Then the Moors, by this aware, That bloody Mars recall'd them there, One by one, and two by two, To a mighty squadron grew. Wo is me, Alhama! Out then spake an aged Moor "Friends! ye have, alas! to know That the Christians, stern and bold, Wo is me, Alhama ! Out then spake old Alfaqui, "Good king, thou art justly served; "By thee were slain, in evil hour, The Abencerrage, Granada's flower; And strangers were received by thee Of Cordova the chivalry. Wo is me, Alhama! "And for this, oh king! is sent On thee a double chastisement; Thee and thine, thy crown and realm, One last wreck shall overwhelm. Wo is me, Alhama! "He who holds no laws in awe, He must perish by the law; And Granada must be won, And thyself with her undone." Wo is me, Alhama! Fire flash'd from out the old Moor's eyes; "There is no law to say such things The Moorish king, and doom'd him dead. Wo is me, Alhama! Such are the ancient ballads of Spain; poems which, like the Gothic cathedrals of the middle ages, have outlived the names of their builders. They are the handiwork of wandering, homeless minstrels, who for their daily bread thus "built the lofty rhyme;" and whose names, like their dust and ashes, have long, long been wrapped in a shroud. "These poets," says an anonymous writer, "have left behind them no trace to which the imagination can attach itself; they have died and made no sign.' We pass from the infancy of Spanish poetry to the age of Charles, through a long vista of monuments without inscriptions, as the traveller approaches the noise and bustle of modern Rome through the lines of silent and unknown tombs that border the Appian Way." Before closing this essay, I must allude to the unfavourable opinion which the learned Dr. Southey has expressed concerning the merit of these old Spanish ballads. In his preface to the Chronicle of the Cid he says, "The heroic ballads of the Spaniards have been overrated in this country; they are infinitely and every way inferior to our own; there are some spirited ones in the Guerras Civiles de Granada, from which the rest have been estimated; but excepting these, I know none of any value among the many hundreds which I have perused." On this field I am willing to do battle, though it be with a veteran knight who bears enchanted arms, and whose sword, like that of Martin Antolinez, "illumines all the field." That the old Spanish ballads may have been overrated, and that as a whole they are inferior to the English, I concede; that many of the hundred ballads of the Cid are wanting in interest, and that many of those of the Twelve Peers of France are languid, and drawn out beyond the patience of the most patient reader, I concede; I willingly confess, also, that among them all I have found none that can rival in graphic power the short but wonderful ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, wherein the mariner sees VOL. II.-C "the new moon with the old moon in her arm," or the more modern one of the Battle of Agincourt, by Michael Drayton, beginning,— Fair stood the wind for France, As we our sails advance, Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry; But putting to the main, At Caux, the mouth of Seine, With all his martial train Landed King Harry. All this I readily concede; but that the old Spanish ballads are infinitely and every way inferior to the English, and that among them all there are none of any value, save a few which celebrate the civil wars of Granada,—this I deny. I think the March of Bernardo del Carpio is equal to Chevy Chase; and that the ballad of the Conde Alarcos, in simplicity and pathos, has no peer in all English balladry-it is superior to Edem o' Gordon. In proof of this opinion, I confidently appeal to the ballads themselves,-nay, even to the short specimens that have been given in this essay. But a truce to criticism. Already, methinks, I hear the voice of a drowsy and prosaic herald proclaiming, in the language of Don Quixote to the puppet-player, "Make an end, Master Peter; for it grows toward supper-time, and I have some symptoms of hunger upon me." |