Note 1 — Chapter IX · : The Romanceros or Ballads

The title Romancero General was applied to many collections of Spanish songs and narrative romances in verse published during the seventeenth century and later. Of these only the older require illustration here. The first in point of date was the collection of Miguel de Madrigal, published in 1604, although another work containing upward of a thousand romances and songs was produced in the same year, and bears the same title. Another collection of primary importance is that of Pedro de Flores (1614). This is obviously a bookseller’s compilation, but is none the worse for that, save that it pretends to embrace the entire sum of Spanish romanceros, whereas it contains not one of those appearing in the Cancionero General. All of these works contain numerous amatory poems of the kind so liberally exemplified in the Cancionero General, but with these we have little concern, and our attention may be better employed in examining the romanceros proper which it contains. These for the most part would seem to belong to the fifteenth century, and relate to the civil wars of Granada, the last Moorish principality in Spain, and the heroic and gallant adventures of Moorish knights. It is, indeed, in this work that we first perceive the trend toward a literary fashion in things Moorish to which we have referred in a previous chapter, but, as has been indicated, this is very far from saying that these poems owe their origin to Moorish models. But there are not wanting Castilian themes and stories, such as those relating to Roderic, Bernaldo de Carpio, Fernán González, the Infantes of Lara, and the Cid. Most of these were written by men of humble station, the true poets of the people, the late representatives of those juglares who had sung or recited the cantares de gesta.1