some twenty years before the Poema del Cid.
This misnamed epic, no unworthy fellow to the Chanson de Roland, is the first great monument of Spanish literature. Like the Misterio de los Reyes Magos, like so many early pieces, the Poema del Cid reaches us maimed and mutilated. The beginning is lost; a page in the middle, containing some fifty lines following upon verse 2338, has gone astray from our copy; and the end has been retouched by unskilful fingers. The unique manuscript in which the cantar exists belongs to the fourteenth century: so much is now settled after infinite disputes. The original composition is thought to date from about the middle third of the twelfth century (1135–75), some fifty years after the Cid's death at Valencia in 1099. Hence the Poem of the Cid stands almost midway between the Chanson de Roland and the Niebelungenlied. Nevertheless, in its surviving shape it is the result of innumerable retouches which amount to botching. Its authorship is more than doubtful, for the Per Abbat who obtrudes in the closing lines is, like the Turoldus of Roland, the mere transcriber of an unfaithful copy. Our gratitude to Per Abbat is dashed with regret for his slapdash methods. The assonants are roughly handled, whole phrases are unintelligently repeated, are transferred from one line to another, or are thrust out from the text, and in some cases two lines are crushed into one. The prevailing metre is the Alexandrine or fourteen-syllabled verse, probably adopted in conscious imitation of that Latin chronicle on the conquest of Almería which first reveals the national champion under his popular title—
"Ipse Rodericus, Mio Cid semper vocatus,
De quo cantatur, quod ab hostibus haud superatus."
However that may be, the normal measure is reproduced with curious infelicity. Some lines run to twenty syllables, some halt at ten, and it cannot be doubted that many of these irregularities are results of careless copying. Still, to Per Abbat we owe the preservation of the Cid cantar as we owe to Sánchez its issue in 1779, more than half a century before any French chanson de geste was printed.
The Spanish epic has a twofold theme—the exploits of the exiled Cid, and the marriage of his two (mythical) daughters to the Infantes de Carrión. Diffused through Europe by the genius of Corneille, who conveyed his conception from Guillén de Castro, the legendary Cid differs hugely from the Cid of history. Uncritical scepticism has denied his existence; but Cervantes, with his good sense, hit the white in the first part of Don Quixote (chapter xlix.). Unquestionably the Cid lived in the flesh: whether or not his alleged achievements occurred is another matter. Irony has incidentally marked him for its own. The mercenary in the pay of Zaragozan emirs is fabled as the model Spanish patriot; the plunderer of churches becomes the flower of orthodoxy; the cunning intriguer who rifled Jews and mocked at treaties is transfigured as the chivalrous paladin; the unsentimental trooper who never loved is delivered unto us as the typical jeune premier. Lastly, the mirror of Spanish nationality is best known by his Arabic title (Sidi = lord). Yet two points must be kept in mind: the facts which discredit him are reported by hostile Arab historians; and, again, the Cid is entitled to be judged by the standard of his country and his time. So judged, we may accept the verdict of his enemies, who cursed him as "a miracle of the miracles of God and the conqueror of banners." Ruy Diaz de Bivar—to give him his true name—was something more than a freebooter whose deeds struck the popular fancy: he stood for unity, for the supremacy of Castile over León, and his example proved that, against almost any odds, the Spaniards could hold their own against the Moors. In the long night between the disaster of Alarcos and the crowning triumph of Navas de Tolosa, the Cid's figure grew glorious as that of the man who had never despaired of his country, and in the hour of victory the legend of his inspiration was not forgotten. From his death at Valencia in 1099, his memory became a national possession, embellished by popular poetic fancy.
In the Poema the treatment is obviously modelled upon the Chanson de Roland. But there is a fixed intent to place the Spaniard first. The Cid is pictured as more human than Roland: he releases his prisoners without ransom; he gives them money so that they may reach their homes. Charlemagne, in the Chanson, destroys the idols in the mosques, baptizes a hundred thousand Saracens by force, hangs or flays alive the recalcitrant; the Cid shows such humanity to a conquered province that on his departure the Moors burst forth weeping, and pray for his prosperous voyage. The machinery in both cases is very similar. As the archangel Gabriel appears to Charlemagne, he appears likewise to the Cid Campeador. Bishop Turpin opens the battle in Roland, and Bishop Jerome heads the charge for Spain. Roland and Ruy Diaz are absolved and exhorted to the same effect, and the resemblance of the epithet curunez applied to the French bishop is too close to the coronado of the Spaniard to be accidental. But allowing for the fact that the Spanish juglar borrows his framework, his performance is great by virtue of its simplicity, its strength, its spirit and fire. Whether he deals with the hungry loyalty of the Cid in exile, or his reception into favour by an ingrate king; whether he celebrates the overthrow of the Count of Barcelona or the surrender of Valencia; whether he sings the nuptials of Elvira and Sol with the Infantes de Carrión, or the avenging Cid who seeks reparation from his craven son-in-law, the touch is always happy and is commonly final.
There is an unity of conception and of language which forbids our accepting the Poema as the work of several hands; and the division of the poem into separate cantares is managed with a discretion which argues a single artistic intelligence. The first part closes with the marriage of the hero's daughters; the second with the shame of the Infantes de Carrión, and the proud announcement that the kings of Spain are sprung from the Cid's loins. In both the singer rises to the level of his subject, but his chiefest gust is in the recital of some brilliant deed of arms. Judge him when, in a famous passage well rendered by Ormsby, he sings the charge of the Cid at Alcocer:—
"With bucklers braced before their breasts, with lances pointing low,
With stooping crests and heads bent down above the saddle-bow,
All firm of hand and high of heart they roll upon the foe.
And he that in a good hour was born, his clarion voice rings out,
And clear above the clang of arms is heard his battle-shout,
'Among them, gentlemen! Strike home for the love of charity!
The Champion of Bivar is here—Ruy Diaz—I am he!'
Then bearing where Bermuez still maintains unequal fight,
Three hundred lances down they come, their pennons flickering white;
Down go three hundred Moors to earth, a man to every blow;
And, when they wheel, three hundred more, as charging back they go.
It was a sight to see the lances rise and fall that day;
The shivered shields and riven mail, to see how thick they lay;
The pennons that went in snow-white come out a gory red;
The horses running riderless, the riders lying dead;
While Moors call on Muhammad, and 'St. James!' the Christians cry."
Indubitably this (and it were easy to match it elsewhere in the Poema) is the work of an original genius who redeems his superficial borrowings of incident from Roland by a treatment all his own. That he knew the French models is evident from his skilful conveyance of the bear episode in Ider to his own pages, where the Cid encounters the beast as a lion. But the language shows no hint of French influence, and both thought and expression are profoundly national. The poet's name is irrecoverable, but the internal evidence points strongly to the conclusion that he came from the neighbourhood of Medina Celi. The surmise that he was an Asturian rests solely upon the absence of the diphthong ue from his lines, an inference on the face of it unwarrantable. Against this is the topographical minuteness with which the poet reports the sallies of the Cid in the districts of Castejón and Alcocer; his marked ignorance of the country round Zaragoza and Valencia, his detailed description of the central episode—the outrage upon the Cid's daughters in the wood of Corpes, near Berlanga; and the important fact that the four chief itineraries in the Poema