, they sat down to a rich banquet, which was
graced by the Queen and the Princess Elisena. No sooner did Elisena
and Perion behold one another than they knew that a great and deathless
love had sprung up between them. When the Queen and Princess had risen
from the banquet Elisena divulged her love for Perion to her damsel
and confidante, Darioleta, and asked her to discover whether the
King of Gaul had pledged his troth to any other lady. Darioleta, who
was not easily abashed, went straight to Perion, who avowed his love
for Elisena in passionate terms and promised to take her to wife. He
begged the damsel to bring him to where Elisena was, that he might
have the happiness of expressing his love in person, and she returned
to the Princess with his message. So impatient was Elisena to hear
from Perion's own lips that he loved her, that, recking not of time
or tide, she sought the apartment in which he was lodged, where she
remained until dawn, detained by his protestations of affection and
her own devotion to the noble and knightly monarch who had so suddenly
made her regard her former mode of life as savourless and melancholy.
Ten days did Perion sojourn at the Court of Garinter. At the end of
that time it became necessary that he should depart, but before he
took his leave he plighted his troth to Elisena, and left her one of
two duplicate rings he wore, as a pledge of his faith. Search as he
might, however, he failed to find his good sword, a tried and trusty
weapon, and at last was forced to abandon the search for it.
The Birth and Casting Away of Amadis
When her lover had gone Elisena was plunged in the deepest grief,
and all the comfort which Darioleta could bestow upon her failed to
rouse her from the lethargy of sorrow into which she had fallen. In
her father's kingdom, as in modern Scotland, an old law existed which
provided that if two persons solemnly took each other in marriage by
oath no further ceremony was necessary to render the union legal,
although it was usual to have it ratified later by both Church and
law. Perion and Elisena had taken these vows upon themselves, but
the Princess dreaded the wrath of her father, whom the lovers had
not consulted, and when a little son was born to her she was in great
fear of the consequences, for she knew her father to be both proud and
hasty and prone to act before he learned the truth of a matter. The
worldly and quick-witted Darioleta had, however, no scruples regarding
the manner in which she resolved to save her mistress and herself
from the King's wrath, and despite the protestations of Elisena,
who in her weakness was unable to restrain her, she built a little
ark of wood, made it water-tight with pitch, and, regardless of the
tears and lamentations of her mistress, placed the new-born baby
boy therein with Perion's sword, which she had abstracted from his
sleeping-chamber. Then she wrote upon a piece of parchment, "This is
Amadis, son of a king," covered the writing with wax so that it might
be preserved from obliteration, and, securing it to the betrothal ring
which Perion had given to Elisena, fastened it by a silken cord round
the infant's neck. Then with the utmost caution, lest any one should
observe her action, she carried the tiny vessel to the river which
ran at the foot of the palace garden and launched it upon the swift,
deep waters.
The little ark was rapidly carried out to sea, which was not more than
half a league distant, and it had scarcely emerged upon the tossing
billows when it was sighted by the mariners of a Scottish vessel which
bore a Caledonian knight, Gandales, back from Gaul to his home in the
North. At his orders the sailors launched a boat, and having secured
the tiny vessel, brought it to the ship, when the wife of Gandales,
delighted with the beauty of the infant it held, decided to adopt him
as her own. In a few days the vessel put into the Scottish port of
Antalia, [36] and Gandales carried the little Amadis to his castle,
where he brought him up with his own son, Gandalin.
Some years afterward, when Amadis was about five years old, Languines,
the King of Scotland, and his Queen, 'the Lady of the Garland,' and
sister to Elisena, paid a visit to the castle of Gandales, and were so
greatly attracted by the child's grace and beauty that they expressed
a desire to adopt him as their own. Gandales acquainted them with what
he knew of Amadis's history, and the royal pair promised to regard him
as their own son. Amadis, because of the circumstances of his strange
discovery, was known to every one as 'the Child of the Sea,' and indeed
this mysterious and poetic name cleaved to him until his identity had
been proven beyond cavil. He showed no reluctance to accompany his new
guardians, although he was grieved at having to part with his first
foster-parents, but the little Gandalin would in no wise be separated
from him, and begged so hard to be permitted to share his fortunes
that at last King Languines took both the boys under his protection.
Perion's Dream
Let us return to King Perion. Occupied once more with the affairs
of his kingdom, he still knew great heaviness of spirit because of
a dream that he had had while at the Court of Garinter. It seemed to
him in his dream that some one entered his sleeping-apartment, thrust
a hand through his side, and, taking out his heart, cast it into the
river that flowed through King Garinter's garden. Crying out in his
anguish, he was answered by a voice that another heart was still left
to him. Troubled by memory of the dream, which he could not unriddle,
he called together all the wise men of his realm and requested them
to attempt its solution. Only one of them could unravel the mystery,
and the sage who did so assured him that the heart which had been
abstracted represented a son which a noble lady had borne him, while
the remaining heart symbolized another son who would in some manner
be taken away against the will of her who had cast away the first.
As the King left the wise man's presence he encountered a mysterious
damsel, who saluted him and said: "Know, King Perion, that when thou
recoverest thy loss the kingdom of Ireland shall lose its flower";
and ere the King could detain or question her she had gone.
In course of time King Garinter died, and Perion and Elisena were
formally wedded. But when Perion asked his wife if she had borne him
a son, so bitterly ashamed was she of the part she had been forced
to play in the matter of the child's disappearance that she denied
everything. Later, two beautiful children were born to them, a son
and a daughter, called Galaor and Melicia. When Galaor was but two
and a half years old, the King and Queen, at that time sojourning at
a town called Banzil, near the sea, were walking in the gardens of
the palace there, when suddenly a monstrous giant rose out of the
waves and, catching up the little Galaor, made off with him before
anyone could prevent him.
The monster, dashing into the water, clambered on board a ship and
put out to sea, crying out joyfully, as he did so: "The damsel told
me true!" The parents were deeply afflicted at the loss of their son,
and in her grief Elisena admitted the casting away of Amadis. Then
Perion knew that what the wise man had told him regarding the loss
of the two hearts was the truth indeed.
