[15] Gaston Paris, La Littérature Française au Moyen Age (Paris, 1888), and Léon Gautier, Les Épopées Française (Paris, 1878-92), are the leading authorities upon the chansons de gestes. Accounts of these in English can be found in Ludlow's Popular Epics of the Middle Ages (1865) and in my Dictionary of Medieval Romance (1913). [16] See W. Wentworth Webster, in the Boletin of the Academia de Historia for 1883. [17] See Manuel Milá y Fontanal, Poesía heróico-popular Castellana (Barcelona, 1874). [18] The term, first employed by Count William of Poitiers, the earliest troubadour, at first implied any work written in the vernacular Romance languages. Later in Spain it was used as an equivalent for cantar, and finally indicated a lyrico-narrative poem in octosyllabic assonants. [19] In German it was known from 1583, and in English from 1619. Southey's translation (London, 1803) is (happily) an abridgment, and has been reprinted in the "Library of Old Authors" (1872). I provide full bibliographical details when dealing with the romance more fully. [20] Omniana, t. ii, p. 219 (London, 1812). [21] Don Quixote, Part I, chap. vi. [22] English translation by Southey, 4 vols. (London, 1807). [23] In the chapter entitled "Moorish Romances of Spain" the reader will find specimens of the romantic fictions of that people, from which he can judge for himself of their affinity or otherwise with the Spanish romances. [24] See Dozy, History of the Moors in Spain, Eng. trans., and Recherches sur l'Histoire politique et littéraire de l'Espagne (1881); F. J. Simonet, Introduction to his Glosario de Voces iberias y latinas usadas entre los Muzárabes (1888); Renan, Averroës et Averroïsme (1866). Gayangos' Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain (London, 1843) is somewhat obsolete, as is Conde's Dominación de los Arabes. [25] "The Raid," an old Spanish poem. [26] Ormsby (The Poem of the Cid), who wrote in 1879, seems to have had the most elementary notions of what a cantar was, and states that the Poema "was nearly contemporary with the first chansons de gestes." But he is probably at least a century out in his reckoning, as the first chansons date from about the middle of the eleventh century. Of trovador and juglar he had evidently never heard. Yet he is anything but superficial, and on the whole his book is the best we have in English on the Poema. It is unlucky, too, as Saintsbury remarks, that neither Ticknor nor Southey, who wrote so widely on ancient Spanish literature, were acquainted with the chansons de gestes. Still more luckless is it that so much in the way of Spanish translation was left to Longfellow, who shockingly mangled and Bowdlerized many fine ballads. Probably no poet was so well qualified as he to divest a ballad of all pith and virility in the course of translation. Bad as are his Spanish renderings, however, they are adequate when compared with his exploits in the field of Italian translation. [27] See his Poema del Cid (1898).