Liverpool University Press
  • Humour in the oral Romancero:how would we know?

One of the most striking, even unavoidable, features of modern performances of old ballads, whether by specialists or amateurs, in festivals, folk clubs or on more informal occasions, is that they tend to strike audiences as amusing. Some of the amusement is undoubtedly inspired by patronizing attitudes to the quaintness of the preoccupations of the past, but much is also intrinsic to the material, which would have survived by being thought funny from the start. When Martin Carthy sings the Scottish ballad of The Devil and The Feathery Wife, for example, it seems impossible that it can ever have been greeted in stony silence (see, or rather listen to, the live version from the Cambridge Folk Festival recently issued on a double CD entitled Cool as Folk, GOTTCD070, 2007). So it comes as a considerable shock to find that Richard Firth Green, co-editor of a recent volume of studies of ballad traditions (Bennett and Green 2004), argues, with examples from the British Isles, that the ballad genre is intrinsically inimical to humour; or rather, since Green has read Bakhtin, that 'it is no accident that ... the traditional ballad should have proved so relatively inhospitable to the carnivalesque' (Green 2004: 133).

Modern performances of English translations of, for example, Mariana, who efficiently poisons her former lover as he is about to marry somebody else, seem inevitably to be thought humorous rather than sinister. I speak from my own experience here, but even though different performers can certainly aim for and succeed in arousing different audience responses, an attempt to make Mariana frightening or merely narrative seems to me to miss the point. But a modern performer (or critic) of an ancient ballad always runs that risk, of missing the point. So it is worth asking this question: how far is it possible to decide whether a medieval Spanish ballad, or episode or comment within a ballad, is meant to be funny? This is not the same question as whether a ballad makes or made its listeners laugh; there are plenty of tales intended to make audiences laugh, which do not achieve that aim, as in most new TV sitcoms, and there are plenty of others which do make us laugh without that being their intention. [End Page 26]

This is a more directly relevant matter for ballads than for novels, or other varieties of verse, since the late medieval ballad was in effect the main dramatic genre of the age, in the sense that it depended for its raison d'être on the interaction between performer and audience. If there was no positive reaction to a ballad from the listeners, a performer would be less likely to keep it in his or her repertoire and new generations would be less likely to bother to learn it. This is, in essence, why genuinely historical ballads only survive in the repertoire in a personalized form which loses the direct connection with the historical background events. So it will be directly relevant to explaining an old ballad's continuously attested existence to tell whether the reason why audiences liked it was because they found it funny.

Humour is not the same thing as frivolity; serious themes can be developed with a sense of humour, and where that happens, it is usually to their advantage. It was certainly so in the case of late medieval Spanish and Golden Age works. Sir Peter Russell's piece on Don Quixote as a funny book (Russell 1969) has had a salutary and long-lasting effect; for example, it inspired Anthony Close (Close 2000). Recent presentations of Golden Age plays that have a sombre image (such as Adrian Mitchell's version of El Alcalde de Zalamea) have often successfully brought out the humour that pervades them until the final act. Overall, it seems clear that many well known literary works, including Celestina (Severin 1969) and Lazarillo de Tormes (Wright 1984), gained popular success through being thought funny, so it is reasonable to suggest that this could be the case with some of the long-lived ballads in the oral Romancero.

Humour is, of course, culturally conditioned. To what extent do 15th-century Castilians and 21st-century hispanists laugh at different things? We all tell our students that the ballads' success lies largely in their appeal to universal human feelings and emotions such as love, sex, horror, duty, and a desire for poetic justice; is their humour also a universal of this kind?

We should concede from the start that some ballads have no conceivable way of being presented humorously. King Rodrigo losing the battle to the Moslem invaders could not be presented that way; Rodrigo's Retreat ends despairingly:

¡O muerte! ¿Por qué no vienesy llevas esta alma míade este cuerpo mezquino?Pues ¡se te agradescería!

[CS3, RW29: 57–60]

And yet, despite the seriousness of that ballad, it is easy to suspect that the chronologically subsequent ballad concerning Rodrigo's appropriate penance for raping La Cava, when a hermit places him in a tomb with a poisonous snake which bites him on the most suitable part of his body, would at least sometimes have led to ribald laughter; Rodrigo's Penance ends:

'Dios es en la ayuda mía',respondió el buen rey Rodrigo,'la culebra me comía. [End Page 27] Come me ya por la parteque todo lo merescíapor donde fue el principiode la mi muy gran desdicha'.El hermitaño lo esfuerça;el buen rey allí moría.

