ballad that Balthazar sang as we cooled
ourselves in this orange-roofed hall:

"The Cid rode through the horse-shoe gate,
        Omega-shaped it stood,
A symbol of the moon that waned before the Christian
        rood."

"He was all sheathed in golden mail, his cloak was
        white as shroud,
His vizor down, his sword unsheathed, corpse-still
        he rode and proud."

"And over all the spears and blades, east, west,
        and south, and north,
The Cid's broad flag like a sunset spread, wild
        flaming fiercely forth."

"What is that?" I asked.

"One of Don Fulano's ballads, The Victory
of the Dead Cid."

"The Dead Cid?"

"Yes. He won a victory after he was
dead—and all I wonder is, he did not win
oftener. If we had tried him against the
French Gabachos, we might have saved calling
in you English, who give us no credit for
even helping you against those blasphemous
robbers. Well, but about the Cid. When
that great champion of Spain, friend of Saint
James and destroyer of the Moors, died, his
body was embalmed and kept in Burgos
Cathedral—I think it was Burgos—seated in
a carved chair in the chancel, never moving
for seven years but once; when a wretch of a
Jew dared to pull his beard. At the end of
those seven years—being hard bested by the
Moors, whose turbans lay as thick on the
plain as mushrooms in a meadow after the
spring rains, and no prayers, or anything
availing, not even the tooth of St. Appolonia
—they bethought them of the Cid. So they
put the body on horseback—strapped and
fastened—and rode it out at the head of
the sallying army. The rout was total. It
was like, the ballad relates, a school-room,
when the master suddenly returns, and puts
down a riot. As for the dead bodies, they
were as thick as wasps in a sugar-mill. Don
Fulano goes on to say:

"The rice-fields where the tufted stalks grow green round
            tepid pools,
Were trodden red by flying crowds of unbelieving
            fools."

"The bright canals that girt the town as with a
           silver net,
Were scarlet with the slain Moors' blood—the
           melons purple wet."

"At every water-wheel and mill, a dying man you
           found,
His cloven head leant back against the red jars
           knotted round."

"The mulberry trees were strung with Moors, as
          carob twigs with fruit,
The dying struggled on the boughs—the dying at the
          root."

"But who is this Don Fulano?"

"How is it you Englishmen, who talk so
much about our ballads, seem never to have
heard of Don Fulano, one of the most vivid,
powerful, passionate, condensed writers
Andalusia boasts of? Whether he lived in
your Henry the Seventh's reign, or in our
Ferdinand and Isabella's, or earlier or later,
I know not; but this I know, that to judge
by rush and spur, savagery and tumult, there
was something divine in him. Now, promise
me, English Señor, that when you go back to
your own country you will mention, and try
to remedy, this shameful neglect of Don
Fulano—the best and most vigorous of
Spain's ballad writers."

I promised, on the faith of a Christian, that
I would.

"In some things,"—went on Balthazar;
"but we must have some wine, for dry talking
is a poor thing—Don Fulano excels Castillo
and Sepulveda, or rather the writers of their
collections. He paints our country; and, when
he tries to convey an idea, he never fails."

"That," said I, "in poetry I have generally
found arises from the writer having an idea
to convey. I must look up this Don Fulano.
You see hints are to my curiosity what olives
are to the palate."

"You remember," said Balthazar, looking
hard at the toe of his right-hand boot, as if
that were the seat of his memory, "you
remember the fine ballad of the Admiral
Guarinos, which the Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza (of the incomparable Cervantes) overheard
a peasant singing at Toboso as he went
to his work at daybreak?"

"I do, indeed," said I, "a most touching
story of great antiquity; going back to the
times that should have been, and that shall
be, but that never were. But tell me Fulano's
version of it, for the story, as Sancho says, is,
after all, 'too old to be a lie.'"

"Well, but." said Balthazar, gnawing his
foxy moustache, "do you really mean to tell
me, on your honour, as an English gentleman
of blue blood, that no British writer on
Spanish ballads has mentioned the great Don
Fulano?"

I said, "Not one."

Balthazar here crossed himself five times,
and expressed intense indignation and
astonishment.

"I thought," he said, turning sharply on
me, " that there was a Don Juan Logard
who had done some of our ballads smoothly
and cleverly?"

I said that Lockhart had rendered a few of
them carefully; but not strongly. He made
no mention of Don Fulano: neither did
Southey.

"If Mouthey," said Balthazar, accidentally
mistaking the poet's name, "forgot to
mention our Fulano, it must have been because
he had stolen so many of his ideas he was
afraid at last to quote him. There ought to
be a gaol for plagiarists."

I defended Southey; and said there was no