countries more pleasant to visit and to live in than the Basque
Provinces. After the treeless, unsheltered mountains and plains, and the
compact villages of Castille or Navarre, the villages of the Basque
country, set in green, and, to quote the phrase of a Spanish novelist,
“all in the peace of prayer,” are a delightful contrast. The sky has no
longer the harsh intensity of the Castilian, and everywhere is a
softness of outlines; everywhere, too, is green--the green of chestnut
and oak, of maize and trefoil, meadow and cider-orchard. The maize is
the principal crop of the year, providing the heavy, yellow bread,
_artoa_, as well as food for the oxen and material for mats, mattresses,
and even cigarette-papers. The fields are divided by slabs of stone, and
in the mists of the early mornings the Angelus rings from hidden towers;
and the only other sound is that of scythes cutting the drenched grass
or trefoil. Every true Basque is of noble, ancient family, and the
Basque farmhouse, with its wooden façade and carved projecting
buttresses, its wide balcony and deep ornamented eaves, is handed down
from father to son without change. It stands surrounded by orchards and
fields of maize, and often overshadowed by an immense fig-tree or a
group of splendid walnut-trees. The roof slopes down on one side till it
nearly reaches the ground. The lower part of the front is hollowed into
a court, and on one side of this a door leads straight into the spacious
kitchen, with its huge fireplace and many vessels of scoured bronze and
copper, which forms the principal room of the house. A dark, narrow
staircase leads to the bedrooms; through the cracks of the floors may
often be seen the oxen in their stalls beneath. Large chests of oak,
some of them beautifully carved, are to be found in most Basque farms.
In Vizcaya a large vine-trellis, running forward on posts from the inner
court beneath the balcony, further deepens the dark velvet spaces in the
whitewashed front of the farm; in Guipúzcoa many houses have no balcony
or trellis, but are overgrown with heavy vines, that often entirely
cover all the windows. From the windows hang long strings of red piments
or white onions; above the door there is frequently an ancient stone
coat-of-arms or an inscription with the name of the founders and the
date, and above this a cross or the letters I. H. S. The house is thus
half sacred. After the father’s death, the eldest son becomes “Lord of
the house, etcheco-jauna,” while the younger sons often emigrate.
It was from their farms, so dear to them, that the Basques formerly took
their names, so that they are called not Smith or Collier, but
At-the-head-of-the-hill (Mendiburu) or Under-the-new-road (Bideberripe).
Even now a Basque in the country is never called by his surname, but
either by his Christian name or a nickname, or the name of his house or
property. Etche (“house”) is perhaps the commonest compound. Etcheberri
(“newhouse”) has numerous variants--Echeverri, Echevarri, Echavarri (in
Vizcaya and Alava, where the Basque spoken is broader than in Guipúzcoa,
new is “barri”), Chavarri, Echarri, Echave, Xavier, Javer, etc. The
number of Basque-speaking people can now but little exceed half a
million, and only very rarely is a Basque found who is unable to speak
Spanish or French.[63] Of the three Spanish-Basque provinces, Guipúzcoa
(capital San Sebastián) alone is entirely Basque. At Bilbao, the capital
of Vizcaya, no Basque is spoken; and long before reaching Vitoria, the
capital of Alava, the language spoken is Castilian. Nor is Basque spoken
at Pamplona, the capital of Navarre, though it reaches almost to its
walls, and till quite recently had a wider extension in Navarre, names
of places such as Mendigorria (“red mountain”) surviving. The difficulty
of the language has been somewhat exaggerated; there is a well-known
story that the Devil spent three years in the Basque country, and only
succeeded in learning two words: _Bai_, “yes;” and _Es_, “no.” But it
remains true that the immense and complicated system of Basque
conjugations is for a foreigner almost impossible to master; and at the
same time the Basque literature to reward the learner is of the
scantiest. Interesting indeed are the proverbs, some of the songs, and
the pastorales, which have been compared in more than one particular
with the Greek drama, but which are now acted only in the province of
Soule. The stage, in the open air, is formed of plain planks, supported
most often on barrels. A curtain cuts off a part for the actors to
change their costumes, the same person often taking several parts in a
play. The curtain has two doors, one for the good and one for the
wicked. The good and the wicked are kept strictly separate. The
pastorale is always in honour of Christianity and the Roman Catholic
religion, and the wicked are the heathen, the Turks, the English, etc.
Red is the colour of the wicked, that of the good is blue; in this
respect no change is ever made. The good always walk slowly and
solemnly, but when the wicked come on the stage the music is immediately
changed to a lively air, and they never remain long quiet, their
movements continuing quick and agitated. The acting is very simple; a
journey, for instance, is represented by walking up and down the stage
several times. The characters are usually taken exclusively by men and
boys, but there are a few pastorales acted by women only; the sexes are
never mingled. Strange and amusing anachronisms abound. In the
pastorale entitled _Abraham_, Abraham appears in high boots and felt
hat; Sarah in a modern, bright-coloured dress, with hat, veil, and fan;
Isaac carries one or two sticks on his shoulder for the sacrifice; the
Angel is a little boy in white. Then there are the heathen and the
Christian kings, the former dressed in red, with high crowns arrayed
with plumes and ribbons, the latter in blue with crowns of gold. In the
middle of the play one of the Christian kings leaves the stage, and
presently appears above the curtain and speaks with Abraham. He
represents the “Eternal Father.” The verses are spoken in a loud
monotonous chant, each verse being literally measured out by motion up
and down the stage, the only change being when the music becomes faster
or slower. The music is composed of the two Basque instruments the
_churula_, a shrill pipe, and the _tamboril_, a kind of guitar with six
strings, played by the same person. The strangeness of the scene, the
loud chanting of the actors as the tone rises and falls, the fantastic
costumes, the dances of the “Satans,” the prayers of the Christians, and
especially the slow march and action of the blues, dignified and
majestic, and the turbulent, restless movements of the reds, are not
soon forgotten.
The Basque language, _Eskuara_, was described by the Spanish historian,
Mariana, as “coarse and barbarous,” and a traveller among the Basques in
the Middle Ages recorded that to hear them speak one would say they were
dogs barking. In English, the word “jingo” has been said to derive from
the Basque _Jincoa_, “God,” introduced by Wellington’s troops after the
Peninsular War. The Basque word is an abbreviation of _Jaungoicoa_, “the
Lord on high,” _jauna_, “lord,” being the common form of greeting
between peasant and peasant. It becomes more and more rare to hear pure
Basque spoken; foreign words creep in and, with the definite article
“_a_” suffixed, hide under a Basque form: _dembora_ (Lat. _tempus_) thus
ousting the Basque word _eguraldia_ for “weather,” _gorphuntza_ (Lat.
_corpus_) being “body,” and so on.[64] Pure Basque recedes to remote
villages in the mountains, and there the Basque maintains his ancient
customs, as averse from change to-day as when Horace described him as
“Cantabrum indoctum juga ferre nostra.”[65]
II.--BASQUE CUSTOMS
An old Latin account speaks of the Basques as going nowhere--not even to
church--without arms, usually a bow and arrows, and says that they are
“gens affabilis, elegans et hilaris--courteous, graceful, and
light-hearted;”[66] but, in spite of their known hospitality, their
distrust of the foreigner and their hatred of intrusion are shown in
more than one of their proverbs, as “The stranger-guest does not work
himself, and prevents you from working.” The Basques are, indeed, the
most energetic, as they are the most ancient people of the Peninsula.
