ABSTRACT
We understand by traditional romances those narrative songs with forms and themes common to the whole Hispanic tradition that have strong textual similarities. This chapter considers as such texts of Hispanic origin interpolated with national motifs or formal influences of the same kind, or texts with additions made by Mexican re-creators. The romancero came to the American continent with the conquistadores, and precisely the first piece of evidence comes from Mexico. Bernal Díaz de Castillo relates that in San Juan de Ulúa (Veracruz) in 1519 Alonso Hernández Portocarrero recited to Cortés verses from an old romance. In the corpus of traditional Mexican romance representative, containing religious ballads, children’s as well as “adult” ballads, as well as texts that we can classify as novelesque, we also find among them one historical romance (La muerte de Prim) and another that is historical-novelesque (Alfonso XII).
