First published in 1989. The ballad or romance, as it is commonly called, has played a vital role over the centuries in Hispanic culture as an orally transmitted narrative song. It is characteristically the product of people who have had to look to themselves for entertainment. From the end of the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century, the romancero (balladry) enjoyed a great vogue among learned poets and their audiences, especially in the Spanish and Portuguese courts. The authors’ intent in this book is to survey and to assess the state of the romancero, not only in Spain and Portugal, but also in peripheral areas where it has migrated and taken root.