LA BELLISIMA NOYA
Situation of Noya--Antiquity of the town--The coach drive from
Santiago--Singing cartwheels--Where the golden torques were
found--Copper and iron--Mountain valleys--Waterfalls--Paper
mills--A ruined monastery--Nearing Noya--A peep at the sea--A
village green--The oldest church--Noya merchants of the fourteenth
century--The Sunday before Easter--My visit to a nun--The church of
San Martin--The interior--The castellated apse--The rose
window--Imitation of the _Pórtico de Gloria_--The wooden
roof--Strange brackets or corbels--Lamperez--An alderman of
Noya--An old house--The old wall--The Franciscan monastery--The
Noya magistrate--An old family mansion--Drives in the
neighbourhood--_Puente de Alonso III._--The Tambre--Fruit
blossoms--Flowers--Examining the cartwheels--Inside a granite
cottage--A cross by the roadside--The Ria--Greek colonies--Roman
inscriptions--Our drive to Portosino--A famous _trovador_--English
ships--Muros--A good port--Greek type of beauty preserved--A Greek
costume--Visit to a dolmen--_Pena de Oro_--Gallegan peasants and
the Moors--Another granite cottage--A Grenadier in the Engineers--A
square apse--Noya pilgrims--A leper chapel--Scene from our
balcony--Maunday Thursday--Good Friday--Fetching home the
candlesticks--A Good Friday dinner--A lady resident--Market baskets
in church--Thirteenth century houses--José Ferreiro--Galicia’s
first vocabulary--Bull fights at Noya--Two kinds of
homesickness--The music of the _gaita_
Noya is a town of nearly five thousand inhabitants, but the hills and
valleys by which it is surrounded are so thickly dotted with villages
that on market days and feast days, when the people flock in by every
road, there is a great deal more life in it than the above statistics
would lead a visitor to expect. Noya is almost a seaside town, for it
lies on the banks of a magnificent ria, an inlet of the Atlantic, and so
close to the ocean that the rocky coast can be distinguished by the
naked eye. The river Tambre, which has its rise in the centre of
Galicia, flows into the ria to the north of the town, and the river
Trava on the west, so that Noya is bounded on three sides by water. High
green hills slope away from the water and shelter the town from cold and
wind. It is a lovely and romantic situation.
“Noya,” writes Molina,[236] “is a pretty town, and one of the oldest in
Galicia, and it has inhabitants of noble blood. Here they make many and
good ships, both great and small, because the district abounds in
timber. Noya has the best sardines in the realm, so that people wanting
sardines ask especially for those of Noya.”
Pliny mentions this town under the name of Noela, and Florez heard that
there was a stone in the bridge over the Tambre which had the word
“Noela” inscribed upon it. According to popular tradition, the town was
founded by Noah, or by one of his daughters, and received its name from
that patriarch. However that may be, the arms of Noya, which may be seen
over the door of the little hospital, and which are printed at the head
of municipal letter paper, are Noah’s ark and a dove.[237] Both Pliny
and Pomponius Mela speak of all the coast of Galicia between the Duero
and Cape Finisterre as Celtic, and the dolmens with which the
neighbourhood of Noya abounds are another indication that this part of
Galicia was inhabited by Celts.
It was a glorious day, the 23rd of March, that we chose for our journey
from Santiago to Noya, and so hot that we were glad to leave off some of
our winter clothing. There is no railway to Noya, but a coach goes there
twice every day, and the journey takes a little over five hours. Our
coach started at two p.m.; the inside was like a box that would hold six
people, three on each side, with an upper storey covered with a double
or telescopic hood, which was filled with “second-class” passengers. The
Easter holidays began that day, so most of our fellow-passengers were
students from the University going home for Easter. They were sprightly
young fellows, with bright faces and strong limbs; it was a pleasure to
see them get out and walk up the hills. One of them picked a lovely
bunch of violets and handed them in to us at the coach window. From the
very start the scenery was beautiful; we were out among the giant hills
and fertile valleys in a few minutes, there being no ugly suburbs to
pass through. Noya lies, as we have seen, upon the sea level, but the
road thither from Santiago runs first down into a valley and then up,
up, up to the ridge of a very high hill, much higher than Santiago. Here
the air grew rare and bracing, and the scenery was like that between
Pitlochrie and Braemar. We passed innumerable _castros_ and _tumuli_,
and saw far off on the summit of a conical hill, which commanded the
surrounding valleys for many miles, the fine old castle of Altamira. The
family of Altamira is one of the oldest, and still one of the greatest
in Spain; but I hear that they are letting that fine old castle crumble
to ruin! Many a peasant with his bullock cart met us on the road, and we
always knew of a cart’s approach by the distant sound of musical
cartwheels, and once or twice, when three carts joined in the chorus,
the “singing” became very loud; I felt inclined to put my fingers in my
ears. A fellow-passenger remarked that the oxen needed some such sound
to cheer them on their way, and that the children always sing to their
oxen when leading them in the fields, because it makes them work better.
A little farther on, as we were passing close to a _castro_, another
passenger explained that it was to these vantage points that the Celts
are supposed to have fled at the approach of an enemy. It is in such
places as these that the golden torques are found. Many Roman coins have
been found in these castros, a fact which has led to the belief that the
Romans in their turn employed them as camps.
From a passenger on the return journey I learned that some of these
hills were rich in copper and iron, which ought to be worked, and would
be, but for the fact that Spaniards prefer to keep their money in paper
under lock and key! My informant, who was an elderly resident of Noya,
said that he had himself discovered in his youth the remains of an
ancient tin mine, and had made many vain attempts to interest
capitalists and resuscitate the industry. Not far from Noya there are
some iron mines, but they belong to Englishmen; they are called _Minas
de Vilacoba_, and almost as many women are employed there as men.
Many of the mountain valleys were full of oak trees, while others were
covered with waving rye (_secale cereale_), wheat, and other cereals.
