[Here, Van Antwerp sketches a detailed overview of the mingling of popular folk elements with the courtly tradition as evidenced in the style of the Razón de amor.]

Few works of the Spanish Middle Ages have attracted more critical attention than the problematic Razón de amor con los denuestos del agua y el vino. The poem begins with the presentation of a courtly amor de lonh. Resting from the midday heat in a pleasant orchard, an escolar encounters a lovely maiden singing of a distant lover whom she has never met. He recognizes her as his own theretofore unseen beloved and presents himself to her. They make love in the shade of an olive tree growing near a miraculously cold "fuente perenal", and their long-awaited first meeting comes abruptly to an end. As the maiden departs from the orchard, a small white dove appears, seeking a place to cool itself. The dove bathes in a vessel of water suspended throughout the poem from one of the highest limbs of an apple tree. This action of the dove overturns the vessel, causing it to spill into another, of wine, carefully hung in a lower branch of the same tree. Here the lyrical Razón de amor concludes, and the "Denuestos del agua y el vino" begin in which water and wine, now personified, comically debate their own strengths and weaknesses.

Aptly summarized by the daulity of its title, this complex text has been studied from various perspectives, including the scrutiny of linguistic peculiarities, the discussion of generic classification, and the investigation of poetic sources. The critics remain, however, in wide disagreement. Alicia C. de Ferraresi [in "Sentido y unidad de Razón de amor," F, XIV (1970), and "Locus amoenus y vergel visionario en Razón de amor," H R, XLII (1974),] views the poem as an embryonic "enseignement de amor", designed to illustrate the doctrines of courtly love, while Arsenio Pacheco argues, unconvincingly, that the lyrical Razón de amor is essentially a poetic prelude to the common medieval debate between wine and water [in "¿Razón de amor o Denuestos del agua y el vino?" BHS, LI (1974)]. Enrique de Rivas believes that the poem's "razón secreta" lies in the teachings of the Cathar heresy [in "La razón secreta de la Razón de amor," Anuario de Filologia, VI-VII (1967-68)]; Alfred Jacob considers the piece conventional Christian allegory [in "The Razón de amor as Christian Symbolism," H R, XX (1952),]; and Leo Spitzer identifies the unified Razón and "Denuestos" as the product of the medieval conception of profane, human love [in "Razón de amor," R, LXXI (1950)].

The diverse efforts of these critics are, in essence, quite similar: each accepts the poem as a work belonging to the tradition of courtly love into which some delightful although "alien" snatches of traditional-type song (the maiden's cantigas de amigo addressed to her lover from afar) have been introduced. All attempt to explain the apparent lack of thematic unity which characterizes the work, thus prolonging the debate initiated in 1887 by A. Morel-Fatio over whether the Razón and the "Denuestos" constitute a single poem or a fusion of two. Although the debate has produced many valuable insights, it has had at least one unfortunate result: The importance of the Razón de amor as the first manifestation of the cultured Castilian lyric has been largely overlooked.

This continuing academic clamor to ascertain the autonomy of the lyrical Razón or to establish its relationship to the "Denuestos" ignores one important lesson taught all Hispanists by S. M. Stern's publication of the kharjas in 1948: Convenient generalizations which label one poem "popular" and another "learned", although often necessary, are no longer absolutely valid, since the sophisticated love lyric (in the Peninsula as elsewhere) most certainly arose from a popular basis, of which much has been lost. As Alan D. Deyermond points out, this folk tradition is very much alive in the first written examples of the lyric that we possess. The clearly present influence of medieval Latin or Arabic verse in the writings of the first poets using the vernacular is of distinctly less consequence than it was once thought to be; "Latin and Arabic influences are in points of detail, whereas the popular tradition is not an influence but a fundamental cause" [The Middle Ages, 1971].

