The Bible in Spain. Volume 1 of 2

269

“I believe it!”

270

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.

Roman Spain was at no time a province, but included, from b. c. 205 to a. d. 325, many provinces, each with its own provincial capital. In the division of the Roman world by Constantine, Hispania first became an administrative unit as a diocese in the Prefecture of Gaul, with its capital at Hispalis or Seville, the residence of the Imperial Vicar (see Burke’s History of Spain, vol. i. pp. 31, 35, 36).

271

“Woe is me, O God!”

272

Combats with young bulls, usually by amateur fighters. Although the animals are immature, and the tips of their horns, moreover, sawn off to make the sport less dangerous, accidents are far more common than in the more serious corridas, where the professionals take no step without due deliberation and secundum artem. Novillo, of course, means only a young bull; but in common parlance in Spain los toros means necessarily a serious bull-fight, and los novillos an amateur exhibition.

273

See note on p. 340.

274

Span. anis (see Glossary).

275

An onza (see Glossary).

276

The real word, of which this is a modification, is Carajo– a word which, used as an adjective, represents the English “bloody,” and used as a substantive, something yet more gross. In decent society the first syllable is considered quite strong enough as an expletive, and, modified as Caramba, may even fall from fair lips.

277

At Seville Borrow seems to have been known as El brujo (v. p. 178).

278

On the north shore of this bay is built the town of El Ferrol (el farol = the lighthouse), daily growing in importance as the great naval arsenal of Spain.

279

More commonly written puchero = a glazed earthenware pot. But it is the contents rather than the pot that is usually signified, just as in the case of the olla, the round pot, whose savoury contents are spoken of throughout southern Spain as an olla, and in England as olla podrida.

280

Santiago de Compostella (see note on p. 193). As usual I preserve the author’s original spelling, though St. James is a purely fanciful name. The Holy Place is known in common Spanish parlance as Santiago, in classical English more usually as Compostella.

281

Probably Norwich.

282

See Wild Wales, chap. xxiv.

283

For the etymology of Guadalete, and many references to the river and to the battle that is said to have been fought on its banks between the invading Arabs and Roderic, “the last of the Goths,” see Burke’s History of Spain, vol. i. pp. 110, 111, and notes.

Borrow, in fact, followed almost exactly the line of the celebrated retreat of Sir John Moore, as may be seen by referring to the map. Moore, leaving the plain country, and provoked by the ignorant taunts of Frere to abandon his own plan of marching in safety south-west into Portugal, found himself on the 28th of December, 1808, at Benavente; on the 29th, at Astorga; on the 31st, at Villafranca del Vierzo; and thence, closely pressed day by day by the superior forces of Soult, he passed through Bembibre, Cacabelos, Herrerias, Nogales, to Lugo, whence, by way of Betanzos, he arrived on the 11th of January at Corunna. The horrors of that winter march over the frozen mountains will never fully be known; they are forgotten in the glorious, if bootless, victory on the sea-coast, and the heroic death of Moore. The most authoritative account of Sir John Moore’s retreat, and of the battle of Corunna, is to be found in the first volume of Napier’s Peninsular War; but the raciest is certainly that in the first edition of Murray’s Handbook of Spain, by Richard Ford.

284

A shepherd, we are told, watching his flock in a wild mountain district in Galicia, was astonished at the appearance of a supernatural light. The Bishop of Iria Flavia (Padron) was consulted. The place so divinely illuminated was carefully searched, and in a marble sarcophagus, the body of Saint James the Greater was revealed to the faithful investigators. The king, overjoyed at the discovery, at once erected upon the ground thus consecrated a church or chapel dedicated to the apostle – the forerunner of the noble cathedral of Santiago de Compostella, and from the first, the favourite resort of the pilgrims of Christian Europe. For it was not only a relic, but a legend that had been discovered by the pious doctors of the church.

Saint James, it was said, had certainly preached and taught in Spain during his lifetime. His body, after his martyrdom at Jerusalem in the year of Christ 42, had been placed by his disciples on board a ship, by which it was conveyed to the coast of his beloved Spain, miraculously landed in Galicia, and forgotten for eight hundred years, until the time was accomplished when it should be revealed to the devoted subjects of King Alfonso the Chaste. The date of the discovery of the precious remains is given by Ferreras as 808, by Morales as 835. But as it was Charlemagne who obtained from Leo III. the necessary permission or faculty to remove the Episcopal See of Iria Flavia to the new town of Compostella, the discovery or invention must have taken place at least before 814, the year of the death of the emperor. Whatever may have been the actual date of its first establishment; the mean church with mud walls soon gave place to a noble cathedral, which was finished by the year 874, consecrated in 899, and destroyed by the Arabs under Almanzor, nigh upon a hundred years afterwards, in 997. See also Murray’s Handbook of Spain, 1st edit., p. 660, Santiago.

285

Or Jet-ery. Azabache is jet or anthracite, of which a great quantity is found in the Asturias. The word – of Arabic origin – is also used figuratively for blackness or darkness generally in modern Spanish.

286

“Oh, my God, it is the gentleman!”

287

From the German betteln, to beg.

288

May, 1823.

289

Meiga is not a substantive either in Spanish or Portuguese (though it is in Galician), but the feminine of the adjective meigo, or mego, signifying “kind,” “gentle.” Haxweib is a form of the German Hexe Weib, a witch or female wizard.

290

Or El Padron (Iria Flavia), the ancient seat of the bishopric, transferred to the more sacred Santiago de Compostella before the year 814.

291

French, sur le tapis.

292

More correctly, Caldas de Reyes.

293

Branches of vines supported on or festooned from stakes. Borrow uses the word for the stakes themselves. The dictionary of the Spanish Academy has it, “La vid que se levanta á lo alto y se extiende mucho en vástagos,” and derives the word from the Arabic par = extension or spreading.

294

“What folly! what rascality!”

295

The names of the ambassadors or envoys actually sent by King Henry III. to Tamerlane were, in 1399, Pelayo Gomez de Sotomayor and Herman Sanchez de Palazuelos, and on the second mission in 1403, Don Alfonso de Santa Maria and Gonzalez de Clavijo, whose account of the voyage of the envoys has been published both in Spanish and English, and is one of the earliest and most interesting books of travel in the world.

296

Lord Cobham’s expedition in 1719; the town was taken on October 21. Vigo Street, in London, is called after the Spanish port, in memory of the Duke of Ormond’s capture of the plate ships in the bay in 1702. Vigo was also captured by the English under Drake in 1585 and in 1589.

297

See the Glossary, s. v. Cura.