THE LANGUAGE OF GALICIA
A Romance language--The universal language of Spain--A provincial
dialect--George Ticknor--The _Cantigas_ of Alfonso el
Sabio--Comparison between the languages of Galicia and Portugal--A
Celtic trait--The wing of the tongue--The native poets of
Galicia--_Trovadors_--The Marquis de Valmar--Latinised
forms--Amador de los Rios--The young Italian language--French takes
the precedence--Romance poetry in England--The troubadours of
Aquitaine--Alfonso the royal trovador--The poet of true love--The
martyr to Cupid--The story of Macias--His tragic end
With the production of the _Salve Regina_, and with the origination of
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Galicia may be said to have
entered triumphantly upon her second golden age, an age which extended
from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, and in which is comprised
the period which witnessed the most glorious triumphs of lyric poetry in
Spain.
It must be remembered that for a hundred and seventy years previous to
the year 585, when the Visigoths became the sole masters of Spain, the
present province of Galicia, united to what is now the northern half of
Portugal, had formed one united kingdom--that of the Sueves. As an
independent nation, this portion of Spain, with a language of its own,
and kings of its own, had more pronounced characteristics and traditions
than any other part of Spain. Its language, originally Latin, had
become, under the Sueves, a distinct Romance language, just as the Latin
of central Spain became by degrees a Romance tongue, and finally
developed into the Spanish language, as it is spoken in Madrid to-day.
The language of Galicia during its second age of gold, the language of
its lyric poetry was, like the Spanish language, a child of the Latin
tongue; they were, we may say, twin branches from the same stem. But
while the one became the universal language of Spain, the other split
into two smaller branches, of which one became the national language of
Portugal,[72] and the other--while it remained the purest of all the
Latin dialects except the Italian--eventually sank to the level of a
provincial dialect--that spoken by the peasants of Galicia to-day, a
dialect which not even the historians of Spain and Portugal professed to
understand till the close of the nineteenth century.
It was as recently as the last decade of the nineteenth century that
students of Spanish history became conscious of the fact that a true
knowledge of the history of Spanish civilisation in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries could only be attained by careful study of the
literature produced in the Galician tongue during Galicia’s second age
of gold. An American writer, George Ticknor, whose work is still
considered an authority on Spanish literature, erroneously attributed to
flattery the words of the marquis of Santillana in his famous letter to
the Constable of Portugal, “_non ha mucho tiempo, cualesquier deçidores
e trovadores destas partes, agora fuesen castellanos anduluces o de la
Estremadura, todas sus obras componian en lengua Gallega o
portuguesca_”[73]; but we know now that it was the simple truth, the
language universally chosen by the famous _trovadores_ of Spain, no
matter which might be their native province, and by all Spain’s greatest
poets of the Middle Ages was that of Galicia. “Ticknor thought it an
insoluble mystery,” says Valmar, “why King Alfonso _el Sabio_ should
have left in his will a command that the poetry of Galicia should be
sung over his tomb, seeing that he was buried in Murcia, where that
tongue was not spoken; but if he had studied the Spanish poetry of that
time, if he had read the beautiful _Cantigas_ written by Alfonso
himself, he would not have called the idiom spoken in Galicia in the
thirteenth century a dialect, nor would he have been surprised that
Alfonso should wish Gallegan poetry to be sung over his tomb.”
As we have seen, northern Portugal was once part of Galicia. When
Portugal became a separate kingdom, she retained her original (the
Gallegan) language. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Feijoó
pointed out that it was an error to suppose that there only existed
three dialects derived from the Latin language, namely, Spanish,
Italian, and French: there was a fourth--the Lusitanian language, that
is, the language of Galicia, which was once identical with that of
Portugal. The chief difference between the two is the pronunciation, and
this is not sufficient to prevent individuals of the two countries
respectively from understanding one another. Feijoó went on to insist
that the Gallegan idiom was not, as generally supposed, a sub-dialect of
Latin nor a corruption of the Spanish tongue, but an independent branch
from the Latin tree, a branch more closely connected with the parent
stem than even the language of Castille. “No one denies,” he says, “that
Latin words have degenerated less in the Portuguese and Gallegan idioms
than they have in Spanish: this could not be the case if they were
sub-dialects of the Spanish language--the nearer the fountain the purer
the stream. Italian is the purest of the Latin dialects; Portuguese
comes next.”
The Gallegans have been a poetic people from the very earliest times,
and this fact tallies with the traditions of their Celtic origin. Like
the Irish, they have preserved even to our own day the Celtic
predilection for spontaneous wit. The poetical contests indulged in by
the _trovadores_ of the Middle Ages were only an elaboration of the
Celtic contests of wit so popular among the ancient Irish, and which are
still part of the programme connected with a Gallegan peasant’s wedding.
On the eve of her wedding-day the peasant girl in Galicia hears before
her window the witty and often sarcastic couplet flung by the friends of
a disappointed rival at the successful suitor and his friends who have
come to serenade her, and then, as quickly as an echo, it is answered by
the triumphant couplet of the happy bridegroom. Verse comes as readily
as prose to the lips of these people, and the peasant bride may listen
half through the night to their poetic banter.[74] Where the
disappointment of the rival is very great, not only is the sentiment
confessed in his spontaneous couplets very bitter, it is sometimes even
cruel. French critics in Feijoó’s day complained that Italian and
Spanish poets put too much enthusiasm (poetic frenzy) into their poetry,
and to this charge Feijoó replied that he who wishes to turn the poets
into prudent, discreet, and sensible beings, wishes to do away with them
altogether, for enthusiasm is the soul of poetry, the ecstasy of the
mind is the wing of the pen. In Galicia it is the wing of the tongue.
“_Impetus ille sacer, qui vatum pectora nutrit._”
The fact that Portugal and Galicia had for several centuries one common
language accounts for the other fact that both have more than once laid
claim to the honour of having produced the same great poet or literary
man. Hence it comes that the _trovador Macías el Enamorado_ appears as a
Portuguese poet in the works of Portuguese writers, and as a Gallegan
poet in the works of Spanish writers. The same apparent contradiction
occurs with regard to the _Cantigas_ of Alfonso _el Sabio_.[75] Great
was the importance of Galicia in the Middle Ages. Constantly was she
visited by royalty, by princes, and by the flower of chivalry, attracted
to the sepulchre of St. James. The greatest and noblest families of
Spain had their senorial estates in Galicia. It was there that they
founded the “Order of the Knights of Spain,” and later the _Hermandad de
Cambiadores_, institutions which lent their powerful protection to the
pilgrims who passed to and from Santiago on the French road (_Camino
francés_).
Not only did the nobles speak the language of Galicia, that tongue was
also the language of the court. It was in those days that a taste for
_la poesia provenzal_ penetrated into Galicia from France (brought by
French pilgrims of aristocratic birth), and was imitated by the nobles
of Galicia. “This persistence of the sentiment of love,” says the
marquis of Fegueroa, “the chief argument of provençal lyric poetry,
necessarily influenced our Knights of the Order of Spain, as it did the
knights of northern France, Theobald IV, Count Champagne, and Charles of
Orleans.” King Alfonso deliberately chose the language of Galicia in
which to compose his hymns to the Virgin (_Cantigas de Santa Maria_); he
chose it because it was so much more poetical than the language of
Castille, so much more expressive, so much more tender; and for the same
reason it became the favourite medium of all the poets of Spain. The
native poets of Galicia were among the most famous of their age. It is
now known that the curious book of poetry so long preserved in the
Vatican library under the title of _Cancionero de la Vaticana_, was
composed almost entirely by Gallegan poets, and not by Portuguese--as
was believed until about twenty years ago.[76]
The _trovadores_ of Galicia were great travellers, as well as musicians
and poets. Not only did they visit and sing before the most powerful
courts of Europe, but they studied at the _schola mimorum_ of the
countries they visited, and brought back with them to Santiago the most
famous musical compositions of France and Italy. The music of Santiago
Cathedral was for several centuries unsurpassed in Europe.
The Marquis de Valmar, in his fascinating work on the _Cantigas_ of
Alfonso _el Sabio_, describes their language as spirited, flexible,
impressive, and of rich variety. It was a language found ready for his
use by the royal _trovador_; he did not improvise his happy expressions,
they were already current among his people. The old idea that the modern
languages of Europe were a result of the amalgamation of Latin with the
barbaric idiom of the invaders of the Roman Empire is now completely
abandoned. The philologists of to-day do not believe that the
substantial changes introduced by the neo-Latin languages into the Latin
tongue came from the Northern invaders except in very extreme cases. The
transcendental transformations were a natural and inevitable result of
the presence of Roman social life in Western countries.
The separation between the official and aristocratic language and that
of the lower classes in such distinct regions, became the more palpable
and determined, as the traditional glory of Imperial Rome waned. One
Imperial Latin was spoken in the laws, tribunals, and schools, in the
forum, the temple, and the palace; a common idiom bound together the
educated classes of the vast Roman Empire; but in the business houses
and the workshops, among the slaves and the lower classes, there was no
common tongue; each country had its local expressions and its dialects,
of which--though Latin was the foundation--a great part consisted of
Latinised forms, and words of diverse origin--sometimes native,
sometimes exotic--here Celtic, there Iberic, yonder Breton or Arabic, as
the case might be. Later, when Roman fame and influence had declined
still further, when the old Roman families had sunk to a plebeian level,
and their place had been taken by a new, locally produced aristocracy,
then it was that, along with the toga and the sword, the grand old
Latin language disappeared for ever, leaving in its place a mixed
dialect, which we call “Romance.”[77] The various provinces of the Roman
Empire during its last period were, without doubt, bi-lingual. The
conquerors adopted, as is invariably the case, the language and customs
of the conquered, and forgot their own.
Valmar remarks that Amador de los Rios was right in saying that the
common idiom of the peninsula was already completely formed at the
beginning of the twelfth century. There are popular couplets written in
the language of Galicia which can be traced back to the year 1110,
namely the couplets that were sung on the occasion of the enthusiastic
welcome given by the townspeople of Santiago to Bishop Gelmirez, who in
1105 had founded there a school for the cultivation of oratory, letters,
_and the Latin tongue_. It is true, as Valmar points out, that the
formation of the languages of Castille and Galicia must have required
centuries, but that formation reached its completion towards the middle
of the twelfth century. When new dialects came into existence, the
synthetic beauty so remarkable in the Latin language was lost, but in
its place animation and ease of expression were gained. “Marriages,”
says Valmar, “also helped on the triumph of the Romance languages; but
perhaps the most powerful influence was Christ’s religion of charity and
love.”
Even in Italy Latin gradually became an unknown tongue to the lower
classes. Pope Boniface VIII. translated the _Stabat Mater_ into the
young Italian language that the people might be able to appreciate it.
Alfonso x. indicates in _Cantiga_ viii. that in his day a young man
needed the help of the Holy Spirit before he could learn to speak Latin.
To help on the propagation of the Christian religion, even Arabic was
sometimes resorted to. Juan, Bishop of Seville, wrote sermons in Arabic
at the beginning of the tenth century,[78] “a proof,” says Valmar, “that
Latin was little known, as also the Romance language which was not yet
risen.”
French, owing to the influence of the parish schools, took the
precedence of all the neo-Latin languages, and had a powerful influence
over other nations. There was a sudden flowering of Romance poetry in
England just after the Norman conquest in 1066, and this spread to all
the neo-Latin peoples--the story of Tristam and Iseult, the Arthurian
legends, penetrated more deeply than the provençal lyrics. St. Francis
of Assisi went about reciting French songs. Sir John Mandeville was the
precursor of the famous Portuguese Ferñao Mendes Pinto, wrote in French
the story of his travels in Asia (published by Lynn just after the
invention of printing in 1480). Marco Polo also wrote, or rather
dictated, his book of travel in French.
Alfonso _el Sabio_ did not write in a vulgar dialect, but in the
cultivated and polished language used by the aristocracy of Galicia.