As the first cultured lyric written down and preserved in the Castilian language, the Razón de amor attests to the validity of Deyermond's statement. Despite the undeniable courtliness and artistic sophistication of this poem in which rapidly changing scenes are tied together by a complex set of structural parallels, the Razón de amor is intimately and inextricably bound to the popular tradition. Convincing linguistic evidence of this confluence of two traditions has recently been set forth by Daniel M. Cárdenas, who identifies the Razón's "lyrical nucleus" as vv. 78 to 146, containing little more than the maiden's traditional-type cantigas de amigo to her lover ["Nueva luz sobre Razón de amor y denuestos del agua y del vino," RHM, XXXIV (1968)]. For Cárdenas, these nuclear verses, around which both the preceding amorosa visione and the subsequent debate were composed, represent "una poesá ya aprendida o escrita que alcanzó un estado estático" whose form and language the anonymous "juglar-refundidor" wished to respect. They are "un vestigio de una lìrica castellana más antigua"; more than mere "incrustaciones de villancicos", they constitute an integral part of the poem which "ensalza el valor del conjunto y la destreza del poeta".

Cárdenas' analysis is based upon a study of the phonological, morphological, and syntactic features of the poem. A literary analysis complements and reinforces him findings. Thematic and symbolic commonplaces reminiscent of the cancionero de tipo tradicional abound in the Razón. Indeed, these recognizable vestiges of what Cárdenas terms "una lìrica castellana más antigua" lie at the center of each of the various scenes carefully woven together in the medieval masterpiece, as the early sophisticated poet draws inevitably upon the tradition which he begins to move away from but, of course, can never leave behind. One particularly striking example of the kinship between the Razón de amor and the lyrical folk tradition merits attention before we begin to scrutinize the text. It is found in a perplexing, decidedly popular song recorded in the fifteenth-century Cancionero musical de Palacio:

No pueden dormir mis ojos,
no pueden dormir.

Y soñaba yo, mi madre,
dos horas antes del día
que me florecía la rosa:
ell vino so ell agua frida.
No pueden dormir.

Despite its brevity, this folk song is strangely similar to the cultured Razón. Like the sophisticated medieval lyric, it possesses a mysterious, somnolent air; it draws its force from the counterposition of water and wine, symbolic images reflected in the opening verses of the text under scrutiny. As in the cultured lyric, the water and wine of the folk song are matter-of-factly set forth; as symbols, they are expected to stand by themselves. To be appreciated most fully, this symbolic pair must be reintegrated into the folk tradition from which it ultimately sprang and evolved. That is to say, if we are to understand the symbolic implications of the wine and water, and, more important, the learned recollection of this pair by the anonymous poet of the Razón, we must return to Deyermond's "fundamental cause", to the vast corpus of traditional-type verse in which themes, images, and symbols define themselves—their limitations and nuances—through constant repetition and interaction with one another.

This process sheds light upon the problematic vessels of wine and water which appear in our text, as well as upon several other enigmatic yet decidedly symbolic elements of the medieval masterpiece. It fosters, in turn, an entirely new reading of this poem "feyta d'amor". With its complex architecture and subtle echoes of popular verse, the Razón confirms the inseparability of the popular and the culto traditions in poetry and points significantly to the popular origins of all cultured verse.

The confluence of the erudite and the popular is evident from the first moments. After a brief courtly introduction to the work, we are confronted by a scene displaying vestiges of folk tradition. Like so many lovers in traditional song, the poet rests from the heat beneath an olive tree growing in an orchard which does not belong to him. Folk lyric poeticizes this situation in a series of interrelated songs which warn of the consequences awaiting one who dares trespass upon a "huerto ajeno". In one of the simplest of these songs, the consequences are drastically understated; a gentle scolding seems sufficient punishment for the offense:

No entréis en huerto ajeno,
que os dirá mal su dueño;
no entréis en huerto vedado,
que [os] dirá mal su amo.

More elaborate poems treating this same theme disclose, however, that the trespasser is pledged in love, both spiritually and physically, to the owner of the orchard. Accordingly, the lonely prioress in one well-known traditional song exacts a physical "prenda" from a bold caballero, caught stealing lemons from the convent orchard:

—Gentil caballero,

dedesme hora un beso,
siquiera por el daño
que me habéis hecho.