Now the giant who had stolen the little Galaor was not of the race
of evil monsters, but was generous in disposition and gentle in
demeanour. Indeed, he took as much care of the child as if he had
been one of his own gigantic brood. He was a native of Lyonesse, was
known as Gandalue, and was the master of two castles in an island of
the sea. He had peopled this island with Christian folk, and gave the
little Galaor into the keeping of a holy hermit, with strict orders
to educate him as a brave and loyal knight. He told the hermit that a
damsel--the same who had addressed King Perion so strangely, and who
was a powerful sorceress--had assured him that only a son of Perion
could conquer his lifelong and ruthless enemy, the giant Albadan,
[37] who had slain his father, and had taken from him the rock
Galtares. And so Galaor was left in the care of the hermit.
Oriana
About this time King Lisuarte of Britain chanced to put into a port
of Scotland, where he was honourably received by King Languines. With
Lisuarte was his wife Brisena, and his beautiful little daughter
Oriana, the fairest creature in the world. And because she suffered so
much at sea, her parents decided to leave her for a space at the Court
of Scotland. Amadis was now twelve years old, but seemed fifteen, so
tall and hardy was he, and the Queen bestowed him upon Oriana for her
service. Oriana said that 'it pleased her,' and Amadis cherished those
words in his heart, so that they never faded from his memory. But he
knew not that Oriana loved him, and was greatly in awe of the lovely
and serious little maiden of ten, for whom he conceived a high and
noble affection. Very beautiful was the silent love of these children
for one another. But silent it remained, for Amadis was fearful of
presumption and Oriana the most modest of little damsels.
High thoughts of chivalry now began to stir in the heart of Amadis,
so that at last he requested King Languines to grant him the boon of
knighthood. Languines was greatly surprised that a mere boy should
crave such a heavy burden of honour, but approved his desire, and
gave orders that arms should be made for him. He sent to Gandales,
the knight who had found Amadis in the sea, acquainting him with the
lad's purpose, and Gandales dispatched a messenger to Court with the
sword, ring, and parchment which he had found in the ark along with
the sea-borne baby. [38]
These things were delivered to Amadis as belonging to him, and when
he showed them to Oriana she begged for the wax that contained the
parchment, not knowing it held anything of moment, and accordingly
he gave it to her. Shortly after this King Perion arrived on a
visit to Languines, to ask his help against King Abies of Ireland,
who had invaded Gaul with all the force of his kingdom. Amadis,
knowing Perion's great reputation as a warrior, much desired to be
knighted by his hand, and asked the Queen to crave the boon on his
behalf. But she seemed sad and distraught, and heeded him not. He
inquired of Oriana the cause of the Queen's sadness, and she replied:
"Child of the Sea, this is the first thing ye ever asked of me."
"Ah, lady," replied Amadis, "I am not worthy to ask anything from
such as you."
"What?" she exclaimed. "Is then your heart so feeble?"
"Aye, lady," he replied, "in all things toward you, save that it
would serve you like one who is not his own, but yours."
"Mine!" said Oriana, mystified; "since when?"
"Since 'it pleased you,'" replied Amadis, with a smile. "Do you not
remember your words when the Queen offered me for your service?"
"I am well pleased that it should be so," said Oriana shyly, and
beholding Amadis much overcome at her gracious answer, she slipped
away to ask the Queen the cause of her sorrow.
The Queen told her that she was deeply distressed because of her
sister Elisena, whose kingdom had been invaded, and, returning to
Amadis, Oriana explained to him why his royal mistress had left his
appeals unanswered. Amadis at once expressed a desire to proceed to
Gaul to fight against the Irish invaders, and Oriana applauded his
intention. "You shall go to the wars as my knight," she said, simply
but graciously. Amadis kissed her hand, and requested her to ask the
Princess Mabilia, Perion's daughter (and Amadis's sister) to bring
it about that her father should confer the honour of knighthood upon
him. The little damsel readily consented to do so, and King Perion
joyfully acquiesced in the young man's eager desire to embrace the
profession of arms. So, asking him to kneel, he bestowed upon him the
accolade, fastened the knightly spurs upon his heels, and girded the
sword to his side.
Amadis Goes on Adventure
Now Amadis resolved to set out for Gaul at once, so, taking a tender
leave of Oriana and accompanied by Gandalin, his foster-brother, he
rode off from the palace at nightfall. They had not gone far when they
encountered the mysterious sorceress who, as we have seen, took such
an interest in the fate of our hero, and whose name was Urganda. [39]
The fay greeted Amadis in a most gracious manner, and presented
him with a lance, which she told him would, within three days,
"preserve the house from which he was descended from death." With
her was another damsel, and when Urganda had departed her companion
remained and announced to Amadis that she would journey with him for
three days, and that she was not a familiar of the sorceress, but had
encountered her by chance. They had not ridden far when they came to
a castle, where they heard a squire lamenting loudly that his master
was beset therein by its inmates. Amadis spurred his horse into the
courtyard, and beheld King Perion fiercely attacked by two knights
and a number of men-at-arms. With a cry of defiance he fell upon the
attackers, striking left and right and dealing such terrific blows
that the caitiff knights who had assailed the King were slain and
their retainers put to flight.
Perion at once recognized Amadis as the youth he had knighted not long
since. Leaving the castle, they came to a fork in the road, where
they parted, with mutual promises to meet in Gaul. The damsel who
had so far accompanied him now told Amadis that she was in reality a
messenger from Oriana, whereat Amadis trembled so with joy at hearing
his lady's name that had not Gandalin supported him he had fallen
from the saddle. The damsel then took her leave, saying that she
would acquaint her mistress of his welfare.
After several other adventures which it would be tedious to recount,
Amadis arrived with Gandalin at the Court of King Perion, in Gaul. They
had scarcely rested themselves when they heard the clarions of King
Abies of Ireland sound for an attack upon the city, and, mounting
their destriers, sallied forth, with Agrayes and other knights, to
give the men of Ireland battle. A stubborn contest ensued, in which
Amadis performed prodigies of valour. Perion came up with his men, but
they found themselves greatly outnumbered by the host of King Abies,
and were forced to give ground. However, the day was retrieved by
Amadis, who charged with such fury that neither horse nor man might
withstand him, and in the press he slew, among others, Daugavel,
a favourite of Abies. Hearing this, Abies grieved full sorely, and,
encountering Amadis, challenged him to a mortal combat on the following
day. They met, and after a fierce duel, which lasted several hours,
Abies was slain, and the war was thus ended at a blow.
