The Bible in Spain. Volume 2 of 2

Solabarri. Rom. Bridle. P. ii. 239; Pp. 487; M. viii. 69.

Sombrero. Span. A hat; that which gives sombra, or shade.

Son. Span. They are; from ser.

Sonacai. Rom. Gold. P. ii. 227; Pp. 481; M. viii. 68.

Sopa. Span. (1) Soup. (2) The entire dinner.

Sotea. Port. Flat roof; balcony; platform.

Sou. Port. Soy. Span. I am; from ser.

Sowanee. Rom. A sorceress. Used by Borrow, i. 122, for the more correct chuajañi, Eng. Rom. chovihoni. P. ii. 190; Pp. 549; M. vii. 37.

Su. Span. Suus. Lat. His.

Svend. Dan. Swain.

Tabla. Span. A board, or plank.

Tal. Span. and Port. Such. Que tal? “How goes it?”

Talib. Arab. Learned, Lit. “a seeker,” used in some countries for “a devotee.” More correctly, ṭālib.

Tambien. Span. Also, likewise, as well.

Tan. Span. So.

Tarde. Span. and Port. Afternoon, evening.

Teatro. Span. Theatre.

Tebleque. Rom. God the Saviour, Jesus. P. ii. 312; J.

Tener. Span. To take, hold, have. See Modo. Tuvose, it was held, or, thought.

Terelar. Rom. To have, hold. P. ii, 294; A. 41; Pp. 512; M. viii. 79.

Terreiro. Port. A parade, promenade.

Tertulia. Span. An assembly, conversazione.

Tinaja. Span. A large earthen jar.

Tinto. Span. and Port. Coloured. Vino tinto, red wine.

Tio, Tia. Span. Uncle; aunt. Applied in common life as a term of familiar address to any one, not related to the speaker. Something like the Old English gaffer and gammer.

Tipotas. Grk. Nothing (πίποτε).

Tirar. Span. and Port. To throw, remove, shoot. Tirar por detras, to kick out behind.

Tocino. Span. Bacon, pork.

Todo. Span. and Port. All.

Toma. Span. Lit. take; as an interjection, “Come!” “Look here!”

Tomate. Span. The tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum).

Tonsura. Span. and Port. (1) A cutting, of hair or wool. (2) The first of the ecclesiastical orders.

Torah, or Thorah. Hebr. The books of the Law; the Pentateuch.

Toreador. See Torero.

Torero. Span. A professional bull-fighter. These are of three classes – the picadores, or horsemen; the bandarilleros, or placers of banderillos; and the matador, or espada. Each company, or cuadrilla, of fighters consists of a matador, chief of the band, three bandarilleros, and two picadores. There is also usually a sobresaliente (or understudy) de espada, in case of accidents; and a certain number of chulos, or men with cloaks, complete the personnel of the ring.

Traducido. Span. Translated. From traducir.

Traer. Span. To bear, carry.

Traguillo. Span. Dim. of trago. A draught, drink.

Trampa. Span. and Port. A trap, snare.

Trinidad. Span. Trinity.

Tsadik. Hebr. Righteous. Hence Tsadok, the leader of the Sadducees, derived his name.

Tucue. Rom. Thee, with thee. See Tute.

Tuerto. Span. One-eyed.

Tunante. Span. and Port. Truant; lazy scoundrel.

Tute. Rom. Thou, thee. P. i. 229; Pp. 66; M. viii. 87.

Tuvose. See Tener.

Undevel, Undebel. Rom. God. According to Borrow, the first syllable of the word is the Om of the Brahmins and Indian Buddhists, one of the names of the Deity. Pott, however, denies this, ii. 75, 311; A. 285 Pp. 205; M. vii. 42; G. i. 177.

Uria. Basque. City. So translated by Borrow, but I cannot find the word. The correct Basque is iri or hiri.

Usted. Span. Contracted form of vuestra merced, your worship; used for “you;” now written simply Vd or V.

Ustilar. Rom. To take, take up, steal. Z. ii. * 118; J. Cf. ostilar, to steal. P. ii. 72, 246. See Pastesas.

