El sombrero de tres picos

409), Alarcón in his preface acknowledges his indebtedness. The other ballad seems from language and form to be younger; the content of the two is almost identical. It is not my purpose in the present place to enlarge on Bonilla's article, though I suspect that the theme in its cruder forms is considerably older than Boccaccio; he has given us all that served as the first-hand sources of our story, and more, and he seems to me beyond any doubt to be in the right in holding that the differences to be noted between these sources and the novel are Alarcón's own, not the product of some other model, to him (Bonilla) unknown. To my mind this conclusion [p. xiv] should be more strongly put. In his preface Alarcón tells us where he found the story, and makes direct reference to the Durán Romancero; had he had another, more strictly decorous, version at hand, one in short better suited to his need, he had surely mentioned it. Bonilla seems to me to take far too seriously the clos