Now Melicia, Perion's daughter, lost a ring which had been given her by
her father, the same indeed as that which the King had worn when first
he met Elisena, and the exact counterpart of the ring he had bestowed
upon her, and which she had tied to the neck of Amadis when he was cast
adrift. Rather than that her father should know of this loss, Amadis
gave Melicia his own ring. But the King himself recovered the lost
jewel, and made inquiries regarding the resemblance between the rings,
asking his daughter where she had procured its counterpart. Through her
explanation, and his recognition of the sword which Amadis wore, Perion
felt certain that Amadis could be no other than his long-lost son,
and when the young knight recounted the circumstances of his history,
how that he had been found in the sea, the last doubts of his parents
regarding his identity were quite dissipated, and they were overjoyed
at recovering him, publicly acknowledging him as prince of the realm.
We must now follow the fortunes of Galaor, brother of Amadis, who
had been so suddenly snatched away in his infancy by the giant. In
due time he grew to be a youth of courage and address, and as he had
heard that at no Court did chivalry flourish so gallantly as at that
of King Lisuarte of Britain, he resolved to journey thither in the
hope of receiving the honour of knighthood. His giant foster-father
accompanied him, and they had travelled but two days when they came
to the castle of a felon knight, whom, with his retainers, they
saw attacking a single champion. Galaor spurred to the rescue, and
by his aid the caitiff crew were slain or routed. Galaor conceived
such an affection for the stranger that he requested knighthood at
his hands. This was cheerfully granted, and after Amadis--for the
stranger knight was none other--had taken his departure, Galaor,
beholding a damsel close at hand, asked her if she was aware of
the name of the knight he had assisted. The damsel, who was the
sorceress Urganda, replied that his name was Amadis, and that he
was own brother to Galaor. On hearing this Galaor was overjoyed,
but his satisfaction was mingled with a deep regret that he had not
discovered their relationship ere they had taken leave of one another.
Not content with having enlightened Galaor, Urganda hastened
after Amadis, who was on his way to the Court of King Lisuarte at
Windsor. She told him that his rescuer was his brother Galaor, who
had been stolen in youth, whereat he was both overjoyed and sorrowful.
Greatly heartened by the strange encounter, Galaor still pressed on
to the goal of his adventure, the rock Galtares, which he hoped to
free for ever from the tyrannous rule of the monster who usurped
it. A few days' journey brought him to the fortalice, and at his
defiance the giant issued from his castle, armed at all points,
mounted upon a gigantic charger, and mouthing the most terrible
threats imaginable. He rode fiercely at the young knight, hoping to
end the combat at a blow. But, striking out wildly with his club, he
smote down his own horse, came thundering to the ground, and Galaor
spurred his courser over his prostrate body. In doing so, however,
he fell from his charger, and received a terrible buffet from the
giant. Recovering himself, he drew his sword and severed the monster's
arm at the shoulder. This blow practically ended the combat, for Galaor
with another sweep of his good blade beheaded his gigantic adversary.
Amadis, arriving at the Court of King Lisuarte, mingled with its
chivalry, and partook of its adventures with such zest that he came to
be known as one of the most illustrious knights in Christendom. His
adventures at the Court of Lisuarte would fill a goodly volume, and
included a war of extermination against the giants, the defeat of
the usurper Barsinan and the enchanter Archelaus, as well as a score
of other exploits, even a meagre account of which would overflow the
pages set apart for the description of this romance. His adventures are
intertwined with those of his brother Galaor, whom he even once meets
in fierce combat, neither recognizing the other because of his armour.
Lisuarte's Vow
Now, while Lisuarte held court in London an aged knight entered
and displayed such a marvellously wrought crown and mantle that
the King eagerly offered him any price he might ask for them. The
knight declared that he would return on a certain day and claim his
reward, and the King agreed to keep the crown and mantle with all
care, upon pain of losing that which he loved best. The knight was
an emissary of the false enchanter Archelaus, and the gauds he had
shown Lisuarte were made by magic art, so that when the King desired
to wear them and unlocked the coffer in which they were kept he
found they had vanished. The aged knight returned, and demanded his
recompense. Lisuarte was forced to admit the loss of the crown and
mantle, and the creature of the cunning magician demanded the Princess
Oriana in pledge of the King's vow. In true romantic compliance
with his promise, Lisuarte weakly acquiesced, and the knight rode
off with Oriana, whom he at once placed in the power of Archelaus,
and Lisuarte himself fell into a trap set by the artful enchanter.
Learning of this treason while at some distance from the Court,
Amadis and Galaor hurried to Windsor, resolved to frustrate the
necromancer's wicked intention, which was to wed Oriana to the
pretender to the British throne, the false Barsinan, whom Amadis had
already worsted. Galaor speedily delivered Lisuarte from his enemies,
and Amadis, searching high and low for his lady, at last encountered
her in a forest, through which she was being carried by Archelaus. On
beholding the doughty champion, whose reputation was only too well
known to him, the enchanter hastily made off, leaving Oriana with
her lover, who conducted her back to Court.
The Firm Island
With the commencement of the Second Book we enter a strange and mystic
atmosphere. Indeed the book may be called the cor cordium of romance,
its mirror, its quintessence. It introduces us to Apolidon, son of a
King of Greece, who is described as a valiant knight and powerful
necromancer. Abandoning his inheritance to a younger brother,
he sailed from Greece into the Great Sea, where he discovered an
island inhabited by peasants only, and ruled by a frightful giant,
which was known as the Firm Island, fated to be celebrated in the
pages of romance along with many another insular paradise.
Slaying the monstrous tyrant, Apolidon dwelt in the isle until,
on the death of his brother, he returned to sit upon the Grecian
throne. But ere he left the place he laid a potent enchantment upon
it to the purpose that no knight or lady might dwell there save such
as were equal in valour to himself or in beauty to his lady Grymenysa.
