"The Oak Tree of Guernica
Within its foliage green
Embraces the bright honor
Of all the Basque demesne.
For this we count thee holy,
Our ancient seal and sign;
The fibres of our freedom
Are interlaced with thine.
"Castile's most haughty tyrants
Beneath thy solemn shade
Have sworn to keep the charter
Our fearless fathers made;
For noble on our mountains
Is he who yokes the ox,
And equal to a monarch
The shepherd of the flocks."
--_National Song of the Basques._
It did not seem to me historically respectful to take leave of Spain
without having made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago. A
dauntless friend crossed the sea to bear me company. Hygienic pilgrim
that she is, she came equipped not with cockle shells and sandal
shoon, but with sleeping bags, coffee, and cereals. Many a morning, in
traversing those northern provinces, where the scenery was better than
the breakfast, we blessed her boxes of "grape nuts," and many a night,
doomed to penitential beds, we were thankful to intrench ourselves
against the stings and arrows of outrageous insects in those spacious
linen bags, that gather close about the neck, or, when dangers
thicken, above the head, leaving only a loophole for the breath.
Our point of departure was that city of nature's fancy-work, San
Sebastian. Then, in the early half of July, it was all alive with
expectancy, looking every day for the coming of the Court. It is
reputed to be the cleanest town of the Peninsula, and is, in truth, as
bright as a wave-washed pebble. Nevertheless, it is a favorite waltz
hall of the fleas, which shamelessly obtrude themselves even into
conversation.
The chief summer industry of San Sebastian is sea-bathing. The
soldiers begin it at six o'clock in the morning, marching by regiments
down to the Concha, clearing for action, and striking out into the
gentle surf, all in simultaneous obedience to successive words of
command. Some two hours later teams of oxen draw scores of jaunty
bathing cars down near the white lip of this opalescent shell of
water, and there the long day through all ages, sizes, and ranks of
humanity sport in the curling foam or swim far out into the sparkling
bay.
San Sebastian is the capital of Guipuzcoa, one of the three Basque
provinces. These lie among the Cantabrian mountains, and are
delightfully picturesque with wheat-growing valleys and well-wooded
heights. As the train wandered on, in its pensive Spanish fashion, we
found ourselves now in Scotland, in a beautiful waste of heather and
gorse, now amid the English ivy and hawthorn, hearing the song of the
English robin, and now in our own New England, with the hilly reaches
of apple orchards and the fields upon fields of tasselled Indian
maize.
The Basques are a thrifty folk, and have cultivated their scant acres
to the utmost. The valleys are planted with corn, the lower hills are
ridged and terraced for a variety of crops. Above are walnuts and
chestnuts, and the flintiest summits serve for pasturage. It was
curious to see men at work on those steep slopes that had been scooped
out into a succession of narrow shelves, and more strange yet to catch
glimpses of peasants ploughing the very mountain top, picturesque
figures against the sky.
The reaping is of the cleanest. The harvest fields have a neat,
scoured look, as if the women had been over them with scrubbing
brushes. Yet this utilitarian soil admits of oaks and beeches, ferns
and clover, morning glories, dandelions, pimpernel, and daisies.
All that sunny morning the train swung us blithely on from one charm
of the eyes to another--from a ruined watch-tower, where red-handed
Carlists had crouched, to a bright-kerchiefed maiden singing amid her
beehives; from a range of abrupt peaks, cleft by deep gorges, to
sycamore-shaded byways and poplar-bordered streams; from a village
graveyard, the pathetic little parallelogram enclosed in high gray
walls and dim with cypress shadows, to a tumbling, madcap torrent
spanned by a time-gnawed Roman arch. Shooting the heart of some black
hill, the train would run out on a mere ledge above a valley hamlet,
and from pure inquisitiveness, apparently, ramble all around the
circle, peering down from every point of view on the cluster of great,
patriarchal houses, sometimes of timber and plaster, more often of
stone, where whole clans dwell together under the same red-tiled roof.
Queer old houses these, occasionally topped with blue chimneys, and
now and then with a fantastic coat of arms sculptured over the door,
or a fresco of saints and devils blazoned all across the front.
Sometimes freshly whitewashed, these Basque houses have more often a
weather-worn, dingy look, but, however black the timbers, lines of
clean linen flutter airily from roofs and balconies.
They are a decent, self-respecting, prosperous people, these Basque
mountaineers, of whose history my companion told me stirring tales.
They are supposed, though not without dispute, to be the oldest race
in Europe, descendants of those original Iberians whom the
westward-trooping Aryans drove into the fastnesses of the Pyrenees.
They have their own language, of Asiatic type. They themselves believe
that it was spoken in the Garden of Eden. There are some twenty-five
dialects of the _Vascuense_, and it is so difficult for foreigners
that even George Borrow spoke it "with considerable hesitation," and
one exhausted student, abandoning the struggle, declared that the
words were all "written Solomon and pronounced Nebuchadnezzar." The
Basques attribute their hardy virtues to the crabbedness of their
speech, telling how the devil, after slaving over their vocabulary for
seven years, had succeeded in learning only three words, and threw up
his lesson in a pet, so that to this day he remains unable to meddle
with their peasant piety. What little literature there is in the
Basque language is naturally of the popular cast--hero songs, dancing
songs, dirges, hymns, and folk-lore.
The Basques are noted for their passionate love of liberty. The sturdy
peasant is lord of his own rugged farm, and insists on tilling it in
his own primitive way, breaking the soil with rude mattock more often
than with plough. An English engineer, laying a railroad through
Alava, tried his best to make his men abandon their slow, laborious
method of carrying the earth in baskets on their heads. He finally had
all the baskets removed by night, and wheelbarrows left in their
places. But the unalterable Basques set the loaded wheelbarrows on
their heads, and staggered about beneath these awkward burdens until,
for very shame, he had to give them back their baskets.
The peasant drives over the mountain roads in a ponderous ox-cart,
with two clumsy disks of wood for wheels. The platform is wrought of
rough-hewn beams, five or seven, the middle one running forward to
serve as pole. All the structure, except the iron tires and nails, is
of wood, and the solid wooden wheels, as the massive axle to which
they are riveted turns over and over, make a most horrible squeaking.
It is a sound dear to the peasantry, for they believe the oxen like
it, and, moreover, that it frightens away the devil; but once upon a
time a town of advanced views voted a fine of five dollars for any man
who should bring this musical abomination within its limits. Thereupon
a freeborn Basque rose with the dawn, selected his best carved oaken
yoke, draped the red-stained sheepskin a trifle more carefully than
usual above the patient eyes of his great smooth oxen, and took his
way, "squeakity-squeak, squeakity-squeak," straight to the door of the
_Ayuntamiento_, city hall, where he paid his twenty-five _pesetas_,
and then devoted the rest of the day to driving all about the streets,
squeaking out his money's worth. This is no servile temper, and it was
not until our own generation that the dearly cherished liberties of
the Basques were wrested away.
[Illustration: THE MANZANARES]
These warders of the Pyrenees, for the Basques of Navarre and those
now known as French Basques must not be forgotten, did good service in
helping the Visigoths beat back the northward-pressing Moors and the
southward-pressing Franks; but when the Basque provinces of Spain were
incorporated with Leon and Navarre, and later with Castile, the
mountaineers stood stubbornly for their _fueros_, or peculiar rights.
My comrade's lecture had reached this point, when, finding ourselves
at Amorebieta, in the Province of Vizcaya, or Biscay, we suddenly
descended from the train, and handed our bags to an honest Basque
porter, who deposited them on the floor of an open waiting room, in
full reach of an honest Basque population. For ourselves, we turned
our faces toward the centre of Vizcayan glory, the famous Tree of
Guernica. We entered a rustic train, that seemed entirely undecided
which way to go. The station agent blew a little tin horn, green
meadows and wattled fences began to glide past the car windows, and
the interrupted discourse was resumed.
The lawmakers of Vizcaya were duly chosen by their fellow-nobles, for
every Basque held the rank of _hidalgo_, or "son of somebody." The
deputies met every two years in the village of Guernica, sitting on
stone benches in the open air beneath the sacred oak, and there
elected the _Senores de Vizcaya_. Even the kings of Spain were allowed
no grander title, but had to come to the Tree of Guernica, at first in
person, later by deputy, and there swear to observe the _fueros_. To
this green shadow came the peasant from his lonely farm-house, high on
the mountainside, to answer before his peers to such charges as might
be brought against him; for within the sanctuary of his home the law
could lay no hand on him or his.
It was the Carlist wars that changed all this. The _fueros_, of which
a list dating from 1342 is still extant, granted the Basque provinces
a Republican Constitution that almost realized an ideal democracy,
with immunity from taxes save for their own needs, and from military
service beyond their own boundaries. But when the dynastic strife
broke out, the Basques put on the white cap of Don Carlos and bore the
brunt of the conflict. We had already passed through Vergara, where,
in 1839, Espartero ended the first Carlist war by a treaty which
compelled the Basques to lay down their arms. But the cost of this
rebellion was paid in blood. Their political status was practically
unaffected. At the close of the second Carlist war, in 1876, Alfonso
XII signalized his victory by meting out to them a terrible
punishment, abrogating the precious _fueros_ that the Tree of Guernica
had guarded for so many centuries. The Government imposed, moreover,
its salt and tobacco monopolies, and made the Basques subject to
military conscription. At every station we saw Spain's Vizcayan
soldiers, red-capped and red-trousered, with blue-belted frock coats,
under which beat hearts of doubtful loyalty. The son of Alfonso XII
will have to reckon with the Basques, when the third Carlist war shall
be declared, but it may be doubted whether the _fueros_, which Don
Carlos, of course, promises to restore, will ever come home to nest
again in the Guernica Oak.
