Some of the ballads embodied in this genuinely Castilian measure are, no doubt, very ancient. That such ballads existed in the earliest times, their very name, _Romances_, may intimate; since it seems to imply that they were, at some period, the only poetry known in the _Romance_ language of Spain; and such a period can have been no other than the one immediately following the formation of the language itself. Popular poetry of some sort--and more probably ballad poetry than any other--was sung concerning the achievements of the Cid as early as 1147.[179] A century later than this, but earlier than the prose of the “Fuero Juzgo,” Saint Ferdinand, after the capture of Seville in 1248, gave allotments or _repartimientos_ to two poets who had been with him during the siege, Nicolas _de los Romances_, and Domingo Abad _de los Romances_, the first of whom continued for some time afterwards to inhabit the rescued city and exercise his vocation as a poet.[180] In the next reign, or between 1252 and 1280, such poets are again mentioned. A _joglaressa_, or female ballad-singer, is introduced into the poem of “Apollonius,” which is supposed to have been written soon after the year 1250;[181] and in the Code of Laws of Alfonso the Tenth, prepared about 1260, good knights are commanded to listen to no poetical tales of the ballad-singers except such as relate to feats of arms.[182] In the “General Chronicle,” also, compiled soon afterwards by the same prince, mention is made more than once of poetical gestes or tales; of “what the ballad-singers (_juglares_) sing in their chants, and tell in their tales”; and “of what we hear the ballad-singers tell in their chants”;--implying that the achievements of Bernardo del Carpio and Charlemagne, to which these phrases refer, were as familiar in the popular poetry used in the composition of this fine old chronicle as we know they have been since to the whole Spanish people through the very ballads we still possess.[183] [179] See the barbarous Latin poem printed by Sandoval, at the end of his “Historia de los Reyes de Castilla,” etc. (Pamplona, 1615, fol., f. 193). It is on the taking of Almeria in 1147, and seems to have been written by an eyewitness.