Читать книгу Legends & Romances of Spain - Lewis Spence - Страница 14

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But if the Castilians did not accept the matter of the chansons, they assuredly adopted their form. Their literary revolt against the alien spirit and politics of the chansons seems to have taken place at some time soon after the diffusion of these throughout Spain. A Spanish priest of the early twelfth century wrote the fabulous chronicle of Archbishop Turpin of Rheims, which purported to be the work of that warlike cleric, but in reality was intended to popularize the pilgrimage to Compostella to which it had reference. Many Franks travelled to the shrine, among them trouvères, who in all likelihood passed on to the native Castilian singers the spirit and metrical system of the chansons, so that later we hear of Spanish cantares de gesta, most of which, however, unlike their French models, are lost to us. The famous Poema del Cid, dealing with the exploits of a great Castilian hero, is nothing but a cantar de gesta in form and spirit, and we possess good evidence that many of the late romanceros or ballads upon such heroes as Bernaldo de Carpio, Gonzalvo de Cordova, and Gayferos are but ancient cantares ‘rubbed down,’ or in a state of attrition.

As in France, so in Spain, degeneration overtook the cantares de gesta. In course of time they were forced into the market-place and the scullions’ hall. Many of them were worked into the substance of chronicles and histories; but the juglares who now sang them altered them, when they passed out of fashion, into corrupt abridgments, or broke them up into ballads to suit the taste of a more popular audience.17