iGloria y nombre al valiente Aguilera!
iViva! iViva! la alegre bandera
Que en los campos de Yara se alzo.

page 253

NOTES

The heavy figures refer to pages of the text; the light
figures to lines.

[Transcriber's note: In this text file, the bold characters are
represented by the enclosure in a pair of = sign.]

_ROMANCES_. The Spanish _romances viejos_, which
correspond in form and spirit to the early English and
Scotch ballads, exist in great number and variety.
Anonymous and widely known among the people, they
represent as well as any literary product can the spirit
of the Spanish nation of the period, in the main stern and
martial, but sometimes tender and plaintive. Most of them
were written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the
earliest to which a date can be assigned is _Cercada tiene
a Baeza_, which must have been composed soon after 1368.
Others may have their roots in older events, but have
undergone constant modification since that time. The
_romance popular_ is still alive in Spain and many have
recently been collected from oral tradition (cf. Menendez
y Pelayo, _Antologia_, vol. X).

The _romances_ were once thought to be relics of very old
lyrico-epic songs which, gathering material in the course
of time, became the long epics that are known to have
existed in Spain in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries
(such as the _Poema del Cid_, and the lost _cantares_ of
_Bernardo del Carpio_, the _Infantes de Lara_ and
_Fernan Gonzalez_). But modern investigation has shown
conclusively that no such age can be ascribed to the
_romances_ in their present form, and that in so far as
they have any relation with the epic cycles just
cited they are rather descendants of them than
ancestors,--striking passages remembered by the people and
handed down by them in constantly changing form. Many
are obviously later in origin; such are the _romances
fronterizos_, springing from episodes of the Moorish wars,
and the _romances novelescos_, which deal with romantic
incidents of daily life. The _romances juglarescos_ are
longer poems, mostly concerned with Charlemagne page 254
and his peers, veritable degenerate epics, composed by
itinerant minstrels to be sung in streets and taverns to
throngs of apprentices and rustics. They have not the
spontaneity and vigor which characterize the better
_romances v