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6 The poem is composed of lines from several ballads that deal with the subject.

7 The name of one of the lakes is del Rey (“of the King”). All the lakes were the property of the crown except for two, which probably belonged to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

8 A line from the ballad about Lancelot that was cited in chapter XIII of the first part.

9 This is the Spanish version of the name Fugger, the well-known German family of bankers and merchants who were closely associated with Spain.

11 An allusion to the many travels of Pedro of Portugal. There is a traditional tendency to say that he traveled to the seven parts (partidas) of the world, rather than the more usual “four corners,” perhaps through confusion with the Siete Partidas, the treatise on laws compiled by Alfonso the Learned (1221–1284), king of Castilla and León.

12 A vara is a Spanish linear measurement (.84 meter).

1 The count of Lemos, to whom the second part of the novel is dedicated.

2 A variable Spanish poetic stanza of four to seven lines, its verses alternating between five and seven syllables.

3 The word means “miserliness” or “stinginess.”

1 This phrase (literally “what fish are we catching?” or “what are we up to, what are we doing?”) and others like it, as well as the Italian words spoken by the innkeeper, were introduced into Spain by soldiers returning from Italy.

2 A character in the novel Amadís of Gaul.

3 The phrase is based on John 10:38: “…though ye believe not me, believe the works.”

1 The line is taken from the Spanish translation of the Aeneidby Gregorio Hernández de Velasco, 1555.

3 These verses are from a poem on the subject by Miguel Sánchez.

4 The line is from one of the ballads about Gaiferos.

5 The lines are taken from a ballad by Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645), one of the most brilliant literary figures of the Spanish Golden Age.

6 A character in the lliad who was extremely old.

7 These lines are from one of the many ballads that deal with Don Rodrigo, the last Visigothic king of Spain, who lost the country to the Moors.

8 Mono is “monkey,” and mona is “female monkey.” Colloquially, it can also mean “drinking binge” or “hangover.” The Spanish reads, “…no para tomar el mono, sino la mona.”

1. A breed of small donkeys native to Sardinia.

2 The story is based on the cycle of ballads that deals with the struggle for power among the children of Fernando I, and the siege of Zamora, in the eleventh century.

3 The lines in the ballad read: “I challenge you, Zamorans / as false and lying traitors; / I challenge young and old, / I challenge the quick and the dead; / I challenge the plants in the field, / I challenge the river fishes, / I challenge your bread and meat, / and also your water and wine.”

5 Nicknames given to the residents of Vallodolid, Toledo, Madrid, and Sevilla, respectively.

1 As he has done before, an enraged Don Quixote addresses Sancho in more formal terms and does so throughout this paragraph.

2 Latin for “by the sign of the cross.”

3 In his anger with Sancho, Don Quixote returns to the more distant form of address, which he uses for the next few paragraphs, until he begins to laugh.

4 Latin for “the great sea” or “ocean.”

5 “There is no honey without gall” (No hay miel sin hiel), or “Nothing is perfect.”

1 This was a common belief in Cervantes’s time.

2 This phrase is based on the wordplay growing out of bestia, which can literally mean “animal” or “beast” as well as “dolt” or “dunce.”

1 Hunting with falcons or other birds of prey was a pastime of the upper classes exclusively.

3 This sentence seems to be a misprint in the first edition; Martín de Riquer indicates in a footnote that two other editors, Cortejón and Schevill, suggest, in his opinion correctly, that it read as follows:

“…there’s no more Sorrowful Face or Figure [there is an untranslatable