Venía el caballero,
venía de Sevilla,
en huerto de monjas
limones cogía,
y la prioresa
prendas le pedía:
—Siquiera por el daño
que me habéis hecho.

The prioress' request is, in a sense, symbolically restated in a third folk song embroidering on the "huerto ajeno" theme. Here the physical nature of the trespasser's obligatory love pledge is succinctly set forth, for the prenda demanded is a "camisa", the most intimate article of apparel worn "a rayz de las carnes". If the thieving lady of the following folk song surrenders the camisa, as the proprietor of the orchard insists, she surrenders herself, since in the logic of folk magic the gift of a camisa (or of any similarly personal garment) represents simultaneously the promise and fulfillment of sexual love:

—Que no me desnudéis,
amores de mi vida,
que no me desnudéis,
que yo me iré en camisa.
—Entrastes, mi señora.
en el huerto ajeno,
cogiste tres pericas
del peral en medio:
dejáredes la prenda
de un amor verdadero.
—Que no me desnudéis,
que yo me iré en camisa.

In the Razón de amor, the poet-protagonist's entrance into the orchard of another retains several elements essential in the folkloric treatment of the theme. Spiritual commitment to the beloved is emphasized by the poet's careful enumeration of love tokens which, exchanged by the lovers from afar, help them to recognize each other when at last they meet in the orchard:

Yo connoçi luego las alfayas,
que yo ie las auia enbiadas;
ela connoçio una mi ci[n]ta man a mano
qu'ela la fiziera con la su mano.

The simultaneous pledging of love, implicit in the lemon-or pear-picking of folk song, is echoed in the Razón by the trespassing escolar's sampling of the flowers which adorn the verdant orchard in which he rests:

En mi mano prys una flor,
sabet non toda la peyor;
e quis cantar de fin amor.
Mas ui uenir una doncela;
pues naçi, non ui tan bella.

Significantly, the arrival of the poet's beloved in the Razón de amor coincides with this "theft". It is as if she appears to exact payment for the "crime"; the pledge formalized by the exchange of love tokens has finally come due.

The poet's worldless pledge of love, suggested by the foray into the orchard, is matched by the symbolic offering of wine also introduced in the opening verses. Having entered the orchard to rest, the poet notes the presence of a silver vessel in the treetops. As he knowingly describes its contents and its purpose, it seems from the first to be destined for him:

Entre çimas d'un mançanar
un uaso de plata ui estar;
pleno era d'un claro uino
que era uermeio e fino;
cubierto era de tal mesura
no lo tocas la calentura.
Vna duena lo y eua puesto,
que era senora del uerto,
que quan su amigo uiniese,
d'a quel uino a beuer le disse.

A subtle parallelism establishes the single identity of the "dueña", proprietress of the orchard and donor of the wine, and the "doncella", beloved of the poet. Both dueña and doncella await the advent of a distant lover; both, more importantly, demonstrate a cautious awareness of the potentially harmful midday heat. The dueña carefully covers her gift of wine so that "no lo tocas la calentura", while the doncella, we later learn, avails herself of a hat "que nol fiziese mal la siesta". With the detail of the hat—unique in an otherwise stereotyped medieval description of feminine beauty—the poet turns the reader back to his earlier, similarly unusual presentation of the vessel of wine. The two ladies are fused into one. The poet emerges unquestionably as the "amigo" (as he is later addressed by his lover) for whom the wine has been set out, and the dueña-doncella, through her gift of wine, pledges herself to the poet, as he had promised himself to her upon entering the ochard.

Like the intrusion into a "huerto ajeno" and the commitment of love which it demands, the choice of wine as a "prenda de amor verdadero" is best explained by verses from the folkloric tradition. A universal referent for passion, wine appears in the emotion-charged verses of more than one kharja to represent love's comforts, both spiritual and physical. In one of these brief Mozarabic lyrics, a frantic young woman cries out for the tonic of an absent amigo's love:

Y MAMMÀ, ŠI NO LĒŠA L-ȲINNA

      ALTESA, MORRÉY.
TRAÝDE JAMRI MIN AL-HĀYIB:
      ASÀ SANARÉY.

