We may fairly infer, therefore, from these facts, indicating the vigor of the Galician in Portugal before the year 1200, that, in its native province in Spain, it is somewhat older. But we have no monuments by which to establish such antiquity. Castro, it is true, notices a manuscript translation of the history of Servandus, as if made in 1150 by Seguino, in the Galician dialect; but he gives no specimen of it, and his own authority in such a matter is not sufficient.[52] And in the well-known letter sent to the Constable of Portugal by the Marquis of Santillana, about the middle of the fifteenth century, we are told that all Spanish poetry was written for a long time in Galician or Portuguese;[53] but this is so obviously either a mistake in fact, or a mere compliment to the Portuguese prince to whom it was addressed, that Sarmiento, full of prejudices in favor of his native province, and desirous to arrive at the same conclusion, is obliged to give it up as wholly unwarranted.[54] [52] Bibl. Española, Tom. II. pp. 404, 405. [53] Sanchez, Tom. I., Pról., p. lvii. [54] After quoting the passage of Santillana just referred to, Sarmiento, who was very learned in all that relates to the earliest Spanish verse, says, with a simplicity quite delightful, “I, as a Galician, interested in this conclusion, should be glad to possess the grounds of the Marquis of Santillana; but I have not seen a single word of any author that can throw light on the matter.” Memorias de la Poesía y Poetas Españoles, Madrid, 1775, 4to, p. 196. We must come back, therefore, to the “Cántigas” or Chants of Alfonso, as to the oldest specimen extant in the Galician dialect distinct from the Portuguese; and since, from internal evidence, one of them was written after he had conquered Xerez, we may place them between 1263, when that event occurred, and 1284, when he died.[55] Why he should have chosen this particular dialect for this particular form of poetry, when he had, as we know, an admirable mastery of the Castilian, and when these Cántigas, according to his last will, were to be chanted over his tomb, in a part of the kingdom where the Galician dialect never prevailed, we cannot now decide.[56] His father, Saint Ferdinand, was from the North, and his own early nurture there may have given Alfonso himself a strong affection for its language; or, what perhaps is more probable, there may have been something in the dialect itself, its origin or its gravity, which, at a period when no dialect in Spain had obtained an acknowledged supremacy, made it seem to him better suited than the Castilian or Valencian to religious purposes. [55] Que tolleu A Mouros Neul e Xeres, he says (Castro, Tom. II. p. 637); and Xerez was taken in 1263. But all these Cántigas were not, probably, written in one period of the king’s life. [56] Ortiz de Zuñiga, Anales, p. 129.