GALICIA’S LIVESTOCK
The pig market--Pigs in every family--Laws relating to pigs and
goats--Poultry--Oxen--The ancient plough--Gallegan carts--The music
of the cartwheels--Excellent milk--No dairy
farms--Horses--Wolves--Foxes--Bears--Hares--Rabbits--Owls and
bats--Musk-rats--Wild cats--Partridges--Pheasants--Pigeons--Facts
about sardines--Neither a mackerel nor a herring--Dried cod--Trade
between Norway and Spain--A heated controversy--The Lamprey--The
turbot--The oyster--Eels--Cod--Salmon--Red mullet--Trout
One of the most entertaining sights in Santiago is its weekly pig market
in the Alameda. Every Thursday morning, women and boys may be seen
wending their way thither, each with a young pig in their arms, or--if
it is too big to carry--on a string. Every pig so conveyed is a member
of some peasant family; it has grown up amongst the children, and often
slept in the same room. By eleven o’clock most of the pigs have arrived,
and the space allotted to them presents a lively spectacle: a fearful
squeaking and squealing prevails. Proud mother pigs stand surrounded by
enormous litters. I photographed a group of thirty little squeakers, all
wedged tightly together back to back, and then measured a parent pig
with my umbrella. Gallegan pigs are not well bred; their legs are far
too long, the backs of several were exactly the height of my umbrella,
they were like plants that had run to seed, not fat and round like the
English commodity. The Gallegan pig is a melancholy example of the crass
ignorance of the peasants; they invariably kill off those that would
make the best breeders, and _vice versa_. English pigs have, however,
been occasionally imported. On the road to Coruña I once pointed to a
group of pigs, and asked the woman to whom they belonged what she called
them. “_Cerdos_,” she replied; “but in your country you call them
_Chinas_.” She knew something about English pigs, and the word she had
got hold of was our word “Chine,” and corresponded to “porker.” On
another occasion I happened to make a remark to the municipal architect
on Santiago’s wealth of pigs.
“This abundance of pigs is a peculiarity of Santiago,” was the reply.
“You will find it nowhere else; they live amongst us, even in our best
streets; there are two pigs living now in a family on the second floor
in the principal street in the town close to our finest shops; a thin
partition is all that separates them at night from the children’s
bedroom. Our streets are full of pigs; it is dreadful.”
On my mentioning the matter to my hostess, she replied, “Yes, it is
quite true; but we have other animals besides pigs--on the second floor
of the house you can see from your window there are two young goats
being brought up as members of the family.”
But pigs and goats must have been plentiful in the town of Orense as far
back as the first decade of the sixteenth century, for one of that
city’s most erudite archæologists tells us that among the By-Laws of
Orense in the year 1509 he has found the following:--
“That pigs shall not walk in the streets, and that those which are found
doing so shall be given to the poor, and their owners be fined.
“That no one shall keep a female pig in his house, nor in the city. That
no one shall feed any pig in the streets, and that any one may put to
death on the spot persons so doing.
“That no person shall keep sheep or goats in the city. Persons found
guilty shall be exposed to the vengeance of the public in the _picota_
or _pelouryno_ of the city.”[216]
The churches of villages and small towns are carefully surrounded by
walls or fences, enclosing sometimes a churchyard and sometimes merely a
small plot of grass; and, in order that the pigs of the neighbourhood
may not enter that enclosed space by the gate, a trench is kept open in
front of the gate, a kind of diminutive moat about five feet in depth.
On first noticing this arrangement I put it down to quite another cause,
and thought that the “drains were up,” but after a time I began to
consider the phenomenon more closely, as it seemed incredible that
“drains” could explain the presence of so many open trenches. “It is a
custom peculiar to Galicia,” explained a lady resident, “because of the
pigs.” A pig would never jump a trench.
My readers will not be surprised to learn that bacon is an important
staple of food in Galicia. The national broth, _Caldo Gallego_, as
known to the well-to-do, could hardly be made without it, neither could
the _olla podrida_.