[RW30: 106–14]

This resolution of the tale, however structurally appropriate, seems merely tasteless now, but this aspect of the ballad is probably the reason why it survived at all; and even if some performers might have managed not to make that seem funny, others surely did. In the same way, the ballad of Durandarte and Belerma, with the similarly gruesome detail of what Montesinos did with Durandarte's heart, seems ridiculous now:

Sacábale el corazóncomo él se lo jurara,para llevar a Belermacomo él se lo mandara.

[CS53: 53–56]

This might come into the category of those that seem humorous now but were taken seriously at the time, yet, as Smith (1996: 98) pointed out, it also seemed ridiculous to Góngora. In this case maybe it always could, to any audience; since the performers were here dealing with fictional characters, there was never a reason why anybody should hold themselves back from laughing out of empathy with a real person.

Some episodes would seem amusing to particular groups only, but these groups would indeed have been the audiences for the original performances (of both early ballads and epics: cp. Wright 1995: chapters 19–20; and In Press). The presentation of the captured Count of Barcelona in the Poema de Mio Cid is generally assumed to be meant to be humorous; a partisan Castilian audience would have enjoyed his humiliation (England 1994), although a Catalan would not. This regionally incorrect attitude is not greatly to modern taste; but the same anti Catalan feeling would also explain the appeal of the otherwise slightly baffling ballad of Rico Franco. He is indeed a Rich Frank (Catalan) who deserves his fate, being stabbed to death with his own dagger by the resourceful girl whose family he massacred. She says to him:

'Prestédesme, Rico Franco,vuestro cuchillo lugués;cortaré fitas al manto,que no son para traer'.Rico Franco de cortesepor las cachas lo fue tender;la donzella que era artera,por los pechos se lo fue a meter.Ansí vengó padre y madrey aun hermanos todos tres.

[CS63, RW4: 25–34] [End Page 28]

Cortese seems here to imply stupidity; laughter at the way she tricks the stupid rich man was probably a large part of the ballad's success among Castilians. The neat grimness of this satisfying denouement is similar to the revenge of Mudarrillo at the end of the ballad cycle of the Siete Infantes de Lara:

'Por hermanos me los hubelos siete infantes de Lara:tú los vendiste, traidor,en el val de Arabiana;mas si Dios a mí ayudaaquí dejarás el alma'.'Espéresme, don Gonzalo,iré a tomar las mis armas'.'El espera que tú distea los infantes de Lara:aquí morirás, traidor,enemigo de doña Sancha'.

[CS13: 33–44]

Poetic justice can lead to delighted laughter.

Anti-Leonese feeling could also lead to this kind of humour, as it did in the Poema de Mio Cid, with the demeaning representation of the Infantes of Carrion in the episode of the lion. In the Oath of Santa Gadea ballads there is plenty of scope for the performer to ham up the details of the humiliating death that awaits the putative Alfonso VI if he is lying about his part in the assassination of Sancho II of Castile outside Zamora:

Villanos te maten, Alonso,villanos, que no hidalgos,de las Asturias de Oviedo,que no sean castellanos;mátente con aguijadas,no con lanças ni con dardos,con cuchillos cachicuernos,no con puñales dorados,abarcas traygan calçadas,que no çapatos con lazo,capas traygan aguaderas,no de contray ni frisado,con camisones de estopa,no de holanda ni labrados;cavalleros vengan en burras,que no en mulas ni en cavallos,frenos traygan de cordel,que no cueros fogueados;mátente por las aradas,que no en villas ni en poblado,sáquente el coraçónpor el siniestro costado;si no dixeres verdad [End Page 29] de lo que eres preguntado:¿si fuiste ni consentisteen la muerte de tu hermano?

[CS20, RW48: 9–34].

A Castilian could easily have found this funny. An Asturian would not, but as usual the Castilian variant is the one that has been preserved for us in print. It was only funny in that context, but that was indeed the usual context of performance for this ballad.

This chronological variability in reaction can also apply the other way round, leading to laughter more modern than ancient. One ballad in the Pedro the Cruel cycle, Por los campos de Jerez, contains the following scene:

Mientras más se acerca el bultomás temor le va poniendo.Con el abaxarse tantoparesce llegar al suelo,delante de su cavallo,a cinco passos de trecho.De él salió un pastorcico,sale llorando y gimiendo,la cabeça desgreñada;rebuelto trahe el cabello;con los pies llenos de abrojosy el cuerpo lleno de vello;en su mano una culebra,en la otra un puñal sangriento;en el hombro una mortaja,una calavera al cuello;a su lado de trahillatrahía un perro negro,los ahullidos que davaa todos ponía gran miedo.

