The Lay of the Cid | Page 3

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 national affection for the very chattels of the Cid. it relates that Babiéca passed the evening of his life in ease and luxury and that his seed flourished in the land.
After this constantly increasing biographical material had been developed and expanded through at least six chronicles and later epic treatment it was taken up by the ballads with a wealth of new episodes. Of these one of the most interesting is the Cid's duel with the conde Lozano and his marriage to Ximena. The hounds of Diego Lainez, the Cid's father, have seized a hare belonging to the conde Lozano, who considers that he has been grievously insulted thereby. Accordingly he retaliates with slurs that can removed only ont he field of honor. Diego Lainez, too old to fight, in order to discover which one of his three sons is worthy of clearing the honor of the family, bites the finger of each one successively. The two eldest utter only cries of pain, but Rodrigo with great spirit threatens his father. He is chosen to fight the conde Lozano and slays him. Ximena demands justice for her?father's