THE DESCENT OF BALLADS 95

For these reasons it is impossible to clinch the proof of 'frag-
mentation' by pointing to any epic fragment which is a ballad. The
correspondences are striking enough, despite the differences noted,
and fragmentation offers a possible, though not a certain, explana-
tion. Apart from the instances cited we know Spanish epics not
in their verse form, but as embedded in the prose of general
chronicles of Spain. The ballads correspond with the data of later
chronicles better than with the earlier, and it is possible these data
may be due to redactions of the old poems. The ballads which deal
with the destruction of Spain by the Moors and King Roderick's
death In 711 are based frankly on a prose text, the Cronica Sarra-
cina of 1430. They are not really epical ballads; indeed, it is not
certain that there was a Spanish epic on this subject, the surviv-
ing forms of which are prose traditions reported by Arabic and
Castilian historians. There was a French epic on the theme:
Anseis de Karthage. A number of ballads deal with Bernardo del
Carpio, his resistance to the French at Roncesvalles, and his efforts
to release his father from imprisonment. They are not old, and
all but one could have been excavated from the chronicles. One
of the ballads on Count Fernan Gonzalez, liberator of Castile,
appears to be authentic, the others being examples of mere ballad-
making. We are here dealing with a *cantar de gesta' summarized
in the Cronica Najerense (about 1160), but not in the Historia
Silense (1109); it was probably assembled between those dates by
the use of common novelistic matter, seeing that all the episodes
are of a romanesque sort. About 1250 the 'cantar5 was rewritten
in rhyming quatrains by a cleric of no great literary attainments,
and his work was turned into the prose of the First General
Chronicle. The old 'cantar* doubtless lingered on, supplying to
later chronicles and the ballad of the ford of Carrion details which
the cleric had ignored. The case hardly requires us to hypothetize
a second redaction of the 'cantar', since we have only indirect
access to the first.

The ballads of the Infantes de Lara cycle are more numerous,
vivid, and of primitive passion. It is a family history of revenge and
treachery, and as such did not attract the notice of the earlier his-
torians who wrote in Latin concerning the affairs of kings. The
vernacular historians were thus not tempted to distort the legend
in the attempt to make it square with some preconceived notion
of history, and we can be more sure in this case than in others that