The popular appetite for _autos_, simple Christmas plays, legends of saints, and for long vague _romances_ never flagged, and some of the literature written to satisfy it, by Balthasar Diaz and others, is reprinted and hawked about the country in _folhas volantes_ at the present day, as Diaz’ _Historia da Imperatriz Porcina_ (Porto, 1906)--a _romance_ of some 1,500 octosyllables in -_ía_--and his _Tragedia do Marques de Mantua_. The prose _Verdadeira Historia do Imperador Carlos Magno_ (Porto, 1906) is the last descendant of Nicolas Piamonte’s Spanish translation (from the French original) _Carlomagno_, printed at Seville in 1525 and at Alcalá in 1570, or rather of Jeronimo Moreira de Carvalho’s Portuguese version (2 pts., 1728, 37). It is an instance of the Portuguese delight in strange, even fantastic, but in any case foreign, themes. The _Verdadeira Historia da Donzella Theodora_ (Porto, 1911), daughter of a merchant of Babylon, was introduced from the East and was translated by Carlos Ferreira from the Spanish (1524) and published at Lisbon in 1735. The _Verdadeira Historia do Grande Roberto Duque de Normandia e Imperador de Roma_ (Porto, 1912) is a belated echo of the French story of Robert le Diable, which also came to Portugal through Spain (Burgos, 1509). The _Verdadeira Historia da Princeza Magalona_ (Porto, 1912) has a similar derivation from France (14th or 15th c.) through Spain (Sevilla, 1519), and retains its popularity as a record of unswerving constancy _na fe e na virtude_. The _Verdadeira Historia de João de Calais_, reprinted at Oporto in 1914, is also undisguisedly foreign. The story of _Flores e Branca Fror_, last offshoot (a ‘vile extract’ Menéndez y Pelayo called it) of the charming Greek tale which came originally from the East,[701] was mentioned by several poets (King Dinis, Joan de Guilhade, the Archpriest of Hita) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries[702] and in the _Gran Conquista_ _de Ultramar_ (13th c.), and was condemned by Luis Vives. The prose story copied by Boccaccio in his _Filocolo_ is still popular in Portugal and Galicia. There is an edition printed at Oporto in 1912: _Historia de Flores e Branca-Flor, seus amores e perigos que passaram por Flores ser mouro e Branca-Flor christã_. García Ferreiro refers to _a historia de Branca Fror_ as recited at a Galician _escasula_.[703] Most of these popular threepenny leaflets are very quaintly illustrated on the title-page. The woodcut on the 1912 edition of _Flores e Branca-Flor_ is worth many an epic.[704] The portrait of Robert le Diable (1912 ed.) represents no less a person than Napoleon III, and the ‘true likeness of the beautiful Princess Magalona’[705] (1912 ed.) is Queen Alexandra. These _folhas volantes_ of the _literatura de cordel_ with many _farsas_, such as _Manoel Mendes_ by Antonio Xavier Ferreira de Azevedo (1784-1814), reprinted at Oporto in 1878, and various progeny of the ingenious Bertoldo, as