St. Iria’s legend spread from early mediaeval Portuguese sources, branching widely into the Spanish Romancero. In the Canary Isles the story survived till recent days. Within this deeply rooted insular tradition the diversity in the variants of the poem illustrates the process of literary oral transmission.
Two of these versions have been compared from narratological standpoints so as to determine for «Santa Iria» the authorial and temporal complexity characterizing the Romancero.