[RW55: 15–38]

This seems little short of idiotic now, and laughter is likely to form part of a modern reaction. This episode, of the ferociously absurd shepherd figure and his screeching hound, who shoot down to earth in front of King Pedro like an asteroid in a cartoon, and then let out bloodcurdling predictions that happen in real life to have already been conveniently fulfilled, is part of a serious propaganda campaign not intended at the time to inspire ridicule but to involve the audience directly in the Trastamaran view of history.

If the audience members feel directly involved in an originally historical tale as vicarious participants, exploiting that involvement is often the balladeer's aim. If not, the distant events need to be personalized (novelización), and that can involve the development of a humorous appeal. The dying Fernando I's daughter, Urraca, says that if Fernando does not give her some of the family inheritance, she will become a wandering prostitute, giving herself to Moslems for money and free to Christians, donating all profits for the good of his soul: [End Page 30]

A mí, porque soy mujer,dexáysme deseredada.Irme e yo por essas tierrascomo una muger errada,y este mi cuerpo daríaa quien se me antojara,a los moros por dinerosy a los christianos de gracia.De lo que ganar pudiere,haré bien por la vuestra alma.

[CS15, RW40: 9–18].

Even if this episode might have been originally invented as anti-Urraca and anti Alfonso VI propaganda, its intrinsic humour is likely to be the reason why it still survived centuries later.

Modern critics have sometimes been nonplussed by the lack of anti-Moslem feeling in several of the fronterizo ballads. Thus, the original audiences probably sympathized with the plight of Reduán –

Reduán le respondíasin demudarse la cara:'Si lo dixe, no me acuerdo,mas cumpliré mi palabra'

[CS29, RW59: 11–14]

whose 'si lo dije, no me acuerdo' became famous. A Castilian-speaking audience is also expected to sympathize with the reaction of the King of Granada to the loss of Antequera:

El rey, quando esto oyera,de pesar se amortecía,haziendo gran sentimientomuchas lágrimas vertía,rasgava sus vestidurascon gran dolor que tenía.

[CS30, RW60: 61–66]

and even with Boabdil:

Llorava toda Granadacon grande llanto y gemido;lloravan por su buen rey,tan amado y tan querido ...

[RW70: 39–40, 49–50]

And although her adventure is not a publicly accessible event in the same way, it still seems to me that audiences are supposed to sympathize with Moraima [RW66; CS59]. And yet in several of them there was potential for an amused anti Moslem reaction. The men in the audience might smile beneath their breath at the skill of the Christian's seduction methods in Moraima (Wright 1991: 75–78), [End Page 31] and if Mirrer-Singer (1985) and Vasvári (1999) are right in suggesting that the original audiences were not being invited to sympathize with the victim of a rape, that laughter could even have been overt. And maybe some fronterizo ballads from the final stages of the Granada campaign, more bitter and polarized than before, originally manifested delight in the Moslems' plight. Perhaps the ballad on the successful siege of Baza in 1489 was one such, as the Moslem defender boasts that they can hold out for ten more years, but any subsequent audience knows that in the event they could not:

Un moro tras una almenacomenzóle de fablar:'Vete, el rey don Fernando,no querrás aquí invernar,que los fríos desta tierrano los podrás comportar;pan tenemos por diez años,mil vacas para salar;veinte mil moros hay dentro,todos de armas tomar,ochocientos de caballopara el escaramuzar;siete caudillos tenemostan buenos como Roldán,y juramento tienen hechoantes morir que se dar'.

[CS40: 11–26]

This view of the ballad as a symptom of Christian triumphalism is a conjecture in direct contrast to Smith's comment that this ballad 'succeeds brilliantly in seeing matters from the Moorish point of view' (1996: 73). There are, then, two possible presentations of the ballad and the choice was in the hands of the performer, who could have us laugh at the Moslems' presumptuousness or not, as he or she wished; and probably sometimes they did.