The highest part of the road lay for about a mile and a half between
green hills mostly covered with furze and without any trees, but when we
began to descend the landscape changed; in place of the Scotch Highlands
we seemed to have arrived at the pine-crested rocks of Norway. The pines
looked like Christmas trees covered with tall brown candles; these
“candles” were some of them a foot and a half long, and in the sun they
looked a rich reddish bronze. Waterfalls foamed between the mossy crags
and boulders, and picturesque bridges spanned the mountain streams. One
bridge, consisting of a single semicircular arch over a small stream,
was clearly a relic of Roman days. We passed, half hidden by the trees,
some four or five paper mills worked by the gushing water.
At last dwelling-houses came in sight, white-washed granite cottages
roofed with red tiles; they were nearly square, with about four rooms to
each. The road now descended rapidly, and we passed to our right a
picturesque dell surrounded on three sides by a noisy waterfall, in
which stood an old monastery and its church, _San Justo de los
Tojosutos_, so named because the slope upon which the dell is situated
is covered with tall furze (tojo). The little church, whose spire rises
up to a level with the sides of the dell, dates from the twelfth
century. We could see part of the beautiful arcade of the ruined
cloister from the coach as we passed. No monks have lived there since
its monastic inmates were turned out, but I was told that this little
cloister was once used as a place of banishment for monks of Osera who
had broken the monastic rules. The modern building adjoining is the
house of the village priest. All the pasture land on the hills round the
dell and the two neighbouring valleys, right down to the bank of the
Tambre, once belonged to the monks, and they had a right to all the fish
caught in that part of the river, which, by the way, was particularly
rich in lampreys. People say that the kindness and generosity of the
monks towards the poor did much to encourage idleness and increase the
number of paupers.
We were at last nearing Noya; women were at work in the fields; they
wore very short skirts, hardly below the knees, and wide-brimmed yellow
straw hats with a band of black ribbon round the low crown; the men also
wore this kind of hat, the manufacture of which is the special industry
of one of the Noya villages. A young peasant woman met us as she was
leading her oxen home. She was as upright as a young pine; perhaps her
queenly bearing was a result of carrying burdens on her head, and
certainly Gallegan women do hold themselves remarkably well. At a bend
in the road we caught sight of the sea for a moment in the direction of
Cape Finisterre. The scenery remained beautiful and rugged till we had
reached the bottom of the wide valley in which Noya lies. In front of
one of the cottages we saw a quaint sight,--a cottager was mounted on a
ladder with a mortar trowel in his hand doing something to the roof,
while beneath him, motionless as a statue, stood a tall woman supporting
on her broad-brimmed hat the board from which the man helped himself to
mortar. Here was another use to which the head of a Gallegan woman could
be put.
The coach drew up in a sort of village green, near a fountain, and in
front was the public walk, or Alameda. The first thing that attracts a
stranger’s attention is a bust of Noya’s
[Illustration: NOYA
PHOTO. BY AUTHOR]
famous sculptor, Filipe de Castro,[238] which is placed on the top of a
tall pedestal and forms a sort of landmark for visitors. The houses of
Noya are built of granite; I noticed that some of them had not only
tiled roofs but also tiled walls. “To keep the wet out,” I was told.
The first church we visited was that of _Santa Maria a Nova_, which is
the oldest church in Noya, and dates from the year 1327. Its cemetery
contains many interesting horizontal gravestones, on which are cut the
insignia of the office of the persons buried beneath them. On one we
found a stone-mason’s hammer.
On the outer side of the right wall are three sarcophagi in arched
recesses. The inscription on one is Era MCCC, which is equivalent to
A.D. 1272; these are thought to have belonged to an earlier church, for
the present one was completely rebuilt in the fourteenth century. I
noticed one sarcophagus that rested on two stone lions, and had
represented on its sides a bridge, and fish swimming beneath the name of
the person buried there. In front of the church, in the little
graveyard, is a sarcophagus with the recumbent effigy of a warrior with
his sword by his side; he wears a tall fur-brimmed hat and a kind of
kilt which is a curious example of the costume of his day.
Over the window beneath the three-arched portico of the church is a
coloured statue of the Virgin, and the Adoration of the Magi, into which
the archbishop Berigel, who built the church, is introduced. One of the
kings is represented as an Ethiopian with black skin and rolling eyes;
two angels are waving incense; their garments are bordered with gold,
and the whole group is very Byzantine. To the right of the entrance is a
dedicatory inscription and the name of the archbishop who built the
church.
Inside the church there are two other sarcophagi with the effigies of
rich Noya merchants and inscriptions with their names and dates.
The Sunday before Easter is a solemn day in Spain, and although the
market in the morning was not interfered with, Noya dressed itself in
sombre hues in the afternoon, and a solemn procession passed with music
beneath our balcony at 4 p.m. We looked out and saw four men supporting
on their shoulders a platform on which was a chair and the seated figure
of a naked Christ, life size, and wearing a crown of thorns from which
drops of blood were represented as streaming. Over the shoulders of
this ghastly figure was a crimson velvet mantle bordered with gold; the
hands were tied together with a cord. Another platform followed bearing
a standing figure of the Virgin, also life size; her skirt was of
plum-coloured velvet, and the velvet shawl which covered her head and
shoulders was of violet bordered with gold. A great crowd of people
followed, all very silent and subdued. Many of the women wore black or
grey handkerchiefs over their heads.
The next day I called at the convent of the Trinitarian nuns to take a
message to one of the inmates from her married sister in Santiago. The
outer walls of this convent were a yard wide; opening into the dark
porch was a large window with a revolving wooden shutter, concave in
shape, like half a barrel. Through this opaque window I had to announce
my name and the object of my visit to an invisible nun who had answered
the bell by calling to me from the other side of the barrel. She began
every sentence she uttered with “Ave Maria,” and then went to ask the
Mother Superior if I might speak with the nun for whom my message was
intended. When she came back she tapped the wood several times to let me
know she was there, and then informed me with more “Ave Marias” that if
I would came again after Easter I might perhaps speak with the nun, but
not before. It ended in my having to return to Santiago without giving
my message. I discovered afterwards that though these nuns appeared to
be terribly shut in, they have, stretching far behind their convent, a
beautiful garden, which they tended themselves with great industry. They
also have a school for girls, where a speciality is made of fine
needlework and embroidery.
