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ADVERTISEMENT
In this story, which has a basis sufficiently historical
to be called an historical romance, the reader
will yet discover some few departures from what
is usually received as history. But let this give
him no concern. The license is less real than
seeming. My facts are, perhaps, quite as genuine
as the greater number of those more ostentatious
narratives, devoted to the period and place of which
I write, which boldly announce their veracity in the
titlepage. Nothing can be more contradictory and
uncertain than the authorities, so called, on the subject
of Gothic-Spain, particularly during the time
which this story occupies. On many of the leading
topics and events no two of the chroniclers agree;
and such is the extent of this discrepance, that
some of the more important personages, such as
the Lady Cava, for example, are supposed, by one
class of these historians, never to have had existence.
The only instance in which I may fairly be
convicted of departing from facts on which the historians
are generally agreed, is in finding other
names than those which they bore for the fugitive
sons of King Witiza. One of these I have made
synonymous with the native hero, most insisted
upon by the Spaniards as the founder of their nation,
he frequently defeated and constantly baffled among
the fastnesses of the Asturias, at a time when those
fierce invaders overrun the country with little or
no resistance elsewhere. It is scarcely necessary
to add that this hero gives the name to my story,
and that his adventures form a portion of its material.
Charleston, S. C., September, 1838.
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