Valdepeñas. Span. The red wine made in the neighbourhood of that town, in die heart of La Mancha. It is about the best in Spain.

Valer. Span. To be worth, prevail, protect. Valgame Dios! “May God protect me!” “S’help me!”

Valido. Span. and Port. Powerful, respected. See note, ii. 376.

Valiente. Span. (1) As an adjective, strong or valiant. (2) As a substantive, in a less honourable sense, as “cock of the walk,” or bully.

Vamos, or Vamonos. Span. “Let us go!” “Come along!”

Vástaco. Span. Stem, bud, shoot.

Vaya. Span. A very common interjection or expression, “Come!” “Get along!” “Let it go!” Imper. of ir, to go.

Vecino. Span. An inhabitant; as an adjective, neighbouring.

Vega. Span. A meadow or plain; an open tract of level and fruitful ground, more particularly applied to the country around Granada; generally an alluvial tract formed by the bend of a river or expansion of a valley.

Velho. Port. Old.

Venta. Span. Venda. Port. Strictly speaking, an isolated country inn, or house of reception on the road; and if it be not of physical entertainment, it is at least one of moral, and accordingly figures in prominent characters in all the personal narratives and travels in Spain. The venta is inferior in rank to the posada, q.v. The original meaning of the word is “sale.”

Verdadero. Span. True.

Verdugo, Verduga. Span. and Port. Said of an exceedingly cruel person. Prim. a switch, then a flogger, or executioner.

Viaje. Span. A voyage.

Vid. Span. Vine.

Viejo. Span. Old; an old man.

Villa. Span. A town; greater than an aldea or village, less than a ciudad or city.

Villano, Villana. Span. Countryman, peasant; country girl or woman.

Vino. Span. Wine.

Virgen. Span. Virgo. Lat. Virgin.

Vise. Nor. Dan. A ballad.

Visé. Fr. Endorsed, or furnished with the official visa. As commonly applied to passports, neither the verb nor the substantive has any exact equivalent in English.

Viver. Span. and Port. To live. Que viva! “Long life to him!”

Vossé, or Vossem. Port. Vossa mercé, your worship; you. Gal. vusté; Span. usted. See note, i. 89.

Voy. Span. I am going; from ir.

Wady. Arab. River. Wady al kebir = the great river, the Guadalquivir.

Wakhud. Arab. A, the article. More correctly, waḥid.

Wullah. Arab. “By God!”

Wustuddur. Arab. Home; abode. Lit. the middle of the houses. See Dar.

Y. Span. And.

Yaw. Borrovian for the Germ. ja = yes.

Ydoorshee. Arab. It signifies; lit. it hurts.

Yerba. Span. (1) Grass. (2) Poison.

Yesca. Span. Under.

Yo. Span. I.

Youm. Arab. A day.

Yudken. Germ. A little Jew; more correctly, Jüdchen.

Zamarra. Span. A sheepskin coat, the woolly side turned inwards; from the Basque echamarra (having the same signification), usually worn by shepherds. The French chamarrer, to deck out, or bedizen, is said to be a word of kindred origin.

Zarza. Span. A bramble.

Zincalo. plur. Zincali. Span. Rom. Gypsy. P. ii. 259; M. viii. 65.

Zohar. Hebr. Brilliancy. See note, ii. 318.

THE END

1

See note, vol. i. p. 120.

2

A fanciful word of Portuguese etymology from nuvem, cloud = the cloud-man.

3

Inha, when affixed to words, serves as a diminutive. It is much in use amongst the Gallegans. It is pronounced ínia, the Portuguese and Galician nh being equivalent to the Spanish ñ.

4

“Flock of drunkards.” Fato, in Gal. as in Port. = a herd or flock. Span. hato.

5

San Martin de Duyo, a village, according to Madoz, of sixty houses. There are no remains of the ancient Duyo.

6

Galician; lit. the shore of the outer sea.

7

“By God! I am going too.”

8

Who served as a subordinate general in the Carlist armies.

9

“The good lad.”

10

In Spanish, guardacostas.

