Legends & Romances of Spain. Lewis Spence

pl, and we find Latin planus, ‘smooth,’ appearing in Castilian as llano (pron. lyáh-no). The Spanish ch supplies the place of the Latin ct, as facto = hecho, dictu = dicho, and so on.

      Other proofs of Teutonic association are not lacking. Thus the g before c and i, which in Gothic and German is a guttural, has the same character in Castilian. The Spanish conversion of o into ue also resembles the similar change in German, if, for example, we compare Castilian cuerpo and pueblo with the German Körper and Pöbel.

Southward Spread of Castilian

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The rise of Castilian as a colloquial and literary tongue was achieved by the ceaseless struggle of the hardy race who spoke it against the Saracen occupation of their native land. As the Castilian warriors by generations of hard fighting gradually regained city after city and district by district rather than province by province, their language encroached by degrees upon the area of that of their Arab enemies,9 until at length the last stronghold of the Moors fell and left them not a foothold in the Peninsula. “It was indeed a rude training which our forefathers, mighty and hardy, had as a prelude to so many glories and to the conquest of the world,” says Martinez in his novel Isabel de Solis.10 “Weighed down by their harness and with sword in hand, they slept at ease no single night for eight centuries.”

      From the period of the defeat of Roderic, “last of the Visigoths,” at the battle of Xerez de la Frontera in 711 until the fall of Granada in 1492, Spain was indeed a land of battles. Almost immediately after their first defeat by Arab arms the armies of the Visigoths were pursued to the north-western limits of the Peninsula, where they, found a rallying-place in the mountains of Biscay and Asturias. There, like the Welsh after the Saxon invasion of Britain, they might have become reconciled to the comparatively narrow area left to them, but the circumstances of their virtual imprisonment served only to unite them more closely in a common nationality and a common resolve to win back their original possessions.

      For many generations their efforts were confined to border forays and guerrilla fighting, in which they were by no means uniformly successful, for the fiery courage of the Saracens would permit of no mere defensive policy, and nearly every victory of which the Castilians could boast was counterbalanced by reverses and losses which their inferior numbers could ill sustain. But by degrees their valorous obstinacy was rewarded, and ere a century had passed they had regained the greater part of Old Castile. The very name of this province, meaning as it does ‘the Land of Castles,’ shows that even when regained it was held only by fortifying its every hill-top with strongholds, so that at last this castellated tract gave its name to the race which held it so dearly. Before another twenty years had passed the Castilian warriors had established a footing in New Castile, and from this time onward seem to have been assured of ultimate success.

      The fall of Toledo in 1085, after three centuries and a half of Saracen occupation, marked a further epoch in the southern advance of the Castilians, and by the taking of Saragossa in 1118 the tables were turned upon the Arab invaders, who were now driven into a more confined part of the country, to the south and south-west. This circumstance, however, seems to have consolidated rather than crippled their resisting powers, and they had yet to be reckoned with for nearly four centuries ere, with the fall of Granada, Boabdil, or Abu-Abdallah, the last of the Moorish kings, gave up its keys to Ferdinand of Castile, looked his last upon the city, and crossed to Africa to fling away his life in battle.

      In these circumstances of constant strife and unrest the Romantic literature of Spain was born. It is by no means remarkable that its development coincided with the clash of arms. Trumpets re-echo in its every close. As it expresses the spirit of a martial race, it was also the nursling of necessity, for from the songs and fables of mighty heroes the knights of Castile drew a new courage and experienced an emulous exhilaration which nerved them on the day of battle. Well might the wandering knight of Castile chant, as in the old ballad:

      Oh, harness is my only wear,

      The battle is my play:

      My pallet is the desert bare,

My lamp yon planet’s ray.11

      Border warfare, with its frequent change of scene and constant alarms, was a fitting introduction to errantry.

The Literary Development of Castilian

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      Castilian, although more than one alien influence impinged upon it, evolved a literary shape peculiarly its own, especially as regards its verse, as will be seen when we come to deal separately with its several Romantic forms. Thus it owed nothing to the literary methods of Provençal or Catalan, though much to their spirit and outward manners. When the courtly and rather pedantic poetic system of the Troubadours encountered the grave and vigorous Castilian, it was ill fitted to make any prolonged resistance. As political causes had hastened their encounter, so they quickened the victory of the Castilian. The ruling power in Aragon had from an early period been connected with Castilian royalty, and Ferdinand the Just, who came to the throne of Aragon in 1412, was a Castilian prince. The Courts of Valencia and Burgos were, therefore, practically open to the same political influences. If our conclusions are correct, it was during the reigns of Ferdinand the Just and Alfonso V (1412–58) that the influence of Castilian first invaded the sphere of Catalan. We find it definitely recognized as a poetic tongue on the occasion of a contest of song in honour of the Madonna held at Valencia in 1474, the forty poems sung at which were afterward collected in the first book printed in Spain. Four of these are in the Castilian tongue, which was thus evidently regarded as a literary medium sufficiently developed to be represented at such a contest. Valencia, indeed, at first wholly Catalan in speech and art, seems to have possessed a school of Castilian poets of its own from 1470 to 1550, who did much to popularize their adopted tongue. But the Catalonians were not minded that their language should lose the literary hegemony of Spain so easily, and they made every endeavour to sustain it by instituting colleges of professional troubadours and vaunting its beauties at their great public contests of song. It was in vain. They had encountered a language more vigorous, more ample in vocabulary, more rich in idiomatic construction, and backed by a stronger political power than their own.

The Poetical Courts of Castile

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      The evolution of Castilian as a literary language was also assiduously fostered by the scholarly character of many of the rulers of Castile. Alfonso the Wise was himself a poet, and cultivated his native tongue with judiciousness and care, affording it purity and precision of expression. Under his supervision the Scriptures were translated into Castilian, and a General Chronicle of Spain as well as a history of the First Crusade were undertaken at his instance. He made it the language of the law-courts, and attempted to infuse into its verse a more exact spirit and poetical phraseology by the imitation of Provençal models.

Alfonso XI composed a General Chronicle in the easy, flowing rhyme of the native redondillas, instead of the stiff, monkish Alexandrines then current in literary circles, and caused books to be written in Castilian prose on the art of hunting and the genealogy of the nobility.12 His relative Don Juan Manuel did much to discipline Spanish imagination and give fixity to Spanish prose in his Conde Lucanor,13 a