The following equations—the first element being Old Spanish and the second modern—may facilitate the reading of the 13th and 14th century texts:

b = b and v; Ç = c (before e, i), and z (before a, o, u); e = e and y; initial f = f and h; i = i, j, g (before e, i), y; l = l and ll; ll = l and ll; mn = mbr; nn = Ñ and n; ny = Ñ; nb = mb; np = mp; pl (initial) = ll; rr = r and rr; ss = s; final t = d; u = u, b, v; v = b, v, u; x = x and j; y = i and y; z = z and c (before e, i). Initial h may be suppressed; h (trihunfo) and y (peyor) may intervene between vowels. For modern Spanish equivalents of the more difficult Old Spanish words see the Glosario.

AVENTURA AMOROSA. This anonymous poem, first published by M. Morel-Fatio (Romania, XVIII), is by him attributed to the thirteenth century. It is, therefore, one of the oldest Spanish lyrics extant. In the manuscript it is followed, or continued, by another poem, a Debate between Wine and Water. By reason of its subject, M. Morel-Fatio entitled our piece a PoÈme d’Amour; the present title is the one which it bears in MenÉndez y Pelayo’s AntologÍa de poetas lÍricos castellanos, vol. I. In the manuscript occurs the statement: “Lupus me feÇit de Moros”; but this Lupus de Moros may have been only the scribe. The manner of the poem is that of the French and ProvenÇal pastourelles, pastorelas, whose octosyllabic metre is also imitated, somewhat irregularly, by the Spanish poet. Some of the metrical irregularities may be scribal only.

Page 3.—l. 6. dueÑas: the MS. shows no tilde in this and other cases where the modern language has it.

l. 7. The MS. has tryanÇa.

l. 10. cortesÍa: i.e., the totality of qualities marking a gentleman; cf. the modern cortesanÍa.

344

l. 18. tocas: the truncated imperfect subjunctive occurs frequently in Old Spanish texts. Cf. p. 4, l. 11.

Page 4.—l. 7. ovi miedo: haber was regularly used in Old Spanish as an independent verb taking a direct object. It is still so employed in a few petrified expressions (habÉrselas con uno) and in the impersonal construction.

l. 17. la calor: a number of abstracts in -or were treated as feminine in Old Spanish.

l. 18. olÍen, l. 19. tenÍe. Under certain conditions the imperfect indicative endings ia, etc., were weakened to ie, etc. These lines seem to show assonance instead of rhyme.

l. 20. es, sson. The modern distinctions between ser and estar were not observed in early Spanish.

l. 29. non ... peyor, not the very worst.

Page 5.—l. 6. Á rrazÓn, well proportioned.

ll. 31-32. The rhyme is imperfect or shows dialectal influence.

l. 32. cortesa, an analogical feminine form due, doubtless, to the influence of national and other locative adjectives in -es, -esa.

l. 33. Te ... bien, loves thee so very much.

Page 6.—l. 5. la mÍa seÑor. The article often appeared with the attributive possessive adjective in Old Spanish. The noun seÑor was both masculine and feminine in early Spanish, as its etymon, the adjective senior, was in Latin.

l. 17. un su mesaiero, a messenger of his. Cf. l. 27, es meu amigo, this friend of mine, and l. 31, una mi Çinta, a ribbon of mine.

ll. 21-22. The MS. has buenas yentes and punnientes.

Page 7.—l. 3. This line is an emendation of Morel-Fatio’s.

l. 12. fe que devedes, by the faith that you owe, on your honor.

l. 18. Por ... muerto, I nearly died.

GONZALO DE BERCEO. Gonzalo de Berceo is the first Castilian poet known to us by name. He is mentioned in documents ranging in date from the second decade to the middle of the thirteenth century. From his birthplace, the village of Berceo, he early passed to the monastery of San MillÁn de la Cogolla, and there he remained, as a secular priest, throughout his life. Most of his work consists of religious, legendary and narrative verse, in the production of which he was most prolific. He has also left us one long profane poem, the Libro de Alexandre, giving the usual mediÆval account of the adventures of Alexander the Great. Berceo seems to have been the first to use the metrical form called cuaderna vÍa345—quatrains of fourteen-syllabled lines with a single rhyme—which he employed consistently and which had considerable vogue in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Abandoning that narrative verse form, he strikes a true lyric note in the CÁntica de la Virgen, a somewhat irregular octosyllabic song inserted in his longer poem, El duelo de la Virgen. As this lyric resembles watch-songs found in Latin and German Easter-plays, it has been supposed that Berceo borrowed it from a lost Easter play in Spanish. Like them it represents Mary as entreating the apostles to guard the body of the buried Christ. The collected poems of Berceo are to be found in volume 57 of the Biblioteca de autores espaÑoles.

