184 ROMANCE BALLADS

in Brittany and Scandinavia, its absence from English balladry is

notable, for we must wait for Thackeray's Little Billee to adduce a

parallel.

Stories of vengeance in a vaguely Carolingian setting are The
Avenging Prince and The Palmer (150, 195). The former would be
banal enough but for the swiftness and excitement of the first lines,
which bring the action vividly before the auditors' eyes :

See him, see him, where he cometh,

cometh the avenging lord !

Riding with his stirrups shortened

on his war-horse swift and strong,

mantle twisted round his left arm,

all his ruddy colour gone,

in his right hand firmly grasping

a javelin both keen and long,

such that one might cut a ploughshare

with that javelin's keen point;

seven times was it attempered

in a furious dragon's blood,

seven times more was it sharpened,

so that it might cut the more:

'twas in France the steel was hammered,

cut the shaft in Aragon:

still he whets it, as he hastened,

on the wings of his falcon.

The Warlike Maid or Don Martin of Aragon (x, p. 119) has parallels
in all the lands of Europe, and even in China (the legend of Mu-
lan). Its source in Spain must be either a poem akin to the French
Belle Claudine or the Italian Warlike Maid (Nigra 48).

In addition to these there are a few pieces for which a foreign
origin need not, so far as one knows, be conjectured. In Espinelo
(152) we have a conventional adventure story starting from the
superstition that of twins one must be the fruit of adultery;
Espinelo is therefore set adrift by his mother, the Queen of France,
drifts to a Moorish land, is adopted by the sultan, and ends his life
as a great monarch. In Bovalias the Pagan (126) nothing occurs;
the sole point made by the ballad is that his tent was crowned by
a ruby which gave light to the camp. This belief in carbuncles or
rubies is found generally throughout Europe, and was used more
than once in French 'chansons de geste' which were known to the
Spaniards. Peranmles, King Bucar, Sevilla, Alfonso Ramos are