The maiden's offer of wine in the Razón is poetically quite similar to the desperate plea expressed in the kharja. Both poems associate a gift of wine with the arrival of a distant lover and with the satisfying effects of his love. Both emphasize, moreover, the marvellous healing power of the wine. To the young woman of the kharja, it represents not only relief but also salvation from the madness to which unfulfilled passion drives her. To our poet it offers a foolproof safeguard against the emotional suffering involved in loving from afar. The wine, like the end of absence, promises health and contentment:

Qui de tal uino ouiesse
en la mana quan comiesse:
e dello ouiesse cada dia,
nu[n]cas mas enfermarya.

The sensuous nature of this soothing wine of love, expressed implicitly in the concise kharja, is emphatically suggested in the Razón by the strange, lofty position of the silver goblet in the treetop. Like the unique detail of the doncella's hat, the high perch designated for the love offering is unprecedented in sophisticated medieval lyric. Folk song, however, commonly associates love and lovemaking with treetops or other high places and with the act of climbing up to them. Often these songs are exceedingly brief; as in the Razón de amor the association is matter-of-factly set forth, but never explained:

Por encima de la oliva
Mírame el Amor, mira.

At times, however, the identification of treetops and sexual activity is euphemistically betrayed, as in the following song's use of the verb luchar:

Arribica, arribica
de un verde sauze,
luchaba la niña
con su adorante.

Closely related traditional-type songs hesitatingly spell out the euphemism, linking the elevated meeting place to the sexual act itself, and enhancing, by extension, the erotic connotations of the vessel of wine in the Razón. In the following verses the rather graphic symbolism of "los caños [que] corren agua", flooding the fragrant "toronjil", combines with the calculated ambiguity of certain key phrases to produce a highly imaginative and suggestive song:

La sierra es alta
y áspera de sobir;
los caños corren agua
y dan en el toronjil.

Madre, la mi madre,
de cuerpo atán garrido,
por aquella sierra,
de aquel lomo erguido,
iba una mañana
el mi lindo amigo;
llaméle con mi toca
y con mis dedos cinco.
Los caños corren agua
y dan en el toronjil.

The success of this poem depends upon the reader's (or listener's) familiarity with poetic tradition, which clarifies the song's grammatically unclear antecedents: "el mi lindo amigo", more than the rightfully suspicious "madre", is the one praised for his "cuerpo atán garrido". The reference to "aquel lomo erguido" is similarly ambiguous; it is topographical and sexual as well. The entire poem is simultaneously a description of the lovers' elevated trysting place and of the love-making carried out there.

In light of popular tradition, the lofty perch chosen by the Razón's damsel for her passionate offering of wine accentuates her desire not only to meet her lover from afar but also to know him in the carnal sense. As the Razón de amor begins, symbolic gestures of yearning, commitment, and love have been made by both the damsel and the trespassing poet. The satisfying realization of desire is, however, postponed until the two lovers actually meet. A mood of anxious anticipation, of rapidly growing desire and its attendant frustration, is established and maintained by the poet's constant references to the all-pervasive, metaphorical heat of "la siesta", which threatens to spoil the gift of fine wine, prompts the damsel to don a hat, and forces the escolar to recline on the grass and peel off some clothing:

Sobre un prado pusmi tiesta,
que nom fizies mal la siesta;
parti de mi las uistiduras,
que nom fizies mal la calentura.

Relief, however, is at hand. To the heat-ravaged vessel of wine suspended from the branches, the poet counterposes another goblet, filled with cooling water:

Ariba del mançanar
otro uaso ui estar;
pleno era d'un agua fryda

que en el mançanar se naçia.

After the rather elaborate description of the vessel of wine, this introduction of the second vessel seems disturbingly concise: The poet neither discloses the material of which the goblet is made nor comments upon the purpose of the vessel and its contents. The deliberate construction of parallels pervading the poem is lacking here, and this apparent poetic imbalance focuses attention on the mysterious container of water.

