[180] The authority for this is sufficient, though the fact itself of a man being named from the sort of poetry he composed is a singular one. It is found in Diego Ortiz de Zuñiga, “Anales Ecclesiasticos y Seglares de Sevilla,” (Sevilla, 1677, fol., pp. 14, 90, 815, etc.). He took it, he says, from the _original_ documents of the _repartimientos_, which he describes minutely as having been used by Argote de Molina, (Preface and p. 815,) and from documents in the archives of the Cathedral. The _repartimiento_, or distribution of lands and other spoils in a city, from which, as Mariana tells us, a hundred thousand Moors emigrated or were expelled, was a serious matter, and the documents in relation to it seem to have been ample and exact. (Zuñiga, Preface, and pp. 31, 62, 66, etc.) The meaning of the word _Romance_ in this place is a more doubtful matter. But if _any_ kind of popular poetry is meant by it, what was it likely to be, at so early a period, but ballad poetry? The verses, however, which Ortiz de Zuñiga, on the authority of Argote de Molina, attributes (p. 815) to Domingo Abad de los Romances, are not his; they are by the Arcipreste de Hita. See Sanchez, Tom. IV. p. 166. [181] Stanzas 426, 427, 483-495, ed. Paris, 1844, 8vo. [182] Partida II. Tít. XXI. Leyes 20, 21. “Neither let the singers (_juglares_) rehearse before them other songs (_cantares_) than those of military gestes, or those that relate feats of arms.” The _juglares_--a word that comes from the Latin _jocularis_--were originally strolling ballad-singers, like the _jongleurs_, but afterwards sunk to be jesters and _jugglers_. See Clemencin’s curious note to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 31. [183] Crónica General, Valladolid, 1604, Parte III. ff. 30, 33, 45. It seems, therefore, not easy to escape from the conclusion, to which Argote de Molina, the most sagacious of the early Spanish critics, arrived nearly three centuries ago, that “in these old ballads is, in truth, perpetuated the memory of times past, and that they constitute a good part of those ancient Castilian stories used by King Alfonso in his history”;[184] a conclusion at which we should arrive, even now, merely by reading with care large portions of the Chronicle itself.[185] [184] El Conde Lucanor, 1575. Discurso de la Poesía Castellana por Argote de Molina, f. 93. a. [185] The end of the Second Part of the General Chronicle, and much of the third, relating to the great heroes of the early Castilian and Leonese history, seem to me to have been indebted to older poetical materials.