Mayor Arias is the first woman to whom a poem can reliably be attributed in the history of Castilian literature. Her husband was Ruy González de Clavijo, who led an embassy to Timur (also known as Tamerlane); this mission involved an arduous journey, which took place from 1403 to 1406. The poem, beginning “¡Ay, mar brava, esquiva!” (“¡Oh, fierce, cruel, sea!”), is a lament by the unnamed wife of Ruy González de Clavijo on his departure as an ambassador to the court of Timur. The composition is patterned as a zéjel, with a refrain inspired by an old song, and has links to medieval Iberian lyric traditions, most notably the Galician-Portuguese cantigas de amigo and Castilian cancionero poetry. Although the authorship of Mayor Arias has been doubted, there are aspects of the poem, among them some details concerning family life, which make any alternative hypothesis highly implausible.