was first written as early as 1368, we are still twenty years after Don Juan Manuel’s time. There may be _romances_ which in their original form were written before these two; but, if so, they are unrecognisable. The authentic _romances_ lived only in oral tradition; they were not thought worth writing down, and they were not printed till late in the day. The older a _romance_ is, the more unlikely it is to reach us unchanged. No existing _romance_, in its present form, can be referred to any period earlier than the fifteenth century, and _romances_ of this date are comparatively rare. The first to mention this class of composition is Santillana in his well-known letter to the Constable of Portugal written shortly before 1450, and he dismisses the popular balladists with all the disdain of a gentleman who writes at his ease. ‘Contemptible poets are those who without any order, rule or rhythm make those songs and _romances_ in which low folk, and of menial station, take delight.’ A cause must be prospering before it is denounced in this fashion, and it may therefore be assumed that many _romances_ were current when Santillana delivered judgment. Writing in 1492 and quoting from the Lancelot ballad already mentioned, Nebrija speaks of it as ‘aquel romance antiguo’; but ‘old’ has a very relative meaning, and Nebrija may have thought that a ballad composed fifty years earlier deserved to be called ‘old.’ At any rate, the oldest _romances_ no doubt took their final form between the time of Santillana’s youth and Nebrija’s, and the introduction of printing into Spain has saved some of these for us. But—it must be said again and again—they are comparatively few in number, and no Spanish ballad is anything like as ancient as our own _Judas_ ballad which exists in a thirteenth-century manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge.