THINGS SEEN
Galicia is a land of sharp contrasts, and the things seen include
sights which cannot be witnessed in any other country within such
easy reach of London. The bullock-cart creaks by the side of
the railway, the peasant with a Roman plough turns up the soil
within sound of the electrical machinery of a corn-mill, the swift
motor-car rushes past the old-world diligence on the highway, and the
incandescent burner or electric lamp keeps company with the ancient
candle. Orange-groves abound and vineyards carpet the landscape,
while the stately liner sends her bow-wave swishing at the bare feet
of fishwives who are handling catches as they were handled in the
days of Jesus. A peasant may prod and drag his team of oxen past a
modern school in which his brother may be learning chemistry and his
sister millinery, and the old man who has never learned to read and
write listens to the machines which print the newspaper whose symbols
are to him a mystery; the nun, a life-long prisoner in her gaol-like
convent, hears the booming of guns in ships of war whose purpose
is to keep and further liberty, and the friar, tonsured, girdled,
sandalled, kneels on the cathedral floor beside a woman dressed
in Parisian gown and hat. These are amongst things seen by the
leisurely traveller, but even the hasty tourist may make a passing
acquaintance with many quaint and fascinating customs and peoples.
The pleasure-seeker may have constant recreation and enjoyment, the
student of ancient cities and remains finds material wherever he
goes, and the lover of archæological and ecclesiological memorials
and structures may carry out a long tour and find at the end that he
has only touched the fringe of the subject.
The easy-going visitor may constantly step aside from the beaten
path and encounter new aspects of Gallegan life, and learn something
interesting that is not mentioned in even the best of guide-books. I
think the very impossibility, as it seems to be, of getting at the
real truth of some Galician matters is one of the charms of going
about the country. Baedeker, omnipotent in travel, has missed many
things in North-West Spain, or omitted them as being superfluous or
unattractive, while details which are published in his masterpieces
are at variance with other sources of information. For example,
Baedeker states that the population of Pontevedra is 8500, but Murray
gives the number as 21,000, a startling and bewildering difference.
The discrepancy, however, is understandable, because it is one of
the hardest of all things in Galicia to get reliable statistics. The
Gallegan treats any demand for census details as Englishmen deal
with income-tax papers.
Wandering off the high road and through some vineyards and
maize-fields not far from Caldas, I saw a fine old house. This was
at the village of San Benito, where also I came across a quaint
little church connected with the house by a small bridge. A few
yards from the church, and just off the highway, was a curious
open-air platform, used in connection with religious ceremonies at
certain seasons of the year; for even this tiny hamlet attracts
pilgrims, many of whom travel to get a saintly cure for warts and
such-like unromantic ailments of the flesh. There was no difficulty
in obtaining permission to inspect the house, which has a fine and
well-preserved coat of arms in the stonework outside, and to visit
the adjoining vineyards--indeed, I was well received, under the
impression that I was a person of importance in the wine trade. The
building is seven hundred years old, and certainly looks its age,
both inside and outside; further, I was informed the vineyards yield
from nine to twelve pipes of red and white wine yearly, according to
the season; and the average price obtained is 205 pesetas a pipe.
After my inspection of the house and vineyards I was pressed by the
proprietor, with true Spanish hospitality, to try the new vintage,
which I did, drinking the white, cider-like beverage from a tumbler
just as one would take water. I had three samples, and although I
was warned that pains and penalties would follow I felt no ill-effect
whatever, and continued my journey stationward with every possible
good feeling towards my fellow-creatures in Galicia. By that time I
had left the Spanish carriage in which I had been driving, and walked
in pleasant companionship along the road towards Caldas station.
There was a wonderful peace in the air, for it was Sunday evening,
and work had ceased. The peasants were out and about, the women
sitting, the men smoking and leaning against doors or walls, and the
children playing before being put into their primitive beds. The
chimes from neighbouring churches mingled with the pleasant tinkle
of the bells worn by the two small horses which were drawing the
conveyance.
Darkness was falling quickly, and the stars were shining beyond the
hills and overhead. Peasants were coming towards us, young men and
young women, laughing and chatting gaily, and some of them singing
sweet Gallegan songs. In England, even in the villages, people of
the same ages and condition would have been bellowing banalities
from music-halls. The twilight was short and the road and country
were soon in almost perfect darkness, for there were no lights or
lamps of any sort. I reached Caldas station in company with a little
diligence which dashed up in the gloom, indicated by the voices of
the driver and passengers and the thudding of the ponies' hoofs and
tinkle of their bells, as well as by a tiny lamp in the interior of
the vehicle. There was practically no illumination in the station,
on the walls of which a melancholy oil-lamp was suspended, serving
just to outline the figures of the waiting passengers. Nothing came
out of the vast surrounding darkness except the occasional sounds of
the peasants' songs, and there was something so amazingly primitive
and peaceful in the evening and the place that it gave one almost a
shock to have a second oil-lamp turned up on the platform and to hear
the approaching train and see the head-lights of the locomotive; yet
after a few miles had been covered I looked from the carriage windows
upon the bright electric lights of Redondela station, and had time
to take some wine and food before re-entering a train and journeying
back to Vigo.
It is your duty, if only for the sake of experience, to enter one of
the wayside inns of Galicia, the _fondas_ and _posadas_ at which your
motor-car, motor-bus, diligence, or carriage draws up in travelling.
It may be a place which is comparatively imposing, with bottles of
spirits and wines ranged temptingly on shelves, and a right-angled
counter containing sundry articles of refreshment, with a dining-room
adjoining the bar, and all clean and attractive in appearance; it
may be an appalling establishment from which you are fain to fly
on swallowing your drink and in which you are grateful to your
cigarette; or it may be a house which is neither good nor bad, but
incorrigibly indifferent. Go into them all; there is something new
and fresh in each.
The first _fonda_ I entered was at Porriño, and that was on a Sunday.
Next door was a barber's shop, open to the air, with a priest reading
a newspaper while awaiting his turn for a shave. The sign of the
trade was a brass dish dangling from a chain, in contradistinction
to the impressive tonsorial pole of British facial artists, of whom
it would be wrong in these levelling days to speak as barbers.
Peasants were entering the _fonda_, and some, men and women, were
seated at bare wooden tables, breakfasting on bread and wine. At
the counter I bought for a penny an excellent aniseed liqueur, and
for the equivalent of a shilling came away with a full large bottle
of the spirit, which experience proved more than rivalled cocoa in
its comforting and grateful qualities. Incidentally, on re-entering
the motor-bus, I saw a large dead rat lying in the middle of the
road. Three days later, on returning to Porriño and the _fonda_, I
noticed that the carcase was still there--also a decayed and dejected
diligence on the pavement, a vehicle which could, however, be
galvanised into active service in case of need. Porriño, however, is
not a typical Galician village, and is no more representative of the
charms and beauties of the country than Wigan is of England.
[Illustration: A GALICIAN FISHING-BOAT]
[Illustration: MEN AND WOMEN ROWING UP VIGO BAY]
The visitor will often witness sights which, if not exactly pleasant,
are full of interest, as showing something of the people's lives.
I saw in corners of vineyards or gardens the carcases of kids
suspended; and, driving down a village street, I observed the body
of an immense pig which had been killed. The animal had been placed
on the stones in front of the door of a cottage, and a man and his
wife, helped by children, were heaping up branches and faggots. When
I returned this material was burning, and on inquiry I was told that
this was the Galician method of removing the bristles.
In Galicia you may travel in perfect comfort and security along many
of the roads and into many of the towns which in Borrow's day, only
seventy years ago, were infested with murderers and robbers, and the
idea of danger and peril will never so much as enter your mind--a
state of peacefulness which is largely due to those splendid fellows
of the Civil Guard; yet wherever he went Borrow ran great risks to
life and limb. Frequently he took advantage of a military escort, and
at one time, travelling from Lugo to Corunna, he had the support of a
band of picturesque ruffians who had all the appearance of banditti,
and would have created a sensation in a Drury Lane drama.
"They were all men in the prime of life," says Borrow, "mostly
of tall stature and of Herculean brawn and limbs. They wore huge
whiskers, and walked with a fanfaronading air, as if they courted
danger, and despised it.... Their proper duty is to officiate as a
species of police and to clear the roads of robbers, for which duty
they are in one respect admirably calculated, having been generally
robbers themselves at one period of their lives."
Alas! these romantic ruffians have disappeared from Galician
highways, and their nearest prototypes to-day are harmless peasants
adorned with flowing side-whiskers, the style of decoration favoured
by respectable and inoffensive British butlers.
To my lasting regret I did not thoroughly re-read my Borrow until I
returned from Galicia, because Galicia fascinated him, and he covered
much of the ground that I personally traversed, and looked upon many
awesome sights which I, in a spirit of modernity and commerce, would
have photographed.
At the bridge of Castellanos, "a spot notorious for robbery and
murder, and well adapted for both," Borrow passed "three ghastly
heads stuck on poles standing by the wayside; they were those of a
captain of banditti and two of his accomplices, who had been seized
and executed about two months before. Their principal haunt was
the vicinity of the bridge, and it was their practice to cast the
bodies of the murdered into the deep black water which runs rapidly
beneath." Borrow added that the three heads would always live in his
remembrance, particularly that of the captain, which "stood on a
higher pole than the other two: the long hair was waving in the wind
and the blackened, distorted features were grinning in the sun."
All this sounds very gruesome and barbarous; yet such sights were
common in England at the same time, for those were the days of public
executions and gibbeting of corpses.
The things seen in Galicia do not include the woeful exhibitions of
ignorance of the native language which are so common on the part of
the Englishman abroad, especially in France. Even the hardy British
matron who in Paris will address the cabman as _cochon_ refrains from
speech in Galicia, because no word of Spanish has formed part of
her education. Yet a working acquaintance with the language can be
easily obtained, for Spanish, though of all modern tongues the least
understood by Englishmen, is the easiest to learn. Borrow declared
it to be the most sonorous tongue in existence. In my own wanderings
I had the constant help and guidance of an excellent interpreter,
and the tourist would do well to avail himself of such skilled
assistance, which leaves him free to enjoy the charms of the country
and the customs and peculiarities of the people. The system also
removes the need for travellers to adopt Borrow's idea of making a
foreigner understand them in his own language; that method being to
speak "with much noise and vociferation, opening their mouths wide."
He protests that when his fellow-countrymen attempt to speak the
most sonorous of all tongues they put their hands in their pockets
and fumble lazily, instead of applying them (their hands, not their
pockets) to the indispensable office of gesticulation. "Well may
the poor Spaniards exclaim," he adds despairingly, "_These English
talk so crabbedly that Satan himself would not be able to understand
them._" To do my countrymen justice, I am bound to say that, with
a single exception, I never heard them attempt to speak Spanish in
Galicia; and as for the isolated case, I was assured that his Spanish
was too bad to be intelligible.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH AT BOUZAS, ON THE COAST]
[Illustration: TUY, A HILL CITY ON THE FRONTIER]