11

More correctly, el Ferrol or farol, the lighthouse. Nothing can more strikingly give the lie to the conventional taunt that Spain has made no progress in recent years than the condition of the modern town of el Ferrol compared with the description in the text. It is now a flourishing and remarkably clean town of over 23,000 inhabitants, with an arsenal not only magnificent in its construction, but filled with every modern appliance, employing daily some 4000 skilled workmen, whose club (el liceo de los artesanos) might serve as a model for similar institutions in more “advanced” countries. It comprises a library, recreation-room, casino, sick fund, benefit society, and school; and lectures and evening parties, dramatic entertainments, and classes for scientific students, are all to be found within its walls.

12

A little town charmingly situated on a little bay at the mouth of the river Eo, which divides Galicia from Asturias, famous for oysters and salmon.

13

Signifying in Portugese or Galician, “A thing of gold.”

14

Tertian ague, or intermittent three-day fever.

15

“Come along, my little Parrot!”

16

A town on the sea-coast about half-way between Rivadeo and Aviles.

17

Query. See note, p. 45.

18

On the right bank of the Eo, over against Rivadeo.

19

The port of Oviedo.

20

See the Glossary, s. v. Copla.

21

“God bless me!”

22

I.e. Bascuence, or Vascuence, the Basque language.

23

Query, Aviles?

24

Job xxxix. 25: “.. the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.”

25

“Good heavens!”

26

I.e. jacas.

27

The cathedral at Oviedo is one of the oldest and most interesting foundations in Spain. The first stone was laid by Alfonso II. in 802; the greater part of the existing edifice is of the fourteenth century.

But the great glory of Oviedo, entitling it to rank as second among the holy cities of Christian Spain, is the Camara Santa, and the relics therein contained (see Burke’s History of Spain vol. i. pp. 122–124, 140, 141, 147–150, 165, 275; vol. ii. pp. 8–11; and Murray’s Handbook, sub. Oviedo).

28

Benito Feyjoo was born in 1676, and having assumed the Benedictine habit early in life, settled at length in a convent of his order at Oviedo, where he lived for hard on fifty years. He died in 1764.

A strange mixture of a devout Catholic and a scientific innovator, he was an earnest student of Bacon, Newton, Pascal, Leibnitz, and others, whose opinions he embodied in his own works. Learned, judicious, and diligent rather than a man of genius, he was original at least as regards his conceptions of the nature and limits of scientific research in Spain. He kept on good terms with the Inquisition, while he continued to publish in his Teatro Critico and his Cartas Eruditas y Curiosas all that the Inquisitors would desire to remain unread; attacked the dialectics and metaphysics then taught everywhere in Spain; maintained Bacon’s system of induction in the physical sciences; ridiculed the general opinion as regards eclipses, comets, magic, and divination; and laid down canons of historical criticism which would exclude many of the most cherished traditions of his country and his Church. The best edition of his works is that by Campomanes, the minister of the enlightened Charles III., with a Life of the author. 16 vols. Madrid, 1778.

29

Charles III. of Spain (1759–1788), the most enlightened of the Bourbon kings.

30

Literally, dry.

31

George Dawson Flinter began life in an English West India regiment, served in the Spanish American forces, and afterwards obtained a commission in the Spanish army. In 1833, on the outbreak of the civil war, he declared for Isabella, and served with considerable distinction in the constitutional army. A prisoner in 1836, he was entrusted with a high command at Toledo in 1837, but having failed to satisfy the Cortes in an engagement in September, 1838, he cut his throat (see Gentl. Mag., 1838, vol. ii. p. 553, and Duncan, The English in Spain, pp. 13, 189).

32

There is still a fairly frequented high-road from Santander to Burgos, inasmuch as the railway from Santander to Madrid takes a more westerly route through Palencia, the actual junction with the main line from Irun being at Venta de Baños, a new creation of the railway not even mentioned in the guidebooks a few years ago, and now one of the most important stations in Spain.

Yet in railway matters Spain has still some progress to make. From Santander to Burgos viâ Venta de Baños is just 120 English miles; but the time occupied in the journey by train in this year 1895 is just seventeen hours, the traveller having to leave Santander at 1 p.m. in order to reach Burgos at 6 o’clock the following morning!

