Note 9 — Chapter I · : The Sources of Spanish Romance

The rise of Castilian as a colloquial and literary tongue was achieved by the ceaseless struggle of the hardy race who spoke it against the Saracen occupation of their native land. As the Castilian warriors by generations of hard fighting gradually regained city after city and district by district rather than province by province, their language encroached by degrees upon the area of that of their Arab enemies,9 until at length the last stronghold of the Moors fell and left them not a foothold in the Peninsula. “It was indeed a rude training which our forefathers, mighty and hardy, had as a prelude to so many glories and to the conquest of the world,” says Martinez in his novel Isabel de Solis.10 “Weighed down by their harness and with sword in hand, they slept at ease no single night for eight centuries.”