The water occupies a higher position in the tree—"Ariba del mançcanar"—than the vessel of wine, indicating its participation, to perhaps an even greater degree, in the erotic connotations traditionally associated with a lofty trysting place. The fact that the poet neglects both to mention the purpose of this second vessel and to name the person responsible for its suspension in the tree suggests that the goblet of water, although essentially similar to that of wine, is somehow symbolically different. The omission of significant details in the presentation of the water and the poetic tension maintained between the two precariously-balanced goblets imply that the container of water represents some sort of constant vis-à-vis that of wine, placed in the tree by the proprietress of the orchard for a specific purpose. It is the goal to which the lovers aspire, a physical embodiment of the satisfaction and fulfillment sought by both the escolar and his beloved, eager to meet one another after a lengthy love from afar.

The tense relationship between desire and fulfillment, introduced by the two vessels, is emphasized by the poet's insistent counterposition of heat and cold. The passionate, almost painful yearning suggested by the all-consuming noonday heat and by the symbolic offering of wine is balanced by the promise of coolness proffered by the water in the second vessel, drawn from an uncannily cold spring "que en el mançcanar se nacia". The poet's description of the spring is elaborate. As he approaches the "fuente perenal" he is at once impressed by its seductive, nearly magical qualities, by its triple promise of relief from the heat, of sensual pleasure, and of a new kind of life:

Plegem a una fuente p(er)erenal,
nu[n]ca fue omne que uies tall;
tan grant uirtud en si auia,
que de la fry dor que d'i yxia,
cient pasadas adeRedor
non sintryades la calor.

Todas yeruas que bien olien
la fuent çerca si las tenie:
y es la saluia, y sson as Rosas
y el liryo e las uiolas;
otras tantas yeruas y auia
que sol no[m]bra no las sabria;
mas ell olor que d'i yxia
a omne muerto Ressuçitarya.

Appearing in a verdant setting, the "fuente perenal" vividly recalls the folkloric fuente or baños de amor, the lovers' favorite trysting place in traditional lyric of the Middle Ages. As it appears in the sophisticated Razón de amor, the spring is a magical reservoir of "renovación" and "fecundidad", the two most salient characteristics of the folkloric fuente de amor. From the fertile ground nourished by its waters sprout countless lovely flowers, whose miraculous powers are worthy of note. Their fragrance alone, the poet points out, is apt to raise the dead, to renew life or re-create it, much as the spring or baño of folk song is able to convert empty existences into amorous adventures marked, as in the following song, by love's sweet suffering:

Enviárame mi madre
por agua a la fonte fría:
vengo del amor ferida.

or, more often, by the physical pleasures of love, represented by the common bathing in the following song. Here lovemaking is as simple and elemental as the straightforward poetic style used to described the mutual face-washing of "la niñna y el doncel":

En la fuente del rosel,
lavan la niñna y el doncel.

En la fuente de agua clara.
con sus manos lavan la cara.
Él a ella y ella a él
lavan la niña y el doncel.

When protestations are heard, they concern the qué dirán of the spectators (chanting the choral glosa, as in the following song), without ever questioning the widely and tacitly accepted symbolism of the erotic fuente or baños:

Caballero, queráisme dejar,
   que me dirán mal.
¡Oh, qué mañanica, mañana,
la mañana de San Juan,
cuando la niña y el caballero
ambos se iban a bañar!
   Que me diŕan mal.
Caballero, queráisme dejar,
   que me dirán mal.

It is as Gonzalo de Correas notes in a discussion of traditional merrymaking on the feast of Saint John. These Christianized rites of spring, he remarks, are characterized by three symbolic customs: "Bañar-se, coger hierbas y enramar las puertas", and the symbolic connotations of the baños are especially well-known: "La que del baño viene, bien sabe lo que quiere. Juntarse con el varńn".