The largest and the most important church in Noya is that of San Martin,
which dates from the year 1434, and was built by Archbishop Lopez de
Mendoza. This edifice has been singled out by Señor Lamperez as a fine
and typical example of Galicia’s popular style of architecture, a style
which, dominated by laws dictated by local common sense, abandoned the
exotic styles which had preceded it, and boldly adopted both the
traditions and the materials that were to be found on the spot. This
popular architecture was divided into two branches, under the first of
which may be classed the parish churches, and under the second those
attached to the monasteries--the conventual churches;[239] these are two
distinct types, but they have one characteristic in common, namely, the
wooden roof, the kind best suited to the conditions
[Illustration: THE BED OF SAN MAMED, NOYA]
[Illustration: CLOISTER OF SAN JUSTO DE TOJOSUTOS, NOYA]
of the country. A wide nave covered with a roof of wood offered no
difficulties as to equilibrium; we find it in some of the ancient
architecture of Syria; and in the Middle Ages it was introduced, as
Lamperez reminds us, both in the churches of Languedoc and in those of
Catalonia and Valencia. Galicia was very slow to adopt the Gothic style;
she clung to the older ones, the Byzantine and the Romanesque, long
after these had been completely abandoned in other parts of Spain, and
the consequence is that she does not possess a single edifice that may
be termed a good example of the Gothic style. There is no province,
however, in which the travellers will find a more favourable opportunity
of studying the period of Transition.
Outwardly the church of San Martin appears to be of a very much earlier
date than that which is inscribed upon the lintel of the principal
entrance. It has a heavy, square, fortress-like look, and its lofty apse
is castellated, evidently with a view to its adaptability as a fort in
times of warfare. Here again we see how circumstances--the imminent
possibility of Noya having to defend herself against insurgents, had a
greater effect on the mind of the architect than any consideration as to
what the laws of the pure Gothic might demand. Noya was perhaps the most
important town in the feudal territory of the fighting archbishops of
Santiago, and being a centre of considerable mercantile wealth, she was
only too likely to invite attack, which might come either from the sea
or the land.
The rose window of the façade, decorated with trumpet-blowing angels, is
Gothic, but the arch of the entrance beneath it is Romanesque. The idea
which dominates the sculpture of this entrance is evidently taken from
that of the _Pórtico de Gloria_ at Santiago; here we have elders, though
fewer in number, with musical instruments, strange monsters supporting
the pillars, and finally the twelve apostles.[240] The faces, however,
are all quite original and remarkably lifelike; it has been suggested
that the sculptor chose as his models the rugged and weather-beaten
faces of contemporary Noya fishermen. St. James wears his usual
pilgrim’s cap with shells on it. All the faces wear a happy look, and
are almost smiling; the salt sea breezes have probably worn off much of
their original expressiveness, but there is enough left to make them
very interesting.
The plan of _San Martin de Noya_, like that of _Santa Maria a Nova_, is
one nave with wide parallel arches, and a wooden roof; its style is
supposed to be Gothic, but, as Lamperez remarks, it is full of
_romantismos_, that is, features which are distinctly Romanesque; the
only part that is vaulted is the castellated apse. A wooden roof was
naturally the easiest and cheapest in a district where timber was so
remarkably abundant as at Noya, and when shipbuilding was the most
thriving industry.
A real peculiarity of this church, and one which I do not remember
noticing in any other Gallegan architecture, is the great stone corbels
or brackets which, like gargoyles, form the sides of the church both
inside and out. The outer ones were built either with the object of
facilitating the erection of a parapet or tribune from which processions
and other spectacles could be witnessed, or intended to be used like
tent poles, and covered with awning when cases were tried or fairs were
held there; the latter seems to me to have been their most probable use:
some of the largest churches in Holland are still surrounded by shops
and booths in this manner; the brackets in the interior support
wooden-floored galleries in the nave, and are the most striking part of
its ornamentation. Each is composed of two long stones; in the end of
each stone there is sculptured an arch which forms the end of a deep
niche filled with the head and torso of a statue with its hands upon its
breast as if in the act of adoration; in some, the upper statue is that
of a bearded man and the lower that of a woman; others appear to
represent monks. Both when taken as a whole and in detail these Noya
corbels represent an important point as regards the study of ornamental
sculpture in Galicia.
The Gothic apse, which is semi-dodecagonal, has narrow lancet windows,
and between the windows there are lofty buttresses. In the interior of
the church, to right and left of the apse, there are pillars supporting
arch stones without arches; whether this should be taken as a sign that
the church was originally intended to have three naves, or not, is
uncertain. In the opinion of Lamperez, _San Martin de Noya_ does not
give the impression of being an edifice in the construction of which the
architects changed their original plan; it indicates rather that it was
executed rapidly and upon one plan; “it is an example of the archaism of
the Gallegan style, and of the persistence with which the Cathedral of
Santiago was imitated throughout the province.”
An interesting sarcophagus has recently been discovered
[Illustration: GROUP OF MUSICIANS
ONE IS HOLDING THE GALLEGAN BAGPIPE]
[Illustration: MERCHANT’S PALACE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, NOYA]
in an old chapel on the left side of the church; it has upon it the
recumbent effigy of a Noya alderman. The inscription is carved upon his
stone pillow in such a manner that at a short distance it looks like
embroidery; he holds a dagger in his hand, and wears a kilted skirt and
a tall hat, and dates, in all probability, from the fourteenth century.
The coloured glass in the rose window is modern, but its mellowing
effect on the light that streams through it is very pleasing.
Almost facing the apse of this church is an interesting old house which
is supposed to date from the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the
sixteenth century; its first floor rests upon a porch, or rather a
colonnade, with four Gothic arches; the windows are very small, and the
walls massive. This house is thought to have belonged to one of Noya’s
wealthy merchant families; part of it is now used as an hotel; the
balcony is modern. There are several other houses in Noya that are very
similar to this one, and equally old, for Noya too had her own nobility
and her days of splendour. The house opposite the façade of San Martin
is an old one, and behind it are to be seen the ruins of what was
formerly the summer residence of the archbishops of Santiago; there
still remains a wall with a Gothic window, and a little while ago there
was an arch still standing. In this courtyard a rebel was publicly
executed by order of the archbishop, in the fourteenth century.
