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Reviewed by:
  • Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews, Volume IV: Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Oral Tradition, III: Carolingian Ballads (2): Conde Claros
  • Roger Wright
Samuel Armistead, Joseph H. Silverman and Israel J. Katz, Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews, Volume IV: Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Oral Tradition, III: Carolingian Ballads (2): Conde Claros. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta. 2008. x + 635 pp. + 9 plates. ISBN 978-1-58871-058-1.

The bibliographical coordinates of this volume are remarkable. Professors Armistead and Silverman published The Judeo-Spanish Ballad Chapbooks of Yacob Abraham Yoná in 1971 (with the University of California Press), which was conceptualized as being Volume I of a continuing series of volumes on the Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews. Volume II had the title Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Oral Tradition, I: Epic Ballads, and was published by the same press in 1986; Volume III, Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Oral Tradition, II: Carolingian Ballads (1) appeared there in 1994. The volume under review is thus Volume IV of the whole enterprise: Volume III of the Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Oral Tradition, and Part 2 of the Carolingian Ballads; Thomas Lathrop's Juan de la Cuesta press has taken over the project from this Volume IV, which was largely ready by 1990 and might have then foundered on the rock of California's sadly increasing insouciance concerning Romance Philology, and has published it efficiently. Its 635 pages contain just two chapters, numbered Chapter 10 (1-124) and Chapter 11 (125-388); an appendix with copious extra 'supplementary notes' (389-462); a bibliography of cosmic proportions (463-561); eleven indexes; a glossary of several of the words found in the ballad texts; and nine illustrations, including a photograph of their star informant, Luna Elaluf Farache from Tetuán, who sang for Professors Armistead and Katz in 1962 when she was aged 78. There is also, as usual with this publisher, a most attractive photographic cover. Volume V is said to be imminent; volumes VI-VIII are said to be in preparation.

If ever there has existed an expert who knows all about his or her subject, Samuel Armistead is that expert. This volume is dazzling, but also hard to read discursively, and it is in effect more like a reference work. The Conde Claros ballads, usually classified as 'Carolingian' in the most vague sense of that category, are ancient in origin and, as a consequence, come now in all shapes and sizes, combined ('contaminated') with many other tales, and varying all over the Hispanic world, not only in the Sephardic communities. One of those allied tales is that of the 'Boast of Conde Vélez', who declares that he can seduce any woman and is then severely punished when he discovers that he cannot. The relations between this ballad and the Conde Claros tradition form the main subject matter of the first chapter (that is, Chapter 10). Another tale that has come to be combined with that of Conde Claros is that of Bernardo del Carpio, in particular his birth, which forms a large part of the second chapter (Chapter 11); and it is in this chapter that we meet the long ballad story which most Hispanists will know of as the Conde Claros tale par excellence, Media noche era por filo, much anthologized and taught to students, which recounts the adventures of Conde Claros and the Princess. The centrepiece of that ballad tradition came to be the lines which extol the virtues of love, a set-piece episode that existed on its own and was often set to music separately.

The geographical ramifications of the modern oral variations, not only in the Sephardic communities but also elsewhere (including many in Portugal, the Canaries, America), have consequences for our assessment of how and when and where they came to develop, and Professor Armistead traces those with precision and detail. The [End Page 623] old printed versions come to seem almost irrelevant to this task when compared with the modern attested versions. Alternative versions quoted, mentioned or alluded to by Golden-Age dramatists appear more helpful, in the event. Professor Armistead has devoted great energy in the past to discussing the...

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