Page 8.—l. 1. velar, the infinitive with imperative force.

l. 4. Dios: as the rhyme shows, this word has the older accent in the first vowel.

JUAN RUIZ, ARCIPRESTE DE HITA. Archpriest of Hita, in the vicinity of Guadalajara, Ruiz, the most original Old Spanish poet, wrote during the first half of the fourteenth century. On account of his irregular life, his ecclesiastical superiors found it necessary to imprison him. His whole career reminds one strongly of that of the French cleric FranÇois Villon, like whom Ruiz is one of the first modern poets to strike a peculiarly personal note. In his Libro de buen amor (published in the Biblioteca de autores castellanos, volume 57, as Libro de los cantares) he is frankly improper and shows in a marked degree the influence of Ovid’s works, of the Pamphilus de Amore, a mediÆval imitation of Ovid, and of various Old French works. The selections here given are taken from the Biblioteca volume already cited; cf. also the edition of the Libro de buen amor by J. Ducamin (BibliothÈque mÉridionale, 1^e sÉrie, tome VI).

Page 9.—l. 22. There is a metrical translation of this poem by Longfellow, first published in The North American Review, April, 1833, and reprinted in the Riverside edition of Longfellow’s works, 1886, vol. VI, pp. 414 ff. Longfellow imitates the cuaderna vÍa arrangement of the original.

l. 25. Ca ... corazon, for the heart desires but little and that well said.

Page 10.—l. 8. Mucho ... mientes, much more you will find wherever you direct your attention.

Page 11.—l. 3. en la salutaÇion: cf. Longfellow’s translation in anticipation.

l. 6. tomar, cf. note p. 8, l. 1.

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l. 8. In this song the author abandons the cuaderna vÍa for the octosyllabic verse. Occasional imperfections of rhyme are noticeable here.

l. 13. HabÉmoslo a: haber a equivalent to haber de; the lo is used indefinitely.

l. 28. De quien, equivalent to por quien.

Page 12.—l. 3. Aquien, i.e., Á quien.

l. 8. pecado, i.e., diablo.

Page 13.—l. 4. bien fechores, i.e., bienhechores.

DON JUAN MANUEL. If the poem in octaves, A la muerte del PrÍncipe D. Alfonso, of which several stanzas are here given, were really the work of the Infante D. Juan Manuel (1282-1347), the author of the famous framework of prose tales entitled the Conde Lucanor, it would belong in the place here assigned to it. But the poems of the Infante are probably lost, and the pieces which, like the present one, are attributed to Don Juan Manuel in the Cancionero General, the Cancioneiro of Resende, and other collections, must belong to the writer so called who was attached to the court of King Emanuel of Portugal († 1524) and composed in both Spanish and Portuguese. Cf. Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, vol. I, p. 59, note 27, and GrÖber’s Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, Band II, 2. Abteilung, p. 265, note 1, p. 270, note 5.

EL CANCILLER PERO LÓPEZ DE AYALA. One of the most important figures of the fourteenth century. Active in court and camp, he still found time to produce much prose and verse. He was a trusted servant of Don Pedro and the three succeeding monarchs, and was Chancellor of Castile from 1398 on. Several times taken in battle, he was once imprisoned at Oviedes for fifteen months. He was at one time the captive of the Black Prince, but there is probably no truth in the account that he was carried a prisoner to England.

Ayala’s most important work in verse is the satirical and didactic Rimado de Palacio (published in the Biblioteca de Autores EspaÑoles, vol. 57). Here, in somewhat over 1600 stanzas, the author assails all abuses—social, political and others—of the time. Not merely the decay in court life, but general social degeneracy is his main theme. The first part of the poem consists of 705 strophes in cuaderna vÍa. In the second part, which opens with our first cantar, we find plaints, prayers and songs to the Virgin interspersed among 347 the didactic and satiric passages. The last are still in cuaderna vÍa; the former elements, more lyric in their nature, show the use of various measures, with a particular influence of ProvenÇal and Galician forms. They mark Ayala as one of the earliest of the court poets, who were to become so numerous in the reign of Juan II.

Cantar. The shorter lines are arranged in redondillas. Note the inner rhymes in the longer lines, which might also be divided into octosyllabic verses.

