[114] Fernan Gonzalez is the great hero of Castile, whose adventures will be noticed when we come to the poem about them; and in the battle of Hazinas he gained the decisive victory over the Moors which is well described in the third part of the “Crónica General.”

[115] “Y el Conde tovo este por buen exemplo,”—an old Castilian formula. (Crónica General, Parte III. c. 5.) Argote de Molina says of such phrases, which abound in the Conde Lucanor, that “they give a taste of the old proprieties of the Castilian”; and elsewhere, that “they show what was the pure idiom of our tongue.” Don John himself, with his accustomed simplicity, says, “I have made up the book with the handsomest words I could.” (Ed. 1575, f. 1, b.) Many of his words, however, needed explanation in the reign of Philip the Second, and, on the whole, the phraseology of the Conde Lucanor sounds older than that of the Partidas, which were yet written nearly a century before it. Some of its obsolete words are purely Latin, like cras for to-morrow, f. 83, and elsewhere.

[116] Cap. 20.

[117] Cap. 48.

[118] Cap. 8.—I infer from the Conde Lucanor, that Don John knew little about the Bible, as he cites it wrong in Cap. 4, and in Cap. 44 shows that he did not know it contained the comparison about the blind who lead the blind.

[119] There are two Spanish editions of the Conde Lucanor: the first and best by Argote de Molina, 4to, Sevilla, 1575, with a life of Don John prefixed, and a curious essay on Castilian verse at the end,—one of the rarest books in the world; and the other, only less rare, published at Madrid, 1642. The references in the notes are to the first. A reprint, made, if I mistake not, from the last, and edited by A. Keller, appeared at Stuttgard, 1839, 12mo, and a German translation by J. von Eichendorff, at Berlin, in 1840, 12mo. Don John Manuel, I observe, cites Arabic twice in the Conde Lucanor, (Capp. 11 and 14,)—a rare circumstance in early Spanish literature.

[120] Libro de la Monteria, que mando escrivir, etc., el Rey Don Alfonso de Castilla y de Leon, ultimo deste nombre, acrecentado por Argote de Molina, Sevilla, 1582, folio, 91 leaves,—the text not correct, as Pellicer says (note to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 24). The Discurso of Argote de Molina, that follows, and fills 21 leaves more, is illustrated with curious woodcuts, and ends with a description of the palace of the Pardo, and an eclogue in octave stanzas, by Gomez de Tapia of Granada, on the birth of the Infanta Doña Isabel, daughter of Philip II.

[121] This old rhymed chronicle was found by the historian Diego de Mendoza among his Arabic manuscripts in Granada, and was sent by him, with a letter dated December 1, 1573, to Zurita, the annalist of Aragon, intimating that Argote de Molina would be interested in it. He says truly, that “it is well worth reading, to see with what simplicity and propriety men wrote poetical histories in the olden times”; adding, that “it is one of those books called in Spain Gestas,” and that it seems to him curious and valuable, because he thinks it was written by a secretary of Alfonso XI., and because it differs in several points from the received accounts of that monarch’s reign. (Dormer, Progresos de la Historia de Aragon, Zaragoza, 1680, fol., p. 502.) The thirty-four stanzas of this chronicle that we now possess were first published by Argote de Molina, in his very curious “Nobleza del Andaluzia,” (Sevilla, 1588, f. 198,) and were taken from him by Sanchez (Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. 171-177). Argote de Molina says, “I copy them on account of their curiosity as specimens of the language and poetry of that age, and because they are the best and most fluent of any thing for a long time written in Spain.” The truth is, they are so facile, and have so few archaisms in them, that I cannot believe they were written earlier than the ballads of the fifteenth century, which they so much resemble. The following account of a victory, which I once thought was that of Salado, gained in 1340, and described in the “Crónica de Alfonso XI.,” (1551, fol., Cap. 254,) but which I now think must have been some victory gained before 1330, is the best part of what has been published:—

It is a misfortune that this poem is lost.

[122] Slight extracts from the Beneficiado de Ubeda are in Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. 116-118. The first stanza, which is like the beginning of several of Berceo’s poems, is as follows:—

[123] See, for his life, Sanchez, Tom. I. pp. 100-106, and Tom. IV. pp. ii.-vi.;—and for an excellent criticism of his works, one in the Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, 1832, Band LVIII. pp. 220-255. It is by Ferdinand Wolf, and he boldly compares the Archpriest to Cervantes.

