A Problematic Writing: Songs of Old Oral Tradition

Abstract

Old Hispanic popular lyric verse had an “irregular” versification that was not basically regimented by the number of syllables. When this oral poetry began to be written down during the Renaissance, with what criteria was “verse” defined? How were verses distributed on the printed page? This paper desires to show that due to the influence of contemporary courtly lyric it was the tendency then and now to write short poems in short verse which produces with it, a reading that not infrequently distorts its rhythm, syntax and meaning.