33

See Introduction.

34

“Office of the Biblical and Foreign Society,” rather an odd rendering of the original title!

35

The briefest of all abbreviations and modifications of the objectionable Carajo.

36

Rather south-south-west.

37

Domenico Theotocoupoulis, a Greek or Byzantine who settled at Toledo in 1577. He is said to have been a pupil of Titian. The picture so highly praised in the text is said by Professor Justi to be in “his worst manner,” and is indeed a very stiff performance. There are many of El Greco’s pictures in Italy, where his work is often assigned to Bassano, Paul Veronese, and Titian. His acknowledged masterpiece is the Christ on Mount Calvary in the cathedral of Toledo. El Greco died in 1625, after an uninterrupted residence of nearly forty years in Spain.

38

See The Zincali, part. ii. chap. vi.

39

Borrow’s translation of St. Luke into Spanish gypsy was published with the following title: Embéo e Majaró Lucas. Brotoboro randado andré la chipe griega, acána chibado andré o Romanó ó chipe es Zincales de Sesé. (No place) 1837. A new edition was published five and thirty years later by the British and Foreign Bible Society, as Criscote e Majaró Lucas chibado andré o Romano ó chipe es Zincales de Sesé. Lundra, 1872. Both these works are now out of print, but I have had the advantage of seeing a copy of each in the library of the Society in Queen Victoria Street.

40

The Zincali, part ii. ch. viii.

41

Modern linguistic science is so entirely at variance with these theories that it is difficult to add a note at once modest, instructive, or of reasonable length. On the whole it is perhaps better to leave the chapter entirely alone.

43

Evangelioa San Lucasen Guissan. El Evangelio Segun S. Lucas. Traducido al vascuence. Madrid: Imprenta de la Compañia Tipografica. 1838.

44

See Proverbes Basques suivis des Poésies Basques, by Arnauld Oihenart, 1847.

45

See F. Michel, Le Pays Basque, p. 213, and the Glossary, s. v. Ichasoa.

46

No one who has ever read the work of this Abbé would ever think of citing it as a serious authority. It is entitled, L’histoire des Cantabres par l’Abbé d’Iharce de Bidassouet. Paris, 1825. Basque, according to the author, was the primæval language; Noah being still the Basque for wine is an etymological record of the patriarch’s unhappy inebriety!

47

This work is entitled, Euscaldun anciña anciñaco, etc. Donostian, 1826, by Juan Ignacio de Iztueta, with an Introduction in Spanish, and many Basque songs with musical notation, but without accompaniment.

48

See further as to the Basques, Burke’s History of Spain, vol. i. App. I.

49

1838.

50

See ante, p. 100, and Introduction.

51

Ofalia was prime minister from November 30, 1837, to August, 1838, when he was succeeded by the Duke of Frias.

52

The mayor or chief magistrate. Politico is here used in the old sense of civic, πολιτικὸς, of the πόλις; gefe, now spelt jefe = chief.

53

In The Zincali, part ii. ch. iv., Borrow places his imprisonment in March.

54

Rather civic; see note on p. 127.

55

“The city prison.” La Corte is the capital, as well as the court.

56

“My master! the constables, and the catchpolls, and all the other thieves.. ”

57

See the Glossary, s. v. Jargon.

58

“He is very skilful.”

59

“Are there no more?”

60

More like the French Juge d’Instruction.

61

“Come along, Sir George; to your house, to your lodgings!”

62

Acts xvi. 37.

63

People of renown.

64

“Mashes” and mistresses. Majo is a word of more general signification than manolo. The one is a dandy, or smart fellow, all over Spain; the other is used only of a certain class in Madrid.

65

More correctly, Carabanchel or Carabancheles, two villages a few miles south of Madrid.

66

This in prison!

67

E.g. in the citadel of Pampeluna. See Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, i. 152.

68

Perhaps Waterloo. – [Note by Borrow.]

69

“It distresses me.”

70

Robbing the natives.

