Page "Cantar de Mio Cid" Paragraph 1

The Spanish medievalist Ramón Menéndez Pidal included the " Cantar de Mío Cid " in the popular tradition he termed the mester de juglaría.

Mester de juglaría refers to the medieval tradition according to which popular poems were passed down from generation to generation, being changed in the process.

These poems were meant to be performed in public by minstrels ( or juglares ), who each performed the traditional composition differently according to the performance context — sometimes adding their own twists to the epic poems they told, or abbreviating it according to the situation.