The _Poema_ is the oldest and most important existing epic on the Cid, but there is ample proof that his deeds were sung in other _cantares de gesta_ of early date—earlier than the compilation of Alfonso the Learned’s _Crónica general_, which was finished in 1268. Recent investigations place this beyond doubt. It was long supposed that the chapters on the Cid in the _Crónica general_ were largely derived from the _Poema_, but Sr. D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal’s researches into the history of the text of the _Crónica general_ have shown that this view is untenable. The printed text of the _Crónica general_, issued by Florián de Ocampo at Zamora in 1541, is not what it was thought to be—namely, the original compiled by order of Alfonso the Learned: it lies at three removes from that original, and this fact throws new light on the history of epic poetry in Spain. Briefly stated, the results of the recent researches are these: the First _Crónica general_ was utilised in another chronicle compiled in 1344; this Second _Crónica general_ was condensed in an abridgment which has disappeared; this last abridgment of the Second _Crónica general_ is now represented by three derivatives—the Third _Crónica general_ issued by Ocampo, the _Crónica de Castilla_, and the _Crónica de Veinte Reyes_. And it is further established that pre-existing _cantares de gesta_ on the Cid were utilised in the chronicles as follows: the _Poema del Cid_ (from verse 1094 onwards) was used only in the _Crónica de Veinte Reyes_, while what concerns the Cid in the first _Crónica general_ comes principally—not (as was believed) from the _Poema del Cid_ as we know it, but—from another epic, no longer in existence, which began and continued in very much the same way as the _Poema_ for about 1250 lines, where the resemblance ended. The chapters on the Cid in the Second _Crónica general_ derive mainly from another vanished _cantar de gesta_ which coincided to some extent with a surviving epic on the Cid known as the _Crónica rimada_, or (less generally) as the _Cantar de Rodrigo_. This _Crónica rimada_, apparently written by a _juglar_ in the diocese of Palencia, was thought by Dozy to be older than the _Poema del Cid_, and Dozy has been made to feel his error. But let us not reproach him, as though we were infallible. Dozy undeniably overestimated the age of the _Crónica rimada_ as a whole; still the critical instinct of this great scholar led him to conclude that it was a composite work, that its component parts were not all of the same period, and (a conclusion afterwards confirmed by Milá y Fontanals) that the passage relating to King Fernando (v. 758 ff.)— El buen rey don Fernando par fue de emperador—