162 ROMANCE BALLADS

with his turban wound about it,
precious turban, richly made,—
'twas embroidered by a Mooress
whom he kept as well-loved dame—
over all a scarf he carried,
silken-tasselled, fine and gay;
riding on his mare for swiftness,
of his charger was not fain.
Lone he travelled, having only
for companion a page;—
not for any lack of squirelings,
many in his palace stayed !
Seven the ambushes they set him,
horsemen bringing him to bay;
but that mare was light and nimble,
and through all she made her way,
through the fields of Archidona;
shouted he, and thus did say:
'Good my lord and king, if only
knewest thou my tidings grave,
thou wouldst tear thy locks in handfuls,
tear thy beard in dire dismay.'

The finest pieces are sometimes those that recount Christian
disasters. One such occurred on the Rio Verde in 1448, when the
bold soldier Sayavedra fell in by chance with an enormously
larger Moorish expedition. The event was confused with the
similar death of Don Alonso de Aguilar in the same region in 1501
(96). Another confusion affects two expeditions which set out
from Jaen: one, of three hundred

boys of honour only greedy,
nay, more truly, boys in love,

who were trapped at Montejicar on 10 May 1410; the other, of
four hundred who sallied forth under the guidance of the fighting
bishop Gonzalo at a date not precisely known (82). Incidents on
the frontier were liable to repeat themselves, and were seldom of
such importance as to deserve other witness than the ballads. The
poems constituted a stirring, but perishable, record; yet there were
fortunately some historians, like an anonymous chronicler of
John II, who went to ballads to enrich their information. Thus it
is that the chronicle gives us the very day of the conversation which
makes up the magical ballad of Abendmar (78). It was on the zjth