Page 14.—l. 9. dada. Occasionally the Old Spanish participle conjugated with haber is found agreeing with its object.

Page 15.—l. 13. Cantar Á la Virgen. This octosyllabic song begins with stanza 830 of the Rimado de Palacio.

l. 17. With the epithets here applied to Mary compare those addressed to the Spouse in the Song of Songs, with whom she has been often identified by the exegetists.

LA DANZA DE LA MUERTE. This anonymous poem of seventy-nine octaves belongs to the general category of poetical and pictorial works, which in the Occident, and especially in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, celebrated the triumph of Death over all earthly creatures. The original form may have been that of a pantomime. The Spanish poem (published in full in the Biblioteca de autores espaÑoles, vol. 57) is probably a version of an earlier French poem. Its date has been variously estimated. Baist (GrÖber’s Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, II, p. 428, note) would place it in the middle of the fifteenth century. Cf. W. Seelmann, Die TotentÄnze des Mittelalters, Leipzig, 1893.

Page 16.—l. 24. en ... durante, i.e., in the world throughout its duration.

Page 17.—l. 2. quando ... traspasante, i.e., when I discharge this cruel, piercing arrow of mine.

l. 27. de ... forÇado, must perforce die.

Page 19.—l. 29. a tan syn pauor, so fearlessly.

REVELACIÓN DE UN ERMITAÑO. This anonymous vision in twenty-five octaves (published in the Biblioteca, vol. 57) is of the class of Debates between the Body and the Soul, common in the Middle Ages. Cf. the VisiÓn de Filiberto, published by Toledo in the Zeitschrift f. romanische Philologie, II, 40, and for a Middle-English 348 version see MÄtzner, Altenglische Sprachproben, I, 90. See also C. Fritzsche, Die lateinischen Visionen des Mittelalters, in Romanische Forschungen, II, 279 ff., III, 337 ff.

ÇienÇia gaya, art of poetry; a term of ProvenÇal origin.

Page 21.—l. 9. prima, the canonical hour prime.

l. 11. hera: the era espaÑola began thirty-eight years before the Christian era.

l. 16. el, found in early Spanish before feminine nouns not beginning with accented a. Cf. p. 28, l. 6, un espesura.

EL ALMIRANTE DIEGO FURTADO DE MENDOZA. The Admiral Furtado de Mendoza was the father of the MarquÉs de Santillana (cf. p. 34). Far less important as a poet than his more inspired son, he nevertheless possessed abundant lyric gifts, of which the present song (published by Amador de los RÍos, Historia de la literatura espaÑola, vol. V) gives evidence. It is a dance-song of a kind called cossante by the author. Portuguese-Galician influence is clear in the Admiral’s poems.

ALFONSO ÁLVAREZ DE VILLASANDINO. One of the most important trovadores at the court of Juan II (1406-54). He wrote in both Galician and Castilian, and most of his poems, which are in the conventional ProvenÇal manner, are to be found in the Cancionero of Baena (ed. Leipzig, 1860). In expression they are frequently coarse and vituperative. Villasandino’s several songs in praise of Seville seem to have been composed for pecuniary compensation; cf. F. Wolf, Studien zur Gesch. der span. etc., Literatur, Berlin, 1859, p. 200, note.

Page 24.—l. 17. alta compaÑa, i.e., the Giralda, the famous tower of the Cathedral of Seville.

Page 25.—l. 9. mesura, i.e., measure, with the connotation so customary in ProvenÇal poetry, of moderation, dignity and grace in all things.

MICER FRANCISCO IMPERIAL. The son of a Genovese goldsmith established in Seville, Imperial was one of the first to import an Italian influence into Spanish poetry. His poems (published in the Cancionero of Baena) mark the beginning of an allegorizing tendency in Castilian literature which harks back to Dante. The latter, Imperial constantly imitates and quotes, as he does in the present decir, or short poem.

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Page 25.—l. 16. Rribera del rio, on the bank of the river.—Triana: a suburb of Seville, from which it is separated by the river.

l. 20. santa Ana: a church and a square of Seville.

l. 27. al que dixo: Ave, i.e., to the Archangel Gabriel.

l. 28. paraysso: the doubled s here and in rysso, v. 25, is inorganic; cf. the rhymes quiso and lyso.

Page 26.—l. 4. seÑores, cf. note to p. 6, l. 5, and see l. 11 below.

