The old Castilian, Portuguese, and Galician poetry was, under its own peculiar forms, still more popular and strictly national than was the Provençal, or than the Italian after it has ever been. It was not destined to be recited in courtly circles, before lords and ladies. It arose amidst the clang of arms, and was fostered by constantly reiterated relations of warlike feats and love adventures, transmitted from mouth to mouth; while almost every one who either witnessed or participated in those feats and adventures, wished to give them traditional circulation in the vehicle of easy verse. So common was the practice among all ranks of composing verses, particularly in Portugal, that the historian, Manuel de Faria y Sousa, thought himself, at a later period, justified in calling every mountain in that country a Parnassus, and every fountain a Hippocrene.[16] The poems called Romances took their name from the national language; and it is probable that the same name was at first given to all kinds of amatory and heroic ballads, the taste for which, however rapidly those productions increased and supplanted each other, appears to have been insatiable. To mark with critical precision the limits of the different species of poetic composition, was never contemplated by the authors of the Romances, but they very carefully distinguished, in their national verse, several kinds of measure and forms of rhyme, which differed widely from the Provençal and Limosin; and having touched on this subject, it will, perhaps, be most convenient here to introduce a brief description of the nature of the verse common to the ancient Castilian, Portuguese, and Galician poetry.