“No hay olla sin tocino
Ni sermon sin Augustino.”[217]
“In Spain,” says Ford, “pigs are more numerous even than asses, since
they pervade the province.” In parts of Galicia, as in the adjoining
province of Extremadura, pigs are fattened upon mast and acorns, which
are larger than those of English oaks, but in many districts they live
upon chestnuts, which give a very fine flavour to the bacon. “The
acorns,” says Ford, “formed the original diet of the aboriginal Iberian,
as well as of his pigs; when dry, the acorns were ground, say the
classical authors, into bread, and when fresh, they were served up as
the second course. Ladies of high rank constantly ate acorns at the
opera and elsewhere; they were the presents sent by Sancho Panza’s wife
to the Duchess, and formed the text on which Don Quixote preached so
eloquently to the goat-herds, on the joys and innocence of the golden
age and pastoral happiness.”
Poultry and pigs grow up together in the villages. Eggs were sold at the
rate of fivepence a dozen in Santiago a few years ago, but in the last
decade their price and that of chickens has doubled. The villagers send
all their chickens, and everything else they have to sell, to Santiago
for the festival of St. James in July, when the town overflows with
visitors; and as the supply is greater than the demand, living there
becomes very cheap.
The gentle-eyed, long-horned oxen, which take the place of cart-horses,
are another feature both of town and country life in Galicia. In
northern Italy, in the month of November, I have often counted as many
as fourteen and even fifteen pairs of oxen in front of one plough; that
is a sight not met with in Galicia, where I have never seen two pairs of
oxen pulling the same plough; but in Italy they have modern ploughs,
whereas here the plough of Virgil’s day is still in use. It is the
identical plough that we see sculptured on Etruscan tombs, and on the
Celtiberic coins. The ancients used them also as weapons: Pausanius
fought with a plough at Marathon. Hesiod mentions in his _Works and
Days_ the ἀροτρον αὐτογυον, which was a stout piece bent like a
hook, with beams and share beams all in one piece. When driving along
the country roads of Galicia, we used to meet many a ploughman wending
homeward his weary way and carrying his plough upon his shoulder, while
his oxen walked on either side; and I have often seen a couple of
stalwart women engaged in tilling a field, one holding the end of the
long handle of the plough, and the other in front guiding the oxen. Why
has the modern plough not been long since introduced into this corner of
Spain?[218] Are the Gallegan peasants as inimical to improvements in the
plough as our Lancashire weavers were to the spinning jenny? By no
means: the answer is to be found in their ignorance and poverty.
The carts used by the peasants are almost as archaic as the ploughs;
their shape is that of a small boat, and their walnut wheels make a
strange screaming sound as they turn on their walnut axles, which can be
heard at a considerable distance. There is a special word to denote this
sound in the Gallegan language (_v. chirriar_; _n. chirrio_). I examined
the axles of several, and found them twice the thickness of a man’s
wrist and as smooth as satin. This “singing” of the cartwheels is not
allowed in the towns, so the peasants soap the axles when they come into
the streets; but the louder their carts sing in the fields and on the
country roads the better pleased are they, for they believe that the
oxen like the sound and will not work well without it. They also find it
convenient in narrow lanes where there is not room for two carts to pass
each other, because it warns them in good time that they are approaching
each other, and that one must halt or turn back. They say, too, that in
olden days, when the mountains abounded in wolves and bears, the singing
cartwheels frightened and kept them from attacking the oxen and their
drivers. Not only the peasants, but everybody likes to hear the
cartwheels in the quiet summer evenings; it is like the sound of the
scythe in England, and its associations are much the same. Rosalia
Castro speaks of it as one of the things she missed when she went to
live in Castille:
“Chirrar d’ os carros d’ a Ponte,
Tristes campanas d’ Herbon,
Cando vos ozo partidesme
As cordas d’ a corazon.”
