In a prefatory note to his version, Lockhart says that this ballad ‘appears to be one of the oldest among the great number relating to the Moorish conquest of Spain.’ This is somewhat vague, but the remark might easily lead an ingenuous reader to think that the ballad was very ancient. This is not so. There is a thirteenth-century French epic, entitled _Anséis de Carthage_,[13] which represents Charlemagne as establishing in Spain a vassal king named Anséis. Anséis dishonours Letise, daughter of Ysorés de Conimbre, and Ysorés takes vengeance by introducing the Arabs into Spain. Clearly this is another version of the legend concerning the dishonour of ‘La Cava,’ daughter of Count Julian (otherwise Illán or Urbán) by Roderick. Anséis is manifestly Roderick, Letise is ‘La Cava,’ Ysorés is Julian, and Carthage may be meant for Cartagena. The transmission of this story to France, and a passage in the chronicle of the Moor Rasis—which survives only in a Spanish translation made from a Portuguese version during the fourteenth century by a certain Maestro Muhammad (who dictated apparently to a churchman called Gil Pérez)—would point to the existence of ancient Spanish epics on Roderick’s overthrow. But no vestige of these epics survives. The oldest extant _romances_ relating to Roderick are derived from the _Crónica Sarrazyna_ of Pedro del Corral, ‘a lewd and presumptuous fellow,’ who trumped up a parcel of lies, according to Pérez de Guzmán. Corral’s book is not all lies: he compiled it from the _Crónica general_, the chronicle of the Moor Rasis, and the _Crónica Troyana_, and padded it out with inventions of his own. But the point that interests us is that Corral made his compilation about the year 1443, and it follows that the _romances_ derived from it must be of later date. They are much later: the oldest were not written till the sixteenth century, and therefore they are not really ancient nor popular. But some of them have a few memorable lines. For instance, in the first ballad translated by Lockhart:— Last night I was the King of Spain—to-day no king am I; Last night fair castles held my train,—to-night where shall I lie? Last night a hundred pages did serve me on the knee,— To-night not one I call mine own:—not one pertains to me. There is charm, also, in the _romance_ which begins with the line:— Los vientos eran contrarios, la luna estaba crecida.[14] And as Lockhart omits this, I may quote the opening in Gibson’s excellent version[15]:— The winds were sadly moaning, the moon was on the change, The fishes they were gasping, the skies were wild and strange, ’Twas then that Don Rodrigo beside La Cava slept. Within a tent of splendour, with golden hangings deckt. Three hundred cords of silver did hold it firm and free, Within a hundred maidens stood passing fair to see; The fifty they were playing with finest harmonie, The fifty they were singing with sweetest melodie.