Some ballads give the impression of being historical when they clearly are not, and these tend to have little other point than being a good joke. The only ballad about the Cid that seems to have survived into the oral tradition of the later 20th century was the one in which King Búcar comes to Valencia to kidnap the Cid's daughter, Urraca (Helo, helo, por do viene). The central lines run as follows:

'Siete años ha, rey, siete,que soy vuestra enamorada'.'Otros tantos ha, Señora,que os tengo dentro en mi alma'.Ellos estando en aquestoel buen Cid que assomava.'¡A Dios, a Dios, mi señora,la mi linda enamorada!que del cavallo Bavierayo bien oygo la patada'. [End Page 32] Do la yegua pone el pieBavieca pone la pata.Allí hablara el cavallo,bien oyréys lo que hablara:'Rebentar devía la madreque a su hijo no esperava'.

[CS21, RW50: 43–58]

There is potential humour in Urraca's skill in keeping Búcar interested while her father saddles up Babieca; in Búcar's sudden departure; in the talking horse; and in the eventual humiliation of Búcar. The unrelated ballad about King Búcar's decree that all his knights should marry their lovers (RW53), in which he is described as a 'rey sabio', and eventually we find that he got that name when he did not apply his decree to his own sobrino because his sobrino's lover was already unhappily married to someone else, has always struck me as being rather a good joke, and not only because the real 'Rey Sabio' gained that apodo for quite different reasons. The ballad would not have survived at all, we can suspect, if it had not been amusing; it would have just seemed trivially pointless. And although it has not survived in the modern tradition, surely the extraordinary ballad about The Cid and the Pope could never have been a success if it had not been thought funny; this ends:

El Papa, quando lo supo,al Cid ha descomulgado;en saberlo luego el Cidante el Papa se ha postrado.'Absolvedme', dixo, 'Papa;si no, será os mal contado'.El Papa, de piadoso,respondió muy mesurado;'Yo te absuelvo, Don Rodrigo,yo te absuelvo de buen grado,con que seas en mi cortemuy cortés y mesurado'.

[RW49: 43–54]

That, and the Mocedades strand of stories in general, could be a suitable sequel for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The ballads considered so far had some, even if tenuous, link with reality to underpin an audience's potentially amused reaction. Many of the fictional 'novelesque' ballads can also be presented as at least partly humorous, but with these it is harder to be sure if that was the original point. Blancaniña seems intrinsically humorous to us now, and to invite hamming up, particularly during the progressive inquisition:

Ellos en aquesto estando,su marido que llegó:'¿Qué hazéys, la Blanca Niña,hija de padre traidor?' [End Page 33] 'Señor, peyno mis cabellos,peyno los con gran dolorque me dexéys a mí sola,y a los montes os vays vos'.'¡Essa palabra, la Niña,no era sino trayción!¿Cúyo es aquel cavalloque allá baxo relinchó?''¡Señor, era de mi padre,y enbió os lo para vos!''Cúyas son aquellas armasque están en el corredor?''¡Señor, eran de mi hermano,y oy os las embió!'

[CS64, RW1: 17–34]

… but this could be an illusion, for it continues:

'¿Cúya es aquella lança?Desde aquí la veo yo'.'¡Tomalda, conde, tomalda,matadme con ella vos,que aquesta muerte, buen conde,bien os la merezco yo!'

(35–40)

Smith decided that the theme is being 'treated with high seriousness' (1996: 122), and many modern continuations of the short old ballad, although they vary greatly in the denouement, end in tragedy of some kind (Wright 1991: 85–88). Is this genuine humour followed by a violent contrast (as in Celestina), or was it inappropriate to laugh all along?

There is often, in fact, ambiguity in the wording as to whether a humorous presentation would be appropriate or not. When Melisenda (RW18, CS49) is found going half-naked in the middle of the night to the spare bedroom, where her lover Ayruelos is staying, she spins a ludicrous excuse to the bodyguard, Hernandillo, which leads him to give her his knife and thus allow her to stab him dead with it. We are expected not to be horrified, but to applaud this manifestation of love conquering all; do we also laugh at Hernandillo's gullibility? People getting a deserved comeuppance cause laughter, as with Rico Franco (or the wonderful Gallarda [RW26]), but Hernandillo's demise is hardly deserved. There is no right answer to these questions; if a performer thinks Blancaniña, Melisenda or several others should be presented as amusing, then the performance may indeed be amusing, and if not, maybe not (Deyermond 1996; Wright 2000).

Audience expectations can also be played on to humorous effect. The Lady and the Shepherd reverses the clichés of the pastourelle genre, as the lady in the garden tries to seduce the ungratefully boorish shepherd and fails: [End Page 34]

Estáse la gentil damapaseando en su vergel;los pies tenía descalçosque era maravilla ver.Hablávame desde lexos,no le quise responder.Respondíle con gran saña:'¿Qué mandáis, gentil mujer?'Con una boz amorosacomencó de responder.

