Mediaeval Tales

Publication of the songs and ballads of Spain began at Valencia in the year 1511 with a collection by Fernando del Castillo, who on his title-page professed to collect pieces "as well ancient as modern." From 1511 to 1573 there were nine editions of this "Cancionero." A later collection made between 1546 and 1550--The "Cancionero de Romances"--was made to consist wholly of ballads. A third edition of it, in 1555, is the fullest and best known. The greatest collection followed in nine parts, published separately between 1593 and 1597, at Valencia, Burgos, Toledo, Alcala, and Madrid. This formed the great collection known as the "Romancero General."

The chief hero of the Spanish Ballads is the Cid Campeador; and Robert Southey used these ballads as material for enriching the "Chronicle of the Cid," which has already been given in this Library. Songs of the Cid were sung as early as the year 1147, are of like date with the "Magnanime Mensonge" and Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of British Kings." In 1248 St. Ferdinand gave allotments to two poets who had been with him during the Siege of Seville, and who were named Nicolas and Domingo Abod "of the Romances." There is also evidence from references to what "the juglares sing in their chants and tell in their tales," that in the middle of the thirteenth century tales of Charlemagne and of Bernardo del Carpio were familiar in the mouths of ballad-singers.

The whole number of the old ballads of Spain exceeds a thousand, and of these John Gibson Lockhart has translated some of the best into English verse. Lockhart was born in 1793, was the son of a Scottish minister, was educated at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and was called to the bar at Edinburgh in 1816. Next year he was one of the keenest of the company of young writers whose genius and lively audacity established the success of "Blackwood's Magazine." Three years later, in 1820, he married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott. Lockhart's vigorous rendering of the spirit of the Spanish Romances was first published in 1823, two years before he went to London to become editor of the "Quarterly Review." He edited the "Quarterly" for about thirty years, and died in 1854.

The "Gesta Romanorum;" is a mediaeval compilation of tales that might be used to enforce and enliven lessons from the pulpit. Each was provided with its "Application." The French Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais, tells in his "Mirror of History" that in his time--the thirteenth century--it was the practice of preachers, to rouse languid hearers by quoting fables out of AEsop, and he recommends a sparing and discreet use of profane fancies in discussing sacred subjects. Among the Harleian MSS. is an ancient collection of 215 stories, romantic, allegorical and legendary, compiled by a preacher for the use of monastic societies. There were other such collections, but the most famous of all, widely used not only by the preachers but also by the poets, was the Latin story-book known as the "Gesta Romanorum." Its name, "Deeds of the Romans," was due to its fancy for assigning every story to some emperor who had or had not reigned in Rome; the emperor being a convenient person in the Application, which might sometimes begin with, "My beloved, the emperor is God." Perhaps the germ of the collection may have been a series of applied tales from Roman history. But if so, it was soon enriched with tales from the East, from the "Clericalis Disciplina," a work by Petrus Alfonsus, a baptized Jew who lived in 1106, and borrowed professedly from the Arabian fabulists. Mediaeval tales of all kinds suitable for the purpose of the "Gesta Romanorum" were freely incorporated, and the book so formed became a well-known storehouse of material for poetic treatment. Gower, Shakespeare, Schiller are some of the poets who have used tales which are among the thirty given in this volume.

The "Gesta Romanorum" was first printed in 1473, and after that date often reprinted. It was translated into Dutch as early as the year 1484. There was a translation of forty-three of its tales into English, by Richard Robinson, published in 1577, of which there were six or seven editions during the next twenty-four years. A version of forty-five of its tales was published in 1648 as "A Record of Ancient Histories." The fullest English translation was that by the Rev. C. Swan, published in 1824. In this volume two or three tales are given in the earlier English form, the rest from Mr. Swan's translation, with a little revision of his English. Mr. Swan used Book English, and was apt to write "an instrument of agriculture" where he would have said "a spade." I give here thirty of the Tales, but of the "Applications" have left only enough to show how they were managed.