71

See chap. xiii.

72

The sun was setting, and Demos commands. “Bring water, my children, that ye may eat bread this evening.” Borrow has translated this song in the Targum (v. p. 343).

73

The treasure-digger.

74

See The Zincali, part ii. chap. iv.

75

The duke became prime minister in August, 1838.

76

In Gams’ Series Episcoporum, the standard authority on the subject, the archiepiscopal see of Toledo is noted as vacant from 1836 to 1847. Nor is any hint given of how the duties of the office were performed. Don Antonio Perez Hirias figures only as Bishop of Mallorca, or Majorca, from December, 1825, to December, 1847.

77

Kicks from behind.

78

“I do not know.”

79

See note, p. 103.

80

“To the gallows! To the gallows!”

81

“To the country! To the country!”

82

“Ride on, because of the word of truth, of meekness, and righteousness” (Ps. xlv. 5, P.B.V.).

83

A nickname, unhappily too commonly justified in Southern Spain, where ophthalmia and oculists are equally dangerous.

It is remarkable how many of the great men in Spanish history, however, have been distinguished by this blemish: Hannibal, Viriatus, Táric, Abdur Rahman I., and Don Juan el Tuerto in the reign of Alfonso XI.

84

Byron, Don Juan, xiii. 11. Borrow probably knew well enough where the lines came from. Don Juan had not been published more than fifteen years at the time, and was in the zenith of its popularity. But Byron and his ways were alike odious to the rough manliness of Borrow (see Lavengro, ch. xxxix.), and, in good truth, however much the poet “deserves to be remembered,” it is certainly not for this line, which contains as many suggestiones falsi as may be packed into one line. Yet the “sneer” is not in the original, but in Borrow’s misquotation; Byron wrote “smiled.” The idea of the poet having spent a handful of gold ounces in a Genoese posada at Seville and at a bull-fight at Madrid, that he might be competent to tell the world that Cervantes sneered Spain’s chivalry away, is superlatively Borrovian – and delicious. The entire passage runs thus —

“Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away;A single laugh demolish’d the right armOf his own country; – seldom since that dayHas Spain had heroes.”

85

About thirty pounds, at the exchange of the day.

86

“I wish to enlist with you.”

87

“Gee up, donkey!” From this arrhé, of Arabic origin, is derived the word arriero, a muleteer.

88

“Blessed be God!”

89

See note, ante, p. 190.

90

See vol. i. p. 257.

91

Aranjuez, the Roman Ara Jovis, was, until the absorption of the great military order by the Crown under Isabella and Ferdinand, a favourite residence of the Grand Masters of Santiago.

92

“Die schönen Tage in Aranjuez

Sind nun zu Ende.”

The opening lines of Don Carlos.

93

An exceedingly ancient town, celebrated in the days before the Roman dominion.

94

See Glossary, sub. verb. Schophon. As to rabbits in Spain, see note, vol. i. p. 25.

95

The modern La Granja or San Ildefonso is, in the season, anything but desolate: the beautiful, if somewhat over-elaborate gardens, are admirably kept up, and the general atmosphere of the plain is bright and cheerful, though the Court of to-day prefers the sea-breezes of Biscay to the air of the Guadarrama, when Madrid becomes, as it does, well-nigh uninhabitable in summer.

96

A particular scoundrel. His massacre of prisoners, November 9, 1838, was remarkable for its atrocity, when massacre was of daily occurrence. See Duncan, The English in Spain, pp. 247, 248.

97

See note, vol. i. p. 164.

98

August 31, 1838.

99

Don Carlos, who probably died a natural death in 1568.

100

The etymology of Andalusia is somewhat of a crux; the various authorities are collected and reviewed in an appendix to Burke’s History of Spain, vol. i. p. 379. The true etymology may be Vandalusia, the abiding-place of the Vandals, though they abode in Southern Spain but a very short time; but the word certainly came into the Spanish through the Arabic, and not through the Latin, long years after Latin was a spoken language. The young lady was quite right in speaking of it as Betica or Bœtica; though the Terra would be superfluous, if not incorrect.