THE BALLADS.--We begin with the ballads, because it cannot reasonably be doubted that poetry, in the present Spanish language, appeared earliest in the ballad form. And the first question that occurs in relation to them is the obvious one, why this was the case. It has been suggested, in reply, that there was probably a tendency to this most popular form of composition in Spain at an age even much more remote than that of the origin of the present Spanish language itself;[165] that such a tendency may, perhaps, be traced back to those indigenous bards of whom only a doubtful tradition remained in the time of Strabo;[166] and that it may be seen to emerge again in the Leonine and other rhymed Latin verses of the Gothic period,[167] or in that more ancient and obscure Basque poetry, of which the little that has been preserved to us is thought to breathe a spirit countenancing such conjectures.[168] But these and similar suggestions have so slight a foundation in recorded facts, that they can be little relied on. The one more frequently advanced is, that the Spanish ballads, such as we now have them, are imitations from the narrative and lyrical poetry of the Arabs, with which the whole southern part of Spain for ages resounded; and that, in fact, the very form in which Spanish ballads still appear is Arabic, and is to be traced to the Arabs in the East, at a period not only anterior to the invasion of Spain, but anterior to the age of the Prophet. This is the theory of Conde.[169] [165] The Edinburgh Review, No. 146, on Lockhart’s Ballads, contains the ablest statement of this theory. [166] The passage in Strabo here referred to, which is in Book III. p. 139, (ed. Casaubon, fol., 1620,) is to be taken in connection with the passage (p. 151) in which he says that both the language and its poetry were wholly lost in his time. [167] Argote de Molina (Discurso de la Poesía Castellana, in Conde Lucanor, ed. 1575, f. 93. a) may be cited to this point, and one who believed it tenable might also cite the “Crónica General,” (ed. 1604, Parte II. f. 265,) where, speaking of the Gothic kingdom, and mourning its fall, the Chronicle says, “Forgotten are its songs, (_cantares_,)” etc. [168] W. von Humboldt, in the Mithridates of Adelung and Vater, Berlin, 1817, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 354, and Argote de Molina, ut sup., f. 93;--but the Basque verses the latter gives cannot be older than 1322, and were, therefore, quite as likely to be imitated from the Spanish as to have been themselves the subjects of Spanish imitation.