Like the spring in folk song, the "fuente perenal" of the Razón unifies: Its waters mysteriously join the escolar and the doncella together, nurturing their love and forming unbreakable bonds between them. The poet's discovery of the fuente is, in fact, a significant turningpoint in the action of the Razón de amor. He takes a sip of cooling water from the spring, plucks a nearby flower, and prepares to sing of love. These sequential, almost ritualistic actions seem to have a magical effect. It is as if the poet's draught of spring water were a kind of love potion. As he sips the cooling liquid, he is temporarily released from the torturous effects of the heat ("Prys del agua un bocado / e fuy todo esfryado"). The drink of water (like the flower-picking) serves as a symbolic prelude to the fulfillment of desire, for just as he finishes drinking and prepares to sing of love, the lady he has worshipped from afar appears. The erotic promise of the fuente of the love tokens earlier exchanged, and of the lofty vessels of wine and water can now be realized in the long-awaited consummation of their love.

As in popular bathing songs, in the Razón the consummation is not forthrightly described. The details of the amorous encounter are merely suggested and the reader (or listener), with his knowledge of poetic tradition, is called upon to participate in the creative process by making good their absence. In the Razón de amor the poet and his beloved first "come together" beneath an olive tree ("junniemos amos en par / e posamos so ell oliuar"). They speak of love. Their physical activity is tastefully presented as the poet proudly describes his lady's caresses:

Tolios el manto de los o[n]bros,
besome la boca e por los oios;
tan gran sabor de mi auia,
sol fablar non me podia.

It is the lady who summarizes the joyous encounter in a traditional-type cantiga de amigo giving thanks for the pleasure of at last knowing her love:

"Dios senor, a ti loa[do]
quant conozco meu amado!
agora e tod bien [comigo]
quant conozco meo amigo!"

The sensuous tone of this understated love scene stems, in part, from the poet's learned recollection of several erotic commonplaces of traditional song, brought together in anticipation of the lovers' meeting. Their physical encounter is foreshadowed by the constellation of symbolic settings, objects, and gestures with which the poem begins, and is carefully rounded out by the concluding episode of the work—again reminiscent of folk tradition—involving the white dove.

After making love, the poet's beloved departs abruptly from the orchard. Her presence is, however, immediately replaced by that of a white dove, poetically associated with the lovers in several ways. The torments of the heat endured by the poet and his friend are similarly suffered by the dove, which seems to enter the orchard seeking a cooling place to bathe. When the bird finally finds relief, splashing clumsily in the vessel of water, it is described in terms nearly identical to those previously applied to the poet, soothed by his draught of water from the spring. The dove, "quando en el uaso fue entrada/… fue toda bien esfryada". Like the poet, the dove tests all possible sources of relief from the heat before partaking of one: It goes first to bathe in the "fuente perenal" but settles finally in the goblet, as the poet earlier considers a drink from the vessel ("Beuiera d'ela de grado, / mas oui miedo que era encantado"), but sips instead from the spring. Parallelism suggests an intimate relationship between poet and bird.

More significant, however, is the parallelistic association of the dove and the paramour which establishes a symbolic identification between the two and sheds light upon the concluding scene of the Razón. This identification is evoked through the remarkably similar poetic circumstances and events which accompany the sojourns in the orchard of both the maiden and the dove. Both the maiden's approach and the dove's advent are immediately preceded in the text by the poet's two curious references to an "omne muerto", soon to be restored to life. The poet's initial mention of the fragrance of the orchard flowers, which "a omne muerto Ressuçitarya", anticipates his first, vital experience with his beloved. His second apparently casual allusion to death occurs immediately prior to the arrival of the dove as the poet refers specifically to himself, disconsolate, emotionally deceased after the departure of his beloved:

La mia senor se ua priuado,
dexa a mi desconortado.
Q[ue]que la ui fuera del uerto,
por (por) poco non fuy muerto.

This second, well-placed reference to death is designed to turn the reader carefully back to the verses leading up to the arrival of the maiden, since the sequence of events involving the introduction, description, and actions of the dove nearly duplicates that presented with regard to the maiden.

