The Lay of the Cid

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lay of the Cid

by R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

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Title: The Lay of the Cid

Author: R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6088]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on November 4, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE LAY OF THE CID ***

Synopsis: The national epic of Spain, written in the twelfth

century about Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar, conqueror of Valencia, who

only died in 1099 but had already become a legend. Rendered into

vigorous English rhymed couplets of seven iambic feet in 1919.

***********

Transcription by Holly Ingraham.

***********

THE LAY OF THE CID

Translated into English Verse

by

R. Selden Rose

and

Leonard Bacon

______________________

THE CID

Lashed in the saddle, the Cid thundered out

To his last onset. With a strange disdain

The dead man looked on victory. In vain

Emir and Dervish strive against the rout.

In vain Morocco and Biserta shout,

For still before the dead man fall the slain.

Death rides for Captain of the Men of Spain,

And their dead truth shall slay the living doubt.

The soul of the great epic, like the chief,

Conquers in aftertime on fields unknown.

Men hear today the horn of Roland blown

To match the thunder of the guns of France,

And nations with a heritage of grief

Follow their dead victorious in Romance.

______________________

INTRODUCTION

The importance of the Cid as Spain's bulwark against the Moors of

the eleventh century is exceeded by his importance to his modern

countrymen as the epitome of the noble and vigorous qualities that

made Spain great. Menéndez y Pelayo has called him the symbol of

Spanish nationality in virtue of the fact that in him there were

united sobriety of intention and expression, simplicity at once

noble and familiar, ingenuous and easy courtesy, imagination

rather solid than brilliant, piety that was more active than

contemplative, genuine and soberly restrained affections, deep

conjugal devotion, a clear sense of justice, loyalty to his

sovereign tempered by the courage to protest against injustice to

himself, a strange and appealing confusion of the spirit of

chivalry and plebeian rudeness, innate probity rich in vigorous

and stern sincerity, and finally a vaguely sensible delicacy of

affection that is the inheritance of strong men and clean blood.

[1]

[1] Cf. Menéndez y Pelayo, Tratado de los romances viejos, I, 315.

This is the epic Cid who in the last quarter of the eleventh

century was banished by Alphonso VI of Castile, fought his way to

the Mediterranean, stormed Valencia, married his two daughters to

the Heirs of Carrión and defended his fair name in parliament and

in battle.

The poet either from ignorance or choice has disregarded the

historical significance of the campaigns of the Cid. He fails to

mention his defeat of the threatening horde of Almoravides at the

very moment when their victory over Alphonso's Castilians at

Zalaca had opened to them Spain's richest provinces, and turns the

crowning achievement of the great warrior's life into the

preliminary to a domestic event which he considered of greater

importance. We are grateful to him for his lack of accuracy, for

it illustrates how men thought about their heroes in that time.

The twelfth century Castilians would have admitted that in battle

the Cid was of less avail than their patron James, the son of

Zebedee, but they would have added that after all the saint was a

Galilean and not a Spaniard.

In order then to make the Cid not merely heroic but a national

hero he must become the possessor of attributes of greatness

beyond mere courage. The poet therefore, probably assuming that

his hearers were well aware of the Cid's prowess in arms, devoted

himself to a theme of more intimate appeal. The Cid, an exile from

Castile and flouted by his enemies at home, must vindicate

himself. The discomfiture of the Moor is not an end in itself but

the means of vindication and, be it said, of support. When he is

restored to favor, the marriage of his daughters to the Heirs of

Carrión under Alphonso's auspices is the royal acknowledgment. The

treachery of the heirs is the pretext for the Parliament of Toledo

where the Cid shall appear in all the glory of triumphant

vindication. The interest in the hecatombs of Moors and even in

the fall of Valencia is a secondary one. What really matters is

that the Cid's fair name be cleared of all stain of disloyalty and

the doña Elvira and doña Sol wed worthy husbands.

This unity of plan is consistently preserved by a rearrangement of

the true chronology of events and by the introduction of purely

traditional episodes. The shifting of historical values may be due

to the fact that when the poem was composed, about 1150, the power

of the Moor had really been broken by the conquests of Ferdinand

I, Alphonso VI, Alphonso VII and Alphonso VIII of Castile and

alphonso I, the Battler, of Aragon. The menace was no longer felt

with the keenness of an hundred years before. until the end of the

tenth century the Moors had dominated the Peninsula. The growth of

the Christian states from the heroic nucleus in northern Asturias

was confined to the territory bordering the Bay of Biscay,

Asturias, Santander, part of the province of Burgos, León, and

Galicia. In the East other centers of resistance had sprung up in

Navarre, Aragon and the County of Barcelona. At the beginning of

the eleventh century the tide turned. The progress of the

reconquest was due as much to the disruption of Moorish unity as

to the greater aggressiveness and closer coöperation of the

Christian kingdoms. The end of the Caliphate of Cordova was the

signal for the rise of a great number of mutually independent

Moorish states. Sixty years later there were no less than twenty-

three of them. By the middle of the following century the

enthusiasm that had followed the first successful blows struck

against the Moor had waned, and with it the vividness of their

historical significance and order.

Let us look at the Cid for a moment as he was seen by a Latin

chronicler who confesses that the purpose of his modest narrative

was merely to preserve the memory of the Cid of history.

When Ferdinand I of Castile died under the walls of Valencia in

1065 he divided his kingdom among his five children. To Sancho he

left Castile, to Alphonso León, to García Galicia, to doña Urraca

the city and lands of Zamora, and to doña Elvira Toro. Sancho,

like his father, soon set about uniting the scattered inheritance.

