Lockhart, indeed, says: ‘that Pedro was accessory to the violent death of this young and innocent princess whom he had married, and immediately after deserted for ever, there can be no doubt.’ But the matter is by no means so free from doubt as Lockhart would have us believe. It is true that Peter’s conduct to Blanche de Bourbon was inhuman, but the circumstances—and even the place—of her death are uncertain. Assuming that she was murdered, however, it is certain that María de Padilla had no share in this crime. María appears to have been a gentle and compassionate creature, whose only fault was that she loved Peter too well. But justice is not greatly cultivated by political partisans, and the vindictiveness of the _romances_ is poetically effective. Lockhart closes the series with a version (apparently by Walter Scott) of Los fieros cuerpos revueltos entre los robustos brazos,[53] and with a disappointing translation of a very striking ballad, in which an undercurrent of sympathy for Peter is observable:— A los pies de don Enrique yace muerto el rey don Pedro.[54] Refrains of any kind are exceptional in the _romances_, but in this instance a double refrain is artistically used:— Y los de Enrique Cantan, repican y gritan: ¡Viva Enrique! Y los de Pedro Clamorean, doblan, lloran Su rey muerto. This is indeed a most brilliant performance, worthy, as Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo says, of Góngora himself at his best; but the very brilliance of the versification is enough to prove that the ballad cannot have been written by a poet of the people. Still, though it is neither ancient nor popular, we may be grateful to Lockhart for including it in his volume. He was less happy in deciding to give us _The Lord of Buitrago_, a version of a ballad beginning Si el caballo vos han muerto, subid, rey, en mi caballo.[55] This is not of any great merit, nor is it in any sense popular or ancient: it appears to be the production of Alfonso Hurtado de Velarde, a Guadalajara dramatist who lived towards the end of the sixteenth century, and much of its vogue is due to the fact that it struck the fancy of Vélez de Guevara who used the first six words as the title of one of his plays. Lockhart was better advised in choosing _The King of Aragon_, a translation of Miraba de Campo-Viejo el rey de Aragón un dia.[56]