Note 200 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Ortiz de Zuñiga (Anales de Sevilla, Appendix, p. 831) gives this ballad, and says it had been printed two hundred years. If this be true, it is, no doubt, the oldest printed ballad in the language. But Ortiz is uncritical in such matters, like nearly all of his countrymen. The story of Garci Perez de Vargas is in the “Crónica General,” Parte IV., in the “Crónica de Fernando III.,” c. 48, etc., and in Mariana, Historia, Lib. XIII. c. 7.