Note 481 — APPENDIX II. ON THE ANCIENT METRICAL ROMANCES, &c.

The little narrative songs on Morisco subjects, which the Spaniards have at present in great abundance, and which they call peculiarly romances, (see vol. i. book iii. no. xvi. &c.), have nothing in common with their proper romances (or histories) of chivalry, which they call Historias de Cavallerias; these are evidently imitations of the French, and shew a great ignorance of Moorish manners: and with regard to the Morisco, or song romances, they do not seem of very great antiquity; few of them appear, from their subjects, much earlier than the reduction of Granada, in the fifteenth century: from which period, I believe, may be plainly traced among the Spanish writers, a more perfect knowledge of Moorish customs, &c.