The long horns of the oxen often carried my thoughts to the Highlands of
Scotland. The horns of a couple of them as they stood yoked to a cart in
one of the narrow streets of Santiago would span the entire
thoroughfare, but they never frightened even the smallest child, and
their large, gentle eyes more than counteracted the ferocious appearance
of their horns. They are very strong, and draw loads that would break
the back of many an English cart-horse. In Coruña I saw them drawing a
couple of huge iron pipes many yards in length. Seoane,[219] writing on
the bulls of Galicia, says that these animals were found wild in Central
Europe up to the sixteenth century, and that the Spaniards imported them
into South America, and thus brought into existence the immense herds
now to be found between the Andes and the Atlantic coast, and called
_toros cimarrones_.
The milk of Gallegan cows is excellent, and nothing but their ignorance
prevents the peasants from becoming prosperous dairy farmers. As we have
seen, the breeding of herds of cattle was one of the chief industries of
Galicia in the eighteenth century, and an authority on the subject has
assured me that there is no reason why the finest cattle in the world
should not be produced there. Nature has furnished an abundance of pure
water and an unusually exuberant vegetation, but so great is the
ignorance of the peasants that they actually employ their oxen to draw
the plough before selling them for butcher’s meat. This is why the beef
is so tough.
The horses of Galicia are sorry creatures; they are still in their
primitive state, and have not improved since the days of the Celts. The
typical village horse is badly proportioned, ugly, and absolutely
untrained; its gait is awkward, and, in fact, it is a mere apology for a
horse. Herds of wild horses frequent the mountainous districts; the
males defend the females from the attacks of wild animals, and they
breed their young without any assistance from man--a proof, as Seoane
has observed, that the climate of Galicia is favourable to
horse-breeding. And, going back to classical times, we find that Pliny
has a good deal to say in favour of the horses of Galicia and Asturias.
He says they were much in demand for their powers of resistance and
their velocity, adding, “Their ardour gives them wings to devour space.”
He also speaks highly of their pleasing and gentle trot. Silicus
Italicus mentions the remarkable fecundity of the mares, but Justin is
less enthusiastic.[220] Mules and even asses are preferred by the lower
classes all over Spain to horses--they require less attention and are
more surefooted. “The mule,” says Ford, “performs in Spain the functions
of the camel in the East.” I have spoken in a former chapter of the way
in which the breeding of Gallegan mules has decreased of late years in
Galicia, owing to the free importation of French mules.
Goats are plentiful but poor. I have seen a poor woman come into
Santiago with a couple of live kids tucked under one arm and offer them
for sale to every person she met. On market days in the spring-time
there are always plenty of women with kids to sell. Mountain goats are
rare in Galicia. Deer are also rare.
Wolves were, till quite recently, found all over Galicia, and the
peasants were mortally afraid of them; they live in the mountains,
chiefly of Lugo, Orense, and Tuy; the peasants declare that many of
their dogs are of a mixed parentage, the fathers being wolves, and the
mothers dogs. A wolf never attacks a man unless driven by hunger or in
self-defence. The Gallegan wolves attack the flocks, but seldom come off
as victors when they attack the bulls, on account of the latters’
splendid horns. In 1861, Seoane wrote that wolves came into the Gallegan
villages in the middle of the day to steal chickens, that a case had
occurred of a wolf seizing and carrying off a child that was playing
before a cottage door, and that the combined efforts of all the
villagers were powerless to save the child.
Foxes are very common. When a fox is caught by a peasant, he takes it to
the town officials and receives a reward; he is allowed to keep its tail
and ears.[221] The wild boar is scarce in Galicia--so is the jackal.
Bears are disappearing from the mountains both of Asturias and Galicia,
but they are still to be found in certain wild districts; the _urrus
pyraenaicus_ (Linn.) is still to be met with in Galicia, one was caught
a few miles from Santiago in the year 1848. The bear skins of Galicia
are, however, very inferior to those of the Alps.