My erudite fellow-vagabond was just pointing out the typical shape of
the Basque head, with its broad forehead, long, narrowing face, curved
nose, and pointed chin, when we reached Guernica. Such a sweet and
tranquil village as it is, set in the beauty of the hills, with the
dignity and pathos of its history pervading every hushed,
old-fashioned street! The guide, whom two affable ladies, sharers of
our carriage in the little picnic train, had taken pains to look up
for us at the station, was not, we judged, a favorable specimen of the
haughty Basque _hidalgo_. He was a dull, mumbling, slouchy lad, who
sunk his voice to an awed whisper as we passed the escutcheon-carved
palace of a count. But he led us by pleasant ways to the modern _Casa
de Juntas_, or Senate House, where we were shown the assembly room,
with its altar for mass, the library and other apartments, together
with the portraits of the twenty-six first _Senores de Vizcaya_, from
Lope the Pirate, who forced back the invading Galicians in 840, to the
Infante Don Juan, under whom the Basque provinces were finally
incorporated with Castile.
Close by the _Casa de Juntas_, which stands in a dreamy bit of park as
fresh and trim as an English cathedral close, rises a pillared
portico. There, where brown-eyed little Basque girls, their brown
braids blowing in the breeze, were dangling green figs above their
laughing mouths, used to sit, on those seven stone seats, the grave
Basque fathers, making laws, meting out judgment, and regulating all
the affairs of this simple mountain republic. The portico, bearing as
joint devices the lion and castle of Spain and the three wolves of
Vizcaya, was formerly enveloped in the leafy shadow of the Sacred
Tree; but what rises behind it now is only the gaunt stem of a
patriarchal oak, a very Abraham of plants, all enclosed in glass, as
if embalmed in its casket. Before the portico, however, grows a lusty
scion, for the Tree of Guernica is of unbroken lineage, shoots being
always cherished to succeed in case the centuried predecessor fail.
In presence of this despoiled old trunk, majestic with memories, we
felt an honest awe and longed to give it adequate salute. My comrade
levelled her kodak and took front views, back views, and side views
with such spendthrift enthusiasm that the custodian, deeply impressed,
presented her with a dried leaf from the junior, cunningly pricked out
so as to suggest the figure of the tree. The national song of the
Basques, a matter of some dozen stanzas, written principally in "j's,"
"rr's," and "tz's," takes its theme, if one may trust the Castilian
translation, from this symbolic oak.
The historian wished to do nothing more in Guernica but sit and gaze
forever on that spectral trunk, but the reminder that piety was a
hardly less marked Basque characteristic than political independence,
finally induced her to follow our guide to the church. A Basque church
has its distinctive features, including a belfry, a lofty, plain
interior, with galleries, and often a votive ship, gayly painted and
fully rigged, suspended from the ceiling. The lad bore himself with
simple-minded devotion, offering us on stubby finger tips the holy
water and making due obeisance before each gilded shrine.
But my attention was soon fascinated by a foot-square relief on a blue
ground of Santiago--
"Good Saint James upon the milkwhite steed,
Who leaves his bliss to fight for chosen Spain."
I had hardly anticipated such a stalwart, vigorous, not to say violent
saint, with his white horse galloping, his gold-sandalled feet
gripping the great stirrups, his gold-fringed, crimson robe and azure
mantle streaming on the wind, his terrible sword glittering high in
air. This was clearly not a person to be trifled with, and I looked
about for the historian to tell her that we must be pressing forward
on our pilgrimage. But she had stolen out, every sympathetic Basque
image of the sculptured doorway conspiring to keep a stony silence and
conceal her flight, and had sped back to the Tree of Guernica, from
whose contemplation she was torn away only by a fairy-tale of supper.
Of the several Basque churches which we visited, including the bridal
church of Louis XIV, far-famed San Juan de Luz, whose sides and west
end are portioned off by three tiers of galleries, fairest in memory
is the sixteenth-century church of Begona in Bilbao. It abounds, as
coast churches should, in suggestions of that mighty, mysterious
neighbor, at once so cruel and so beneficent, the sea. Instead of
votive ships, the walls are hung with paintings of vessels in scenes
of appalling peril. One is scudding madly before a tropical gale; one
has her rigging ragged by hurricane and her decks lashed with tempest;
one, careened upon her side, lies at the mercy of the billows, which
are sweeping over her and tumbling her crew like ninepins into the
deep. But the presence of the pictures, bold dashes of the modern
brush amid dim old paintings of saints and martyrs, tells that Our
Lady of Begona succored her sailors in distress, who, on their safe
return, came hither to offer thanks for their preservation and to
leave these mementos of their danger and her efficient aid.
