Ballads, Spanish; Legends -- Spain; Spanish literature -- History and criticism
Down they go in deadly wrestle,
Down upon the earth they go.
Fierce King Pedro has the vantage,
Stout Don Henry falls below.
Marking then the fatal crisis,
Up the page of Henry ran,
By the waist he caught Don Pedro,
Aiding thus the fallen man.
They had better have let the ballad alone, those two at Abbotsford. It
does not seem to me "a very striking ballad," as Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly
observes, but in its Castilian dress it is sufficiently dramatic
and exciting.
Los fieros cuerpos revueltos
Entre los rubustos brazos
Está el cruel rey Don Pedro
Y Don Enrique, su hermano.
No son abrazos de amor
Los que los dos se están dando;
Que el uno tiene una daga,
Y otro un puñal acerado.
So run the first two verses, which I leave the reader to translate
for himself, lest further damage be done them.
The proclamation of Don Henry takes up the story where the preceding
ballad left it off. In the translation of this, it seems to me,
Lockhart has been much more successful than his great father-in-law
proved himself in that of its companion ballad. I do not think it
possible, however, to render adequately by an English pen the dignified
rhythm of the Castilian in which this romancero is dressed. But the
second verse,
So dark and sullen is the glare of Pedro's lifeless eyes,
Still half he fears what slumbers there to vengeance may arise.
So stands the brother, on his brow the mark of blood is seen,
Yet had he not been Pedro's Cain, his Cain had Pedro been,
is really fine, expressive, and ascends a whole scale of terrible
thought and realization. Are these awful eyes dead? Can the threat
they hold be imaginary? My hands are wet with brother's blood, but it
is only by virtue of a slender chance that his are not imbrued with
mine. The verse is horribly eloquent of the death-cold atmosphere
of the moment which follows murder--simple, appalling, desperately
tragic. The mad grief of the slain King's paramour is drawn with a
touch almost as successful.
In her hot cheek the blood mounts high, as she stands gazing down,
Now on proud Henry's royal stole, his robe and golden crown,
And now upon the trampled cloak that hides not from her view
The slaughtered Pedro's marble brow, and lips of livid hue.
The Moor Reduan
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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