166 ROMANCE BALLADS

distinguishing characteristics, proves to be in part secondary, due

to the power of oral tradition to remodel its matter.

The word 'historical' has been used by the Spanish authorities
to cover ballads of historical themes previous to 1350; but the
usage Is ambiguous and has led to confusion of thought. There are
ballads, It is true, which purport to relate episodes from Spanish
history from the fall of the Gothic kingdom in 711, and these
accounts were either true or believed to be so. But the ballads do
not, like historical ballads properly so called, arise directly from the
events which occurred or were imagined. The proper form for
traditional narrative verse previous to 1350 was the epos. Extant
are a Poem of the Cid (composed about 1140), The Cid's Youthful
Feats (of the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, replacing an
epic of the thirteenth) and one hundred lines of Roncesvalles. The
Seven Infantes de Lara is reproduced in two prose forms: the older
in the First General Chronicle of Spain (1289), the second in the
Second General Chronicle (i 344). The poetical text is followed with
such closeness that it is easy to reconstruct entire tirades; and the
best authority is satisfied that he can reproduce for us some two
hundred lines from the two chief scenes substantially as the reviser
left them. Difference of plot and of assonance prove the existence
of two poems, the ballads corresponding to the second one. With
similar fidelity a tale of the Siege of Zamora has been preserved to
us since 1289, and has taken its place among the sources of ballads
on the Cid. Count Fernan Gonzalez, who died in 970 and was the
virtual liberator of Castile, was the subject of an epic poem which
was remodelled in rhyming quatrains by the author of the Poem of
Fernan Gonzalez about 1250, and it was this rhyming poem which
was used by the chroniclers in 1289. Some ballads are independent
of the rhyming account and correspond better with the prose of the
chronicle of 1344. It Is fairly certain that they rest on the traditional
epic, now lost. An epic of Bernardo del Carpio existed and was
followed by the chroniclers of 1289; but it was followed only in
part, since the chroniclers preferred to rely, whenever possible, on
the Hispano-Latin historians who were their Immediate prede-
cessors. Again it is probable that some ballads give us the epic
text, though few of them are really old. As for the oldest matter—
the fall of the Gothic monarchy in 711—it was developed through
the pages of Hispano-Arabic, Hispano-Latin, and Castilian
chroniclers until it reached its ultimate form as the historical prose