CID. The adventures of this famed Castilian hero are nearly ne much involved In fable and romance as those of our King Arthur and his Knights of the Round-Table, nor is it easy at this distance of time to separate the truth from the exaggeration of tradition and the Inven tions of ballad-writers. Femme and one or two other Spanish writers think however that they have established the following facts:— The Cid (from the Arable El Soid, 'the Lord ') who was so called by the Moors of Spain whom he subjugated by his victories, was born at Burgos somewhere about 1010: his real name was Rodrigo Diaz do Bivar. He attached himself to Sanchez IL, king of Leon and Castile, whose life he once saved in battle. At the siege of Zamora, Sanchez was treacherously slain, and his brother Alfonso, the next in order of succession, was suspected of the deed. The Cid Insisted that, before taking possession of the vacant throne, Alfonso should purge himself by taking an oath of his innocence of his brother's murder ; and when the rest of the nobles hung back, he alone exacted and made the king repeat the vow, to which he added the moat awful maledictions in case of perjury. After such a step he could expect little court favour, and the state of Spain encouraged his propensities to war and adven ture. His life was a continued series of combats with the Moors, who occupied by far the largest and richest parts of the country. He fell upon them in Aragon, burning, pluudering, and slaughtering wherever he went; he took Alcoser, and making that place his stronghold, he was gradually joined by a numerous band, half patriots, half freebooters, with which he made innumerable incursions into the neighbouring territories of the Moors. Still gathering force, he penetrated to the district of Ternel at the soutlewestern extremity of Aragon, and there established himself in a strong fortress on a rock, which is still called 'La Pella de el Cid' The Rock of the Cid '). By the sudden death or murder of the Moorish lord of Valencia, he was encouraged to extend his incursions into that province, and to the shores of the Mediterranean. Here too he was eventually enabled to establish himself. After a long siege he took Valencia, the capital city, and held it until his death, which happened about 1099.
The Cid appears to have really bad a wifo named Ximaita, the Chimine of the cebrated Frcuch tragedy 'Lo Cid,' but the story of his affecting courtship, and the struggle uud contra-t of affections in the heart of his mistress, are mainly inventious of Corueille. The Spanish
chronicles and ballads from which the French tragedian took the notion of his plot, or from a drama fouuded upon them, do indeed relate that the Cid had killed Ximena's father; but they destroy all interest in the heroine by saying that after her father's death, and before any tender addresses on the part of his slayer, she earnestly begged the king to marry her to the Cid, "because," she is made to say by these naive writers, " I am quite certain that Lis possessions will one day be greater than those of any man in your domiuions." The origival Cronica de el Fames° Cavaliers, Cid Rey Diaz Cam peador' is supposed to have been written in the 13th century, about 150 years after the hero's death. Mr. Southey in his curious work makes use of a printed edition of 1593, and says the first and only other edition was printed in 1552; but there it a copy of an edition in the library of the British Museum which bears the date of 1541.
The 'Poem de el Cid,' which is believed to contain rather more historic truth than the prose chronicle, was written about the middle of the 12th century, or only some fifty years after the CH's death. The author has been called the ' Homer of Spain,' but his name has not been preserved. Though ecareely justifyiug the extreme praise of Southey, who terms it "the oldest poem in the Spanish language, and beyond comparison the finest," the' Puerile' contains some powerful passages, and is highly interesting from its undoubted antiquity.
Besides this poem the Spauiarde have an immcuse number of romances and ballads relating to the exploits of the national hero. No fewer than 102 of these are in the real old style of the 13th and 14th centuries ; many are evidently more modern, and many more have never been printed. In some of these ballade the wonderful achieve ments of Bernardo do el Carpio, Ferran Gonzalez, and the rest of the twelve peers (for Spain had her twelve 'peerless' knights as well as Britain and France), aro interwoven with the adventures of the groat Cid. An ample notice of these different works will be found in Southey's 'Chronicle of the Cid,' 1 vol. 4to, 1808. See also Lockhart's 'Spanish Ballads,' and 'the Cid' by G. Dennis.