SPAIN, SPANISH JEWRY, PORTUGAL, IBERO-AMERICA 169

On the other hand, though one old and one decadent epic exist
concerning the Cid, by far the greater number of ballads must be
written off as 'ballads of minstrelsy3, or even sheer inventions. In
the few cases where the two texts can be placed in parallel columns,
there are as many divergences as similarities. Fragmentation alone
would not account for the only two which can be rigorously com-
pared; the material and the style have been reshaped.1

By their contact with epical poems the Spanish ballads gained
many things. They gained in gravity, energy, imagination of a
literal kind, dramatisrn, and nationality. The old Castilian
'gravitas' freed them from the triviality which is a prominent
feature of other balladries; even their international pieces have a
more sober mien. As a repository of all that concerned the Castilian
spirit and as a veracious account of Spanish history the 'romancero*
attained a unique authority. It was able to shape a considerable
amount of the classical literature of Spain, especially the drama,
and thereby to extend its influence beyond the frontiers. This
authority, exerted through one style instantly recognizable though
dispersed among thousands of ballads, has caused the Spanish
corpus to be the most perfect example of a 'romancero'—of short,
oral, traditional narratives in verse, collectively forming one whole.

Precisely on account of his popularity, the Cid has not proved to
be a conservative figure in the 'romancero5, The ballad-mongers,
as they receded farther and farther from the Castilian heroic age,
lost sight of other heroes and saw only the Cid. The 205 ballads of
the Romancero del Cid (edited by Carolina Michaelis, Leipzig,
1871) are mostly late and arbitrary. In the other cycles many
ballads have to be considered comparatively late medieval produc-
tions, from the end of the fifteenth century or the beginning of the
sixteenth; but those of the Infantes de Lara (19-26) stand out for
their exceptional apparent fidelity. It is from them, after all, that
we must glean our best idea of the old 'cantares de gesta': they give
us, as prose cannot, the rush and fury of poetry. Their language
is starker, fitted to the stark ferocity of the action. It is in them that
we hear the actors speak out their jealousies and hates. In two
supreme scenes the language of the chroniclers is poetry thinly
disguised: the episode of the heads, and the conclusion. The
episode of the heads gives a terrible ballad (24). The first words
show that the poet is following the story as it is contained in the

1 S. G, Moriey, Spanish Ballad Problems, California, 1925.
46is z