Hares are plentiful in the lower slopes of the mountains, and in the
valleys. Great virtue was attributed to the skin of the hare in
antiquity. The Emperor Heliogabulus never sat, we are told, on any seat
that was not covered with one. The Gallegans use them for making hats;
the peasants catch them with traps made of large stones placed in front
of their holes.
Rabbits are also very plentiful,--in fact, there are, as usual, too
many. Spanish naturalists believe that the rabbit originated in Spain
and passed thence to the rest of Europe. They are not found in Sweden or
in any very cold countries. In Pontevedra and Orense rabbits do a great
deal of harm. The Gallegan word for them is _coello_, or _cocullo_.
Pliny says that rabbits did so much harm in the Balearic Islands in the
time of Augustus, that the inhabitants petitioned the Emperor to send
soldiers to assist them in driving them off, and thus prevent a famine.
Owls and bats are plentiful, they frequent the vaults of the churches.
The owls, _rhinolophus_, do not build nests, but make use of holes in
walls; they are called _lechuzas_ or sucklings, because they come out at
night and suck the oil out of the lamps. In the neighbourhood of
Santiago Cathedral they are especially troublesome. Moles are plentiful
in every part, and prove themselves great enemies to agriculture,
perhaps the greatest that the Gallegan peasants have to contend with:
the ancients made hats of their skin, but no use is made of them here.
The musk-rat, _musaraña_ (fetid shrew-mouse), _Ginera sorex_, is also
found in these parts; it has glands along the outside of its stomach,
under its fur, which give out a strong odour of musk. Seoane says these
are the smallest mammals known; some think them poisonous; there are
many fables about them. The Spanish word for musk is _almizcle_; it is
derived from the Arabic.
The common musk-rat, _sorex araneus_ (Linn.), abounds in all parts of
Galicia; and the peasants have an invincible horror of it; they declare
that it is poisonous, and that it bites their cattle and kills them,
though in reality it is much too timid. Cats kill them, but never eat
them on account of their smell. The water rat, _sorex fodum_, is
plentiful on the banks of rivers and lakes; its claws are not joined by
any membrane. Hedgehogs are also numerous; the peasants erroneously
believe that they climb apple and chestnut trees to get the fruit and
nuts. Pliny also had this notion. Hedgehogs swim well, however, if they
do not climb; snakes have a great horror of them. Pliny says that the
ancients used their skins and bristles for carding wool.
Martin Sarmiento says there is a species of cat in Galicia, which, on
account of its size and the colouring of its skin, is called by the
peasants _tigre gallego_. Seoane thinks this must be the common lynx,
which is found in these parts, but very seldom. The wild cat is also
rare; it hunts partridges.
Partridges are extremely plentiful all round Santiago, and during
certain months of the year they form quite a _pièce de résistance_ in
the daily menu.
Pheasants are said to have been found in the wood of Cebrero in the
province of Lugo, but they have not, as far as I can ascertain, been
seen in any other part of Galicia. Pigeons are plentiful everywhere, and
the round pigeon-house and dovecots which the Gallegans build for them
are both characteristic and picturesque. The pigeon is not considered
sacred in Spain, as is the case in Russia; among the Gallegans this bird
is quite an ordinary article of food.
But it is for her abundant supply and large variety of both river and
salt water fish that Galicia is especially famed. I have already
described my visit to the fishermen’s wharf at Coruña, and the way in
which ice is specially manufactured to preserve the fish that has to
travel to Madrid and other distant towns. The most typical fish of
Galicia is the sardine. More than a hundred years ago, on the occasion
of the erection of a lighthouse on the coast for the benefit of
fishermen, Señor Joseph Cornide[222] published a monograph on the
sardine; in 1788 he published a larger work, embracing an account of all
the fish caught on the coast of Galicia. The reader must bear in mind
that Galicia is bounded on two sides by the sea, and that not only is
her coast-line very extensive in proportion to her size, but there are
also her wide lochs or rias which run to a considerable distance inland,
and meet the rivers that flow down from the mountain outposts of the
Pyrenees. The chief capes to north and west are Cape Finisterre and Cape
Ortegal.