Many parts of the old wall which surrounded the town in medieval days
are still standing; the fisherwomen mend their nets upon it. At one time
the water of the ria washed against its many gates, but now it does not
come farther than the bridge with six arches. Ships and small boats
float up towards the town with the tide, and are left stranded at low
water. A little way up the river Trava, which skirts the southern side
of the town, is a picturesque flour mill, on the road to which stands
the quaint little hospital with the Noya arms above its entrance.
The Franciscan monastery, already partially in ruins, is now used as the
town prison. I went up its broad old stairs, walked round its cloister
to admire its graceful arcades (later Gothic), and saw, in what had been
perhaps the refectory or the library of the monks, one solitary
prisoner; the floors were composed of rotting rafters that threatened to
give way as we walked, though I was assured by the gentleman who acted
as my guide, that they were entirely of chestnut wood, and very strong.
The windows looked out on a beautiful garden shut in on three sides by
verdant hills.
The Noya magistrate, when I was speaking about the prison, informed me
that there were only seventy cases of crime in Noya in the whole of the
preceding year, and none of them grave. “The man you saw in the prison,”
he added, “is of feeble mind, and as soon as room in an asylum can be
found he is to be removed thither.”
Near the monastery there is a fine old family mansion belonging to the
Varela family, containing some quaint furniture, pictures, and clocks;
it stands in a beautiful garden with fountains and arbours, and is full
of flowering trees, giant magnolias with spreading branches, and
camellias of every colour; I saw there many semi-tropical shrubs of
which I did not know the names.
There are some charming drives in the neighbourhood of Noya. Our first
was to the _Puente de Alonso III._ (Bridge of Alonso III.), a fine old
bridge which crosses the Tambre about two miles from the point at which
its mountain waters mingle with the brine of the ria. It was the 25th of
March, and the fruit trees, which covered many of the valleys and half
hid the villages with their pink and white blossoms, were a sight worth
coming a long way to see. Green hills, their summits now bleak and bare
like the Scotch moors, now covered with furze still yellow with bloom,
sloped upwards in the distance on the farther side of the majestic
river, and as we drove inland along its bank we could see, on looking
behind us, the graceful curves and rugged peaks of the last outposts of
the Pyrenees rising above the waters of the Atlantic Ocean on either
side of the shining ria. One of these giant gates of the Atlantic, the
one to the north, is called Monte _Barganzos_; we could see the ria
coming inland to meet the Tambre just as the Arctic waters flow down to
fill the lochs that separate the island of Skye from the western coast
of Scotland. The Tambre flows with great force when swollen by the
affluence of other mountain streams; it is twenty Spanish leagues in
length, and winds in and out among the mountains like the letter S. Some
of the slopes on either side of the river were carpeted with a brilliant
green, others were covered with pine woods, while others again had
groves of oak trees, whose bare branches were interspersed with the
blossom of the cherry and the apple. There were villages everywhere,
very small ones, often with only half a dozen houses in each. Now and
again the hillside was a mass of white blossom like freshly fallen snow;
and after we had driven about two miles the town of Noya itself could
hardly be seen for its profusion of encircling blossom. Rye and wheat
stood high in many of the fields; it was to be harvested in May, when
maize would immediately be sown in its place, to be cut in its turn in
October. Green peas filled some of the plots, and were already in
flower; they too were to be ready in May, and some were already in pod.
Other plots were heaped with vegetable manure, and about to be sown with
maize. Our road then ran close to the water, which was fringed with
overhanging willows, and here and there a tall eucalyptus, an orange, or
a lemon. There were lemon trees in all the village gardens. The oranges
of Noya are quite passable, though not so luscious as those of Southern
Spain. Fine “lords and ladies” peeped from under the hedges, and in the
more shady nooks there were a few ferns and hyacinths. The pine trees
here too were covered with “brown fingers,” and below each finger we
could see a cone.
Our carriage stopped near a picturesque village, through which lay our
path leading to the Bridge of Alonso III. In a shed as we passed I saw
some carts of the “singing wheel” kind, and took the opportunity to
study their make; the walnut wood axles, as smooth as satin, were as
thick as a man’s thigh, the wheels were solid disks of oak with
iron-bound edges.
We entered one of the cottages; it was built with great solid blocks of
granite, and had walls three-quarters of a yard thick; such cottages
last for generations. They are deliciously cool in summer and warm in
winter, for each has a great oven built into the wall and forming an
excrescence on the outside, not unlike the mud ovens of Central Asia.
Here the bread is baked; while near it, hanging from a hinge on the wall
like a picture, is the _escaño_, or wooden dining-table; it takes up no
room, and is on the principle of the seats in the corridors of trains,
and never in the way; two hooks in the ceiling, a couple of yards apart,
support two loops of cord, and in these loops rests a long pole; on the
pole hang the clothes of the family. This too is on the same principle
as the wardrobes of Turkestan; they, like the table, can be got out of
the way in a moment when their room is required. A small baby boy in a
quaint wooden cradle delighted us with its beautiful brown eyes, and its
little sister standing near also had magnificent eyes. Opposite the
kitchen, across the narrow passage, we opened another door, expecting to
see another dwelling room, but behold, it was a cattle stall, dark, with
no windows, and containing one solitary cow, who looked at us with great
surprise. The baby’s mother informed us that the cows were always kept
in the houses, and that only the bullocks were out ploughing.
The interior of the next cottage was shown to us by its owner, an old
woman wearing a yellow straw hat with a black ribbon band round the low
crown, crossed in two short ends at the back; in a shed outside we saw
piles of freshly mown hay full of daisies, and aromatic with field
herbs. Fowls were running about in the kitchen, which also did duty as a
hen-coop. We noticed a crucifix on a shelf in the bedroom. As we came
out again into the lane, a long-legged pig met us at a gallop, and a man
trotted briskly past on a mule.
