Legends & Romances of Spain. Lewis Spence

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.

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, 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 españoles, 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 praiseworthy 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 haystack 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.”