As "The Song of Roland" is to the French, so "The Poem of the Cid" is to Spain.

    This is another "national epic," a work of literature that grew out of the developing consciousness of a people becoming a nation.

    "El Cid" is the Spanish form of a Muslim title meaning "The Lord." It was given to a brave warrior named Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar (c. 1040-1099), or simply Rodrigo. He was a Castilian nobleman and military leader in medieval Spain.

    We are once again in the situation where the Muslims--called "Moors" or "Saracens"--had taken large parts of Spain. El Cid was one of the leaders of the "Reconquest" of formerly Spanish domains.

    The poem is in three parts. The first tells of Rodrigo's exile. While collecting the King's tributes from the Moors, he is accused of stealing from the King and is sent away from court. He then fights bravely against the Moors to regain his honor. (It was during this time, in fact, that history says he actually fought on the side of the Moors, and that is when he earned his title "El Cid.")

    In the second part of the poem, he captures the Moorish city of Valencia, and his daughters marry the nephews of the King. These are the same nephews who plotted his exile, and they marry the daughters in order to steal El Cid's wealth. Rodrigo suspects something, but allows the marriages.

    In the third and final section, the nephews are shamed, first when they're scared by a lion at court, and next when they run away from a fight against the Moors. To avenge themselves, they abandon their wives along a road by beating them and tying them to trees. Naturally, El Cid takes revenge. His men duel against the nephews and beat them, and the daughters remarry to other princes.

    Many liberties are taken with the historical truths of Rodrigo's life. As mentioned, he did not always fight the Moors, and when he had created his own fiefdom, Christians and Muslims lived there in peace. In the poem, his daughters are named Elvira ("Truth") and Sol ("the Sun"); in fact their more prosaic names were Cristina and Maria. And though they married into royal families, they never became queens.

    Vocabulary: Which word above means:

    1. payments to a king

    2. common, everyday

    3. say something not true

    4. lands under control

    5. have a formalized fight

    6. awareness

    7. take revenge for

    8. lands of a lord

    9. planned to do something evil

    10. banishment, being sent away

    ANSWERS: 1. tributes 2. prosaic 3. take liberties 4. domains 5. duel 6. consciousness 7. avenge 8. fiefdom 9. plotted 10. exile