[124] Sanchez, Tom. IV. p. x.

[125] Ibid., p. 283.

[126] The immoral tendency of many of the poems is a point that not only embarrasses the editor of the Archpriest, (see p. xvii. and the notes on pp. 76, 97, 102, etc.,) but somewhat disturbs the Archpriest himself. (See stanzas 7, 866, etc.) The case, however, is too plain to be covered up; and the editor only partly avoids trouble by quietly leaving out long passages, as from st. 441 to 464, etc.

[127] St. 61-68.

[128] There is some little obscurity about this important personage (st. 71, 671, and elsewhere); but she was named Urraca, (st. 1550,) and belonged to the class of persons technically called Alcahuetas, or “Go-betweens”; a class which, from the seclusion of women in Spain, and perhaps from the influence of Moorish society and manners, figures largely in the early literature of the country, and sometimes in the later. The Partidas (Part. VII. Tít. 22) devotes two laws to them; and the “Tragicomedia of Celestina,” who is herself once called Trota-conventos, (end of Act. II.,) is their chief monument. Of their activity in the days of the Archpriest a whimsical proof is given in the extraordinary number of odious and ridiculous names and epithets accumulated on them in st. 898-902.

[129] St. 72 etc., 88 etc., 95 etc.

[130] When the affair is over, he says quaintly, “El comiò la vianda, è a mi fiso rumiar.”

[131] St. 119, 142 etc., 171 etc., 203 etc. Such discoursing as this last passage affords on the seven deadly sins is common in the French Fabliaux, and the English reader finds a striking specimen of it in the “Persone’s Tale” of Chaucer.

[132] St. 557-559, with 419 and 548. Pamphylus de Amore, F. A. Ebert, Bibliographisches Lexicon, Leipzig, 1830, 4to, Tom. II. p. 297. P. Leyseri Hist. Poet. Medii Ævi, Halæ, 1721, 8vo, p. 2071. Sanchez, Tom. IV. pp. xxiii., xxiv. The story of Pamphylus in the Archpriest’s version is in stanzas 555-865. The story of the Archpriest’s own journey is in stanzas 924-1017. The Serranas in this portion are, I think, imitations of the Pastoretas or Pastorelles of the Troubadours. (Raynouard, Troubadours, Tom. II. pp. 229, etc.) If such poems occurred frequently in the Northern French literature of the period, I should think the Archpriest had found his models there, since it is there he generally resorts; but I have never seen any that came from north of the Loire so old as his time.

[133] St. 1017-1040. The “Bataille des Vins,” by D’Andeli, may be cited, (Barbazan, ed. Méon, Tom. I. p. 152,) but the “Bataille de Karesme et de Charnage” (Ibid., Tom. IV. p. 80) is more in point. There are others on other subjects. For the marvellously savory personages in the Archpriest’s battle, see stanzas 1080, 1169, 1170, etc.

[134] St. 1184 etc., 1199-1229. It is not quite easy to see how the Archpriest ventured some things in the last passage. Parts of the procession come singing the most solemn hymns of the Church, or parodies of them, applied to Don Amor, like the Benedictus qui venit. It seems downright blasphemy against what was then thought most sacred.

[135] Stanzas 1221, 1229 etc., 1277 etc., 1289, 1491, 1492 etc., 1550 etc., 1553-1681.

[136] Stanzas 464, etc. As in many other passages, the Archpriest is here upon ground already occupied by the Northern French poets. See the “Usurer’s Pater-Noster,” and “Credo,” in Barbazan, Fabliaux, Tom. IV. pp. 99 and 106.

[137] Stanzas 1494 etc., 1609 etc.

