Bivar, in Spanish Vivar, was the name
of the ancestral home of the Cid. It is a castle
near Burgos, in which the Cid was born in 1040.
patio (Spanish), a court or open space in front
of a house. The ti is pronounced as in
French question.
l 18. The full name of the Cid was Rodrigue Ruy
Diaz de Bivar, or in Spanish Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar.
campeador. The Spanish word campeador,
derived from campear, to be eminent in the
field, signifies excellent, pre-eminent,
and was the title given to their champion by the Spaniards,
The Moors called him the Cid, i.e. Seid,
an Arabic word for chief.
pavois, an old word for a large shield, which
protected the whole body, and on which the Franks
raised the king whom they had elected.
richomme, from the Spanish ricohombre,
a title given to the Barons of Aragon.
servidumbre (Spanish), an establishment of
servants. In Spanish the last syllable is sounded.
As far as is known, the story is of Hugo’s own
invention. The epoch may be supposed to be the
later Middle Ages, the place anywhere in Teuton lands.
The proper names are mostly of Hugo’s own invention;
some are, however, echoes from German mediaeval history.
The poem and another called Le Petit Roi de Galice
form a section of the Legende called Les
Chevaliers Errants.
l 1. There was a Ladislaus, King of Poland, in
the fourteenth, and a Sigismund, Emperor of Germany,
in the fifteenth century. But the personages
of the poem are in reality wholly imaginary.
stryge (written also strige), a vampire
or demon that wanders about at night. Derived
from Latin striga, a bird of night, or a witch.
lemure: Lemures (the singular is very
rare) is the Latin lemures, the disembodied
spirits which haunted houses and caused terror to
the living.
val, valley, The word is now little used and
only in poetry, except in the phrase par monts
et par vaux.
preux. See note on AYMERILLOT, l 54.
munster (German), cathedral.
bauges, properly the lairs of wild boars.
Amadis, commonly called Amadis of Gaul, the
hero of a celebrated mediaeval poem, written originally
in Spanish, which recounts his heroism in war and
constancy in love. He is the typical knight-errant
and true lover.
Baudoin. This is Baldwin, brother of Godfrey
of Bouillon. He became King of Jerusalem and
died in 1118. During the Crusade he went on a
pilgrimage to the Holy City.
Sir G.Young in his Poems from Victor Hugo suggests
that Corbus may stand for Cottbus, the
capital of Old or Lower Lusatia.
