Legends & Romances of Spain

Romance, Romance, the songs of France, The gestes of fair Britaine, The legends of the sword and lance That grew in Alemaine, Pale at thy rich inheritance, Thou splendour of old...

When meat and drink is great plentye Then lords and ladyes still will be, And sit and solace lythe. Then it is time for mee to speake Of kern knights and kempes great, Such carp...

There stands a castle on a magic height Whose spell-besetten pathways ye may climb If that ye love fair chivalry sublime. Come, its enchanted turrets yield the sight, As long ag...

"Inferior as these after-books of Amadis certainly are, they form so singular an epoch in the history of literature that an abridgment of the whole series into our language is t...

It would seem to have been a foible with the early critics of Spanish romance to seek to discover a Portuguese origin for practically all of its manifestations. They appear to h...

The literary genius of Catalonia was unquestionably a lyrical one, as befitted a province so happily endowed by nature, clothed with the purple mantle of vineyards, and laved by...

Last night I was a King of Spain--to-day no King am I. Last night fair castles held my train, to-night where shall I lie? Last night a hundred pages did serve me on the knee, To...

I bracket these three romances together in this chapter not only because they appear to have been held in the highest favour by the people of Old Spain, but for the equally good...

The word romancero in modern Spanish is more or less strictly applied to a special form of verse composition, a narrative poem written in lines of sixteen syllables which adhere...

There was crying in Granada as the sun was going down, Some calling on the Trinity, some calling on Mahoun; Here passed away the Koran, there in the Cross was borne, And here wa...

These are, of course, more of the nature of romances of the Moors than by the Moors--tales embedded in Spanish folk-lore relating to Saracen times and themes, rather than writte...

Spain seems to have been regarded by the other countries of Western Europe as the special abode of superstition, sorcery, and magic, probably because of the notoriety given to t...

Cervantes was one of the world's great satirists, a man gifted with a keen and peculiar sense of the ridiculous. He would himself have been the first to laugh at those modern cr...