Tradition and Renewal of a Spanish Ballad

T R A D I T I O N A N D R E N E W A L O F A S P A N I S H B A L L A D Vladimir Guerrero University of Oslo, N o r w a y In spite of the predominantly oral nature of Spanish balladry dur ing the Early Modern Period and later centuries, many scholars and students still perceive the ballad as a form of poetry having a relationship to the written word similar to that of other poetry. Since the ballad, in its origin and traditional circulation, is an oral-aural phenomenon , its reflection in the written word is both subsidiary and incomplete .1 While the term "oral" is generally used to convey transmission by word of mouth I will also use the word "aural" in this study to refer to the latent medium where the ballad is retained when it is not being transmitted. Because of its unwritten existence in an aural environment and its oral circulation, the nature of the traditional baUad cannot be understood unless it is clearly distinguished from written poetry. The traditional ballad which begins "Preso esta Fernan Gonzalez, el buen conde castellano" was first printed during the 16th century (Menendez Pidal & Goyri 2:33). In the five similar versions surviving from that period, the baUad teUs the story of how the count of Castile escaped from prison through the scheme of donning his wife's clothing when she visited him. While these printed versions have given the ballad a fixed and recognizable form, none of them is, of course, the original. As is generally accepted, the concept of an original is not applicable to an aural-oral genre which is only accidentaUy present in written form. As Menendez Pidal has described it: "el romance es poesia que vive en variantes" and as such, in its natural habitat, the ballad is inherently a fluid and protean genre (Menendez Pidal 1966,65). Therefore , notwithstanding the fact that the printed versions provide a recognizable and datable text, the baUad certainly existed before being printed and continued to do so in a latent state for centuries afterward. We are, in effect, dealing with a verbal art form having different characteristics than written Uterature because the five versions, aU have the claim to being a manifestation of the ballad, rather than the ballad itself , or later versions of a lost original. As shown in Figure 1, an aural ballad can be visualized as consisting of multiple simultaneous variants, Al, A2, A3, etc., which themselves will change over time producing sequential variants such as K, CALfOPE Vol. 5, No. 2 (1999): pages 82-91 TRADITION AND RENEWAL OF A SPANISH BALLAD ?•> 83 m T) 3 3. 3 c 1 5 C D — 5' cr o 5 > c w D a •a •» 3 C D a m 3 5' 3 > c o C O 5 5 5' 3 m ro " 1 O l ' 3 ro " 16 20 Version R (Menendez Pidal & Goyri 2:36): — Vistete los mis vestidos, calzate los mis calzados, 2 entre duques y marqueses me seas muy bien hablado, alia afuera en la muralla encontraras el caballo; 4 no me esperes hasta Burgos, que alld me estes esperando. Al salir de la prision 6 me piden que a petition y un favor os pido, rey, una merced os demando. 8 — Como no sea la vida, todo est& a nuestro mandato. — Yo no he pensado en la vida, ni tal cosa me ha pasado, 10 solo que me dejen el mundo los nueve meses de mi embarazo Esos chasquitos, condesa, ya los tenia aguardados, 12 por eso sois las mujeres punto y medio mas que el diablo. Version Q, "La Peregrina," coUected inAsturias has not, up to the present time, been considered to be a version of the "Fernan Gonzalez" corpus, although I expect to demonstrate that it reaUy is. Version R, on the other hand, in spite of being only a brief and defective fragment, is clearly a version of "Preso esta Fernan Gonzalez." From the above summary, the six major elements of the narrative are: 1) unjustified and Ulegal imprisonment by a king, 2) in the city of...