is an authentic old popular _romance_ derived, it is believed, more or less directly from the _Roman de Berthe_, while the much later _Melisendra_ ballad— El cuerpo preso en Sansueña y en Paris cautiva el alma[78]— owes most of its celebrity to the fact that it is quoted by Ginés de Pasamonte when he acts as showman of the puppets in _Don Quixote_. Again, _The Lady Alda’s Dream_— En Paris está doña Alda la esposa de don Roldan[79]— is an ancient _romance_ of intensely pathetic beauty suggested by the famous passage in the _Chanson de Roland_ describing Charlemagne’s announcement of Roland’s death to his betrothed Alde, Oliver’s sister:— ‘Soer, chere amie, d’hume mort me demandes...’ Alde respunt: ‘Cist moz mei est estranges. Ne placet Deu ne ses seinz ne ses angles Après Rollant que jo vive remaigne!’ Pert la culur, chiet as piez Carlemagne, Sempres est morte. Deus ait mercit de l’anme! Another famous ballad in the Charlemagne cycle, translated by Lockhart under the title of _The Admiral Guarinos_— Mala la vistes, franceses, la caza de Roncesvalles[80]— is also universally known from its being quoted in _Don_ _Quixote_. Its origin is not clear, but it seems to be related to _Ogier le Danois_, and it has certainly lived long and travelled far if, as Georg Adolf Erman reports, it was sung in Russian in Siberia as recently as 1828. A more special interest attaches to the fine elfin ballad— A cazar va el caballero, á cazar como solía[81]— which Lockhart entitles _The Lady of the Tree_. It is, as he says, ‘one of the few old Spanish ballads in which mention is made of the Fairies,’ and the seven years’ enchantment reminded him of ‘those Oriental fictions, the influence of which has stamped so many indelible traces on the imaginative literature of Spain.’ The theory of Oriental influence is not brought forward so often nowadays, and is challenged in what was thought to be its impregnable stronghold. The melancholy Kelt has taken the place of the slippery Oriental; but theories come and go, and we can only hope that our grandchildren will smile as indulgently at our Kelts as we smile at our grandfathers’ Arabs. Hélo, hélo por do viene el infante vengador[82] is the original of _The Avenging Childe_, a superb ballad which is better represented in Gibson’s version. Compare, for instance, the following translation with Lockhart’s:—