“The popular Gallegan dialect remained in the land of its birth, and
kept the characteristic of a euphonic dialect,” says Valmar; but the
language of learning ‘el Gallego erudito,’ so skilfully used by Alfonso
and those innumerable Portuguese Spanish poets whose work is preserved
in the Cancionero of the Vatican, acquired (without losing the essence
of the primitive dialect) the character of a refined literary language.
This language it was which became the mother of Portuguese.
The trouvadores of Aquitaine came in such numbers to Santiago, that it
is no wonder they founded a centre of poetical unification, as Theophile
Braga has called it. It was a school of national lyric poetry in the
language which has been called Galaico-Portuguese. French influence was
strongly reflected in it. It reached its highest point of resplendence
in the reign of Alfonso X., and at that time even the lower classes
understood and appreciated its poetry; so historians need be surprised
no longer that the poet king chose to write in the language of Galicia.
Valmar has made a critical study of the versification of the
_Cantigas_.[79] “In vain,” he says, “philologists have sought a
connecting link between Latin prosody and the prosody of the Romance
languages.” To write Hexameters in the language of Galicia would be
impossible. The origin of the _Cantigas_ is undoubtedly the popular and
religious poetry of Latin decadence, at the moment when there was added
to it a rhythmic element. There were, in Roman days, two Latin
versifications, rhythmic and metric, corresponding to the two idioms
_sermo plebius_ and _sermo patricius_. The rhythmic versification used
in popular poetry existed from the earliest days of Rome. It is
mentioned by Livy, Cicero, Horace, and many other literary Romans. In
the primitive hymns used by the Christian Church, the metric and
rhythmic principles were curiously mixed. The earliest of these were
composed by St. Ambrose and sung in Milan in 386. Léon Gautier has
remarked that the poetry of France originated with the verses sung in
the churches.
The fact that Alfonso X. wrote many hymns of devotion to the Virgin does
not prevent his morals from having been very shady. Dante went so far as
to class him among princes unfit to reign,[80] and Valmar, unable to
truthfully contradict the Italian poet, devotes pages to proving that
Dante himself was not a better man. It is clear, however, that morals
were everywhere very lax in those days, and one need not be surprised
that the _trovadores_ of Galicia were infected by the “_audacias de la
musa provenzal_.” The poets of those days often seem to forget the moral
dignity of humanity; they would attack the honour even of princes in
their bold and bitter satyrs. “Alfonso,” says Valmar, “ever expressed
real tenderness in his love songs.” But one or two of them have shocked
even Valmar by their naked naturalism. “All this,” he says, “shows the
relaxation of morals in his day, and the evil influences that came from
Provence.”
One of the most singular legends contained in the _Cantigas_ is that in
which a rich and gallant gentleman, who has fallen blindly and immorally
in love with a lady, prays with obstinate fervour two hundred _Ave
Marias_ to the Virgin every day for a whole year, entreating her that
she would touch the lady’s heart. At length the Virgin appears to him in
the church, and says, “Look at me well, and then choose between me and
that other woman, the one who pleases you best (_a que te mais praz_).”
The gallant gentleman instantly consecrated himself wholly to the
adoration of the Virgin, and a year later she took him up with her to
heaven.
In another _Cantiga_, the nun who acts as sacristan of the convent of
Fontebras is in love with a knight, and is on the point of fleeing with
him. She goes and prostrates herself before the Crucifix to take leave
of Christ. Suddenly the holy effigy gives her such a blow in the face
that it leaves a mark for ever on her cheek.
In yet another _Cantiga_ (xciv.) a nun who acts as treasurer of a
convent escapes from the cloisters with a lover, after having left the
keys of the treasury before the altar of the Virgin with a prayer. The
Virgin, in pity, takes her place,
[Illustration: WHERE THE SIL JOINS THE CABE, ORENSE]
[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN VINEYARD, ORENSE
PHOTOS. BY AUTHOR]
and when the repentant nun returns after many years to the convent, she
finds the keys where she had left them, and learned with astonishment
and gratitude that no one had noticed her absence.
There are three hundred and fifty-nine _Cantigas_ in Alfonso’s
collection.