The sardine, erroneously termed _arengus minor_ (smaller herring), is,
as we have seen, the chief source of wealth to the fishermen. Shoals of
this fish enter the rias every year from the month of July onward; it
resembles more closely the North Sea herring than any other fish, but it
is quite distinct. Linnæus classed it amongst the mackerel family. The
weeds and other substances that the rivers wash down from the mountains
into the rias are just the food that sardines require, and as the mouths
of the ria are very wide, and at the same time sheltered from the
Atlantic winds, they prove a favourable shelter for these little fish,
who, unable to thrive where there is wind and severe cold, come
southwards every year in the months of December and January; in stormy
weather they leave the surface and cling to the bottom for protection.
The Gallegans use cod’s roe as a bait with which to attract them.
There are two sizes of sardines caught on this coast; the smaller ones
look very like anchovies, and are called _parrochas_ by the Gallegan
fishermen, but if the two are carefully compared it will be found that
the anchovy is narrower and has a more pointed head than the sardine; it
is covered, moreover, with irregular black spots, and the head, if
eaten, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. The anchovy is frequently
eaten raw, and it is also preserved in oil like the sardine.
One result of the increased facilities for exporting fish to other parts
of Spain has been a rise in the price of sardines. Whereas they could
formerly be bought in Santiago at the rate of a hundred for a penny,
they now sell at about a penny a dozen. In 1835, Aquiar wrote that fish
was selling by its bulk and not by its weight; and even now, cartloads
of sardines are used by the ignorant peasants as manure for their
fields.
The Spaniards as a nation consume an enormous amount of dried and salted
cod: it is a staple food on fast days. This, then, is another industry
in which the Gallegans might make fortunes, but at present even Galicia,
where cod is so plentiful, gets her dried cod, _bacalao_, from Norway.
Two millions of dried cod are annually imported to the north coast of
Spain; and a Norwegian Consul, who was stationed at Bilbao for several
years, tells me that a shipload of Norwegian cod unloads at Bilbao every
week. I see that Señor A. Florez has been lecturing in Madrid on the
enormous imports from Norway to Spain and their effect upon the latter
country.
Señor Francisco Ribas has found in the library of the Marquis de Mos at
Tuy a most interesting manuscript book dating from the reign of Carlos
III. (eighteenth century), and describing a heated controversy that went
on between the Gallegan fishermen and some Catalonians, who had come to
Galicia to start fishing industries there and were using a new kind of
net, _xeito_, with which far more fish could be caught than was possible
with the antiquated ones used by the natives. In this book there was a
copy of the memorial that was sent to the King in the name of all the
fishermen on the Gallegan coast, entreating His Majesty to put a stop to
the use of the new net, as it was calculated to kill the spawn and
ultimately ruin the trade. The Government gathered the opinion of
experts on the subject, and came to the conclusion that the fears of the
Gallegan fishermen were groundless; so it ended in the universal
adoption of the net. I hear that a similar objection was recently raised
to the introduction of English and French trawling nets.
Among the various kinds of fish that are caught on the Gallegan coast,
the lamprey is especially worthy of mention. The name _lamprea_,
signifying “rock licker,” Latin, _lambo_, to stick, and _petra_, a rock,
has been given to this fish because it has a habit of attaching itself
to rocks and stones by its mouth; it is a cartilaginous fish, and
somewhat resembles the eel; its flesh is very indigestible, but the
flavour is considered by gourmets to be exquisite. And we all learned at
school how our King Henry loved that flavour, not wisely but too well.
