SHE language of the Spanish Romancero comSprises a number of distinctive features. These features include unusual tense/aspect manipulations, negative and conditional clause usages, ritual utterances, and recourse to languages Sother than Spanish. It is typically the verbal lo p manipulations of the romances that are given the most attention in the critical literature-perhaps because the alternations of preterite, present, and imperfect forms so characteristic of the romances viejos appear as the most obvious transgressions of the normative grammatical system of Spanish.1 The following selections from the romances show some of the forms so basic to the characteristic patterning of Romancero language.