RUY PÁEZ DE RIBERA. The poems of PÁez de Ribera, like those of Imperial, are contained in the Cancionero of Baena, and show similar tendencies toward the allegory. They are marked, furthermore, by a spirit of unrest which is somewhat socialistic in its expression.

Page 27.—l. 7. veer lo caydo, i.e., verlo caÍdo.

l. 25. mesurada, cf. note to p. 25, l. 9.

EL CONDESTABLE ÁLVARO DE LUNA. Prominent among the two hundred or more poets of the reign of Juan II. was the courtier Álvaro de Luna. For a long time he enjoyed the favor of the monarch, who even raised him to one of the highest ranks to which a subject could attain, but, incurring the hatred of his fickle master, he was persecuted and finally executed in 1453. His tragic career has been several times treated in Spanish verse and prose. In his poems conventional gallantry borders on what the devout would call blasphemy.

Page 28.—l. 26. E non ... vara, i.e., and I would not yield to thee.

FERNÁN PÉREZ DE GUZMÁN. The nephew of one poet, the Canciller LÓpez de Ayala, and the uncle of another, the MarquÉs de Santillana, PÉrez de GuzmÁn has left us in the Cancioneros a few poems in the ProvenÇal-Galician manner with traces of Italian influence. He is more important as a prose writer than as a poet, being one of the best of the early Spanish historians.

Page 30.—l. 12. This is the reading of this line in the Cancionero of Baena (ed. 1860, II, p. 254), but the metre seems to require the conjunction É after prados.

l. 30. ryso: risa is needed for the rhyme.

JUAN DE MENA. Mena, the Latin secretary of King Juan II. and a leader of the stylistic poets of his court, became most noted as 350 the author of the allegorical poem El Laberinto (also known as the Trecientas, from the original number of its stanzas). Imitating the scheme of Dante’s Divina Commedia, and largely influenced also by Lucan, Mena here seeks to picture the vicissitudes of Fortune. Elaborate but cold, the work was a great favorite with his contemporaries. At times, as in these octaves celebrating the luckless Galician troubadour MacÍas, a martyr of love, Mena rises to a respectable lyric height. Other ambitious poetical works of his are the CoronaciÓn and the Coplas de los siete pecados mortales. Note the dactylic (— ? ?) rhythm of the present versos de arte mayor. For accounts of MacÍas, and the plays and novels dealing with him, see F. Wolf, Studien, etc., p. 772, and Ticknor, History of Span. Literature, I, 329 f.

RODRIGO COTA. A converted Hebrew, who has owed a great deal of his fame to the false attribution to him of the Coplas de Mingo Revulgo and of the Celestina. A meritorious poem of Cota’s is the DiÁlogo entre el Amor y un Viejo (published by MenÉndez y Pelayo in his AntologÍa de poetas lÍricos castellanos, vol. IV, p. 1). A burlesque ascribed to him may be seen in the Revue hispanique, vol. I.

COPLAS DE MINGO REVULGO. This is one of several satires, lyrico-dramatic in form, written during the reign of Enrique IV. of Castile († 1474). It is in the nature of a dialogue in thirty-two stanzas, between two shepherds, Mingo Revulgo, representing the more inferior class, and Gil Arribato, representing the more elevated class, who discuss the moral and social decay of the time and the dissolute behavior of the king. The work has been attributed without warrant to Rodrigo Cota, Juan de Mena and others. For the full text see MenÉndez y Pelayo, AntologÍa, III, 5 ff., and cf. Ticknor, I, 232 f., and Pidal in the Cancionero of Baena (ed. 1860, p. c).

Page 32.—l. 13. Mingo Rebulgo; Mingo = Domingo, and according to early glosses Rebulgo is here an intensitive of vulgo = cosa pÚblica.

l. 21. ¿Non ... rejo? A line of doubtful sense. MenÉndez y Pelayo would translate te llotras by te alegras. But llotrarse seems to mean vestirse; hence a possible sense would be, Do you not arm yourself with good courage? (rejo = vigor, strength). Cf. the translation in Ticknor (I, 233): “Pray, are you broken down with care?”

351 Page 33.—l. 1. Arribato, possibly based on arriba and equivalent to The Elevated.

l. 2. en fuerte ... echamos, i.e., we made a very bad cast, we had hard luck.

l. 3. Candaulo, here for the king Enrique IV. Candaulo, or Candaule, was a Lydian king.

l. 12. nin roso nin velloso, nothing at all.

l. 18. tyenen de, i.e., han de. According to the glosses, the three ravenous she-wolves are the three persecutions—hunger, war and pestilence—which Ezekiel promised to the Israelites in punishment for their sins; cf. the three next stanzas.