Both the damsel and the bird intrude suddenly upon the poet's solitude, and each causes an abrupt change in his announced plans. The maiden's presence thwarts the lovesick poet's desire to sing ("… quis cantar de fin amor. / Mas ui uenir una doncela"), while the entrance of the dove disrupts his preparations to sleep ("Por uerdat quisieram adormir, / mas una palomela ui"). The poet reacts in like manner to these pleasant intrusions upon his aloneness: Seeing the doncella, he pours forth a detailed praise of her beauty; observing the dove, he comments upon the extraordinary whiteness of the bird, upon whose foot a small golden bell emerges. The poet then interacts with both the maiden and the dove. From a nearby hiding place he overhears the maiden's song of love and absence, and decides to surprise her as she sings:

Quant la mia senor esto dizia,
sabet, a mi non uidia;
pero se que no me conoçia,
que de mi non foyrya.
Yo non fiz aqui como uilano,
leuem e pris la por la mano;
junniemos amos en par
e posamos so el oliuar.

His action leads to the scene beneath the olive tree in which their love is consummated and their formal recognition of one another takes place.

The poet's interaction with the dove follows a similar pattern. He spots the bird, then startles it with his unexpected presence. The enigmatic scene above the apple (pomegranate) tree ensues:

[La paloma] uolando uiene por medio del uerto,
(en la funte quiso entra
mas quando a mi uido estar
e[n]tros en la del malgranar).…
ela que quiso ex[ir] festino,
uertios al agua sobr '1 uino!

The dove's spilling of the water into the wine above the apple tree is the high point of the episode involving the poet and the bird, as the earlier interlude beneath the olive tree is the culmination of events involving the poet and his beloved doncella. In each case it is the poet who makes the first move; it is his unexpected visitor whose actions round out the scene. The dove upsets the goblet of water; the maiden makes joyful love to the poet. Through another parallelistic configuration (similar to that revealing the single identity of dueña and doncella), the poet's beloved assumes the symbolic identity of the dove.

This careful and deliberate association of the maiden and the dove recalls the common thematic tradition of the folk known as la caza de amor in which the beloved most often takes the form of a bird. The learned poet's reminiscence of this thematic tradition in the Razón de amor is an effective complement to his earlier sophisticated variations on other well-known, essentially folkloric themes, since in poems dealing with la caza de amor the lover assumes the role of a predator or hunter whose pursuit of his prey promises not only spiritual but also physical rewards. The garza stalked in a familiar estribillo glossed by Gil Vicente clearly and succinctly emblematizes the woman in love. She is characterized in human terms, an "enamorada", wounded "en el alma" by what might anachronistically (and euphemistically) be described as a "Freudian" arrow of love:

Mal ferida va la garza
  enamorada;

A las orillas de un río
la garza tenía el nido,
ballestero la ha herido
   en el alma.
Sola va y gritos daba.

In the epico-lyrical works of the Romancero viejo, the sexual dynamism of the hunt, poeticized in Gil Vicente's song and alluded to in the Razón, is often forth-rightly expressed. In the ballad of Conde Claros, for example, the rôle of the predator is assigned to the Count, whose aggressiveness makes him resemble "un gavilán". He is in love with Claraniña, and asks, as the ballad begins, her sexual favors if only for a night. When Claraniña demurs, the Count attempts to strengthen his demand with a threatening appeal to the terminology of the hunt:

"Bien sabedes vos, señora,
que soy cazador real;
caza que tengo en la mano
nunca la puedo dejar".

He is the hunter. She is his prey. The success of the chase depends upon her physical surrender. In the ballad, hunting imagery prefigures the graphic presentation of lovemaking which takes place between the two:

Tomárala por la mano,
para un vergel se van;…
de la cintura arriba
tan dulces besos se dan,
de la cintura abajo
como hombre y mujer se han.