To our right, just before we reached the bridge, we came to a tall
sculptured stone cross raised upon four steps of stone; this cross dates
from the fifteenth century. The sculpture is well preserved; on the
lower part are the figures of three monks, each looking in a different
direction; they wear the garb of “Benedictine,” “Dominican,” and
“Franciscan” respectively. Galicia is full of such crosses, as England
was once. In the Middle Ages a stone crucifix often stood in the place
of an oratory. In many districts scarcely yet cleared from the forest a
cross raised in the middle of a field was enough to satisfy the devotion
of the Anglo-Saxon thane,[241] his ploughmen and shepherds; they
gathered round it for public and daily prayer in places where churches
were scarce.
Laurel bushes in full flower and with a very small leaf adorned the
bank, and sprang from crevices in the bulwarks of the bridge. This
bridge had, originally, pointed Gothic arches built in the fifteenth
century, but when it was restored in the nineteenth the new arches were
made semicircular. In my photograph the old pointed arches are clearly
distinguishable among the others;[242] half way across we looked down
over the parapet upon an old apple tree that sprang out of the brickwork
of the breakwaters which were built on the eastern side, like the
pointed prows of ships, to cut the force of the torrent-fed river; on
the western side the breakwaters were square, and washed only by the
gentle sea-tides of the ria. Ascending the farther bank after we had
crossed the bridge, we came to a large village, the very one that
Professor Dogson of Oxford walked out to from Noya, that he might gather
and examine the names of the villagers with a view to proving their
Basque origin.[243] A little higher up on the slope of the hill is a
village named Argalo, after a king of the Greeks, the fifth king of
Lacedemonia, about 1400 B.C., and founded by Greek settlers at a little
later date.[244] Aguiar asserts that in no part of the Peninsula are
there more traces of Greek colonies than in Portugal and Galicia. There
are thousands of Greek names still to be found in Galicia, names of
towns, mountains, and rivers, such as Agra, Melante, Berroea, Berta,
Boea, Bura, Camara, Cardia, Cella, Cora, Naron, Samos, Lais, Pindo, and
Caspindo. The Gallegan name for maize bread is _broa_, which is also a
Greek word. Two of the three generals who confronted the Romans in the
north of Spain were Leucon and Megara. The custom of wrestling naked on
festive occasions was derived by the Gallegan villagers from Greek
colonists, and preserved up to the middle of the nineteenth century.
As we were returning to Noya, we passed on the road a woman carrying a
large sack of flour on her head; her boots were tied together and slung
above the sack, and she was walking barefoot. At a distance of about an
eighth of a mile from Noya we again alighted from our conveyance, and
ascended a short way up a hill to a tiny village hidden among the trees,
to look at a stone with a Roman inscription which the villagers had
discovered a few days previously. In the yard of one of the cottagers,
built with slabs of ancient stone, we found the writing we had come to
see; the woman who owned the cottage was quite aware that her find was
likely to be valued by the local archæologists, and she was determined
only to part with it to the highest bidder, so we contented ourselves
with a photograph. The letters of the inscription are very clear where
not broken away, as may be seen from the photograph.
DIS
MOSO
FLORI
NA ... M
(To the gods, to Moso, his mother Florina, etc.)
The stone had formed part of one of the cottage walls; in a heap of
rubbish we discovered part of a stone column about three-quarters of a
foot in diameter, also the Doric base of a very much larger column
turned upside down among a pile of stones. The friend who acted as my
guide had found some interesting fragments of Roman pottery there a few
years before, and was convinced that it was the site of an important
Roman settlement. This gentleman presented me afterwards with a
photograph of another Græco-Latin stone of the first or second century,
found in that neighbourhood, on which, beneath a curious figure standing
under a crescent, were the letters--
XAIPOS
VICTOR
NOIXV
VSTNP
The last line is the usual _Voto Solute timens Numini posuit_.
On 27th March we drove along the bridge over the river Trava, and
skirted the southern shore of the ria by a road cut in the slope of a
hill, a good road only finished in 1900. Almost all the roads round Noya
are quite new; until some twelve years ago travellers had no choice but
to ride or go on foot. Every step of this drive was beautiful; the day
was fine, and the ria looked like a Swiss lake beneath us,--it might
have been Lake Como, with its mountain scenery on either side. On our
left was Monte Barbanzos, looking far more like a range of peaks than
one single mountain--its base spreads over five Spanish leagues. This
mountain is partly covered with furze and partly with grass; it has no
trees, but the mountains on the opposite side of the ria are mostly
covered with pines, which stood out in a fringe against the sunlit sky
as we retraced our steps to Noya. The shore below us formed numerous
little bays and inlets with beaches of silvery sand, perfect for summer
bathing. Here the ancient Iberians are thought to have dwelt before the
arrival of the Celts; the latter were a continental people, but the
Iberians loved to dwell by the sea. An archæologist who has explored
this part tells me that the names here are very like those of Italy
(which land was also partly peopled by Iberians). A little farther on we
passed the spot where a famous _trovador_ of the thirteenth century is
said to have lived--he was one of those whose erotic verses are
preserved in the Vatican collection. At last we reached a particularly
snug little bay which still retains the name given it by the
Romans--Portosino, _Portus Sinus_. From here the telegraph wire ran
through the pine trees to Son. On a little neck of land which forms the
bay of Portosino we visited a factory for tinning sardines; boats
belonging to it bring the fish to a little landing-place two yards from
the factory door. Behind the factory was a garden, a regular old
English garden--but for its tropical fruits--with a straight path down
the centre hedged by shrubs, and bushes of stocks, red and pink, in full
bloom; between the garden and the house of the owners of the factory
there was the typical Gallegan wash-tank, with sloping stone sides on
which to rub the clothes; here a woman with bare feet was washing linen
in the running water, which entered the tank on one side and left it on
the other; trees sheltered the tank, and beyond was an arbour over which
there climbed a variety of cacti with red flowers and finger-like leaves
of dark green. In the garden I noted fig trees as broad and sturdy as an
oak; there were also lemon trees laden with ripe lemons; we had passed a
grove of orange trees a few minutes before, some of which were in
blossom. A huge pear tree, white with blossoms, overhung a good piece of
the garden, and near it was a Nispera Japonica (Japanese Medlar), with
its fruit already the size of green cherries.
