El Cantar de Beotibar, ¿Un romance noticiero vasco?

Resumen

The fragment of the Cantar de Beotibar included by Garibay in his Compendio Historial (1571) bears witness to the existence of a Basque romance form, probably of Low Medieval origins and possessing metrical characteristics related to those of the Hispanic romance. This may be either because the Castilian romance brought about and independent romance form in the Basque Country (as postulated by Menendez Pelayo), or because both forms stemmed from a common metrical archetype: that which predominated in the Low Latin period in the hymns of the Roman militia. The "modernising" interpretation of the Song proposed by Garibay does not constitute, in principle, any proof against its antiquity; whilst that offered years later by Zaldibia, with greater
attention paid to the language of the old romance, is just as plausible as the former if not more so. If it turned out that the ·song was composed: in the years following the Battle of Beotibar (1321), then we would have before us one of the most ancient peninsular romances.