The wonders of this magical island well merit description, and as
much of the action of our romance centres there let us embark upon
the fairy galley which lies ever ready in the harbours of legend,
sail thither, and set foot upon its enchanted beaches. Perhaps it is
only through the rainbow lenses of poesy that we can view this wondrous
region aright, so I have essayed a description of the isle in verse.
THE FIRM ISLAND
Prince Apolidon the Mage
Raised a mystic hermitage
On an island in a shipless sea
By necromantic potency,
Carving the granite gateways of its cliffs
With interdicting seals and hieroglyphs,
That his unequals might not habit there,
Nor drink that island's consecrated air.
White terraces o'erhung the black abyss,
Fair as the gardens Queen Semiramis
Piled above Babylon: the glittering height
Seemed as the day empillared on the night.
And from the ocean-green of myrtle's shadow
Rose a pavilion, which from afar
Seemed to the eyes of shipmen as a star
Shattered on a distant meadow.
Betwixt this palace and the shipless sea
The wizard set an arch of glamourie,
Byzantine, builded as from golden air.
Its fretted alcove held an image rare,
In whose uplifted hand there burned and shone
The brazen brightness of a clarion.
And should a lady or a knight,
Lesser in beauty or in might
Than wise Apolidon the wight
Or Grymenysa fair
Seek to traverse the magic vault,
Or make the palace by assault,
The brazen trump would blare,
And vomit such a horrid blast
That, fainting from the garden cast,
The wretch would perish there.
But, should a knight of equal fame
Or lady of unblemished name
Seek entrance by the port,
The trumpet, with a high fanfare
Of praise, would waken all the air
Of that celestial court.
Two crystal pillars marked the magic line;
A tablature of jasper, serpentine,
Surround by arabesques like carven flame,
On which would flash the lineage and name
Of that illustrious paladin or dame,
Gleamed in the Grecian pavement; who did pass
Those pillars frozen in Phoenician glass
Would see, 'mid splendour like reflecting ice,
The lord and lady of that paradise
Moulded in immortality of brass.
Still deeper in those labyrinths of pleasure
A siege right perilous the Mage did make
For Grymenysa's fair, mysterious sake,
For glory of a love withouten measure,
Setting nine seals of Babylonian doom
Upon the entrance to her ivory room,
That but the highest hearts the world had seen
Might know the rapture of its air serene.
And that no sordidness might pass therein
He sentinelled the door with savage jinn,
Invisible and with the flaming powers
Of Sheol in their guarding scimitars.
And all the webs of his weird soul were woven,
In mazy mystery of charm and spell,
Around the shadows of that citadel,
Where oft his wizard prowess had been proven.
So did he leave the place of his delight
To sinful spirits in a magic night,
Calling on Siduri and Sabitu,
And Baphomet, in syllables of might.
And when the moon was in her thinnest phase
He left that island in the shipless sea,
No man knew how, nor evermore did he
Return unto its labyrinthine ways.
Still in the dawn's white fire the shepherd sees
Shapes whiter than the dawn, and whisperings
Sigh through the shadows of the myrtle-trees,
Like to the mutterings of invisible kings
Who speak of blessed, heart-remembered things.
Before he had quitted this marvellous island Prince Apolidon had
placed a governor over it, and had commanded that any who failed to
pass the Arch of Honour and still survived the dread blast of the
trumpet should without ceremony be cast out of the island, but that
such as sustained the ordeal were to be entertained and served with
all honour. And he willed that when the island should have another
lord the enchantment should cease.
Now the spell had been laid upon the island for about a hundred
years when Amadis, who had taken a fond farewell of Oriana, and was
on adventure bound, encountered a damsel who told him of the wonders
of the Firm Island, which, she said, was scarcely two days' sail from
where he then sojourned. Amadis replied that he could desire nothing
better than to essay such an adventure, and the damsel's father,
a knight of large estate, agreed to guide him there so that he might
essay the perilous adventure. When at last they came to the Firm Island
they beheld the pavilion, the walls of which were hung with the shields
of those who had tried the adventure but failed, for though several had
passed the arch none had penetrated to the pavilion. And when Amadis
saw that so many good knights had been undone his heart misgave him.
Amadis Passes the Archway
Amadis was accompanied by Agrayes, son of King Languines of Scotland,
who decided to attempt the passage of the arch at once. As he passed
through it the trumpet held by the image emitted sweet music, and
he entered the pavilion. Then Amadis approached the archway, and
the trumpet blew louder and more melodiously than it had ever done
before. Both knights approached the forbidden chamber. They saw the
jasper slab, on which they read: "This is Amadis of Gaul, the true
lover, son of King Perion." As they looked upon it Amadis's dwarf,
Ardian, ran to his master and told him that Galaor and Florestan, his
brothers, who had also accompanied him on the adventure, had attempted
the passage of the arch, but had been attacked on all sides by unseen
hands, and left for dead. Amadis and Agrayes at once retraced their
steps, and found the young knights lying as in a deep swoon. While
Amadis was giving his brothers such assistance as he could, Agrayes
tried to enter the forbidden chamber, but he too was struck senseless.
When Galaor and Florestan had somewhat recovered from the effects
of the blows they had received from invisible assailants, Amadis
felt that for the honour of his lady, Oriana, he must attempt the
great adventure of entering the forbidden chamber, into which no
knight had yet penetrated. Summoning all his courage to his aid, he
crossed the line of the spell between the pillars, and immediately
felt himself assaulted by the unseen warriors who had defeated his
comrades. A terrific uproar of voices arose, as if all the knights
in the world were assailing him, and the blows were doubled in force
and violence. But, nothing daunted, and strong in memory of his lady,
he fought on. Sometimes he was beaten to his knees, and once his sword
fell from his hand, yet he struggled on until he reached the door of
the chamber, which opened as if to admit him. A hand came forth and,
seizing his, drew him in, and a voice exclaimed: "Welcome is the
knight who shall be lord here, because he surpasses in prowess him
who made the enchantment and who had no peer in his time." The hand
that led him was large and hard, like that of an old man, and the
arm was sleeved with green satin. As soon as he was in the chamber
it vanished, and Amadis felt his strength return to him.