ÍÑIGO LÓPEZ DE MENDOZA, MARQUÉS DE SANTILLANA. Perhaps the most impressive literary figure of the fifteenth century. The nephew of LÓpez de Ayala, he belongs partly to the Middle Ages, but largely also to the Renaissance. Amador de los RÍos, who has given us the best edition of his works (Madrid, 1852), as well as an excellent account of his life and genius, divides Santillana’s productions into five classes: obras de amores, obras doctrinales É histÓricas, sonetos fechos al itÁlico modo, obras devotas, obras de recreaciÓn. Of these, two of the most important are represented by our selections, viz., the sonetos and the obras de amores. Santillana is thought to have imported the sonnet into Spain, and this poetical form does not represent his whole debt to Italian literature, for in a great part of his work he stands under the influence preËminently of Dante, but also of Petrarch and Boccaccio. The Dantesque allegory plays a prominent part in his poetical vision (not a drama), the Comedieta de Ponza, in the Coronacion de Mossen Jordi and the Infierno de enamorados. Didactic or doctrinal in bent are the DiÁlogo de Bias contra Fortuna, the Proverbios, and the Doctrinal de privados, the last-named containing a bitter arraignment of his unfortunate enemy Álvaro de Luna. The most original and most interesting element of all his work is that represented by the obras de amores, that is to say, the serranillas (mountain-girl songs) or vaqueiras (cowherd songs, a Galician word), such as the famous one on p. 35, the villancicos (a popular form with an estribillo or refrain), etc. A ProvenÇal-Galician influence is, of course, discernible in these songs. Santillana was deeply imbued with an admiration for classic letters. In his prose Carta al Condestable de Portugal he is the first real historian of Spanish literature. Cf. MenÉndez y Pelayo, AntologÍa, V, pp. lxxviii ff. and Ticknor, I, 331 ff.

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Page 34.—l. 19. In tone this sonnet is paralleled by that of Quevedo on p. 164 and of NÚÑez de Arce on p. 324.

Page 35.—l. 11. Tabor: Mount Tabor, the supposed scene of the Transfiguration of Christ; cf. St. Matthew xvii., St. Mark ix., St. Luke ix.

l. 12. que se raÇona, which is related.

l. 13. fija de Latona, i.e., Diana.

l. 15. punto: strengthens the negation, not at all.

ll. 17-22. These two tercets suggest Dante’s sonnet, Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare (in the Vita nuova).

l. 23. This is the most celebrated of all Santillana’s poems.

Page 36.—l. 29. As the caption states, this was composed by the Marquis for his three daughters.

l. 34. conosÇellas: i.e., conocerlas. The assimilation of the infinitive r to the l of the appended pronoun is still frequent in poetry.

LOPE DE ESTÚÑIGA. EstÚÑiga, or StÚÑiga, fought under Alfonso V. of Aragon (1416-58) in Italy, and played a prominent part in the passage of honor held by his cousin, Suero de QuiÑones. The fact that two of his pieces stand at the head of a certain collection of poems—the Cancionero de StÚÑiga—caused it to be called by his name. Cf. MenÉndez y Pelayo, AntologÍa, II, 163 ff.

SUERO DE QUIÑONES. Noted as the originator of the famous passage of honor (paso honroso), which lasted from July 10 to August 9, 1434, and during which, in order to dissolve his chivalric vow of wearing an iron chain in his lady’s honor, he and nine other champions held the bridge of Órbigo, near LeÓn, against all knightly comers. Cf. MenÉndez y Pelayo, AntologÍa, II, 477.

JUAN ALFONSO DE BAENA. Probably a converted Jew. His verse is contained in the Cancionero de Juan Baena, an anthology which he himself compiled around 1445, as a typical collection of the productions of the court poets of Juan II.’s time (cf. the ed. of Pidal, etc., Madrid, 1851, and of Michel, Leipzig, 1860).

MANUEL DE LANDO was one of these poets and a reputed disciple of Imperial, like whom he shows the influence of Dante. The system of poetical pleas, replications, replies, etc., here illustrated, was frequently employed in the court poetry of the time. It is but a continuation of the jeu parti and the joex partitz of French and ProvenÇal poetry.

