The Bible in Spain Volume I Part 33

Philip II. granted certain privileges to the students in 1590. The number of students at the present day is about 45.

{296b} The _Celegio de Escoceses_ was founded only in 1790.

{298} _I.e._ uncontaminated with the black blood of Moorish or Jewish converts; possibly also referring to the use of "New Castilian" for "Gitano." See _The Zincali_, part i. chap. i.

{299} _Temp_. Elizabeth and James I.

{300a} Celebrated also for the great victory of Ferdinand of Aragon over Alfonso the African of Portugal (February, 1476), by which the succession of Isabella to the crown of Castile was a.s.sured, and the pretension of her niece _Juana la Beltraneja_ for ever put an end to.

{300b} _Alcayde_, the Arabic governor of a castle, or fortress, is commonly used in modern Spanish for a jailer, a governor of a prison; the somewhat similar word, _alcalde_, also an Arabic word, meant, and still means, the mayor of a town.

{303} It was at Duenas that Ferdinand and Isabella held their little court immediately after their marriage in October, 1469.

{304a} Government requisition. See _ante_, p. 261.

{304b} The officers, no doubt, of the Spanish Legion and Contingent.

See Introduction.

{304c} "Hold hard, you gypsy fellows! you forget that you are soldiers, and no longer swapping horses in a fair."

{305a} See note on p. 120.

{305b} That is, gold _onzas_.

{309a} The Roman Pallantia; the seat of the first university in Castile, transferred in 1239 to the more celebrated city of Salamanca.

{309b} The cathedral was commenced in 1321, and finished about two hundred years later. As it now stands, the exterior is unsatisfactory; the interior is most picturesque, and full of remarkable monuments, including the tomb of the wicked Queen Urraca, who died in 1126.

{310a} These "paintings of Murillo" are imaginary. There are some good pictures now in the _Sala capitular_-one by Ribera, one by Zurbaran, and a third by Mateo Cerezo. The paintings in the church itself are unimportant, and are rather German than Spanish in character.

{310b} The Sierra de Oca, to the east of Burgos, about sixty miles as the crow flies to the north-east of Palencia.

{311} Possibly Cisneros or Calzada. Sahagun, which lies just halfway between Palencia and Leon on the high-road, is rather a small town than a large village, and, though shorn of all its former splendour, would have afforded the travellers better quarters.

{312} See Introduction.

{313} A familiar Spanish locution-of which the meaning is sufficiently obvious-derived originally, no doubt, from the game of chess, a game of oriental origin, and no doubt introduced into Spain by the Arabs. Roque is the rook or castle; Rey, of course, the king.

{315} The name of Leon has nothing to do with lions, but is a corruption of _legionis_, or the city of the 7th Legion, quartered here by Augustus to defend the Cantabrian frontier. The city is full of historic interest, and bears the records of the conquerors of many ages and nations.

The cathedral referred to by Borrow was finished about 1300, after having been at least a hundred years a-building, and is in the early pointed style of what we call Gothic, but the Spaniards Tudesque. The west front and the painted gla.s.s windows in the aisles are of unrivalled beauty.

The church of San Isidoro, with the tombs of that great metropolitan and of Alfonso el Batallador, of inferior aesthetic interest, is even more attractive to the antiquary.

{318} Astorga is an old Roman town, _Asturica Augusta_, established after the Cantabrian war (B.C. 25), when the southern _Astures_ first became subject to Rome. But a far more ancient origin is claimed for the city, which was traditionally founded by _Astur_, the son of Memnon (see Silius Italicus, iii. 334; Martial, xiv. 199). The surrounding country of the _Astures_ was celebrated at once for the riches of its gold-mines and for its breed of horses, whence the Latin _Asturco_ (see Petron., _Sat._, 86, and Seneca, _Ep._, 87; Pliny, viii. 42, s. 67).

{319} Borrow has it Coruna, but it should be either La Coruna, if written in Spanish, or Corunna, if written in English. Our ancestors, who had good reason to know the place, called it The Groyne, but it would be pedantic to so call it now.

{321} The origin of the Maragatos has never been ascertained. Some consider them to be a remnant of the Celtiberians, others of the Visigoths; most, however, prefer a Bedouin or caravan descent. It is in vain to question these ignorant carriers as to their history or origin, for, like the gypsies, they have no traditions and know nothing.

_Arrieros_, at all events, they are, and that word, in common with so many others relating to the barb and carrier-caravan craft, is Arabic, and proves whence the system and science were derived by Spaniards.

Where George Borrow and Richard Ford are so uncertain, it is a.s.suredly unbecoming to dogmatize. Mariana (vol. i. lib. vii. cap. 7), speaking of King Mauregato, who is supposed, as much from his name as from anything else, to have been an illegitimate son of Alfonso I. by a _Moorish_ lady, seeks to trace the origin of the Maragatos as being more especially the subjects of Mauregato, but it is rather an extravagant fancy than an explanation.

Monsieur Francisque Michel, in his _Races Maudites de la France et de l'Espagne_ (Paris, 1847), has nothing to say of these Maragatos, though he notices (ii. 4144) a smaller tribe, the _Vaqueros_, of the neighbouring Asturias, whose origin is also enveloped in mystery. See De Rochas, _Les Parias de France et l'Espagne_, p. 120. [The _Cagots_ were also found in northwest Spain as well as in France, but not, as far as we know, to the west of Guipuzcoa. For an account of these Cagots and the various etymologies that have been suggested for their names, see De Rochas and F. Michel, _ubi supra_, tom. i. ch. i.]

{322} A transliteration of the old Spanish _Barrete_, an old kind of helmet, then, generally, a cap.

{323} A mute is the offspring of a stallion and a she-a.s.s, a mule of a jacka.s.s and a mare.

