As my translation does not aspire to scholarly accuracy, but rather attempts to achieve a certain aesthetic effect in English, I have thought it prudent to base it on Menéndez Pidal's recension. Pidal himself alludes to algunas variantes, posteriores a su redacción primitiva ... As preserved by the Sephardic Jews, this romance or ballad is one of adventure. In the unknown ship Arnaldos will meet his relatives and servants, who were looking for him; hence, the 'good luck' of the poem's opening.

Pidal says that all four ancient versions are incomplete. Later tamperings, he continues, 'heighten the marvellous element.' 'The suspension of interest and the mysterious negative of the sailor ... are foreign to the original version ... they were introduced in several later reworkings. The primitive ballad is a complete, unfantastic adventure of Prince Arnaldos ... Thus, being reworked in the imagination of many reciters, eliminating the uninteresting, adding something of good fortune, the ballad abandoned the area of ordinary adventure in order to move into the enchanted region of symbolism ...' (i.e. the description of the galley and of the supernatural power of the song). Pidal adheres to a MS of the 14th century (circa) when the ballad has settled and spread, gaining the stature of an obra maestra del Romancero ('a masterpiece of balladry').

The ballad, universally admired, has been subjected to many and varied interpretations, testimony of its rich suggestiveness. Is the ship of Prince Arnaldos the ship of death, the boatman Charon? Or, as has been suggested also, is the galley the Church, the sailor Peter or Christ, the spell the sleep of death, and the song of the poem's conclusion the blissful rejoicing of heavenly salvation? I merely raise these questions to advert to the ballad's textual richness, not to determine or even suggest answers.