“Naguia bethi lansu--The idle man is ever busy,” says another of their
proverbs; and, again, “Idle youth brings needy old age.”[67] Their
fields are well and economically cultivated, and if their methods are
antiquated, this is partly due to the mountainous nature of the country
and the smallness of the holdings, making it simpler, _e.g._, to thresh
corn by beating it sheaf by sheaf against a stone. Numerous small
factories--of cloth as at Vergara, of paper at Tolosa, of iron and
steel at Eibar and Elgoibar, of furniture at Azpeitia--and many quarries
and tile-factories prove their industry; and entering a small Basque
town such as Elgoibar, one may hear in tiny shops on all sides the sound
of sandal-makers and workers in wood and leather. They know how to work,
and they know how to enjoy themselves with thoroughness at the village
fêtes. From dawn to dusk the ball is to be heard against the wall of the
pelota court on Sundays, with intervals of dancing to the shrill pipe
and drum of the _chunchunero_. Voltaire, thinking of their love of
dancing, described them as “un petit peuple qui danse sur les Pyrénées,”
and certain dances still survive. The sword-dance, _ezpata danza_, is
one of the most remarkable, and has been described by Pierre Loti in
“Figures et choses qui passaient;” and other dances are those
representing the primitive methods of agriculture, the vintage, weaving,
etc. The Basque pelota has, unfortunately, become, of recent years, a
game of professionals, and as played, _e.g._, at Madrid, the interest is
rather in the betting than in the play. The enthusiasm formerly excited
among the Basques by the game is illustrated by the story that several
Basque soldiers left the Army of the Rhine, returned to their country to
play a game of ball, and, having played and won it, rejoined the army in
time to take part in the battle of Austerlitz.[68] A game played in the
immense court of a small Basque village is still a splendid sight,
though it has lost much of its splendour, and the old Rebot is fast
dying out. Pierre Loti has described a game of Blaid, as seen in a
French-Basque village, in his novel of the Basque country, “Ramuntcho”;
and this form of the game has been played in Paris and London. But old
peasants will shake their heads and say it is no longer “as of old.” The
expression “of old” is common on the lips of both French and Spanish
Basques;[69] they willingly praise the past, and are intensely
conservative of all their customs, their immemorial language, their
games, privileges, religion. The ox-carts, with wheels of solid wood, to
be seen under the vine-trellises of Basque farms, seem as old as the
withered trunk of the oak of Guernica, and similarly many ancient
customs have been retained. In some parts, at funerals, the men wear
long cloaks reaching to the feet, the women also wearing long, full
cloaks with hoods, that completely hide the face. The men go first, and
then all the women--men and women in single file--the chief mourners
coming last. Both at weddings and funerals, feasts were formerly given
on such an extensive scale that the family was often nearly ruined, and
a law (_fuero_) was passed forbidding to invite any but relations to the
third degree. But the wedding-feast is still sufficiently imposing; it
continues for many hours, and immediately afterwards the young begin
dancing, while the old play cards. As to the offerings at funerals,
“none but an eye-witness,” says Larramendi, in the eighteenth century,
“could believe the quantity of bread and wax that is offered. Moreover,
at these big funerals, in some places a live ox, and in others a sheep,
is brought as an offering to the church door, and when the service is
over it is taken away, and a fixed sum of money is given to the
priest.”[70] This curious custom, a survival of the offerings to the
dead and a trace of ancestor-worship, has not yet wholly died out. In
one village at least (Arriba, on the borders of Navarre and Guipúzcoa)
it is customary at funerals to offer bread and wax, and to bring to the
church either a quarter of veal or a live sheep, which is afterwards
given to the priest. The Basques are intensely religious, and it is
characteristic of them that before they were converted to Christianity
they were the terror of the Christians--indeed, the pilgrims to Santiago
de Compostella at all times feared the passage through the Basque
Provinces, the strange language adding to their difficulties (“La
Biscaye,” they said, “où il y a d’étrange monde, où l’on n’entend pas
les gens”). The Basques troop in to early Mass every Sunday, often by
rough mountain paths, from farms lying a league away. Yet it must not be
thought that the Basques are priest-ridden; the priests are respected,
and often take part in their games or walk many miles across the hills
to visit the sick. But though the Basques are often narrow and
fanatical, they have far too much dignity and independence to be the
blind followers of the priests. In the Carlist wars they fought chiefly
for their old privileges, or _fueros_, and the result of the wars was
that nearly all their _fueros_ were lost, in 1839 and 1876. “Nothing is
so fair as liberty,” says one of their songs, and their national song,
“Guernikako Arbola,”[71] with its stirring air, celebrates “the holy
tree of Guernica, loved by all the Basques.” In the little green-set
town of Guernica a fine new oak, some forty years old, has taken the
place of the old tree, now a mere trunk protected by glass, while in the
little pillared temple are still to be seen the seven marble seats on
which assembled--
“Peasant and lord in their appointed seat,
Guardians of Biscay’s ancient liberty.”
