220 CASTILIAN LITERATURE. PART I. and its revelry, prolonged to the last hour of its existence. The bull-fight of the Vivarrambla, the graceful tilt of reeds, the amorous knights with their quaint significant devices, the dark Zegris, or Gomeres, and the royal, self-devoted Abencer- rages, the Moorish maiden radiant at the tourney, the moonlight serenade, the stolen interview, where the lover gives vent to all the intoxication of pas- sion in the burning language of Arabian metaphor and hyperbole, '^ — these, and a thousand similar scenes are brought before the eye, by a succession of rapid and animated touches, like the lights and shadows of a landscape. The light trochaic struc- ture of the redoncUlla, '^ as the Spanish ballad 12 Thus, in one of their romances, we have a Moorish lady " shed- ding drops of liquid silver, and scattering her hair of Arabian gold " over the corpse of her murdered husband ! " Sobre el cuerpo de Albencayde Destila liquida plata, y convertida en cabellos Esparce el oro de Arabia." Can any thing be more oriental than this imagery ? In another we have " an hour of years of impa- tient hopes"; a passionate sally, that can scarcely be outmatched by Scriblerus. This taint of ex- aggeration, however, so far from being peculiar to the popular min- strelsy, has found its way, probably through this channel in part, into most of the poetry of the Penin- sula. 13 The rcdondilla may be consid- ered as the basis of Spanish versi- fication. It is of great antiquity, and compositions in it are still ex- tant, as old as the time of the in- fante Don Manuel, at the close of the thirteenth century. (SeeCan- cionero General, fol. 207.) The redondilla admits of great variety; but in the romances it is most frequently found to consist of eight syllables, the last foot, and some or all of the preceding, as the case may be, being trochees. (Rengi- fo. Arte PoeticaEspanola, (Barce- lona, 1727,) cap. 9, 44.) Critics have derived this delightful meas- ure from various sources. Sarmi- ento traces it to the hexameter of the ancient Romans, which may be bisected into something analogous to the rcdondillas. (Memorias, pp. 1G8-171.) Bouterwek thinks it may have been suggested by the songs of the Roman soldiery. (Geschichte dor Pocsie und Be- redsamkeit, band iii. Einleitung, p. 20.) — Velazquez borrows it from the rhyming hexameters of the Spanish Latin poets, of which he gives specimens of the begin- ning of the fourteenth century. iPoesia Castcllana, pp. 77, 78.) iater critics refer its derivation to