Spaniards cook them in their own blood, with the addition of a little
wine and oil. The best in Galicia come from the neighbourhood of Tuy,
Noya, and Padron, but very fine ones are also to be found in many other
parts in the months of June and July. Lampreys were regularly sent to
Rome from Galicia in the days when Spain was a Roman province; they were
a delicacy that was much appreciated by the wealthy patricians, and
indeed they are still considered as such even in Galicia. While I was at
Santiago, four lampreys caught near Padron were sold in the fishmarket
one Sunday morning for ten dollars; they are becoming much more rare
than formerly; their skins are exceedingly ugly to look at; they abound
in the Bay of Biscay, and from thence enter the wide rias and rivers of
Galicia. There is also a river lamprey, a foot long; this fish has
remarkably strong teeth; on its tongue are two rows of objects that
resemble teeth, and it moves its tongue backwards and forwards like the
sucker of a pump when imbibing other fish as food.
The turbot is fairly plentiful. Oysters from Carril, which are the
largest, sell in Santiago at the rate of twenty shillings per hundred,
while smaller ones may be had for about seven shillings per hundred, and
a very small kind called _morunchos_ may be had at three shillings per
hundred. My hostess informed me that she liked these last best of all,
and that they were _muy ricititos_ (very rich little things). Molina,
writing in the middle of the sixteenth century, speaks of Carril as
famous for its oysters. “They fill ships with them,” he writes, “and
supply all Castille, and the greater part of Spain. The oyster,” he adds
naïvely, “is an article which is prized wherever it is sent.” Oysters
abound in all the rias of Vigo, Arosa, and Ferrol. Cornide reminds us
that the ancients prized those caught on the coast of Britain above all
others. Apacius, the celebrated glutton, possessed the art of keeping
them a very long time, and when Trajan was in Persia he was supplied
with oysters from Italy; they appear to have been kept in barrels, as
in our day, so closely packed that the shells could not open. The
Spaniards considered them more wholesome when eaten raw, but they
constantly fry them in oil, and serve them up in a “James” shell.
I have written at length in another chapter about the famous scallop
shells, _pecten veneris_, called _vieira_ in Galicia, and worn by
pilgrims returning from the sepulchre of St. James, and put up over the
doors of the inns at which they lodged in Santiago. Scallops are not too
sacred to be eaten even in Galicia, and, but for their strong fishy
smell, they would make a fair substitute for oysters.
Eels are very plentiful in all the Gallegan rivers, and, above all, in
the Miño; they are bred in the fresh water and go down to the sea when
full grown. The monks of Sobrado had an artificial lake, the eels of
which were greatly prized. Conger-eels are also abundant; the black ones
are the most esteemed. A tradition says there are some so large that a
man could not carry them on his shoulders, but would have to employ a
cart. Cornide says that the largest ever found in Galicia did not weigh
more than 100 lbs.
The common cod, _merluza_, which on the Mediterranean coast is called
_merlan_, is one of the most voracious and destructive of fishes, and,
as the Gallegans have discovered, it has a special predilection for
sardines, which it devours greedily. A certain amount of cod is dried on
this coast and taken into the interior; but the industry is anything but
brisk. Soles, _lenguado_, which the French call sea-partridges, _perdrix
de mer_, are very common, especially where the rias have a sandy bottom.
Salmon, _salmo salar_, are plentiful in the most northern rias, and
found throughout Galicia; they are best in hot weather, at which time
they are less prized in other parts. They were unknown to the Greeks,
according to Cornide, so have no Greek name. These fish enter the rivers
of Galicia from the month of January, lay their eggs in the sandy
places, and return to the sea until the next season, when they repeat
the journey. The Gallegans seldom catch more than can be disposed of
while fresh, but now and again there is an unusually large supply, and
then they are sold for next to nothing. Cornide tells of a priest who
salted a hundred and fifty salmon in one season.
A red mullet, Lat. _mullus barbatus_, is plentiful in the rias, but it
often tastes of the mud on which it feeds, and is not so choice as that
found in the rivers. Pliny and other classic writers thought that
people who ate too heartily of this fish injured their sight and nerves:
Gallegans call it _salmonete_, and are very fond of it. I have several
times seen it baked in pastry, like jam in an open tart. Trout,
_truchas_, are, as we have seen, remarkably plentiful and cheap in
spring; they abound in all the rivers, and would furnish plenty of sport
for British anglers.