PEOPLE AND POETS 13

French songs of the trades are wont to declare the poet's profession
and claim that the song is new, that also is a matter of formula,
since the claim to be new adheres still when the ballad has become
very old,

In this way ballads come to be the completest definition of the
community which enjoys them. One must allow that not all things
are considered suitable for verse; but that which finds expression,
finds it in the commonest manner. If we wish to know what sort
of mind is the Spanish one, it is of less advantage to consult Don
Quijote, which is a work of exceptional genius, or the 'comedias',
which were Castilian and of a certain epoch, than the 'romancero'.
The 'romances5 are at home not only in Castile, whence they
sprung up, but wherever Castilian is spoken: in Mexico or Chile,
or among the exiled Jews in Oran and the Balkans. They have
spread into all the dialects, and into the languages akin to Castilian.
So the same ballads and ballad-types are encountered in Portugal
and her islands, and in Brazil. In Catalonia ballads are Spanish,
save for an older French stratum. But when these songs travel
farther, it is by way of translation, and they appear as exotics.
Every Spaniard has seen his image in Don Quixote or Don Juan,
the one with his unbridled passion for justice, the other with his
unbridled will, both dynamic figures. The Cid of the 'romances'
is a froward youth and an upright old man, typically Spanish in
either way, without the need to discount any of his qualities; the
Cid is neither mad, like Don Quixote, nor a hedonist, like Don Juan,
nor are Spaniards like that in general. Genius may offer pictures
which are more subtly true, more various or more brilliant; but
nothing more broadly acceptable than the portraits of ballad
poetry. The features are generalized and motives are broadly
human; the situations are those which occur at all times. The
heroic exaltation of Roland when he refuses to blow his horn, or
the cold fury of Hagen in the pit of serpents, are moments of
tension which cannot be for ever maintained; Milton's puritanism
or Tasso's synthesis of Christendom are attitudes that have passed.
But Robin Hood's good humour and sense of fair play are, one
hopes, qualities for ever English; Niels Ebbes0n's self-reliance is
the manly Dane; Il'ja and Dobrynja are Russians of the Russians,
and Marko Kraljevic is everything a Serb would like to be. They
have their faults, which are also characteristic. Save for their
stature, ballad heroes are average leaders of their race.