i58 ROMANCE BALLADS

such a marriage were eyed with suspicion, and it was to the interest
of the enemy to allege that the marriage had only come because of
murder. The career of Pedro the Cruel went from bad to worse,
till he fell at Montiel in a fratricidal struggle (1369). Enrique
possessed the kingdom by right of conquest and consent, despite
his bastardy; a condition he imputed in self-defence to the late
king's daughters, one of whom was the wife of John of Gaunt.
With John of Gaunt the civil wars entered on a new phase,
culminating in his invasion of Castile (1386-8), and closed by the
treaty of 1390. The hatred distilled into the ballads of this cycle
is thus not only that of the last years of King Pedro's reign,
but also that of the years in which his daughters were a deadly
menace.

The ballads deal with these events as three murders, two
prophecies, and some miscellaneous news. The murders were
those of the Master of Santiago, Don Fadrique, in 1358, and of
Don Juan, Lord of Biscay, in the same year; Queen Blanche's
death in 1561 was set down as a third murder. By the first killing
Pedro was branded a fratricide. The poet increased the horror
of the event by charging the account to Dona Maria (though
we know—and perhaps he did also—that she begged for the
Master's life), whom he represented as a modern Herodias-cum-
Salome:

'Twas Epiphany in the morning,

'twas the first feast of the year;

when both damisels and matrons

from the king a guerdon seek;

some for cloth of silk petitioned,

for brocade some, fine and sleek,

some petition him for favours

in the cause of lovers dear.

Lady Mary, first of many,

comes a-begging with a tear,

begs the head of the Grand Master

of St. James's chivalry. (x. p. 53)

The minstrel who first sang of Don Juan's death let the victim
speak in the first person. With dramatic pantomime he could
excite the lively indignation of the Biscayans and other Basques,
whose territories Don Enrique's armies had repeatedly to cross.
The device must have proved successful, for it was extended to the