a warrior who was neither saint nor bandit.

[2] Aben Bassam, Tesoro (1109), cf. Dozy, Recherches sur
l'histoire politique et litteraire d'Espagne pendant le Moyen Age.
Leyden, 1849.

The deeds of such a man naturally appealed to popular imagination,
and it is not wonderful that there were substantial accretions
that less than a hundred years later found their way into the
Epic. Within an astonishingly short time the purely traditional
elements of the marriage of the Cid's daughters and the Parliament
at Toledo became its central theme. It is probable that such a
vital change was not entirely due to conscious art in a poet whose
distinguishing characteristic is his very unconsciousness. From
his minute familiarity with the topography of the country about
Medina and Gormaz, his affection for St. Stephen's, his utter lack
of accuracy in his description of the siege of Valencia and from
the disproportionate prominence given to such really insignificant
episodes as the sieges of Castejon and Alcocer, Pidal has inferred
that the unknown poet was himself a native of this region and that
his story of the life of the Cid is the product of local
tradition. [3] Moreover there is abundant evidence to prove that
before the composition of the poem as it has come down to us, the
compelling figure of the Cid had inspired other chants of an
heroic if not epic nature.

[3] Cid, 1, 72-73.

From this vigorous plant patriotic fervor and sympathetic
imagination caused to spring a perennial growth of popular