[CS66, RW12: 1–10]

(Compare Kim Basinger and Wayne in Wayne's World). A knowledge of the genre helps us to see the funny side of this; but is it funny anyway? It could be; after all, Lewis Carroll's You are Old, Father William is amusing even though we have forgotten the target of the parody. A similarly parodic aspect probably underlies the appeal of the ballad Mandó el rey prender Virgilios; Lady Isobel has been raped by Virgil, but when Virgil is released from prison seven years later she is delighted and marries him at once:

Plugo a los cavalleros,y a las donzellas también;mucho más plugo a una dueñallamada Doñ Ysabel.Ya llaman un arçobispo,ya la desposan con él;tomara la por la manoy lleva se la a un vergel.

[RW24: 43–50]

If we have been led by our expectations of the genre to expect rape victims gleefully to stab their attackers, we will, at least if we are male, find it amusing to see the woman unexpectedly getting in touch with her masculine side this way.

And is the strange passing reference to Rosa Florida's otherwise unmentioned sister meant to be funny? To attract Montesinos, Rosa Florida says:

'… darle he este mi cuerpo,el más lindo que hay en Castilla,si no es el de mi hermana,que de fuego sea ardida'

[CS48, RW17: 35–38]

– her sister is cursed for being the only woman in Castile to have a better body than Rosa Florida herself. We cannot be sure. But if we think that some aspects of humour are universal, in the same way as the emotions inherent in the ballads, we can at least test empirically whether such comments actually are funny, regardless of whether they were meant to be. I can report that this comment on her sister is indeed thought to be funny by several present-day university students. It should also be possible to check for concomitant laughter collected when the researchers record their informants in the presence of friends; yet [End Page 35] collectors tend not to indicate what the reactions of listeners are, and in practice the circumstances of such collections are usually sufficiently unnatural and forced for singers and listeners to be taking them with preternatural seriousness (cp. Seeger 1989). But we can at least conclude that if we find a surviving old ballad to be amusing, we may indeed thereby have noticed the main reason for its continuing appeal.

* Ballad texts are taken from Wright (1987, = RW), cross-referenced with Smith (1996, = CS).

Roger Wright
University of Liverpool

Works Cited

Bennett, Philip, and Richard Firth Green (eds), 2004. The Singer and the Scribe (Amsterdam: Rodopi).
Close, Anthony, 2000. Cervantes and the Comic Mind of his Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Deyermond, Alan, 1996. Point of View in the Ballad (London: Queen Mary and Westfield College).
Green, Richard Firth, 2004. 'F. J. Child and Mikail Bakhtin', in Bennett and Green (eds), 123-33.
England, John, 1994. '"Comed, Conde": the Cid's use of parody', Medium Aevum, 63: 101-03.
Mirrer-Singer, Louise, 1985. 'Re-evaluating the frontier ballad: the Romance de la morilla burlada as a pro-Christian Text', La Coronica, 13: 157-67.
Russell, (Sir) Peter, 1969. 'Don Quixote as a funny book', Modern Language Review, 64: 312-26.
Seeger, Judith, 1989. 'The living ballad in Brazil: two performances', in Hispanic Balladry Today, ed. Ruth H. Webber (New York: Garland), 175-217.
Severin, Dorothy Sherman (ed.), 1969. Fernando de Rojas: La Celestina (Madrid: Alianza).
Smith, Colin, 1996. Spanish Ballads, 2nd edn (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press), = CS.
Vasvári, Louise, 1999. The Heterotextual Body of the 'Mora Morilla' (London: Queen Mary and Westfield College).
Wright, Roger, 1984. 'Lazaro's success', Neophilologus, 68: 529-33.
———, 1987. Spanish Ballads with English Verse Translations (Warminster: Aris and Phillips), = RW.
———, 1991. Spanish Ballads: a Critical Guide (London: Grant and Cutler).
———, 1995. Early Ibero-Romance (Newark [Delaware]: Juan de la Cuesta).
———, 2000. 'Point of view in the ballad performer', Hispanic Research Journal, 1: 97-104.
———, 2004, 'Spanish Ballads in a changing world', in Bennett and Green (eds), 169-80.
———, In Press. 'Hispanic epic and ballad', in Medieval Oral Literature, ed. Karl Reichl (Berlin: De Gruyter). [End Page 36]

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