484 Schevill — Studies in Cervantes. 



Nor have tlie later poets forgotten the possibilities of the old 

 theme/ 



How early the matter of Virgil's epic got into ballads, the most 

 popular form of Spanish verse, is hard to determine, but the 

 romance of Aeneas and Dido was made the subject of a ballad, if 

 Durjin's conjecture is correct, in the beginning of the sixteenth 

 century.- The time of composition is, however, of little import- 

 ance, because, as Menendez y Pelayo has already remarked,^ the 

 poem was probably written by some one acquainted with the original, 

 and is, therefore, only a semi-popular production in ballad form. 

 The treatment shows nothing of the mediseval manner which turned 

 ancient heroes into contemporary knights with no traces of ancient 

 civilization about them.* In his Romancero general Duran prints 

 several other ballads"^ upon the same subject, but all were mani- 



^D. Juan Maria Maury wrote a poem of considerable length (Canto 

 epieo) on Dido's story: cf. Poetas Uricos del sUjlo XV III (Rivadeneyra), 

 p. 175 ff. 



= It begins: "Por los bosqvies de Cartago | saltan a monteria | La 

 reina Dido y Eneas | con muy gran Caballerfa"; cf. Romancero general 6 

 Coleccion dc romances CasteUanos anteriores al siglo XVIII, recogidos, 

 etc., por D. Agustin Duran (Madrid, 1859), Vol. I, p. 325; "Antologia, 

 etc." op. cit., Vols. VIII and IX, "Romances viejos castellanos, etc." 2a 

 edicion corregida j adicionada por D. Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo (Madrid, 

 1899), Vol. VIII, p. 223, Vol. IX, p. 308; see also Appendix I, below. One 

 ballad is aptly cited by Clemencin: "La desesperada Dido, | De pechos sobre 

 una almena, | Dice viendo por el mar | Huir la flota de Eneas, etc."; cf. 

 his edition of Don Quixote (Madrid, 1894), Vol. VIII, p. 234 ff.; it is no. 

 489 in Duran's Romancero. 



^ "Antologia, etc." op. cit., Vol. XII, p. 484. 



^On the other hand, such a version of the Dido story as is given in 

 the old French Roman d'Eneas, ^^hile reasonably close to the original, has 

 nevertheless the stamp of the age which produced it; cf. Eneas, texte 

 critique public par Jacques Salverda de Grave (Halle, 1891), p. xxx ff. 

 It omits the games because, perhaps, they could not be adapted to the 

 medieval spirit; cf. also Comparetti, op. cit., p. 212 if., German version. 



°Cf. op. cit., p. 323, numbers 483-91; in this connection the famous 

 English ballpd, Queen Dido, is of interest; cf. Reliqiies of ancient English 

 Poetry, etc., by Bishop Percy (Philadelphia, 1890), Vol. Ill, p. 191. As 

 a general rule, however, legends which are inherited from a dim past 

 imderjjo fantastic transformations in folk-lore and ballad literature; 

 Aeneas and Dido were no exceptions; cf. Du Meril, Etudes sur quelques 

 points d'archcologie, etc. (Paris, 1862), p. 429; "En Italic . . . le 

 valeureux Enee n'est plus qu'une pauvre reine qui soupire pour I'ingrat 

 Didon." 