Ruy Diaz, a native of Bivar near Burgos, was his standard bearer

against Alphonso at the battle of Volpéjar, aided him in the

Galician campaign and was active at the siege of Zamora, where

Sancho was treacherously slain. Alphonso, the despoiled lord of

León, succeeded to the throne of Castile. Ruy Diaz, now called the

Campeador (Champion) in honor of his victory over a knight of

Navarre, was sent with a force of men to collect the annual taxes

from the tributary Moorish kings of Andalusia. Mudafar of Granada,

eager to throw off the yoke of Castile, marched against the

Campeador and the loyal Motamid of Seville, and was routed at the

battle of Cabra. García Ordoñez who was fighting in the ranks of

Mudafar was taken prisoner. It was here probably that the Cid

acquired that tuft of García's beard which he later produced with

such convincing effect at Toledo. The Cid returned to Castile

laden with booty and honors. The jealousy aroused by this exploit

and by an equally successful raid against the region about Toledo

caused the banishment of the Cid. From this time until his death

he was ceaselessly occupied in warfare against the Moors.

The way to Valencia was beset with more and greater difficulties

than those described in the poem. The events of the first years of

exile are closely associated with the moorish state of Zaragoza.

At the death of its sovereign Almoktadir bitter strife arose

between his two sons, Almutamin in Zaragoza and Alfagib in Denia.

The Cid and his followers cast their lot with the former, while

Alfagib sought in vain to maintain the balance by allying himself

with Sancho of Aragon and Berenguer of Barcelona. After a decisive

victory in which Berenguer was taken prisoner Almutamin returned

to Zaragoza with his champion, "honoring him above his own son,

his realm and all his possessions, so that he seemed almost the

lord of the kingdom." There the Cid continued to increase in

wealth and fame at the expense of Sancho of Aragon and Alfagib

until the death of Almutamin.

For a short time the Cid was restored to the good graces of

Alphonso, but a misunderstanding during some joint military

expedition brought a second decree of banishment. The Cid's

possessions were confiscated and his wife and children cast into

prison.

The Cid then went to the support of Alkaadir, king of Valencia. He

defeated the threatening Almoravides flushed with their victory

over the Castilians at Zalaca. Again he chastised Berenguer of

Barcelona. he hastened to answer a second summons from Alphonso,

this time to bear aid in operations in the region about Granada.

Suspecting that Alphonso intended treachery, he with drew from the

camp toward Valencia. With Zaragoza as his base he laid waste the

lands of Sancho and avenged himself upon Alphonso by ravaging

Calahorra and Nájera.

Finally in 1092 the overthrow of Alkaadir prompted him to

interfere definitely in the affairs of Valencia. He besieged the

city closely and captured it in 1094. There he ruled, independent,

until his death in 1099.

Even the Moorish chroniclers of the twelfth century pay their

tribute to the memory of the Cid by the virulence of their hatred.

Aben Bassam wrote: "The might of this tyrant was ever growing

until its weight was felt upon the highest peaks and in the

deepest valleys, and filled with terror both noble and commoner. I

have heard men say that when his eagerness was greatest and his

ambition highest he uttered these words, 'If one Rodrigo brought

ruin upon this Peninsula, another Rodrigo shall reconquer it!' A

saying that filled the hearts of the believers with fear and

caused them to think that what they anxiously dreaded would

speedily come to pass. This man, who was the lash and scourge of

his time, was, because of his love of glory, his steadfastness of

character and his heroic valor, one of the miracles of the Lord.

Victory ever followed Rodrigo's banner--may Allay curse him--he

triumphed over the princes of the unbelievers . . . and with a

handful of men confounded and dispersed their numerous armies.'

[2] One can hardly look for strict neutrality in the verdicts of

Moorish historians, but between the one extreme of fanaticism that

led Aben Bassam elsewhere to call the Cid a robber and a Galician

dog and the other that four centuries later urged his

canonization, the true believer can readily discern the figure of

a warrior who was neither saint nor bandit.

[2] Aben Bassam, Tesoro (1109), cf. Dozy, Recherches sur

l'histoire politique et littéraire d'Espagne pendant le Moyen Age.

Leyden, 1849.

The deeds of such a man naturally appealed to popular imagination,

and it is not wonderful that there were substantial accretions

that less than a hundred years later found their way into the

Epic. Within an astonishingly short time the purely traditional

elements of the marriage of the Cid's daughters and the Parliament

at Toledo became its central theme. It is probable that such a

vital change was not entirely due to conscious art in a poet whose

distinguishing characteristic is his very unconsciousness. From

his minute familiarity with the topography of the country about

Medina and Gormaz, his affection for St. Stephen's, his utter lack

of accuracy in his description of the siege of Valencia and from

the disproportionate prominence given to such really insignificant

episodes as the sieges of Castejón and Alcocer, Pidal has inferred

that the unknown poet was himself a native of this region and that

his story of the life of the Cid is the product of local

tradition. [3] Moreover there is abundant evidence to prove that

before the composition of the poem as it has come down to us, the

compelling figure of the Cid had inspired other chants of an

heroic if not epic nature.

[3] Cid, 1, 72-73.

From this vigorous plant patriotic fervor and sympathetic

imagination caused to spring a perennial growth of popular

legends. The General Chronicle of Alphonso the Wise, begun in

1270, reflects the