Like Claraniña and other symbolic prey of the traditional caza de amor, the damsel of the Razón de amor has long eluded the poet; she has constantly motivated his hunt for both spiritual and physical fulfillment, a hunt which has led him at last to the luxuriant orchard of the Razón. This poetic kinship of the damsel-turned-dove and the many victims of the folkloric hunt, at first parallelistically suggested, is fully developed in the final verses of the poem under study. Here the poet discloses the success of his love-hunt through his significant description of the dove which bears "un cascauielo dorado/… al pie atado". Commonly employed to protect a bird from hunters or predators, the bell attests to the dove's domesticity. She has been hunted, ensnared, tamed; she belongs to someone. It is with good reason that the poet only alludes to the hunt and capture of the symbolic dove in the episode involving the bird: The caza de amor has ended triumphantly earlier in the poem as the poet wins the heart of his beloved maiden, not yet transformed into her symbolic counterpart, the dove.

When the dove enters the orchard, immediately after the damsel's departure, it is as if the recent love scene begins anew in the mind of the drowsing poet. Weary from emotion, the poet envisions his lady as a tame white dove, reënacting their joyful moments together with the symbolic spilling of the water into the wine. The dove's rearrangement, high in the tree, of the erotically-charged vessels of water and wine corresponds to the consummation of love which took place under the tree; the previously unattainable water of satisfaction is mixed with the wine of desire. The constant poetic tension between wine and water, heat and cold is at last relaxed, as the dove's action brings together the numerous recollections of folk song evident in the Razón de amor to conclude this poem "made of love" with a brilliant summary of all that has gone before.

Besides providing a fitting resolution to the quest for and discovery of love central to the Razón, the dove's spilling of the water into the wine brings to mind once more the popular verses of "No pueden dormir mis ojos", with dreamlike atmosphere and enigmatic symbols strangely like those of the Razón de amor. Presenting the restless, image-ridden sleep of a young girl, the folk poem sets forth in the glosa the dreamer's vision of a fresh, new rose, following it at once with a second, inseparable vision of the mysteriously placed wine and water:

Y soñaba yo, mi madre,
dos horas antes del día
que me florecia la rosa:
ell vino so ell agua frida.

With her description of the rose (a common folk symbol associated with all aspects of lovemaking) as bursting into bloom, the girl seemingly alludes to herself, to her blossoming womanhood, and to the first awakening to the pleasure of love which such an experience brings.

Inextricably bound to her representation of awakening womanhood as a flowering rose is her hazy vision of "ell vino so ell agua frida". Well-known folk symbols whose persistence is essential to the sophisticated development of the Razón, the counterposed wine and water are central to the wholly popular "No pueden dormir mis ojos", tensely placed one above the other to constitute yet another dreamlike representation of love's first stirrings within the young woman. Like the damsel of the Razón de amor who reveals her unsatisfied longing by placing a silver goblet of wine in the treetops, the restless peasant girl of the folk song is haunted by love's nascent desires, which have taken the form of wine in her semi-conscious mind. This wine is somehow separated from the higher-placed water, emblematic of the satisfaction sought by the young dreamer as she longs to make a first encounter with love. Although the tension which exists between the wine and the water of "No pueden dormir mis ojos" is never relaxed, the adolescent girl's dream vision, her unspoken, subconscious desire for love, is identical to the passionate and hopeful yearning of both the poet and his beloved in the Razón de amor.

With its symbolic expression of a passionate longing similar to that presented in the Razón, the folk poem, "No pueden dormir mis ojos", emerges as a vital link in the chain connecting the sophisticated medieval lyric to the spontaneity and charm of the popular tradition. Joined also to the folk tradition by its popular lyrical nucleus, as identified by Cárdenas, and by its insistent recollection of traditional folk song, the Razón is of special importance as the first known cultured lyric of the Castilian language. Marking the very beginnings of a genre which did not come into its own until well on into the fifteenth century, the poem demonstrates its early cultured author's inescapable dependence upon the popular tradition, the first cause of all Peninsular verse. More, then, than a curious work mingling traditional-type cantigas de amigo with the tenets of courtly love, the Razón de amor is a complex and sophisticated piece whose verses point to the popular origins of all lyric. Its many erudite reminiscences of both themes and images well-known to the folk not only clarify and enhance the learned contexts in which they appear but also bear witness to the virtual inseparability of the popular and culto traditions in the early days when artistic lyric was born.