These guidelines are intended for students of the 4th year of the full-time department and the 5th year of the correspondence department . They offer for analysis in seminars on the history of the Spanish language a fragment from the work "Song of My Side", relating to the Spanish heroic epic, which makes it possible to get acquainted with the features of the Old Spanish language. The text is provided with a foreword, which outlines the main features of the Spanish language of the XII century and the analyzed fragment in particular, as well as comments and a dictionary. The purpose of the guidelines is to familiarize students with the authentic texts of the first known literary works in Spanish and develop skills in analyzing linguistic phenomena in diachrony.