Un castillo era, un castillo

Jerusalem National Sound Archives placement: Y5832a/24
Referenced and notated in: Romancero Sefardi de Marruecos, pg. 82, Editorial Alpuerto, Pardes Publishing House, 2018 Susana Weich-Shahak.

This ballad, which centers on the well-known love motif of “falling in love by hearsay,” is among those for which we have the oldest preserved written texts. One version appears in the manuscript of the Cancionero de Londres, dating from the late fifteenth century; later, it was printed in broadsheets and sixteenth-century collections. In modern tradition it is also found in addition to the Sephardic communities of Morocco, in the Canary Islands and Catalonia, and there are Iberian versions that were adapted into religious (devotional) form.

Lyrics:
Un castillo era un castillo,   y aquel castillo lucido,
y rodeado está de almenas   del oro de la Turquía;
y entre almena y almena,   un aljofar y una piedra fina,
y más alelumbra de noche      que el sol d'al mediodía.
Dentro vive una doncella,     se llama Rosaflorida;
muchos duques la demandan     y un rey que más valía
y a todos los desechaba,   y más era su valentía:
ya 'namoróse del Montesinos,    de oído que non de vista.
Y no hay quen me lleve'sta carta  y a Francia, la bien guarida,
y se la den al Montesino     que venga de prisa y ayuno:
le regaré sus caminos    de aljofar y de piedras finas,
le dare clavo y canela,    que saboree la su comida,
le dare mis cien negritos   vestidos a la Turquía,
le dare mis cien negritas     que le sirvan noche y día,
le dare mis cien molinos    donde muela su harina,
y encima de todo esto    mi cuerpo que más valía.
Ella en estas palabras   Montesino llegaría.
-  ¿Que hijo de quién sos, mi vida?   ¿hijo de quien sos, mi alma?
- Hijo soy  de un carbonero,   que mi padre carbón vendía.
Y como eso oyó Rosablanca   en un desmayo caía.
- Non desmayes tú, mi vida,    y non desmayes tú, mi alma,
hijo soy del rey de Francia    y nieto del rey de Turquía.
No son tres días pasados    la rica boda se hacía.

Translation:
A castle there was, a castle, and that castle shining bright,
and surrounded it is with battlements of the gold of Turkey;
and between battlement and battlement, a pearl and a precious stone,
and it shines more in the night than the midday sun.
Within lives a maiden, her name is Rosaflorida;
many dukes ask for her and a king who was worth still more,
and she turned all of them away, and the greater was her bravery:
she had fallen in love with Montesinos, by hearing, not by sight.
And there is none who will carry this letter to France, the well-guarded,
and give it to Montesino that he come in haste and fasting:
I will strew his paths with pearls and with precious stones,
I will give him clove and cinnamon, that his food may taste sweet,
I will give him my hundred little black boys dressed in the Turkish style,
I will give him my hundred little black girls who shall serve him night and day,
I will give him my hundred mills where he may grind his flour,
and above all these things my body, which was worth still more.
She was saying these words when Montesino arrived.
– “Whose son are you, my life? whose son are you, my soul?”
– “I am the son of a charcoal burner, for my father sold charcoal.”
And when Rosablanca heard that into a faint she fell.
– “Do not faint, my life, and do not faint, my soul,
for I am the son of the king of France and grandson of the king of Turkey.
Not three days have passed when the splendid wedding was made.”