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Page 39.—ll. 7-8. Quando ... ygualante, i.e., when it has recourse to the sun, so that the latter, which has equalizing powers, may subdue its diverging rays.

l. 11. otealla, see note to p. 36, l. 34, and cf. cobralla, p. 40, l. 2.

l. 12. Syn ser demandante: Baena contends that actual verbal wooing is requisite.

Page 40.—l. 1. vista de amor: Lando, like the Italian dolce stil nuovo poets, maintained that the love-glance constitutes sufficient wooing. Vergil is mentioned because of the importance which Dante gave to him.

CARVAJAL (CARVAJALES). A Spanish poet who followed the Aragonese arms into Italy during the reign of Alfonso V., and at Naples wrote in both Spanish and Italian. Two romances of his, contained in the Cancionero de StÚÑiga (cf. ed. 1872)—a compilation of Spanish verse written at Naples—are thought to be among the earliest of the kind. Cf. MenÉndez y Pelayo, AntologÍa, II, 181 ff.

GÓMEZ MANRIQUE. Uncle of the more illustrious Jorge Manrique, and a poet of considerable lyric merit. Cf. the edition of his Cancionero by Paz y Melia (1885). As in the work of his nephew, so in his poems, pathos is a distinguishing trait. He had some success also in political satire.

Page 40.—l. 21. lo no puedes: this order of pronoun and negative adverb is not infrequent in earlier Spanish.

Page 41.—l. 24. solares, i.e., mere sites formerly occupied by edifices.

JORGE MANRIQUE. The most eminently successful of the Spanish lyric poets of the fifteenth century, Jorge Manrique fell in battle when but thirty-eight years old. The greater part of his verse is to be found in the Cancionero General of 1511. The love-poems and humorous pieces given there and in other Cancioneros are of no decided merit, except perhaps an occasional poem, such as that printed here on p. 42. His real title to enduring fame is based upon the exquisite coplas, in which he commemorates the death of his father, the Maestre de Santiago, and proclaims the vanity and fleetingness of all earthly things. In sweetness and mournfulness of tone, as in finish of form, they are surpassed by nothing prior to them. The calm beauty and dignity of the original, and to some degree its metre, have been excellently rendered into English verse 354 by Longfellow in his translation, beginning: “O let the soul her slumbers break.” Cf. Ticknor, I, 366 ff., 391 ff.

Page 44.—l. 3. se acabar: an Old Spanish order of infinitive and object pronoun.

l. 15. yerva secreta: so in MenÉndez y Pelayo, AntologÍa, III, 102. The rhyme seems to require yervas secretas.

l. 20. Cf. St. John i. 10.

Page 45.—l. 1. fuÉ: in modern Spanish fuera or serÍa would be more natural.

ll. 5-6. Es ... atendemos, i.e., It serves for the gaining of that world (Paradise) which we await, i.e., hope for.

l. 19. D’ellas: partitive, some of them.

Page 46.—l. 1. arraval: limit, bounds.

ll. 12-14. Otros que por, etc.: an ellipsis. Otros is in the same construction as unos of l. 9. Translate: How low and abject do people deem others who, since they have nothing, maintain themselves by means of undeserved offices!

Page 48.—l. 19. al Rey Don Juan: Juan II. of Castile (1406-54), a weak sovereign, but a munificent patron of letters in his splendid court.

Page 49.—l. 10. Don Enrique: Enrique IV., the Impotent († 1474). Unsuccessful in war, degraded and deposed by his subjects (1465), he was finally allowed to end his life on the throne only after consenting to the right of succession of his sister Isabel as opposed to that of his alleged daughter Juana.

l. 33. su hermano el innocente: the Infante Alfonso, to whom the throne was offered after the deposition of Enrique in 1465. Alfonso died, poisoned it is said, in 1468.

Page 50.—l. 11. Condestable: Álvaro de Luna; cf. note to p. 28.

l. 13. tan privado, so great a favorite.

Page 51.—l. 25. Longfellow inserts here the translation of two other stanzas not to be found in the text as published by MenÉndez y Pelayo. A legend has it that they were discovered in the pocket of the author after his death on the battlefield.

l. 28. El Maestre don Rodrigo: Rodrigo Manrique, the father of the poet, died in 1476.

Page 52.—l. 9. para: equivalent to para con.

l. 15. Octaviano: the allusions to events in ancient history conveyed by this and the following names will readily suggest themselves.

355

l. 24. En ... Archidano: cf. Longfellow: “The arm of Hector.”

l. 28. en ygualdad, etc.: i.e., in placidity of countenance.