"Is your Virgin so very powerful?" we asked of a chorister boy while
he drew the cords to part the curtains that screened the jewelled
image throned in a recess above the high altar.
"I should rather think she was," answered the little fellow in a glow.
"Why, let me tell you! Robbers, the accursed ones, came here on a dark
midnight to steal her precious stones. They entered by a window, those
sons of wretched mothers, and put up a long ladder against the altar
wall. The wickedest of them all, senoras, he climbed the ladder and
raised his hand to take Our Lady's crown. And in that instant the
great bells overhead began to ring, and all the bells of all Bilbao
pealed with them, and the people waked and came running to the rescue
of Our Lady, and the robbers were put to death."
Our expression did not quite satisfy his boyish ardor, and he pointed
convincingly toward a handsome silver plaque. "And this, too,
witnesses Our Lady's power. It was given in memory of the cholera
time, when people were dying like flies in all the towns about. But
after Our Lady was carried in procession through the streets of
Bilbao, not one died here, except a sinful man who would not turn his
head to look upon her."
"That is a painting of the procession, the large picture over there on
the wall?"
"No, no, senoras. That picture commemorates another of Our Lady's
wonderful deeds. The floods were threatening the city, but Our Lady,
with many censers and candles, was borne down to the river bank, and
she ordered the water to go back, and it obeyed her, and all the town
was saved."
We retreated to the cloisters, from which one has a superb view of the
valley of the Nervion, for Our Lady of Begona dwells high upon a
hilltop. Only the afternoon before we had been in serene Guernica, a
strange contrast to this mining capital of Vizcaya, this bustling,
noisy, iron-grimed Bilbao, in which the Basques take such delight. It
is not a city to gratify the mere tourist, who expects the people of
the lands through which he is pleased to pass to devote themselves to
looking picturesque. But even Spain is something more than food for
the kodak, and this sooty atmosphere of smelting works and factories,
traffic and commerce, means life to Spanish lungs. It is little to my
credit that I took more interest in the fact that Bilbao used to
supply Shakespeare's cronies with rapiers, under the name of
"bilboes," than in statistics regarding those millions of tons of ore
which its iron mines are now annually exporting to Great Britain. The
many English in Bilbao, miners and artisans, with the influence they
shed around them, make the streets rougher and uglier than in purely
Spanish towns. On the other hand, they bring a spirit of religious
independence, so that it is not strange to find the Spanish
Protestants of Bilbao a numerous and vigorous body, counting as a
pronounced element in the community.
From the idle peace of the Begona cloisters, as from the old-time
world, we looked long on this Spanish city of to-day, seething with
manifold activities. We seemed to understand how, to the middle-class
Spaniard, hemmed in by all this mediaeval encumbrance of barracks,
cathedrals, castles, and thrones, such cities as Bilbao and Barcelona,
pulsing with industrial energy and enterprise, are "more beautiful
than Beauty's self." The Basques, like the Catalans, take readily to
business. They set their mountain cascades to turning mill-wheels,
they canal their little Nervion till it can give passage to ships of
four thousand tons burden, they paint the night with the flare of
mighty furnaces. Every year they are building more wharves, more
railroads, more electric tramways, and they are so prodigiously proud
of their new iron bridge, with its flying ferry, which whisks
passengers over from Portugalete to Las Arenas at the rate of two
hundred a minute, that they stamp it on their characteristic jewelry.
That cunning Eibar work of the Basque provinces displays again and
again, on locket, bracelet, brooch, this incongruous design of the
_Puente Vizcaya_ beaten on chased steel in gold.
We looked regretfully out over those significant reaches of land which
we would have liked to explore to the last hearthstone. The Basque
provinces! We had not even set foot in Vitoria, the capital of Alava,
where is preserved the grim old _machete_ by which Basque governors
were sworn into office. "May my head be cut off with this knife," ran
the oath, "if I do not defend the _fueros_ of my fatherland."
And we longed to attend one of the peasant festivals, to see the lads
play _pelota_ and the lasses step Basque dances to the music of the
village pipers, to hear the wild old marches and battle tunes that
have roused the Roman and the Moor to arms. The mystery plays of the
Basques were famous once, and although these naive dramas are now
mainly confined to Christmas and Easter, who could say that we might
not chance on some saint-day fragment? There was soon to take
place, too, in one of the Vizcayan hamlets a "blessing of the fields,"
a processional harvest rite of pagan antiquity, formerly universal in
Spain, but now confined to a few rural districts. We had a hundred
reasons for lingering--but what are reasons? Pilgrims of St. James
must put fresh peas in their shoes and be off for Compostela.
[Illustration: SPANISH CEMETERY]