Note 17 — Chapter I · : The Sources of Spanish Romance
Reading edition
As in France, so in Spain, degeneration overtook the cantares de gesta. In course of time they were forced into the market-place and the scullions’ hall. Many of them were worked into the substance of chronicles and histories; but the juglares who now sang them altered them, when they passed out of fashion, into corrupt abridgments, or broke them up into ballads to suit the taste of a more popular audience.17