When Florestan and Galaor and the people of the island heard that
the adventure had at last been achieved, they crowded into the now
disenchanted palace and gazed upon its wonders. It was full of the
most marvellous treasures and works of art, but nothing more excellent
was there than the statues of Apolidon and Grymenysa.
Oriana's Cruelty
At the time Amadis had left Britain and had said farewell to Oriana
he dispatched his dwarf, Ardian, back to the palace for the pieces of
a sword which a lady had given him in all good faith, asking him to
avenge her father's death on a cowardly murderer. Amadis, like a good
knight, had promised to keep the broken blade until he had avenged
the dead man. Oriana, seeing the dwarf return, asked him the reason,
and Ardian told her that Amadis had promised a lady ever to keep a
certain sword, for which he had been sent back. Then he fetched the
blade and galloped off. Oriana, putting a wrong construction upon the
dwarf's words, and suspecting Amadis of unfaithfulness to her, wrote
him a cruel letter, which she entrusted to a page with instructions
to find him at all costs. After much journeying he traced Amadis to
the Firm Island, and delivered the letter into his hands.
When Amadis had perused the cold and bitter words of his lady he
seemed to the messenger as a man distraught. The page told him that
he was forbidden to carry any reply to Oriana. Amadis in terrible
grief called for Ysanjo, the governor of the island, and requested
him as a loyal knight to keep secret all that he might see till after
his brothers had heard Mass on the morrow. Then he commanded Ysanjo
to open the gate of the palace privily so that he might withdraw his
horse and arms therefrom without being observed by anyone. Accompanied
by the honest Ysanjo, for whom he had formed a high esteem, he betook
himself to a chapel of the Virgin hard by. He prayed fervently that she
would intercede with her Divine Son to have mercy upon him, as he felt
that his days would be few. Then he rose and, taking an affectionate
leave of the Governor, mounted his horse and, without shield, spear,
or helmet, rode off.
Now Gandalin, squire to Amadis, and son of the Scottish knight
Gandales, who throughout all these adventures had never left his
master, took counsel with Durin, the messenger who had brought
Oriana's cruel letter to the Firm Island, and resolved to follow the
distraught knight, lest he should come to harm. They soon found him
sleeping beside a fountain, worn out with the violence of his sorrow,
and mercifully allowed him to slumber on. But when night had fallen
Amadis awoke and, remembering his wretchedness, broke into pitiful
lamentations for his evil fate. The youths concealed themselves, for
they did not wish him to know of their presence. But Amadis, catching
sight of Gandalin, was angry with him for having followed him. To
arouse him from his lethargy Gandalin told him that a knight, like
himself abandoned by his lady, was in the neighbourhood, threatening
vengeance upon any whom he might encounter. Amadis, minded to throw
away his life, leapt on his horse at hearing this, and accompanied
Gandalin in search of the crazy challenger. They soon came up with
the unknown, and Amadis hurled a fierce defiance at him. A stubborn
combat ensued, and Amadis, by a desperate blow, struck his opponent
senseless. Leaving the wounded knight with Durin, Amadis rode on,
still followed by the faithful Gandalin.
Galaor, Florestan, and Agrayes, hearing of Amadis's plight and his
hurried departure, resolved to follow him. Meanwhile the object of
their search rode onward, allowing his horse to choose its own path,
and given over to weeping and lamentation. While the anxious Gandalin
slept, the crazed lover eluded him, and traversed the wildest parts
of the savage country which they had penetrated. Ere long he came to
a plain at the foot of a mountain, where he encountered a hermit,
and begged the holy man for leave to remain with him. The hermit
greeted him kindly, and Amadis confided his history to the good old
man, who told him that he dwelt on a high rock full seven leagues
out at sea. And the hermit gave him the name Beltenebros, or 'the
Fair Forlorn,' as he was at once so comely and so sore distracted.
The Poor Rock
In due time they reached the sea-shore, and, giving his horse to
the mariners, Amadis accompanied the hermit on board a vessel and
sailed to the Poor Rock, as the holy man had named his place of
hermitage. And here Amadis partook of the austerities of the hermit,
"not for devotion but for despair, forgetting his great renown in
arms and hoping and expecting death--all for the anger of a woman!"
Durin, Oriana's messenger, journeyed back to the British Court
and told his mistress how Amadis had received her letter, and of
the manner in which her knight had achieved the adventure of the
Firm Island. Then Oriana knew that Amadis must have remained true
to her. When she learned that he had gone into the desert to die,
her shame and anguish knew no bounds, and she wrote a letter of deep
contrition to her lover, and dispatched it to him by one of her women
called 'the Damsel of Denmark,' a sister of Durin.
After they had set out, the knight whom Amadis had vanquished on the
evening of the day on which he learned of Oriana's cruelty arrived
at the British Court, bringing with him the armour of Amadis, which
he had found, some time after his encounter with him, at the edge
of a deep fountain. And when she heard his story Oriana believed her
lover to be dead, and in great grief shut herself in her apartments,
refusing all comfort.
Meanwhile, calling to mind the great misery he had endured, Amadis
made this song in his passion:
Farewell to victory,
To warlike glory and to knightly play.
Ah, wherefore should I live to weep and sigh?
Far greater honour would it be to die!
With kindly death my wretchedness shall cease,
And from my torments shall I find release.
Love will be unremembered in the shade,
The deep unkindness of a cruel maid,
Who in her pride hath slain not me alone,
But all the deeds for glory I have done! [40]
At this time the lady Corisanda, who loved Florestan, chanced to visit
the Poor Rock, and her damsels heard the story of Amadis, who told
them that his name was Beltenebros, but that the song had been made
by one Amadis, whom he had known. On her return to the British Court,
Corisanda's maidens sang the song to Oriana as the composition of
Amadis. And she knew that Amadis and Beltenebros were one and the same.
Now the Damsel of Denmark, who had been sent to search for Amadis,
was driven by tempest to the foot of the Poor Rock. [41] Landing with
Durin and an attendant, Enil, she found Amadis praying in the chapel,
and when he beheld the Damsel's face he fainted away.
This extreme sensitiveness to love is characteristic of the late
Middle Ages, however absurd and overdrawn it may appear to us. That
Amadis fainted at the mere sight of one who had served his lady seems
to us ridiculous, and that he should imprison himself upon a barren
rock for the remainder of his life because she had been unkind to
him is to the modern reader more than a little grotesque.
Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
But we must deal gently with the ideas of the past, as with one
of those faded samplers of our great-grandmothers, which, if we
handle it carelessly, is apt to fall to pieces. When we think of
the manner in which Dante and Petrarch had established the worship
of woman, and how the Courts of Love had completed the work they
had begun, can we wonder that men bred in this creed, and regarding
the worship of womankind as second to that of God alone, were apt to
become disconsolate and despairing if the object of their devotion
condemned or deserted them? Again, exalted and sensitive minds in
all ages have been peculiarly amenable to feminine criticism, as we
can see in perusing the biographies of such men as Goethe. Genius,
too, which itself nearly always abundantly partakes of the nature
of the feminine, is prone to adopt this ultra-reverent attitude,
as the sonnets of Shakespeare and the poems of Lovelace and many
another singer show. The rough, manly common sense of the average
male is too often denied it, and, man and woman in itself, it must
suffer the emotions of both sexes.
But, if maintained within rational bounds, this reverence for women
in general and for the best type of woman in particular must be
regarded as one of the great binding forces of humanity, a thing
which has accomplished perhaps more than aught else for the world's
refinement and advance. And here, even in a work of romance, which
perhaps, after all, is the fitting place for such an exhortation,
I would appeal to the younger generation of to-day to look backward
with eyes of kindness upon the tender beauty and infinite charm of a
creed which, if it is not entirely dead, is in a manner moribund. I
do not ask our youths and maidens to imitate its fantastic features
or its extravagances. But I do entreat them to regard its fine spirit,
its considerate chivalry, and, above all, the modest reserve and lofty
intention which were its chief characteristics. It is a good sign of
the times that the sexes are growing to know each other better. But we
must be wary of the familiarity that breeds contempt. Let us retain a
little more of the serious beauty of the old intercourse between man
and woman, and learn to beware of a flippancy of attitude and laxity
of demeanour which in later years we shall certainly look back upon
with a good deal of vexation and self-reproach.
When he had regained consciousness, the Damsel of Denmark gave Amadis
Oriana's letter, beseeching him to return to her and receive her
atonement for the wrong she had done him. He took leave of the good
hermit, and, embarking upon the ship in which the Damsel had arrived,
set sail for the Firm Island, where he rested, as he was yet too weak
to make the long journey to England. But at the end of ten days he
took Enil for his squire and, accompanied by Durin and the Damsel,
set out for the English Court.
Oriana Repentant
Meanwhile Galaor, Florestan, and Agrayes, having searched in vain
for Amadis, arrived at London in a most disconsolate frame of
mind. Oriana, hearing of their want of success, betook her to the
castle of Miraflores, some leagues from the city. In its ancient
garden she came to feel that Amadis was still alive, and, full of
remorse for the manner in which she had dealt with him, she resolved
that no further shadow should fall upon their love. The description
of Miraflores in the romance is very beautiful, and the impression
we receive of Oriana walking in its quiet and umbrageous alleys may
perhaps best be rendered in verse.
Miraflores, fountain-girded,
Where the trees are many-birded,
And the orchard and the garden
Of the forest seem a part;
In the stillness of thy meadows,
In the solace of thy shadows,
I await the blessed pardon
That will ease a breaking heart.
Miraflores, name of beauty!
May I learn a lover's duty,
In the evening and the morning,
In this fair and fragrant place;
May I know the bliss of pardon
In thy battlemented garden;
Come to hate the hate of scorning,
And to love the love of grace!
Now a herald came to King Lisuarte at Windsor giving him defiance in
the name of Famongomadan, the giant, Cartadaque, his nephew, giant of
the Defended Mountain, and Madanfaboul, giant of the Vermilion Tower;
from Quadragante, brother of King Abies of Ireland, and Archelaus
the Enchanter, all of whom were to join against Britain on behalf of
King Cildadan [42] of Ireland, who had quarrelled with Lisuarte. The
knight, however, made one condition which he said would ensure peace,
and that degrading enough. For he announced that, should Lisuarte give
his daughter Oriana as damsel and servant to Madasima, the daughter of
Famongomadan, or in marriage to Basagante, his son, the allied giants
and kings would not advance against him, but would remain in their
own lands. Lisuarte rejected the proffered terms with quiet dignity.
Now Amadis had slain King Abies long before, and it was revenge against
him the ill-assorted allies desired, and Florestan, who was present,
hearing this, challenged the ambassador to battle. This the knight,
whose name was Landin, promised him on the completion of the war,
and they exchanged gages of battle.
When the knight had departed, Lisuarte called for his little daughter
Leonora to come with her damsels and dance before him, a thing he
had not done since the news that Amadis was lost. And he asked her
to sing a song which Amadis, in sport, had made for her. So the child
and her companions made music and chanted this little lay:
White rosebud, Leonore,
Unblemished flower,
Pure as a morning in the fields of May,
Thy perfume haunts my heart,
Why dost thou bloom apart,
Hid in the shadows of thy modesty?
Or, if thou mayst not be,
Blossom of purity,
Mine own to wear and cherish, as the leaves
Embrace thee and enfold,
Be not so white, so cold:
Bloom also for the lonely heart that grieves! [43]
Gandalin journeyed to Miraflores to acquaint Oriana with the
news that Corisanda had arrived at Court and had been reunited to
Florestan. Delighted as she was at this intelligence, she could
not help comparing the happy condition of the lovers with her own,
and burst into tears. But even as she wept the Damsel of Denmark
was announced. Oriana listened to her tidings with a beating heart,
and when the Damsel gave her a letter from Amadis, in which she found
his ring enclosed, she all but swooned with excess of joy.
Amadis lay in a distant nunnery, recovering from the wasting sorrow
from which he had suffered so long. When he felt stronger, he
donned green armour, so that he might not be known, and travelled
toward London. On the eighth day of his journey he encountered
the giant knight Quadragante, he who among others had defied King
Lisuarte. Amadis unhorsed the gigantic warrior, who yielded himself
vanquished and promised to deliver himself up to Lisuarte.