Macías (“O Namorado,” the infatuated lover) flourished in the last half
of the fourteenth century, in the reign of Peter the Cruel (1350-69). Of
all the _trovadores_ of Galicia, Macías is the most popular. His fame is
due to his tragic end, rather than to his merits as a poet. Professor
Rennert,[81] who has recently published a monograph of Macías, does not
find enough merit in his poems to account for his extraordinary fame.
Macías has been extravagantly glorified alike by all the Portuguese and
Spanish poets as a perfect model of true love, of love faithful even
unto death. “Love alone was the cause of his death,” says Gregorio
Silvestre.[82]
“El fino amante es Macías
Que con solo amor murió.”
Macías is one of the most romantic figures in Spanish literature.
Rennert has spared no pains in hunting for every scrap of information
obtainable with regard to this pattern lover. He has perused the _Satira
de Felice e’ Infelice Vida_, by Pedro, Constable of Portugal, written
between 1453 and 1455; also the writings of Fernan Nuñez of Toledo,
which appeared in 1499, and he assures his readers that all later
writers who have made Macías their subject have drawn their inspiration
from these two authorities.
From the pen of Macías himself, “the martyr to Cupid,” we have only four
poems that can be authenticated. Rennert has examined these with extreme
care, and says that the dialect (or language) in which they are written
differs in no particular from the language of the early Portuguese
poets.
As we have seen, the language of Galicia separated itself gradually from
that of Portugal, as a result of the union of Galicia with the rest of
Spain. Each of the four poems of Macías contains a sprinkling of
Castillian words.
“His story fired the popular imagination,” says Fitzmaurice Kelly, “and
enters into literature in Lope de Vega’s ‘Porfiar hasta morir,’ and in
Larra’s ‘El Doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente.’”
There are two versions of the poet’s life story. The one taken up by
Argote de Molina, and, in the words of Rennert, embellished with
additional touches of romance,[83] is the most popular: “Macías was born
in Galicia, and was a great and virtuous martyr to love, who, being
enamoured of a gentle and beautiful lady, it happened that, riding one
day over a bridge together, fortune so willed it that the mule upon
which the lady was riding, becoming restive, threw her into the deep
water. And as that constant lover, no less determined than fired by
love, and fearless of death, saw what had happened, he quickly leapt
into the deep waters: and he, whose infinite longing the great height of
the bridge in nowise checked, nor whom the black and angry waters made
forgetful of her in whose thrall he lived, seized her, already half
dead, and bore her to the white sands safe and sound, and afterwards
despairing of the reward that is not denied in the end to all true and
faithful lovers, she was married to another. But that constant and
gentle soul, that knew no change, loved her being married as he had
loved her a maid, and as the faithful lover was journeying along one
day, he met the cause of his undoing, for there came towards him his
lady, and in requital of his great services to her he asked her to
descend from her palfry. Thereupon Macías thanked her for her bounty,
and bade her remount and ride on, so that her husband might not find her
there, and she having departed, her husband arrived, and seeing him whom
he did not much love standing in the middle of the road, he asked him
what he was doing there, and Macías replied, ‘Here did my lady set her
feet, and in these footprints I intend to remain, and end my sad life.’
And her husband, wanting in every feeling of courtesy or nobility, more
actuated by jealousy than by mercy, dealt him a mortal blow with his
lance. There, stretched upon the ground, his eyes turned in the
direction in which his lady had departed, he uttered the following
words: ‘O my only lady and for ever! Wherever thou mayest be, I entreat
thee to remember me, thy unworthy servant’; and, having uttered these
words with a deep sigh, his blissful soul passed away.”
Macías wrote a poem in which he upbraided Love. Here is the first verse
of it--
“Amor cruel e briosa
Mal aia a ta alteza,
Pois non fazes iqualeza
Seendo tal poderoso.”
And here is the fifth and last verse--
“Ves, Amor por que o digo,
Ser que es cruel e forte,
Adversario ou enemigo
Desamador de ta corte:
Al vil deitas en tal sorte
Que por prez lle das vileza!
Quen te serve en gentileza
Por galardon lle das morte.”
No doubt if he could but have foreseen his own tragic end, he would have
reproached Cupid with even greater bitterness.