A history of Spanish literature - Cristo Raul

THE MYTHIC CANTILENAS 25
to say that as verse always precedes prose (just
as man
feels before he reasons), so the epic everywhere precedes
the lyric form, with the possible exception of hymns.
The Poema del Cid, for instance, shows no trace of
lyrical descent ; and it is far likelier that the many
surviving
romances or ballads on the Cid are detached
fragments of an epic, than that the epic
should be a
+astiche of ballads put together
when, where, how, or by whom.
nobody
But in
knows why,
any case the
cantilena theory is idle ; for, since no cantilenas exist,
no evidence is or can be forthcoming to eke out an
attractive but unconvincing thesis. In default of testi-
mony and of intrinsic probability, the theory depends
solely on bold assertion, and it suffices to say that the
cantilena hypothesis is now abandoned by all save a
knot of fanatical partisans.
The exploits of the battle-field would, in all likeli-
hood, be the first subjects of song ; and the earliest
singers of these deeds gesta would appear in the
chieftain's household. They sang to cheer the free-
booters on the line of march, and a successful foray
was commemorated in some war-song like Dinas Vawr's :
"Ednyfed, King of Dyfed,
His head was borne before us;
His wine and beasts stipplied our feasts,
And his overthrow our chorus."
Soon the separation between combatants and singers
became absolute: the division has been effected in the
interval which divides the Iliad from the Odyssey.
Achilles himself sings the heroes' glories ; in the
Odyssey the aotSo? or professional singer appears, to be
succeeded by the rhapsode. Slowly there evolve in
Spain, as elsewhere, two classes of artists known as