These are the two last lines of Wordsworth’s sonnet to the
“Oak of Guernica! Tree of holier power
Than that which in Dodona did enshrine,
So faith too fondly deemed, a voice divine.”
Noble, handsome, graceful in all their movements, hardy and shrewd, the
Basques are active and untiring whether as farmers, smugglers, soldiers,
or _pelotaris_. They live aloof in scattered farms, a healthy open-air
life (their word for rich is _aberatz_, from _abere_, head of cattle),
and, indeed, in a town they tend to lose some of their good qualities.
Their dress has always an air of careful neatness and distinction, with
the _béret_, white shirt (without a tie), dark blue or black coat thrown
over shoulder (or long blouse), silent sandals and the peculiar
_makhila_, a stout iron-pointed stick of medlar. They are shrinking into
their mountains, a race doomed to perish, “un peuple qui s’en va.” They
have watched during thousands of years new races spring up and prosper
around them, and in the twentieth century they see trains and motors
penetrate to the inaccessible places where the Roman legions were
checked, or Charlemagne with all his peerage fell. An inscription here
and there shows them bowing to destiny and the relentless march of time
in saddened resignation, or betaking themselves to the consolation of
their religion--the following inscriptions, for instance, along the
frontier: “Man is beaten by every hour, and the last leads him to the
grave.”[72] “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat.”[73] “Ici fait l’home cequi
pevt et fortune ce que elle vevt.”[74] “Post fata resurgo.”[75] “Deum
time, Mariam invoca.”[76] “Orhoit hilcea.”[77] The privileges that
remain to the Basques are few, consisting in a slightly less acute
centralization than obtains in other provinces of Spain.[78] They have
no _fueros_ left to make it worth their while to take up arms afresh,
and they still have vivid memories of their wasted fields and desolate
farms in the last Carlist war. But were their ancient religion to be
really attacked, or were an attempt made to expel the monks from the
Basque provinces, the peasants could be counted upon to make a desperate
resistance, more in defence of their independence than on behalf of the
monks themselves. Foreigners have often misunderstood the Basques,[79]
for they are reserved and silent towards the new-comer (“Gizonciki
arabotz andi,” they say--“Little man, much noise”; “the empty barrel
makes the most noise,” and so on). But there is no suspicion of
commercialism about their love of liberty such as has often been
attributed to the Catalans: they love their beautiful land, the
Eskual-erria, for its own sake and the religion and customs of their
forefathers, and the strangers who visit their country soon learn to
love and admire its broad healing power and spirit of ancient peace. It
is a country of civilization without great cities, where exists an
intimate and ennobling relation between the soil and the inhabitants.
V
IN REMOTE NAVARRE
Navarre is held to be one of the chief bulwarks of Clericalism in Spain,
and so remote and isolated are its villages, so primitive its life and
agriculture, so few its means of communication, that it might seem that
no breath of modern times could have penetrated to this province. Lying
on the frontier of France, it is defended from the inroads of
civilization by its mountains and wide wastes of desert land. In those
lonely groups of houses of massive yellow-brown stone, clustered around
their church, and crowning rocky hills of the same colour, there is no
room for differences of opinion, and he who does not attend Mass at
least once in the year is forced to go and live elsewhere. Should you
ask how he can be forced to go, the answer you will receive is, “By the
law, by public opinion.” Quite recently a traveller, arriving famished
at one of these villages of Navarre, with no smaller change than a
French napoleon, went from door to door in vain. No one would accept
this _doblón de oro_ (gold doubloon). Finally, a woman who had lived
for a time at Salies de Béarn consented to receive it, and sent it later
to be changed at the capital, Pamplona. Yet even here in Navarre there
is an appreciable body of liberal opinion, and even in the heart of the
Carlist country, at Estella, the Club Carlista is faced by the ensign of
the Círculo Liberal; even here in all but the smaller villages opinion
is divided, and the policy of Clericals and anti-Clericals discussed
with animation. Those who served in the second Carlist war recognize
that the times have altered, and that leaders, or _cabecillas_, are no
longer forthcoming to lead them in swift night marches across the hills,