In the volume of this Library, which contains Marlowe's "Faustus" and Goethe's "Faust," reference has been made to the old German History of Faustus, first published at Frankfort in September 1587, and reprinted with slight change in 1588. There was again a reprint of it with some additions in 1589. This book was written by a Protestant in early days of the Reformation, but shaped by him from mediaeval tales of magic, with such notions of demons and their home as had entered deeply in the Middle Ages into popular belief. From it was produced within two years of its first publication Marlowe's play of "Faustus," which has already been given, and that English translation of the original book which will be found in the present volume. It was reprinted by Mr. William J. Thoms in his excellent collection of "Early English Prose Romances," first published in 1828, of which there was an enlarged second edition, in three volumes, in 1858. That is a book of which all students of English literature would like to see a third and cheap edition.

H. M. October 1884.

TURPIN'S HISTORY OF CHARLES THE GREAT AND ORLANDO.

THE HISTORY OF CHARLES THE GREAT AND ORLANDO.

Turpin, by the grace of God, Archbishop of Rheims, the faithful companion of the Emperor Charles the Great in Spain, to Leopander, Dean of Aix-la-Chapelle, greeting.

Forasmuch as you requested me to write to you from Vienne (my wounds being now cicatrized) in what manner the Emperor Charles delivered Spain and Gallicia from the yoke of the Saracens, you shall attain the knowledge of many memorable events, and likewise of his praiseworthy trophies over the Spanish Saracens, whereof I myself was eyewitness, traversing France and Spain in his company for the space of forty years; and I hesitate the less to trust these matters to your friendship, as I write a true history of his warfare. For indeed all your researches could never have enabled you fully to discover those great events in the Chronicles of St. Denis, as you sent me word: neither could you for certain know whether the author had given a true relation of those matters, either by reason of his prolixity, or that he was not himself present when they happened. Nevertheless this book will agree with his history. Health and happiness.

The most glorious Christian Apostle St. James, when the other Apostles and Disciples of our Lord were dispersed abroad throughout the whole world, is believed to have first preached the gospel in Gallicia. After his martyrdom, his servants, rescuing his body from King Herod, brought it by sea to Gallicia, where they likewise preached the gospel. But soon after, the Gallicians, relapsing into great sins, returned to their former idolatry, and persisted in it till the time of Charles the Great, Emperor of the Romans, French, Germans, and other nations. Charles therefore, after prodigious toils in Saxony, France, Germany, Lorraine, Burgundy, Italy, Brittany, and other countries; after taking innumerable cities from sea to sea, which he won by his invincible arm from the Saracens, through divine favour; and after subjugating them with great fatigue of mind and body to the Christian yoke, resolved to rest from his wars in peace.

But observing the starry way in the heavens, beginning at the Friezeland sea, and passing over the German territory and Italy, between Gaul and Aquitaine, and from thence in a straight line over Gascony, Bearne, and Navarre, and through Spain to Gallicia, wherein till his time lay undiscovered the body of St. James; when night after night he was wont to contemplate it, meditating upon what it might signify, a certain beautiful resplendent vision appeared to him in his sleep, and, calling him son, inquired what he was attempting to discover. At which Charles replied, "Who art thou, Lord?" "I am," answered the vision, "St. James the Apostle, Christ's disciple, the son of Zebedee, and brother of John the Evangelist, whom the Lord was pleased to think worthy, in his ineffable goodness, to elect on the sea of Galilee to preach the gospel to his people, but whom Herod the King slew. My body now lies concealed in Gallicia, long so grievously oppressed by the Saracens, from whose yoke I am astonished that you, who have conquered so many lands and cities, have not yet delivered it. Wherefore I come to warn you, as God has given you power above every other earthly prince, to prepare my way, and rescue my dominions from the Moabites, that so you may receive a brighter crown of glory for your reward. The starry way in the heavens signifies that you, with a great army, will enter Gallicia to fight the Pagans, and, recovering it from them, will visit my church and shrine; and that all the people from the borders of the sea, treading in your steps, will ask pardon of God for their sins, and return in safety, celebrating his praise; that you likewise will acknowledge the wonders he hath done for you in prolonging your life to its present span. Proceed then as soon as you are ready; I am your friend and helper; your name shall become famous to all eternity, and a crown of glory shall be your reward in heaven."