King Alfonso: "Hear what I say, Infantes of Carrion. 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 Carrion. 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.9 26 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. [87] 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, Muno Gustioz and Asur Gonzalez ran swiftly and fiercely together. The point of Asur's spear glanced off Muno'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 [88]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. [Contents] 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 [89]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. [90] 1 Ormsby (The Poem of the Cid), who wrote in 1879, seems to have had the most elementary notions of what a cantar was, and states that the Poema "was nearly contemporary with the first chansons de gestes." But he is probably at least a century out in his reckoning, as the first chansons date from about the middle of the eleventh century. Of trovador and juglar he had evidently never heard. Yet he is anything but superficial, and on the whole his book is the best we have in English on the Poema. It is unlucky, too, 27 as Saintsbury remarks, that neither Ticknor nor Southey, who wrote so widely on ancient Spanish literature, were acquainted with the chansons de gestes. Still more luckless is it that so much in the way of Spanish translation was left to Longfellow, who shockingly mangled and Bowdlerized many fine ballads. Probably no poet was so well qualified as he to divest a ballad of all pith and virility in the course of translation. Bad as are his Spanish renderings, however, they are adequate when compared with his exploits in the field of Italian translation. 2 See his Poema del Cid (1898). 3 See Manuel Rivadeneyra, Biblioteca de Autores espanoles, vol. xvi (1846-80). 4 A good deal of controversy has arisen concerning the metre of the Poema. Professor Cornu of Prague (see M. Gaston Paris, in Romania, xxii, pp. 153, 531) has stated that the basis of it is the ballad octosyllable, full or catalectic, arranged as hemistichs of a longer line, but this theory presupposes that the copyists of the original MS. must have mistaken such a simple measure, which is scarcely credible. Professor Saintsbury (Flourishing of Romance, p. 403) gives it as his opinion that "nobody has been able to get further in a generalization of the metre than that the normal form is an eight and six (better a seven and seven) 'fourteener,' trochaically cadenced, but admitting contraction and extension with a liberality elsewhere unparalleled." No absolute system of assonance or rhyme appears, and we are almost forced to the conclusion that the absence of this is in a measure due to the kind offices of Abbot Pedro. 5 By this phrase the Cid seems to have been widely known; in fact it appears to have served him as a sort of cognomen or nickname. 6 The passage in the Poema del Cid which tells of the combat that followed has perhaps a better right than any other in the epic to the title 'Homeric' The translation which I furnish of it may not be so exact as those of Frere or Ormsby. But although I am only too conscious of its many shortcomings, I cannot bring myself to make use of the pedestrian preciseness of the one or the praise-worthy version of the other of my predecessors, both of which, in my view, fail to render the magnificent spirit and chivalric dash of the original. All that I can claim for my own translation is that it does not fail so utterly as either in this regard. I have in places attempted the restoration of lines which seemed to me omitted or coalesced with others, and I must admit that this rendering of a great passage is more consciously artificial than the others--a fault which I am unable to rectify. But allowances must be made for the rendition of such a passage, and the whole must be accepted by the reader faute de mieux. 7 Throughout the Poema and elsewhere the Cid is constantly alluded to as "Mio Cid" ("My lord"). I deal with the etymology of the name farther on, but hold to the form 'the Cid' as being most familiar to English readers. 8 This passage is reminiscent of the saying of the famous Border outlaw Jock Eliot, when he and his men came upon a large hay-stack of which they resolved to make fodder for their horses. "Eh, man," exclaimed the humorous raider, "if ye had legs, wouldna' ye run!" 9 The commencement of the passage in question is as follows (lines 1741-50): The heraldz laften here prikyng up and doun; Now ryngede the tromp and clarioun: Ther is no more to say, but est and west In goth the speres ful sadly in arest; Ther seen men who can juste, and who can ryde; In goth the scharpe spore into the side, Ther schyveren schaftes upon schuldres thykke; He feeleth through the herte-spon the prikke. Up sprengen speres on twenty foot on hight; Out goon the swerdes as the silver bright. The balance is, however, greatly in favour of Chaucer, whose lines, if properly accented, beat the original Spanish on its own ground, and this notwithstanding the absurd remark of Swinburne that "Chaucer and Spenser scarcely made a good poet between them." [Contents] 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! 28 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
