rms at the hands of bandits.

There is a dramatic power in these ballads which is one of their most
remarkable features. They are sometimes mere sketches, but oftener the
story is told with consummate art, with strict economy of word and phrase,
and the _denouement_ comes with a point and power which show that the
Moorish minstrel was an artist of no mean skill and address.

The authors of the Moorish romances, songs, and ballads are unknown. They
have probably assumed their present literary form after being part of the
_repertoire_ of successive minstrels, and some of the incidents appear
in more than one version. The most ancient of them are often the shortest,
but they belong to the period when southern Spain under Mahometan rule was
at the height of its prosperity, and Arabian learning, art, and literature
made her rank among the first countries in Europe. The peninsula was
conquered by the Moors in the caliphate of Walid I, 705-715 A.D., and the
independent dynasty of the Ommiades was founded by Abderrhaman at Granada
in 755 A.D. It was from this latter date that the Spanish Moors began to
assume that special character in language, manners, and chivalric
enthusiasm which is represented in the present ballads; the spirit of
Christian knighthood is here seen blended with Arabian passion,
impetuosity, and impulsiveness, and the Spanish language has supplanted,
even among Mahometan poets, the oriental idiom. We may roughly estimate the
period in which the Moorish romance flourished as comprised in the years
between 1100 and 1600 A.D.

The term Moorish is somewhat indefinite, and is used in Spanish history as
a synonym of Saracen or Mahometan. It cannot be called a national
appellation, though originally in the Augustan age it was applied to the
dwellers in Mauretania, with whom the Romans had first come in contact when
the war with Hannibal was transferred from Italy and Spain to Africa. In
the present day, it may be applied to all the races of northwestern Africa
who have accepted Mahometanism; in which case it would include the
aborigines of that region, who live not on the coast and in towns, but in
the Atlas Mountain and the Sahara Desert. While these races, all Berbers
under different local names, are Mussulmans in profession, they are not so
highly civilized as their co-religionists who people the coast of the
Mediterranean. They live a tribal life, and are blood-thirsty and
predatory. They are of course mixed i