An interesting analogue (A. D. 1067) occurs in The «Carmen de Hastingae proelio» of Guy, Bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. Catherine Morion and Hope Muntz (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972): «Autumat insipiens uulgus se posse tueri / regali solo nomine, non opere. / In statuant regis puer est electus ab illis, / cuius presidium contulit exicium» (ll. 649-52). The editors translate «In statuam regis» as «the shadow of a king» (p. 43), but it is likely that the words should be rendered literally, as a reflection of the tradition that is used by the Fernán González poet and that is discussed by Flook. I hope to deal with this question elsewhere.

I make no claim to a complete coverage. For other possibilities, see e. g. Foster, pp. 45-59; Bluestine, p. 258 n. 28; Valladares Reguero, pp. 127-35; Ricardo Arias y Arias, El concepto del destino en la literatura medieval española (Madrid: Ínsula, 1970), pp. 144-63; and Connie L. Scarborough, «Characterization in the Poema de Fernán González: Portraits of the Hero and the Heroine», in Literary and Historical Perspectives of the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 1981 SEMA Meeting, edited by Patricia W. Cummins et al. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1982), pp. 52-65, at pp. 54-57.

«De la perspective poétique et du traitement de l'histoire dans le Poema de Fernán González», LNL, no. 222 (1977), 4-17, at 12.

The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927). Patrides says: «But it was one thing to denounce the cyclical view and another to evade its mazes» (p. 14).

The Great Code, pp. 192-93. Cf. Patrides, pp. 3-9.

I am grateful to Professor Claude Allaigre, Dr David Hook, Professor Aurelio Pérez Jiménez, and Srta Eugenia Ramos Fernández for supplying me with copies of elusive bibliographical material, to Ms Katharine Kearsey for a discussion that helped me to clarify my ideas on a number of points in this article, and to Dr Hook and Dr Barry Taylor for their close and constructive editorial scrutiny. Shortly before correcting proof of this article (written in 1988), I received, thanks to the kindness of Professor José Fradejas Lebrero, a copy of Poema de Fernán González: edición facsímil del manuscrito depositado en el Monasterio de El Escorial, edited by César Hernández Alonso (Burgos: Ayuntamiento, 1989). The excellent colour facsimile supersedes the black-and-white one mentioned in n. 2, above, and the volume contains important articles on various aspects of the Poema as well as a regularized transcription, with modern Spanish version, by José Manuel Ruiz Asencio. It is clearly indispensable for all future studies of the Poema. José Fradejas Lebrero, «Significado e intención del Poema de Fernán González», pp. 13-36, deals with a number of issues mentioned in the present article (for instance, he supports Menéndez Pidal's date of ca. 1255, but rejects San Pedro de Arlanza as the place of composition, arguing instead for a poet commissioned by Nuño González de Lara, a powerful noble of Alfonso X's court). As an example of Biblical influence on the poet, he argues convincingly (pp. 3233) for the Moors' attack on Tierra de Campos and Fernán González's reaction to it (st. 713-24) as a re-creation of David's reaction to the Amalekites' attack on Ziklag (Samuel 30), though without verbal borrowings.