We plucked branches of blossoming black thorn from the hedges which
lined the road, and then alighted beside a pine wood to gather a
remarkable plant which local fishermen employ to poison trout; it is in
no way injurious to the fish for eating purposes, and saves the trouble
of waiting for a bite!
Near Portosino, but on the opposite side of the ria, there are twelve
boat-building establishments; boats of all sizes are built there, some
large enough to cross the ocean, but only sailing boats. They supply the
whole coast with fishing boats, and the pine woods upon the neighbouring
hills supply them with timber. But Noya’s most important activity is the
exportation of pines to Cardiff.
Sometimes English ships come into the ria; and when our fleet is
stationed at Villagarcia the officers visit the neighbourhood of
Finisterre and enjoy some good sport. Borrow wrote, “Certainly in the
whole world there is no bolder coast than the Gallegan shore, from the
debouchement of the Miño to Cape Finisterre.” Opposite Portosino to the
north of the ria we could discern the port of Muros, a town that has so
long been famed for its beautiful women.
Muros is the name given to a juridical division of the province of
Coruña, which comprises twenty-nine parishes and some forty thousand
souls. The town of Muros, nestling in a fold of Mount Costina, has about
three thousand inhabitants, who are chiefly engaged in fishing and
sardine packing; it is divided into two parts, called respectively Gesta
and Cerca. In the central square, or _Plaza de los Toros_, there is a
tall Gothic clock tower which has been so much repaired that very little
of its antiquity remains. The church, _Santa Maria del Campo_, was
founded in 1504 by Diego Minguez. The port of Muros is a very good one,
sheltered on three sides by lofty mountains, and opening into the _Ria
de Noya_; it admits ships of every size and kind, and has a good beach
for sea-bathing, and a mild temperature.[245] English sailing ships
called at Muros long before they discovered Vigo, and the seafaring folk
of Muros have visited for centuries the coasts of Scotland and England;
they are energetic, and make a good deal of money. I had fully intended
to visit Muros from Noya, but was obliged to abandon the project on
account of the uncertainty of the journey. It takes five hours to cross
the ria in fine weather, but if the weather is stormy one may be kept a
prisoner at Muros for days together, and I could not risk so much time.
Muros is believed to have been founded by Greek colonists long before
the Christian era, and the classic beauty of its women is attributed to
the fact that the town never, till quite lately, had much intercourse
with other places, and that the purity of the Greek type was thus handed
down from one generation to another. My hostess in Santiago had talked
much of Muros and its beautiful women; she described them as mostly
fair-complexioned with very dark eyes, pearly teeth, and black hair, the
latter so thick that when worn in a plait “you could not get your
fingers round it, and so long that it reached to the feet.” “People turn
in the street to look at a Muros woman,” she added; “their beauty is so
striking.” These women have a dress of their own, loose and flowing;
they never cover their heads with either hat or handkerchief, though if
the weather is very cold they will draw their shawls up over their
heads.
Our third drive took us up the side of a hill called _Pena de Oro_ (Rock
of Gold), and bearing that name as far back as the fourteenth century,
as a recently discovered document testifies. Part way up the slope we
passed a charming villa and garden belonging to a Santiago family, that
of Don Pedro de Pais. A woman working there kindly came on with us as
our guide to a dolmen (cromlech) which we wished to visit. It was at
this point I took a photograph of Noya from the carriage. But no
photograph could do justice to its delicate framework of cherry and
apple blossoms, which literally smothered its innumerable villages, and
joined them all in one pink-and-white mass. It has been predicted that
these villages will ere long form part and parcel of Noya, for the
spaces between them are filling up rapidly.
The dolmen was situated on the flat top of a high hill far from all
human habitation, and shut in by pines and the slopes of yet higher
hills. It was a rough scramble up steep goat paths winding among stones
and furze. We found seven Druidical-looking stones placed in a small
circle round what had once been a grave. Sr. Barros Sevelo opened the
grave some thirty years ago, and describes the various implements,
ashes, torques, and urns, that he found there, in his book on the
antiquities of Galicia. The stones lean against one another like the
leaves of a tulip; there was once a great slab across the top. The
peasants of the neighbourhood call this dolmen _Casa dá Moura_, and
implicitly believe it to be a Moorish ruin, for the Moors are the only
strangers they have ever heard of; they attribute everything that is old
to them, including the Latin inscriptions! The hill on which the dolmen
stands is called _Monte Paraino_. From it we had an extensive view of
the valley through which our road passed, and of the villages on the
farther slope. Among them we noted a large white house, the residence of
a former _Rector_ of Santiago University, Señor Romero Blanco, who
enjoys considerable repute in the world of medicine.
As we were descending the hill to rejoin our conveyance, we entered a
cottage and had a chat with its owners. On my expressing a wish to see
the rooms, the woman took me by the hand and led me through a passage
and up stairs so dark that we had to strike a light to see the steps. In
a room on the upper floor there was a bed covered with a neat
counterpane. “This room belongs to my nephew who has gone to America,”
she said, with a touch of sadness in her voice. “We have only had one
letter from him since he arrived there, and that came a month ago.”[246]
The cottage, built of granite slabs, had hardly any windows; most of the
rooms were low and dark, and we were in danger of knocking our heads
against the rafters. The old man looked very hale and hearty; quite fit
for another ten years of active life.
“How old do you think me?” he asked, and then he added: “I am
eighty-six; I was born in 1821. In my younger days I was a grenadier in
the Engineers; I have served in almost every part of Spain.”
When we emerged to the sunlight I looked at him more closely. He was a
tall, well built fellow with a fine military bearing, and had features
that would have done credit to a general.