Amadis Slays Famongomadan
Proceeding on his way, Amadis passed some tents pitched in a meadow
which were occupied by a party of knights and damsels in the service of
the Princess Leonora. The knights insisted upon his breaking a lance
with them. He unhorsed them all and rode on. While he was in the act
of drinking from a well not many miles farther on, he espied a wagon
full of captive knights and damsels in chains. Before it, on a huge
black horse, rode a giant so immense that he was terrible to behold,
and Amadis knew him for Famongomadan, who had sent his challenge
to Lisuarte. Amadis, who was much wearied by his recent encounter
with the knights, did not then desire to meet him, but when he saw
that Leonora was in the wagon along with the other damsels he leapt
on his destrier and, looking toward Miraflores, where Oriana was,
awaited the giant's onset.
Seeing him, Famongomadan thundered down upon him like a human
avalanche. His great boar-spear transfixed Amadis's horse, but the
lance of the paladin ran its way clean through the monster's carcass
and broke off short in his body. At this his son Basagante ran to the
rescue, but Amadis, disengaging himself from his fallen steed, drew
his sword and severed one of Basagante's legs from the trunk. But his
falchion snapped in twain with the violence of the blow, and a fierce
struggle for Basagante's axe ended in Amadis wrenching it from his
opponent's grasp and smiting off his head. Then he slew Famongomadan
with his own spear, and, releasing the knights in the wagon, requested
them to carry the bodies of the dead giants to King Lisuarte and say
that they were sent by a strange knight, Beltenebros. And mounting
the great black horse of Famongomadan, he galloped off.
At long last Amadis came to Miraflores and met with Oriana, and great
was the love between them. Eight days he sojourned in the castle with
his lady; then he rode away to assist Lisuarte in his war against
Cildadan of Ireland, who, as we have seen, had challenged the King's
supremacy in Britain. Cildadan and his giant allies were vanquished
and the Irish king sorely wounded by Amadis.
Now Briolania, the lady from whom Amadis had received the broken sword,
visited Oriana, and told her in confidence that she was enamoured of
Amadis, who on his part had told her that he loved her not, whereat
Oriana was both relieved and not a little amused. And now the whole
Court knew that Beltenebros and Amadis were one and the same, and
great was the wonder at the puissance of his single arm.
But Amadis, who knew that adventure was the duty and lot of a knight,
desired once more to go in quest of it, and with him went ten knights,
his friends and kinsmen, greatly to the discontent of Lisuarte,
whom mischief-makers tried to incense against Amadis, for removing
the best and bravest of his Court.
Meanwhile Briolania had betaken herself to the Firm Island, where she
was much disturbed by signs and portents of a very terrible nature. She
passed between the Arch of True Lovers. But when she attempted to
penetrate to the Forbidden Chamber she was violently cast out. So,
sad at heart, she returned to her own country. Shortly after this
Amadis arrived at the island, greatly to the joy of all therein.
Here we learn something further regarding the topography and natural
history of the Firm Island, which was nine leagues long and seven
wide, full of villages and rich dwelling-houses. Apolidon had built
himself four wonderful palaces in the isle. One was that of the Serpent
and the Lions, another that of the Hart and the Dogs. The third was
called the Whirling Palace, for three times a day, and as often in
the night, it whirled round, so that they who were in it thought it
would be dashed to pieces. The fourth was that of the Bull, because
every day a wild bull issued out of an old covered way and ran among
the people as though he would destroy them. Then he entered a tower,
from which he emerged ridden by an aged ape, which flogged him back
to the place whence he had come. [44]
News reached the island that Gromadaza of the Boiling Lake, the wife
of Famongomadan, had sent her defiance to Lisuarte, who in consequence
had resolved to behead her daughter Madasima and other damsels of the
race of giants unless she gave up her castles and yielded her kingdom
to him. Amadis and his knights thought it ill in Lisuarte to take such
measures against women, and dispatched twelve of their number to act
as champions to the distressed giantesses. This action naturally gave
colour to the stories of the mischief-makers at Lisuarte's Court,
who desired to put Amadis to shame. But Lisuarte was of too noble a
mind to listen to them, and on the arrival of the knights he set the
damsels free.
Amadis Quarrels with Lisuarte
But Fate and the counsels of wicked men are often stronger than the
nobility of kings. His advisers urged Lisuarte to attempt the siege of
the Island of Mongaza, the last stronghold of the giants, and held only
by their womenkind. Amadis and his company conceived this proposal as
unchivalrous, and when Lisuarte heard of their opinion he grew wroth
and sent his defiance to Amadis in the Firm Island. Amadis replied
that Madasima, the daughter of Famongomadan, having wed with Galvanes,
a friend of both Lisuarte and himself, the island could not be held
as sheltering the enemies of Lisuarte any longer, and that he would
defend it with his whole force. And he set sail for the island with
a large and well-equipped army. There they found a garrison which had
taken possession in the name of Lisuarte, and which they dispossessed.
Leaving a suitable force in the island, Amadis, who was becoming
anxious regarding Oriana, set sail for his own land of Gaul, and,
putting in at an island for supplies, chanced then to rescue his
brother Galaor and King Cildadan from the clutches of a tyrannous
giant, who had entrapped them. Arrived in Gaul, Amadis greeted his
parents, whom he had not seen for some years. In the meantime Lisuarte
had himself landed in the Isle of Mongaza, and had defeated the troops
of Galvanes, its rightful lord, but he dealt reasonably and kindly
with his vanquished foes and contented himself with making Galvanes,
and Madasima, his wife, do homage to him.
For some time Amadis led a life of ease, hunting and feasting, and
contenting himself with such news of his lady as he could obtain. We
are told that by these means his great renown became obscured, although
the unbiased reader might think that he had already achieved sufficient
fame to last a lifetime. "Damsels who went to him to seek revenge for
their wrongs cursed him for forsaking arms in the best of his life."
But Amadis had strong reasons for acting as he did, for a letter
from Oriana had informed him that she had borne him a little son,
and she beseeched him not to leave Gaul until such time as he heard
further from her. She did not acquaint him with the circumstance that
the infant had been lost, but of this we shall hear more anon. Later
Oriana wrote desiring Amadis not to take arms against her father, and
not to quit Gaul, unless it were to take his part. So Amadis resolved
to assist Lisuarte against the Kings of the Isles, with whom he was
about to do battle, and who had invaded his kingdom.
