If we except the Pastorales, the whole of Basque poetry may be
described as lyrical; either secular, as songs, or religious, as hymns
and noëls. There is no epic in Basque, [190] and scarcely any narrative
ballads; even those chiefly are of uncertain date. A few sonnets
exist, but they are almost exclusively translations or imitations
of French, Spanish, or classical poems, and cannot be considered as
genuine productions of the Basque muse. Some of the religious poetry
may be described as didactic, but this again is mostly paraphrase
or translation. All that is really native is lyrical. But even in
song the Basques show no remarkable poetical merit. The extreme
facility with which the language lends itself to rhyming desinence
has a most injurious effect upon versification. There are not verses
only, but whole poems, in which each line terminates with the same
desinence. Instead of striving after that perfection of form which
the change of a single word or even letter would affect injuriously,
the Basques are too often satisfied with this mere rhyme. Their
compositions, too, if published at all, are usually printed only on
single sheets of paper, easily dispersed and soon lost. Hence the
preservation of Basque poetry is entrusted mainly to the memory,
and thus it happens that one scarcely meets with two copies of the
same song exactly alike. If the memory fails, the missing words and
rhymes are so easily supplied by others that it is not worth the effort
to recall the precise expression used. And so it comes to pass that,
while versification is very common among the Basques, high-class poetry
is extremely rare. They have no song writers to compare with Burns or
with Béranger. And if it be alleged that poets like these are rare,
even among people far more numerous and more cultivated, the Basques
still fall short, when measured by a much lower standard. They have no
poets to rival the Gascon, Jasmin, or to compare with the Provençal or
the Catalan singers at the other end of the Pyrenean chain. There is no
modern Basque song which can be placed by the side of "Le Demiselle"
and others of the Biarritz poet, Justin Larrebat; and among the
older poets neither Dechepare nor Oyhenart is equal to the Béarnais,
Despourrins. While the Jacobite songs of Scotland are among the finest
productions of her lyric muse, the Carlist songs, on the contrary,
though telling of an equally brave and romantic struggle, are one and
all below mediocrity. But, while fully admitting this, there is yet
much that is pleasing in Basque poetry. If it has no great merits,
it is still free from any very gross defects. It is always true and
manly, and completely free from affectation. It is seldom forced,
and the singer sings just because it pleases him to do so, not to
satisfy a craving vanity or to strain after the name and fame of
a poet. The moral tone is almost always good. If at times, as in
the drinking songs, and in some few of the amatory, the expression
is free and outspoken, vice is never glossed over or covered with a
false sentimentality. The Basque is never mawkish or equivocal--with
him right is right, and wrong is wrong, and Basque poetry leaves no
unpleasant after-taste behind. [191]
The only peculiarity, in a poetical sense, is the extreme fondness
for, and frequent employment of, allegory. In the love songs the fair
one is constantly addressed under some allegorical disguise. It is
a star the lover admires, or it is the nightingale who bewails his
sad lot. The loved one is a flower, or a heifer, a dove or a quail,
a pomegranate or an apple, figures common to the poets of other
countries; but the Basques, even the rudest of them, never confuse
these metaphors, as more famous poets sometimes do--the allegory
is ever consistently maintained throughout. Even in prose they are
accustomed to this use of allegory, and catch up the slightest allusion
to it; but to others it often renders their poetry obscure, and very
difficult of successful translation. The stranger is in doubt whether
a given poem is really meant only for a description of the habits of
the nightingale, or whether the bird is a pseudonym for the poet or
the poet's mistress. Curiously enough, sometimes educated Basques
seem to have almost as much difficulty in seizing this allegory as
have foreigners. Thus, in a work now in course of publication, [192]
one of the most famous of these allegorical complaints is actually
taken for a poetical description of the nightingale itself.
The historical songs, like all other historical remains among
the Basques, are few and doubtful. There are two songs, however,
for which are claimed a greater historical importance and a higher
antiquity than any others can pretend to. These are the so-called
"Leloaren Cantua" and the "Altabiskarco Cantua." Both these are
reputed by some writers to be almost contemporaneous with the events
which they relate. The first is said to be founded on the wars of the
Roman Emperor Augustus with the Cantabri; the second is an account of
the defeat of Charlemagne's rearguard at Roncesvalles, A.D. 778. The
former may be some three hundred years old, but the latter is certainly
a production of the nineteenth century, though none the less it is
the most spirited offspring of the Basque muse. We will give the text
and translation of each, and then justify our conclusions.