Side by side with literature proper there has always existed in
Portugal a literature of the people. Indeed, before Portuguese poetry
was written it flourished on the lips of the people, in the songs of
the women. Sometimes this popular literature almost coalesced with
written literature, as in the case of the _cossantes_ in the thirteenth
century. Its poetry lent a glow and magic to the work of Gil Vicente
and later to some of the lyrics of Camões; its proverbial lore was
reproduced in Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ prose plays and later
by D. Francisco Manuel de Mello; in indigenous folk-tales Trancoso
found part of his material. Eighteenth-century writers neglected it,
but Filinto Elysio returned to popular sources, and in the nineteenth
century they inspired two great poets, Almeida Garrett and João de
Deus. Literature and illiteracy have often gone hand in hand. In
Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_ (Act III, sc. ii) we read of
the workwoman (_lavrandeira_) who ‘sings _de solao_, composes songs,
loves to learn _trovas_ by heart, gives a schoolboy farthings to buy
cherries in return for reading _autos_ to her’; and the _Pratica de
Tres Pastores_ gives us a picture of an old peasant reading out from
the Bible[700] of an evening to the whole village:
Esse velhinho
Tinha hum cartapolinho
Feito de letra de mão
Em papel de pergaminho,
E chamava-se o feitinho
Do livro da creação.
E então
Que sempre cada serão
Á noyte depois da cea
Com oculos á candea
O lia por devoção
A toda a gente d’aldea.
The popular appetite for _autos_, simple Christmas plays, legends of
saints, and for long vague _romances_ never flagged, and some of the
literature written to satisfy it, by Balthasar Diaz and others, is
reprinted and hawked about the country in _folhas volantes_ at the
present day, as Diaz’ _Historia da Imperatriz Porcina_ (Porto, 1906)--a
_romance_ of some 1,500 octosyllables in -_ía_--and his _Tragedia do
Marques de Mantua_. The prose _Verdadeira Historia do Imperador Carlos
Magno_ (Porto, 1906) is the last descendant of Nicolas Piamonte’s
Spanish translation (from the French original) _Carlomagno_, printed at
Seville in 1525 and at Alcalá in 1570, or rather of Jeronimo Moreira
de Carvalho’s Portuguese version (2 pts., 1728, 37). It is an instance
of the Portuguese delight in strange, even fantastic, but in any
case foreign, themes. The _Verdadeira Historia da Donzella Theodora_
(Porto, 1911), daughter of a merchant of Babylon, was introduced from
the East and was translated by Carlos Ferreira from the Spanish (1524)
and published at Lisbon in 1735. The _Verdadeira Historia do Grande
Roberto Duque de Normandia e Imperador de Roma_ (Porto, 1912) is a
belated echo of the French story of Robert le Diable, which also came
to Portugal through Spain (Burgos, 1509). The _Verdadeira Historia da
Princeza Magalona_ (Porto, 1912) has a similar derivation from France
(14th or 15th c.) through Spain (Sevilla, 1519), and retains its
popularity as a record of unswerving constancy _na fe e na virtude_.
The _Verdadeira Historia de João de Calais_, reprinted at Oporto in
1914, is also undisguisedly foreign. The story of _Flores e Branca
Fror_, last offshoot (a ‘vile extract’ Menéndez y Pelayo called it)
of the charming Greek tale which came originally from the East,[701]
was mentioned by several poets (King Dinis, Joan de Guilhade, the
Archpriest of Hita) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries[702] and
in the _Gran Conquista_ _de Ultramar_ (13th c.), and was condemned
by Luis Vives. The prose story copied by Boccaccio in his _Filocolo_
is still popular in Portugal and Galicia. There is an edition printed
at Oporto in 1912: _Historia de Flores e Branca-Flor, seus amores e
perigos que passaram por Flores ser mouro e Branca-Flor christã_.
