His words were mingled with the tears That down his cheeks did roll: ‘Alas! Narcissa of my life, Narcissa of my soul.’ Nymphs called Narcissa are never met with in popular primitive poetry; but Gibson (from whose version of Timoneda I have just quoted) has happily translated some genuine specimens of the _romances fronterizos_. Thus he has given us a version of the justly celebrated ¡Abenámar, Abenámar, moro de la morería!—[70] in which Juan II. questions the Moor, and declares himself, according to an Arabic poetical convention, the suitor of Granada:— ‘Abenámar, Abenámar, Moor of Moors, and man of worth, On the day when thou wert cradled, There were signs in heaven and earth.... Abenámar, Abenámar, With thy words my heart is won! Tell me what these castles are, Shining grandly in the sun!’ ‘That, my lord, is the Alhambra, This the Moorish mosque apart, And the rest the Alixares Wrought and carved with wondrous art.’... Up and spake the good King John, To the Moor he thus replied: ‘Art thou willing, O Granada, I will woo thee for my bride, Cordova shall be thy dowry, And Sevilla by its side.’ ‘I’m no widow, good King John, I am still a wedded wife; And the Moor, who is my husband, Loves me better than his life!’ Gibson has missed an opportunity in not translating one of the popular ballads on the precocious Master of the Order of Calatrava, Rodrigo Girón, who was killed at the siege of Loja in 1482:— ¡Ay, Dios qué buen caballero el Maestre de Calatrava![71] But he makes amends with a version of a sixteenth-century _romance_[72] which he entitles _The Lady and the Lions_: the story has been versified by Schiller, and has been still more admirably retold by Browning in _The Glove_. And we have also from Gibson a version of a rather puzzling _romance_ given by Pérez de Hita:— Cercada está Santa Fe, con mucho lienzo encerado.[73] The fact that full rhymes take the place of assonants is a decisive argument against the antiquity, and also against the popular origin, of this ballad in which, as Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo points out, a rather insignificant Garcilaso de la Vega of the end of the fifteenth century is confused with a namesake and relative who fell at Baza in 1455, and is further represented as the hero of a feat of arms—the slaying of a Moor who insultingly attached the device _Ave Maria_ to his horse’s tail—which was really performed by an ancestor of his about a hundred and fifty years earlier. This later Garcilaso was a favourite of fortune, for, at the end of the sixteenth century, Gabriel Lobo Lasso de la Vega wrote a _romance_ ascribing to him Hernando del Pulgar’s daring exploit—his riding into Granada, fastening with his dagger a placard inscribed _Ave Maria_ to the door of the chief mosque, and thus proclaiming his intention of converting it into a Christian church.