A couple of miles farther on we came to a little church (upon our
right), which dated from the twelfth century, and had a Romanesque
entrance not unlike that of _Santa Maria de Sar_, a semicircular arch
resting upon columns with sculptured capitals--only much rougher in its
workmanship; the apse was eighteenth-century work, square in form and
much higher than the nave. The apses were lower than the nave until the
fifteenth century, and often circular in form. This church was
constructed entirely of granite; the statues which once stood in its
niches are now placed in the wall of the apse; the churchyard was full
of horizontal tombstones. On festal occasions a procession of peasants
passes over them with as little concern as if they were paving stones.
The Gallegans have none of our superstitious horror of graves and
coffins, but like to have the remains of their departed always near
them.
We drove on till we had almost reached a hill called _San Mamed_, rising
from the slope of _Monte Confurco_, among the granite boulders of which
there has stood a little chapel of some description ever since the
fourth century; this was probably the site of a hermit’s cell in the
days of San Fructuoso. On certain days in the year, and especially on
10th August, the people of Noya make excursions to this hill. Some of
the boulders are so big that a man can stand upright beneath their
projecting sides. The excursions or _romerias_ are a kind of religious
picnic, from which both spiritual and physical blessings are expected to
result. So great is the faith in San Mamed, that delicate women walk the
whole way from Noya, often taking quite young children with them;
although they are ready to drop with fatigue, they persevere for the
sake of ultimate good. A curious hollow in one of the great boulders is
called the bed of San Mamed, and people suffering from various internal
complaints think they will be cured if they stretch themselves upon the
saint’s bed.
The moon shone full upon our road as we drove back along the
pine-skirted road, and lit up the faces of the young peasant women who
passed us with baskets of fish upon their heads, and sang as they
walked, “Tralala, tralala.”
The little white-washed leper chapel which stands on a green slope
separated from the town by the river Trava belonged once to a leper
hospital. The people still take their offerings to that chapel on the
day of St. Lazarus, whereupon the priests sell the offerings received
and give the proceeds to the poor.
The next morning I witnessed an interesting scene from our balcony. A
bullock cart drew up in front of the little hotel--the cart was
practically nothing more than a raft; upon it stood two fine sturdy
peasant women, and on either side of it there walked two more whose
appearance was equally muscular; two of them wore the typical
flat-brimmed straw hat with a pious-looking black ribbon round the
crown, the others had handkerchiefs tied over their heads. One of the
bullocks has got something into its hoof, and the women try to get hold
of its leg, but it kicks violently every time they approach. At last one
of them succeeds in getting a rope round the refractory leg, takes hold
of it, and turns up the hoof, while a rapidly increasing crowd looks on.
The woman now borrowed a knife from a bystander, and proceeded to pick
the furze or thorn out of the hoof; meanwhile another of the women
fetched a cup of alcohol from a shop and a box of matches; she poured
the alcohol into the cavity of the upturned hoof and set a light to it;
the hoof was now in a blaze, and the bullock kicked and struggled with
all its might, but the women held on to the hoof till the fire had
burned away the obstruction, then they let it go and proceeded to load
the cart with sacks full of something heavy. They worked away exactly as
if they were four strong field labourers; not a man in the crowd
attempted to give them the slightest assistance, nor did they seem to
require any. These women labourers are most conscientious in their work,
and it is very rarely that a woman gives way to drink. They are
extremely self-denying, and in those families where there is still a man
left, the wife “gives the chicken to the husband and contents herself
with the broth.” When the husbands and sons have emigrated, the wives
and daughters cheerfully take upon themselves all the agricultural
labour, in addition to the care of the children and the home. Yet, in
spite of it all, their cottages are remarkably clean and comfortable.
On Maundy Thursday we had a “fast” dinner, the courses of which
were--prawns; a mash of chick-peas and eggs; cockles served in scallop
shells; turbot; lampreys and green peas; and lastly, _salmonete_ baked
in a pie. In the afternoon a procession passed beneath our balcony; four
men carried a platform on which stood a life-size figure of Christ
sinking beneath the weight of His cross; He wore a purple mantle
bordered with gold; two Roman soldiers, half-clad, were on either side.
Six priests and a crowd of men, including the musicians, preceded, and
a crowd of women and children followed; nearly all the women had white
handkerchiefs over their heads.
On Good Friday, as soon as it was dark, children began to run about the
streets with lighted candles, and by 9 p.m. every window was
illuminated, and another procession passed beneath our balcony. In this
procession they had the Virgin robed in black, and going to seek her
Son; a very doleful march was played by the musicians, the silent crowd
preceding, each person with a lighted candle.
On the Saturday before Easter all the bells of the town began to peal at
10.30 a.m., and in answer to my question as to why they did not wait
till Easter morning, I received the reply that on Sunday morning the
ringing would interfere with the church services. In the afternoon I
went to the church of San Martin, and saw the people come and fetch away
the candles they had placed before the altar; each candlestick (there
were some four hundred) had a piece of paper round it with the name of
its owner. “How do you each find your own candle again so quickly?” I
asked of one.
“Each person recognises their own candlestick,” was the answer. All
through the week little boys were going about with noisy wooden rattles
which sounded exactly like frogs croaking, and tried our nerves
terribly. On Wednesday evening they took the rattles to church, and
croaked in the dark before the candles were lit. This was supposed to
represent the cries of the Jewish rabble before the Crucifixion, but the
distracting noise continued in Noya for several days. The first time I
heard the rattle I innocently asked the landlord’s daughter to give the
boy a silver coin and ask him to move on to another street. “It’s no
use,” she replied,--“that noise will grow much worse, and it will
continue several days; it is part of the festival.” The Wednesday
evening service in which the rattles take a special part is that of _Las
tenieblas_; in fact, this name applies to all the matins during the last
three days of Holy Week, and the rattle, _carraca_, is meant to take the
place of bells.
The dinner menu on Good Friday was as follows:--Lobster; bread soup;
turbot; baked cockle tart; omelets; coffee.
As we stood on the balcony watching for one of the processions, a lady
resident at Noya turned to me, and said wistfully--
“I feel sure you will be baptized before you leave Noya, and become a
Christian.”
“But are not Protestants Christians too?” I asked.