[138] The Archpriest says of the fable of the Mountain that brought forth a Mouse, that it “was composed by Isopete.” Now there were at least two collections of fables in French in the thirteenth century, that passed under the name of Ysopet, and are published in Robert, “Fables Inédites,” (Paris, 1825, 2 tom. 8vo); and as Marie de France, who lived at the court of Henry III. of England, then the resort of the Northern French poets, alludes to them in the Prologue to her own Fables, they are probably as early as 1240. (See Poésies de Marie de France, ed. Roquefort, Paris, 1820, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 61, and the admirable discussions in De la Rue sur les Bardes, les Jongleurs et les Trouvères, Caen, 1834, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 198-202, and Tom. III. pp. 47-101.) To one or both of these Isopets the Archpriest went for a part of his fables,—perhaps for all of them. Don Juan Manuel, his contemporary, probably did the same, and sometimes took the same fables; e. g. Conde Lucanor, Capp. 43, 26, and 49, which are the fables of the Archpriest, stanzas 1386, 1411, and 1428.

[139] Stanzas 189, 206, 1419.

[140] It begins thus, stanza 1344:—

And so on through eight more stanzas. Now, besides the Greek attributed to Æsop and the Latin of Horace, there can be found above twenty versions of this fable, among which are two in Spanish, one by Bart. Leon. de Argensola, and the other by Samaniego; but I think the Archpriest’s is the best of the whole.

[141] There are at least two manuscripts of the poems of this Jew, from which nothing has been published but a few poor extracts. The one commonly cited is that of the Escurial, used by Castro, (Biblioteca Española, Tom. I. pp. 198-202,) and by Sanchez (Tom. I. pp. 179-184, and Tom. IV. p. 12, etc.). The one I have used is in the National Library, Madrid, marked B. b. 82, folio, in which the poem of the Rabbi is found on leaves 61 to 81. Conde, the historian of the Arabs, preferred this manuscript to the one in the Escurial, and held the Rabbi’s true name to be given in it, viz. Santob, and not Santo, as it is in the manuscript of the Escurial; the latter being a name not likely to be taken by a Jew in the time of Peter the Cruel, though very likely to be written so by an ignorant monkish transcriber. The manuscript of Madrid begins thus, differing from that of the Escurial, as may be seen in Castro, ut sup.:—

The oldest notice of the Jew of Carrion is in the letter of the Marquis of Santillana to the Constable of Portugal, from which there can be no doubt that the Rabbi still enjoyed much reputation in the middle of the fifteenth century.

[142]

These lines seem better given in the Escurial manuscript as follows:—

The manuscripts ought to be collated, and this curious poem published.

After a preface in prose, which seems to be by another hand, and an address to the king by the poet himself, he goes on:—

One of the philosophical verses is very quaint:—

I add from the unpublished original:—

[*] buscarian?

[143] Castro, Bibl. Esp., Tom. I. p. 199. Sanchez, Tom. I. p. 182; Tom. IV. p. xii.

I am aware that Don José Amador de los Rios, in his “Estudios Históricos, Políticos y Literarios sobre los Judios de España,” a learned and pleasant book published at Madrid in 1848, is of a different opinion, and holds the three poems, including the Doctrina Christiana, to be the work of Don Santo or Santob of Carrion. (See pp. 304-335.) But I think the objections to this opinion are stronger than the reasons he gives to support it; especially the objections involved in the following facts, viz.: that Don Santob calls himself a Jew; that both the manuscripts of the Consejos call him a Jew; that the Marquis of Santillana, the only tolerably early authority that mentions him, calls him a Jew; that no one of them intimates that he ever was converted,—a circumstance likely to have been much blazoned abroad, if it had really occurred; and that, if he were an unconverted Jew, it is wholly impossible he should have written the Dança General, the Doctrina Christiana, or the Ermitaño.

I ought, perhaps, to add, in reference both to the remarks made in this note, and to the notices of the few Jewish authors in Spanish literature generally, that I did not receive the valuable work of Amador de los Rios till just as the present one was going to press.

[144] Castro, Bibl. Esp., Tom. I. p. 200. By the kindness of Prof. Gayangos, I have a copy of the whole. To judge from the opening lines of the poem, it was probably written in 1382:—

The first of January, 1420, of the Spanish Era, when the scene is laid, corresponds to A. D. 1382. A copy of the poem printed at Madrid, 1848, 12mo, pp. 13, differs from my manuscript copy, but is evidently taken from one less carefully made.

