The Epic Poem of Spain

The first monument of the Spanish, or, as it is sometimes called, the Castilian tongue, and the oldest epic in any of the romance languages, is the poem of the "Cid."

This poem, consisting of three thousand lines, is valuable as a living picture of the manners and customs of the eleventh century. It celebrates the achievements of the most romantic hero of Spanish tradition,--the Cid, or my Lord.

Perhaps no hero of any country has been so honored by his country, and he is still so sacredly dear to his countrymen that to say "By the faith of Roderigo" is considered the strongest vow of loyalty. The author of the poem is unknown; but it cannot have been written later than the twelfth century, and consequently about fifty years after the death of the hero whose name and achievements it celebrates. The poem throughout is striking and original, and breathes the true Castilian spirit.

Dr. Henry Coppee, in his "Conquest of Spain by the Arab Moors," says of the "Poema del Cid,"--

"Based upon history, although without dramatic form, it is essentially dramatic in character, and presents to us the events in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with the rarest local coloring.

"By the aid of these documents, we discern the colossal figure of a warrior and a statesman, who although noble by birth, like thousands of others, owed his promotion and his fame to his own good sword, wielded mostly against the infidel, as a champion of the Spanish king and of Christian Spain; sometimes as the ally of one Moorish chief against the encroachments of another; sometimes as an exile from royal envy and injustice, striking out 'for his own hand,' and carving a realm for himself. There are, in this changing history, so many dissolving views, that baffled historians have held high controversy, not only as to the deeds ascribed to him, but as to his very existence. The final and logical acknowledgment of the 'Cid' is probably due to the decision of the learned Niebuhr."

Southey, in his "Chronicle of the Cid" (1808), has collected all that is known of this extraordinary hero.