Although the Christian holds thee now, Thou wert the Moor’s before; And if my lance deceive me not, Thou’lt be the Moor’s once more!’... There is still much to be said concerning the Cid _romances_ which Southey dismissed too cavalierly; but my time is running out, and I must pass on to the next ballads translated by Lockhart. _Garci Perez de Vargas_ is a rendering of Estando sobre Sevilla el rey Fernando el tercero;[49] and _The Pounder_, which was referred to by Don Quixote when he proposed to tear up an oak by the roots and use it as a weapon, is a version of Jerez, aquesa nombrada, cercada era de cristianos.[50] Neither need detain us; both are modern, and the latter is by Lorenzo de Sepúlveda. Much more curious are the group of ballads on Peter the Cruel. In the Spanish drama Peter is represented as the _Rey Justiciero_, the autocrat of democratic sympathies, dealing out summary justice to the nobles and the wealthy, who grind the poor man’s face. But this is merely what the sophisticated middle class supposed to be the democratic point of view. The democracy, as we see from the anonymous popular poets, believed Peter to be much worse than he actually was, and the _romances_ record the deliberate calumnies invented by the partisans of Peter’s triumphant bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara. This is noticeable in the translation of Yo me estabá allá en Coimbra que yo me la hube ganado,[51] which Lockhart calls _The Murder of the Master_. It is true that Peter had his brother, Don Fadrique, Master of the Order of Santiago, put to death at Seville in 1358; it is also true that Fadrique was a tricky and dangerous conspirator, who had already been detected and pardoned by his brother more than once. The _romance_ passes over Fadrique’s plots in silence, and this is common enough with political hacks; but it goes on to imply that the crime was suggested to Peter by his mistress. This is almost certainly false, and not a vestige of evidence can be produced in favour of it; but no one is asked to swear to the truth of a song, and the dramatic power of the _romance_—which is supposed to be recited by the murdered man—is undeniable. A similar perversion of historical truth is found in _The Death of Queen Blanche_, which Lockhart translates from Doña María de Padilla, no os mostredes triste, no.[52]