{324a} Founded in 1471, on the site of one more ancient.

{324b} The name of this celebrated _arriero_ was Pedro Mato; the statue is of wood.

{327a} The word _Gog_ is not Hebrew, and, according to Renan and Kuobel (_Volkert_, p. 63), is "mountain," and Magog is "great mountain."

_Maha_, Sanskrit, and _Koh_ or _Goh_, Persian. The legends concerning Gog and Magog are very numerous, and extend over many parts of Europe, Asia, and even Africa.

{327b} "The place of the apples."

{329} _Caballero_. As a mode of address in common life, equivalent merely to _sir_.

{331a} A Galician or Portuguese, but not a Spanish word, usually spelt _corco_. The Spanish equivalent is _ciervo_.

{331b} There is a delightful translation of Theocritus, who by the way described the scenery of Sicily rather than of Greece, into English verse by C. S. Calverley, published in 1869.

{333} Bembibre lies on the southern confines of the district of El Vierzo, one of the most interesting and least explored parts of the Peninsula, the Switzerland of Leon, a district of Alpine pa.s.ses, trout streams, pleasant meadows, and groves of chestnuts and walnuts.

Bembibre, pop. 500, lies with its old castle on the trout-streams Noceda and Boeza, amid green meadows, gardens, and vineyards, whose wines were far more fatal to Moore's soldiers than the French sabres. So much for Bembibre-_bene bibere_. Ponferrada (_Interamnium Flavium_), which is not entered, rises to the left on the confluence of the Sil and Boeza. The bridge (_Pons-ferrata_) was built in the eleventh century, for the pa.s.sage of pilgrims to Compostella, who took the direct route along the Sil by Val de Orras and Orense. The town afterwards belonged to the Templars, and was protected by the miraculous image of the Virgin, which was found in an oak, and hence is called _Nuestra Senora de la Encina_; it is still the Patroness of the Vierzo (Murray's _Handbook of Spain_, 1st edit. p. 595).

The Vierzo extends about 10 leagues east and west by 8 north and south.

This amphitheatre is shut out from the world by lofty snow-capped mountains, raised, as it were, by the hand of some genii to enclose a simple valley of Ra.s.selas. The great Asturian chain slopes from Leitariegos to the south-west, parting into two offshoots; that of El Puerto de Raba.n.a.l, and Fuencebadon (_Fons Sabatonis_) const.i.tute the east barrier, and the other, running by the Puertos de Cebrero and Aguiar, forms the frontier; while to the south the chains of the Sierras de Segundera, Sanabria, and Cabrera complete the base of the triangle. Thus hemmed in by a natural circ.u.mvallation, the concavity must be descended into from whatever side it be approached; this crater, no doubt, was once a large lake, the waters of which have burst a way out, pa.s.sing through the narrow gorge of the Sil by Val de Orras, just as the Elbe forms the only spout or outlet to hill-walled-in Bohemia, the _kettle-land_ of Germany (_Ibid._, p. 597).

{337a} Rendered by Borrow _rabble_; the French _canaille_; Ital.

_canaglia_, a pack of dogs-_canes_.

{337b} Known as Villafranca del Vierzo; said to have been one of the princ.i.p.al halting-places of the French pilgrims to Santiago, hence _Villa Francorum_; in any case, the abode of an important colony of monks from the French abbey of Cluny. See Burke's _History of Spain_, vol. ii. p.

69, and App. II.

{340} Query _Guerrilleros_ (see Glossary). These _Miguelets_ were originally the partisans or followers of the Infante Don Miguel, the absolutist leader in the dreary civil war which ravaged Portugal from 18231834. It was their custom to escape into Spain when attacked by the Const.i.tutional forces in Portugal, and nothing but Mr. Canning's bold action in sending an English army to Lisbon in December, 1826, prevented their being utilized by both Spain and France for the overthrow of Queen Maria in Portugal (see Alison, _History of Europe_, vol. iv. ch. xxi. s.

50). But as "Miguelets," part refugees, part rebels, part brigands, these bands of military ruffians were the terror of the frontier districts of Spain and Portugal for many years after the conclusion of the civil war in Portugal.

{341} _Don Quixote_, part ii. chap. ix.

{347} _Senhor_ is the Portuguese or Galician form. Borrow has now crossed the frontier.

{351} It is possibly an older language than either. It resembles rather the Portuguese than the Spanish, and is of great interest in many ways.

The great religious poem of Alfonso X., _Los Loores y Milagros de Nuestra Senora_, written between 1263 and 1284, when the national language was hardly formed, was written in Galician, though from the beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century little attention was paid to the literary language. Within the last few years a species of provincial revival has taken place, and the following works among others have been published in and about the language of Galicia: (1) D. Juan Saco Arce, _Gramatica Gallega_ (Lugo, 1868), with an appendix of proverbs and popular songs; (2) Fernandez y Morales, _Ensayos poeticos_, edited by Don Mariano Cubi y Soler; (3) A. G. Besada, _Historia critica de la literatura gallega_ (La Coruna, 1887); the works of Manuel Murgina, also published at La Coruna; Don Juan Cuveiro Pinol's _Diccionario Gallego_ and _El habla_, both published at Barcelona in 1876; and, best of all, Don Manuel Nunez Valladares' _Diccionario Gallego-Castillano_ (Santiago, 1884).

{353} "I believe it!"

{359} This is a curious blunder. _Lucus Augusti_ was not only never capital of Roman Spain, but the capital only of _Northern Gallaecia_, or Galicia; as _Bracara Augusta_, or Braga, was the chief town and seat of a _Conventus Juridicus_ of southern Galicia, the Minho being the boundary of the northern and southern divisions of the province.