8 St. Ferdinand gave allotments to two poets who had been
with him during the Siege of Seville, and who were named Nicolas and
Domingo Abod "of the Romances." There is also evidence from references
to what "the _juglares_ sing in their chants and tell in their tales,"
that in the middle of the thirteenth century tales of Charlemagne and of
Bernardo del Carpio were familiar in the mouths of ballad-singers.

The whole number of the old ballads of Spain exceeds a thousand, and of
these John Gibson Lockhart has translated some of the best into English
verse. Lockhart was born in 1793, was the son of a Scottish minister,
was educated at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and was called
to the bar at Edinburgh in 1816. Next year he was one of the keenest of
the company of young writers whose genius and lively audacity established
the success of "Blackwood's Magazine." Three years later, in 1820, he
married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott. Lockhart's vigorous
rendering of the spirit of the Spanish Romances was first published in
1823, two years before he went to London to become editor of the
"Quarterly Review." He edited the "Quarterly" for about thirty years,
and died in 1854.

* * * * *

The "Gesta Romanorum;" is a mediaeval compilation of tales that might be
used to enforce and enliven lessons from the pulpit. Each was provided
with its "Application." The French Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais, tells
in his "Mirror of History" that in his time--the thirteenth century--it
was the practice of preachers, to rouse languid hearers by quoting
fables out of AEsop, and he recommends a sparing and discreet use of
profane fancies in discussing sacred subjects. Among the Harleian MSS.
is an ancient collection of 215 stories, romantic, allegorical and
legendary, compiled by a preacher for the use of monastic societies.
There were other such collections, but the most famous of all, widely
used not only by the preachers but also by the poets, was the Latin
story-book known as the "Gesta Romanorum." Its name, "Deeds of the
Romans," was due to its fancy for assigning every story to some emperor
who had or had not reigned in Rome; the emperor being a convenient
person in the Application, which might sometimes begin with, "My
beloved, the emperor is God." Perhaps the germ of the collection may
have been a series of applied tales from Roman history. But if so, it
was soon enriched with tales from