willing though they might be to follow. At Estella a fort taken by the
Carlists is now a peaceful covered market-place, and the palace where
Don Carlos held his court is a pleasant _fonda_ with a cool _patio_ of
flowers. Those who enter Navarre by the Convent of Roncesvalles and the
Pass where Roland was slain, and which Byng a thousand years later, in
1813, was forced to evacuate with ten thousand troops, may be easily
deceived into imagining that Navarre is a land of meadows and green
woods and pleasant streams. The swift river Urrobi runs through passes
of rugged hills, but overgrown with box and beech trees and pines. Steep
walls of rock are in summer covered with foxgloves and bramble and
broom, scabious, St. John’s wort, mallow, bell heather, and many other
flowers and ferns, and in places the hills are red with wild
strawberries. The Urrobi forces its way through barriers of grey rock
and over ledges in green pools and white rushing torrents. But this is
not the true Navarre. There no trees are to be seen, and one is
perpetually in a wide circle of bare hills. The country is the most
desolate imaginable, formed by bare, ashen-grey hills (scored and gashed
by dry torrent-beds) and valleys equally barren. The wind hisses, and
crickets chatter loudly in a few stunted elms by the roadside. All is
greyness without colour, and in late summer the stubble-fields far and
near add a new note of desolation, and it seems out of keeping with the
character of the country that these fields should ever be a fresh green
in spring. Indeed, the occasional hollows of olives and plots of
vineyards have an air of unreality in the surrounding wilderness of
crumbling dust and shale. Yet some welcome patches of colour are to be
found, if it is only a line of chicory or of huge purple thistles along
a stubble-field, or a blue-bloused peasant jogging down the dusty road
on a mule with crimson trappings. And on the threshing-floors around the
villages, where work is carried on far into the night, often by
lightning flash, the white shirts and blue blouses of the men, and the
pink and red dresses and long white headkerchiefs of the women form a
picturesque and beautiful scene through the clouds of flying chaff and
ruddy golden grain falling in heavier, more compact masses. For here the
threshing is all done by hand with the help of mules, oxen, and horses,
which are driven round and round, drawing all the children of the
village on little wooden sledges. When the grain has been thus sifted,
the process is completed by throwing it into the air from long wooden
shovels and close-pronged wooden forks. The corn is grown on precipices
and sheer mountain-sides, and is brought down to the threshing-floors on
donkeys, which disappear beneath their rustling load. The men who live
in this grim country are also stern and grim, harsh featured, hard, and
strong; and, though hospitable and not unkindly, they are fierce and
obstinate upon occasion, and sometimes cruel to their animals. Their
food is rough, but not unplentiful; of wheat there is no lack, and with
some vines and olives they are content to have the three necessities of
a Spanish peasant’s life. The villages would often pass unnoticed on
their rocky hills were it not for the outstanding feature of their grim,
massive churches; the church of Gallipienzo dominates a mountain, and is
so solid and fine that it seems to dwarf it. These churches are to be
seen for very many miles across the completely bare country, and at
night the lights of the village streets form, from long distances,
strange, irregular letters on a mountain-side, making the village far
more conspicuous than it would be by day. Sansol, a little village not
far from Logroño, looks from some distance like a great fortress of
brown stone with tiny black loop-holes (the glassless windows); behind
is a long backbone of grey, rocky hill, and beyond the purple-black
Monte Jura with a glimpse of white road. Bitter and fierce are the
winters in Navarre, and pitiless the sun in summer; but for all its
forbidding aspects it repays the discomforts of a visit to its remote
districts. Lumbier is like a miniature Toledo, on its bare hill above
the winding river, and Sanguesa, of brown yellow stone, on the Aragón,
of the same colour, has its magnificently sculptured church of Santa
María, and other beautiful carvings on private houses. And after a few
weeks’ acquaintance with the harsh country and the proud inhabitants,
the traveller will realize the possibility of those relentless Carlist
wars which still send a thrill through those who recall them, and the
difficulty of hunting down _cabecillas_ who knew the country and of
bringing the war to an end.
VI
SPANISH CITIES