[145] Hist. of Eng. Poetry, Sect. 24, near the end. It appears also in French very early, under the title of “Le Débat du Corps et de l’Ame,” printed in 1486. (Ebert, Bib. Lexicon, Nos. 5671-5674.) The source of the fiction has been supposed to be a poem by a Frankish monk (Hagen und Büsching, Grundriss, Berlin, 1812, 8vo, p. 446); but it is very old, and found in many forms and many languages. See Latin Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, and edited for the Camden Society by T. Wright (1841, 4to, pp. 95 and 321). It was printed in the ballad form in Spain as late as 1764.

[146] Castro, Bibl. Española, Tom. I. p. 200. Sanchez, Tom. I. pp. 182-185, with Tom. IV. p. xii. I suspect the Spanish Dance of Death is an imitation from the French, because I find, in several of the early editions, the French Dance of Death is united, as the Spanish is in the manuscript of the Escurial, with the “Débat du Corps et de l’Ame,” just as the “Vows over the Peacock” seems, in both languages, to have been united to a poem on Alexander.

[147] In what a vast number of forms this strange fiction occurs may be seen in the elaborate work of F. Douce, entitled “Dance of Death,” (London, 1833, 8vo,) and in the “Literatur der Todtentänze,” von H. F. Massmann (Leipzig, 1840, 8vo). To these, however, for our purpose, should be added notices from the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, (Berlin, 1792, Vol. CVI. p. 279,) and a series of prints that appeared at Lubec in 1783, folio, taken from the paintings there, which date from 1463, and which might well serve to illustrate the old Spanish poem. See also K. F. A. Scheller, Bücherkunde der Sässisch-niederdeutschen Sprache, Braunschweig, 1826, 8vo, p. 75. The whole immense series, whether existing in the paintings at Basle, Hamburg, etc., or in the old poems in all languages, one of which is by Lydgate, were undoubtedly intended for religious edification, just as the Spanish poem was.

[148] I have a manuscript copy of the whole poem, made for me by Professor Gayangos, and give the following as specimens. First, one of the stanzas translated in the text:—

And the two following, which have not, I believe, been printed; the first being the reply of Death to the Dean he had summoned, and the last the objections of the Merchant:—

[149] See a learned dissertation of Fr. Benito Montejo, on the Beginnings of the Independence of Castile, Memorias de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. III. pp. 245-302. Crónica General de España, Parte III. c. 18-20. Duran, Romances Caballerescos, Madrid, 1832, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 27-39. Extracts from the manuscript in the Escurial are to be found in Bouterwek, trad. por J. G. de la Cortina, etc., Tom. I. pp. 154-161. I have a manuscript copy of the first part of it, made for me by Professor Gayangos. For notices, see Castro, Bibl., Tom. I. p. 199, and Sanchez, Tom. I. p. 115.

[150] Crónica General, ed. 1604, Parte III. f. 55. b, 60. a-65. b. Compare, also, Cap. 19, and Mariana, Historia, Lib. VIII. c. 7, with the poem. That the poem was taken from the Chronicle may be assumed, I conceive, from a comparison of the Chronicle, Parte III. c. 18, near the end, containing the defeat and death of the Count of Toulouse, with the passage in the poem as given by Cortina, and beginning “Cavalleros Tolesanos trezientos y prendieron”; or the vision of San Millan (Crónica, Parte III. c. 19) with the passage in the poem beginning “El Cryador te otorga quanto pedido le as.” Perhaps, however, the following, being a mere rhetorical illustration, is a proof as striking, if not as conclusive, as a longer one. The Chronicle says, (Parte III. c. 18,) “Non cuentan de Alexandre los dias nin los años; mas los buenos fechos e las sus cavallerías que fizo.” The poem has it, in almost the same words:—

[151]

[152] Other manuscripts of this sort are known to exist; but I am not aware of any so old, or of such poetical value. (Ochoa, Catálogo de Manuscritos Españoles, etc., pp. 6-21. Gayangos, Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, Tom. I. pp. 492 and 503.) As to the spelling in the Poem of Joseph, we have sembraredes, chiriador, certero, marabella, taraydores, etc. To avoid a hiatus, a consonant is prefixed to the second word; as “cada guno” repeatedly for cada uno. The manuscript of the Poema de José, in 4to, 49 leaves, was first shown to me in the Public Library at Madrid, marked G. g. 101, by Conde, the historian; but I owe a copy of the whole of it to the kindness of Don Pascual de Gayangos, Professor of Arabic in the University there.

