_Ballads on Moorish Subjects._--The Moorish ballads form a brilliant and large class by themselves, but none of them are as old as the earliest historical ballads. Indeed, their very subjects intimate their later origin. Few can be found alluding to known events or personages that occur before the period immediately preceding the fall of Granada; and even in these few the proofs of a more recent and Christian character are abundant. The truth appears to be, that, after the final overthrow of the Moorish power, when the conquerors for the first time came into full possession of whatever was most luxurious in the civilization of their enemies, the tempting subjects their situation suggested were at once seized upon by the spirit of their popular poetry. The sweet South, with its picturesque, though effeminate, refinement; the foreign, yet not absolutely stranger, manners of its people; its magnificent and fantastic architecture; the stories of the warlike achievements and disasters at Baza, at Ronda, and at Alhama, with the romantic adventures and fierce feuds of the Zegris and Abencerrages, the Gomeles and the Aliatares;--all took strong hold of the Spanish imagination, and made of Granada, its rich plain and snowcapped mountains, that fairy land which the elder and sterner ballad poetry of the North had failed to create. From this time, therefore, we find a new class of subjects, such as the loves of Gazul and Abindarraez, with games and tournaments in the Bivarrambla, and tales of Arabian nights in the Generalife; in short, whatever was matter of Moorish tradition or manners, or might by the popular imagination be deemed such, was wrought into Spanish ballad poetry, until the very excess became ridiculous, and the ballads themselves laughed at one another for deserting their own proper subjects, and becoming, as it were, renegades to nationality and patriotism.[221] [221] In the humorous ballad, “Tanta Zayda y Adalifa,” (first printed, Flor de Romances, Quinta Parte, Burgos, 1594, 18mo, f. 158,) we have the following:-- Renegaron de su ley Los Romancistas de España, Y ofrecieronle a Mahoma Las primicias de sus galas. Dexaron los graves hechos De su vencedora patria, Y mendigan de la agena Invenciones y patrañas. Like renegades to Christian faith, These ballad-mongers vain Have given to Mahound himself The offerings due to Spain; And left the record of brave deeds Done by their sires of old, To beg abroad, in heathen lands, For fictions poor and cold. Góngora, too, attacked them in an amusing ballad,--“A mis Señores poetas,”--and they were defended in another, beginning “Porque, Señores poetas.”