"Fain would I give ye the verses which I heard recited by a _juglar_ at the court of the most learned king that ever any rule beheld." This was the "happier Age of Gold." A century and a half later, Alfonso the Learned, himself, as we have seen, a _trovador_, classes the _juglar_ and his assistants—_los que son juglares, e los remendadores_—with the town pimp; and fathers not themselves _juglares_ are empowered to disinherit any son who takes to the calling against his father's will. The Villasandino, already mentioned, a pert Galician _trovador_ at Juan II.'s court, was glad to speak his own pieces at Seville, and candidly avowed that, like his early predecessors, he "worked for bread and wine"—"_labro por pan e vino_." The foreign singer had received the half-pence; the native received the kicks. And in the last decline the executants were blind men who sang before church-doors and in public squares, lacing old ballads with what they were pleased to call "emendations," or, in other words, intruding original banalities of their own. This decline of material prosperity had a most disastrous effect upon literature. A popular _cantar_ or song was written by a poor man of genius. Accordingly he sold his copyright: that is to say, he taught his _cantar_ to reciters, who paid in cash, or in drink, when they had it by heart, and thus the song travelled the country overlong with no author's name attached to it. More: repeated by many lips during a long period of years, the form of a very popular _cantar_ manifestly ran the risk of change so radical that within a few generations the original might be transformed in such wise as to be practically lost. This fate has, in effect, overtaken the great body of early Spanish song.