[153] The passage I have translated is in Coplas 5-7, in the original manuscript, as it now stands, imperfect at the beginning.

[154]

[*] Nabi, Prophet, Arabic.

[155]

It is Joseph who is here called king, as he is often in the poem,—once he is called emperor, though the Pharaoh of the period is fully recognized; and this costly measure, made of gold and precious stones, corresponds to the cup of the Hebrew account, and is found, like that, in the sack of Benjamin, where it had been put by Joseph, (after he had secretly revealed himself to Benjamin,) as the means of seizing Benjamin and detaining him in Egypt, with his own consent, but without giving his false brethren the reason for it.

[156]

[157] As the original has not been printed, I transcribe the following stanzas of the passage I have last translated:—

[158] This is apparent also in the addition sometimes made of an o or an a to a word ending with a consonant, as mercadero for mercader.

[159] Thus, the merchant who buys Joseph talks of Palestine as “the Holy Land,” and Pharaoh talks of making Joseph a Count. But the general tone is Oriental.

[160] For the Rimado de Palacio, see Bouterwek, trad. de Cortina, Tom. I. pp. 138-154. The whole poem consists of 1619 stanzas. For notices of Ayala, see Chap. IX.

[161] Letrado has continued to be used to mean a lawyer in Spanish down to our day, as clerk has to mean a writer in English, though the original signification of both was different. When Sancho goes to his island, he is said to be “parte de letrado, parte de Capitan”; and Guillen de Castro, in his “Mal Casados de Valencia,” Act. III., says of a great rogue, “engaño como letrado.” A description of Letrados, worthy of Tacitus for its deep satire, is to be found in the first book of Mendoza’s “Guerra de Granada.”

[162] The passage is in Cortina’s notes to Bouterwek, and begins:—

[163] The original reads thus:—

Don José Amador de los Rios has given further extracts from the Rimado de Palacio in a pleasant paper on it in the Semanario Pintoresco, Madrid, 1847, p. 411.

[164] Alfonso el Sabio says of his father, St. Ferdinand: “And, moreover, he liked to have men about him who knew how to make verses (trobar) and sing, and Jongleurs, who knew how to play on instruments. For in such things he took great pleasure, and knew who was skilled in them and who was not.” (Setenario, Paleographía, pp. 80-83, and p. 76.) See, also, what is said hereafter, when we come to speak of Provençal literature in Spain, Chap. XVI.

[165] The Edinburgh Review, No. 146, on Lockhart’s Ballads, contains the ablest statement of this theory.

[166] The passage in Strabo here referred to, which is in Book III. p. 139, (ed. Casaubon, fol., 1620,) is to be taken in connection with the passage (p. 151) in which he says that both the language and its poetry were wholly lost in his time.

[167] Argote de Molina (Discurso de la Poesía Castellana, in Conde Lucanor, ed. 1575, f. 93. a) may be cited to this point, and one who believed it tenable might also cite the “Crónica General,” (ed. 1604, Parte II. f. 265,) where, speaking of the Gothic kingdom, and mourning its fall, the Chronicle says, “Forgotten are its songs, (cantares,)” etc.

[168] W. von Humboldt, in the Mithridates of Adelung and Vater, Berlin, 1817, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 354, and Argote de Molina, ut sup., f. 93;—but the Basque verses the latter gives cannot be older than 1322, and were, therefore, quite as likely to be imitated from the Spanish as to have been themselves the subjects of Spanish imitation.

[169] Dominacion de los Árabes, Tom. I., Prólogo, pp. xviii.-xix., p. 169, and other places. But in a manuscript preface to a collection which he called “Poesías Orientales traducidas por Jos. Ant. Conde,” and which he never published, he expresses himself yet more positively: “In the versification of our Castilian ballads and seguidillas, we have received from the Arabs an exact type of their verses.” And again he says, “From the period of the infancy of our poetry, we have rhymed verses according to the measures used by the Arabs before the times of the Koran.” This is the work, I suppose, to which Blanco White alludes (Variedades, Tom. II. pp. 45, 46). The theory of Conde has been often approved. See Retrospective Review, Tom. IV. p. 31, the Spanish translation of Bouterwek, Tom. I. p. 164, etc.