“Oh, but you _will_ be baptized, and all Noya will run to see. Your face
tells me that you will be baptized. What is your name?”
“Maria.”
“Ah! they say the devil spins round three times every time he hears that
name.”
On Easter Sunday we were present at the ten o’clock Mass, and saw the
village women walk coolly into the middle of the church with their great
market baskets on their heads; then each in turn lifted her basket off
her head and placed it by her side till the service was over, when she
again lifted it to the top of her head and marched out. To the English
mind this close combination of Sabbath and market-day is at first
somewhat repugnant, but surely if our religion is worth anything it must
have a better influence over us when it is part of our daily life than
when it is kept quite separate, like a Sunday-go-to-meeting bonnet! Yes,
it was both Easter Sunday and market-day; as we came out of church we
were immediately confronted by innumerable booths, stalls, and tables
covered with village merchandise,--oranges grown in the vicinity, the
local wide-brimmed straw hats, baskets of eggs, rows of coffins--large
ones painted black, small ones white--village cheeses and young
vegetables, small piles of maize, millet, chick-peas, hand-woven cloth,
and tin kitchen utensils. I asked the price of the straw hats; they were
about tenpence halfpenny each, and came from the village of San Cosmo.
Small onions were twisted into a regular braid and sold by length, and
“Spanish” onions, _cebollas_, were also plentiful.
On another occasion we wandered through some of the older streets;
there was one, very narrow, the _calle de la Condessa_, with
thirteenth-century houses on both sides; they had Gothic windows and
Gothic colonnades, and the outer walls were ornamented with an artistic
device peculiar to Roman architecture, _entabtamento_ (entablature). In
a more modern street we found a tablet on the house in which one of
Noya’s heroes was born,--“Luis Cradaso Rey, born in 1844, commanded the
Spanish fleet in the Philippines; he died on board his flagship, the
_Reina Cristina_, in 1898.” I have already mentioned the bust of Felipe
de Castro in the Alameda, but Noya was also the birthplace of Galicia’s
other great sculptor, José Ferreiro. Friar Luis Rodriquez was another of
her famous men; he was a monk of the Franciscan monastery (which is now
a prison) and the first person to publish a vocabulary of the Gallegan
language.
There is no public square in Noya, and there is no bull-ring, but Noya
has her bull-fights four times a year, as regularly as the seasons. On
these occasions a street serves the purpose of a ring; the two ends are
blocked by tribunes filled with spectators, and the balconies of the
houses on both sides overflow with ladies and gentlemen. A Noya
bull-fight is conducted in this way:--The men rush at the bull--which is
practically a tame one from the neighbouring hills--and try to aggravate
it; at length they succeed, and it plunges at them, whereupon they turn
their backs and flee before it in a crowd, falling at last in a heap,
one on top of another, those who come last and fall on top getting their
clothes rent by the horns of the bull, to the immense gratification of
the spectators; it ends in the bull becoming the _matador_ and the men
playing the part usually assigned to the bull. There is a poetical
description of one of these performances, by Enrique Labarta Posé. We
are told, in running verse, how the town was placarded with “A Grand
Bull-fight,” and how the inhabitants gathered from far and near on a
sweltering August day--the feast day of Noya’s patron saint, San
Bartolomé. When the company had assembled--all the children, all the
young people and all the old ones--the president rose and waved a
handkerchief, as the signal that the performance should now begin. Music
burst forth, a door opened, and--a bull appeared; but such a quiet,
gentle creature! he actually walked along as if he were going to pay a
call--to chat with a fellow-bull in the neighbouring field. The men now
rushed at the poor creature; one pulled its tail, another beat its back,
another ran a stick into its side till the president felt so sorry for
it that he gave the signal for its withdrawal. Another bull then
appeared. The men simply threw themselves upon it, and the bull bore
their onslaught with the serenity of a martyr at the stake! and without
moving a hair. Again the president’s heart was touched; he signalled,
and the victim was allowed to go. A third bull now came forth to the
sound of more music, and a similar scene was enacted. At last some one
roused the president, who had dozed away in his chair, and that
gentleman now brought the performance to a close amid the ringing cheers
of a delighted audience.
All the students who had come to Noya for Easter returned to Santiago by
coach on Sunday, to be ready for work on Easter Monday, which is not
Bank Holiday in Galicia.
We returned by the first coach on Monday, and found the scenery of the
journey even more beautiful than when we had come. It was as we were
nearing Santiago that we saw three hundred young men who had come down
from the mountains to search for work, and to emigrate if none could be
found. I understood now how it came about that the Gallegan emigrants
sometimes died of home-sickness, for I had experienced something of the
inexpressible charm of their beautiful country, their hills and valleys
always green, and their perennial streams that are never parched, and I
could understand something of what it must be to these poor fellows to
be separated from such a home by thousands and thousands of miles in a
land where all nature was so different. South America, with its wide
prairies under a merciless sun, its wild and savage mountains where one
may travel for days together without finding a sign of human life, is
very different from populous Galicia with its gentle, smiling scenery,
its mountains whose slopes are veritable gardens, its innumerable
springs, its rias and its rivers, its vines and its orchards. Every step
of land visible from Noya is cultivated, every peasant is a proprietor.
Yes, I had begun to understand the devotion of the Gallegans to their
beautiful native land. Who would not love passionately so sweet a
birthplace? Even the Russian loves his steppe, where the scene never
changes for thousands of miles. In Galicia, every nook, every crag,
every peak, every valley has a distinctive character that is all its
own, with its own peculiar beauty. Galicia’s cottage homes are of
granite, they last for many generations; even the Russian exile loves
his home, though his _isba_ of wood will not last twenty years. Shall
not the Gallegan regret Galicia, where there is so much that his memory
can cling to? There are two kinds of home-sickness to which the Gallegan
emigrants are subject,--_saudades_, a milder form, and _morrina_,
already mentioned; they die of the latter, but the former is not fatal,
and the sound of their beloved musical instrument, the _gaita_, or
bagpipe, has been known to revive their spirits and give them the power
to throw it off.