Now the Damsel of Denmark had taken the little son of Amadis and Oriana
and had carried him by night through a gloomy forest, in order that her
mistress might not be disgraced. Left alone for a moment, the child
had been carried off by a lioness, from which it had been rescued by
a hermit, Nasciano, who had called him Esplandian, and educated him
along with his own nephew. The good man brought the lads up as hunters,
and not the least strange thing about this remarkable child was the
circumstance that a lioness had affectionately attached herself to him,
refusing to leave him, either when at home or in the chase.
Meanwhile Amadis, calling himself 'Knight of the Green Sword,'
had resolved to do away with the ill reports of his unchivalrous
sloth. Taking only Ardian the dwarf with him, he entered Germany,
where he passed four years in adventure without word or message from
Oriana. Passing into Bohemia, he remained at its Court for a space.
One day Lisuarte, going to the chase with the Queen and his daughters,
came to the mountain where the hermit Nasciano dwelt, and encountering
Esplandian, resolved to adopt him, and the hermit showed him a letter,
written by Urganda, which had been tied to Esplandian's neck when
Nasciano found him. The letter was addressed to King Lisuarte himself,
and advised him to cherish the boy, who one day would deliver him
from the greatest danger. So Lisuarte resolved to attach Esplandian,
and Sargil, his foster-brother, to his service. And when the hermit
told how he had rescued Esplandian from the lioness Oriana knew him
to be none other than her own son, for she had heard that the infant
left on the threshold of the nunnery had been seized by a wild beast
and carried off.
In the course of his adventures, which were numerous and stirring,
Amadis was sorely wounded by a monster which he had slain, and was
cured of his hurt by a certain lady called Grasinda, to whom he was
grateful for her kindness and assistance, and he promised to do her
will in any adventure she might choose for him.
About the same time El Patin, Emperor of Rome, resolved to ask King
Lisuarte for the hand of Oriana. Hearing this, Queen Sardamira
of Sardinia, who loved El Patin, came to Britain along with the
ambassadors of the Roman Emperor, and, meeting Oriana, gave her some
account of Amadis, telling her how on one occasion he had conquered
El Patin in battle and how that emperor owed him a mortal grudge.
Galaor, who suspected the love of Amadis and Oriana, went to Lisuarte,
strongly advising him not to give Oriana in marriage to the Emperor,
and set out for Gaul, hoping to receive some news of Amadis. At the
same time Florestan betook himself to the Firm Island, to acquaint
Agrayes of the troubles besetting Oriana, and to carry him news of
his lady Mabilia, who longed to see him once more.
'The Greek Knight'
But, as fortune would have it, Amadis, now calling himself 'the Greek
Knight,' accompanied by the lady Grasinda, arrived in Britain. Amadis,
desiring to remain incognito, gave explicit orders to all in his
train not to divulge his name. He learned that Oriana was about
to be given to the Emperor, and resolved to take his measures
accordingly. Grasinda, however, mindful of his vow to her to embark in
any adventure she might choose for him, sent a letter to King Lisuarte
stating that she held herself fairer than any lady at his Court, and
that did any knight deny this he must do battle with her champion,
the Greek Knight. The Roman ambassadors requested of Lisuarte that they
might be permitted to take up the challenge, and to this he acceded.
The combat duly took place between Amadis and the knights of Rome,
to the entire discomfiture of the latter. But the day came on which
Lisuarte had promised the Emperor to send Oriana to him, and although
she swooned at the thought of being taken to Rome, her stubborn father
had her carried on board ship, said farewell to her, not unkindly,
and watched the Roman galley as it bore his daughter from the white
shores of Britain.
Amadis, hearing of the King's intention, went on board his own ship,
and lay in wait for the Roman vessel which was carrying off his
adored lady. Attacking the Italian craft with impetuosity, he quickly
overcame those on board, rescued Oriana, and at once set sail with
her for the golden shores of the Firm Island.
After a voyage of seven days the vessel of Amadis anchored in the
haven of the Firm Island. The lady Grasinda had by this time arrived
there, and now came out to welcome Oriana, whom of all ladies in the
world she most desired to see, because of her great renown, which
was everywhere spread abroad. And when she beheld Oriana "she could
not believe that such beauty was possible in any mortal creature."
Oriana and the other ladies were lodged in a tower of the palace
wrought by the magic skill of Apolidon, and by her request no
knight was permitted to enter this tower till some terms might
be made with the King, her father. Amadis was well aware that the
defiance he had thrown in the teeth of Lisuarte and the Emperor of
Rome by his abduction of Oriana must lead to serious consequences,
so he dispatched messengers to his many friends throughout the world
asking that they would send succour to him in his necessity.
The enmity which had arisen betwixt his two ancient enemies, Amadis
and King Lisuarte, presented an opportunity to the wily enchanter
Archelaus which he had no intention of letting slip. He therefore
approached several other spirits of discord and proposed to them that
if strife commenced between Amadis and the British King they with
their forces should conceal themselves in the neighbourhood of the
engagement, and when one side or the other had achieved victory,
they should fall upon the remnants of both armies and overwhelm
them in a common ruin. This dastardly plan commended itself to the
malcontent lords and petty kings to whom the wizard proposed it,
and they resolved to carry it into effect.
War with Lisuarte
Meanwhile Amadis had dispatched an embassy to the Court of Lisuarte,
requesting the hand of Oriana, but the stubborn old monarch gave a
stern refusal and sent him his defiance. El Patin, Emperor of Rome,
had by this time arrived in Britain, and was busy concerting measures
against Amadis. Soon a mighty host was gathered together, and marched
to seek the army of Amadis, who, taking time by the forelock, had
invaded Britain, and now advanced to meet the forces of Lisuarte and
the Emperor.
The friends of Amadis had not failed him. In the first place
his father, King Perion, was behind him with the whole force of
Gaul. Ireland had sent a large contingent, and his old friends,
the King of Bohemia and the Emperor of Constantinople, had furnished
him with well-equipped legions, all of w
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