García Ferreiro refers to _a historia de Branca Fror_ as recited at a
Galician _escasula_.[703] Most of these popular threepenny leaflets
are very quaintly illustrated on the title-page. The woodcut on the
1912 edition of _Flores e Branca-Flor_ is worth many an epic.[704] The
portrait of Robert le Diable (1912 ed.) represents no less a person
than Napoleon III, and the ‘true likeness of the beautiful Princess
Magalona’[705] (1912 ed.) is Queen Alexandra. These _folhas volantes_
of the _literatura de cordel_ with many _farsas_, such as _Manoel
Mendes_ by Antonio Xavier Ferreira de Azevedo (1784-1814), reprinted
at Oporto in 1878, and various progeny of the ingenious Bertoldo, as
_Astucias de Mengoto_, _Industrias de Malandrino_ (both Porto, 1879),
_Astucias de Zanguizarra_ (Porto, 1878), _Vida de Cacasseno_ (Porto,
1904), contain little of the real people and less of literature. More
indigenous, but still attracting by virtue of its foreign episodes, is
the _Auto_, _Livro_ (1554?), _Historia_ or _Tratado do Infante D. Pedro
que andou as quatro (sete) partidas do mundo_, which is attributed to
Gomez de Santo Estevam, one of the prince’s attendants in his long
travels, and of which the first known edition (1547) is in Spanish. It
has been constantly reprinted and, with romances of chivalry, formed
the education of the notary in _O Hyssope_.[706] Nor do the _Trovas do
Bandarra_ belong to literature, although these verses of the cobbler
prophet of Trancoso, GONÇALO ANNEZ BANDARRA (†1556?), which caused him
to figure in one of the earliest trials before the Inquisition (1541)
and were subsequently interpreted as referring to the return of King
Sebastian, exercised the fancy of the people and even the wits of the
educated for some three centuries. Forbidden in Portugal, they were
printed abroad, probably at Paris in 1603, at Nantes in 1644, Barcelona
1809, London 1810 and 1815. It was not until 1852 (Porto) that an
_Explicação_ of them could be published in Portugal. Their interest was
then much diminished, since the thirty scissors of the verse,
Augurai gentes vindouras
Que o Rey que de vos ha de hir
Vos ha de tornar a vir
Passadas trinta tesouras,
had been thought to signify the year 1808, i.e. thirty closed scissors
= 30 × 8: 240 years after King Sebastian began to reign (1568). A more
reasonable computation would have been from Alcacer Kebir (_de vos ha
de hir_) = 1818, or, if the scissors were open: ✂ (10), = 1878. Many
sought to connect with Bandarra’s prophecies the sayings of Simão
Gomez (1516-76), the ‘Holy Cobbler’, and his biography, written by
the Jesuit MANUEL DA VEIGA (1567-1647), _Tratado da Vida, Virtudes e
Doutrina Admiravel de Simão Gomes, vulgarmente chamado o Çapateiro
Santo_ (1625), a book in more than one respect singular and charming,
was burnt by the public hangman at Lisbon in 1768 in ‘Black Horse
Square’. The 1759 edition had received the ordinary _licenças_. But
farther afield, deeper in the heart of the people and far more ancient,
exists another literature. Writers who have gone to this source have
never come away unrewarded. Their work has gained a freshness and a
charm[707] which the most successful disciples of imported learning
and latinity have in vain attempted to rival, and gives the reader
the impression that if he is not plucking the bough of gold he is not
far from the tree on which it grows. And the reason is, perhaps, that
the Portuguese people still retains an element pre-Christian, even
pre-Roman, an element which goes back to solar myths and pagan beliefs,
and about which hangs a primaeval mystery and wonder, a glamour and
enchantment born of direct contact with the forces of Nature, and the
worship, fear, and propitiation of many unseen powers and divinities. A
great part of the people still inhabits a region of fiery dragons and
apples of gold, and with ready imagination peoples streams and woods,
sea and air with spirits. December and June are connected with the
birth and supremacy of the sun’s power, and paganism, thinly disguised,
survives in several of the ceremonies of the Christian Church, and
serves to increase the Church’s hold on the minds of the people.
Both the songs and the dancing with which it was accompanied were no
doubt originally religious. The movements of the dance seem to have
influenced the song, so that its metre was divided by real feet. When
the Archbishop of Braga, Frei Bartholomeu dos Martyres, was visiting
his diocese in the sixteenth century he was met by Minhoto peasants
with _danças e folias_ and with _cantigas que entoavam entre as voltas
e saltos dos bailes_,[708] songs evidently similar to those in the
works of Gil Vicente, with _leixapren_ and refrain (_aaxbbx_[709]
or _abxbcx_).[710] The _volta_ would correspond in action to the
_leixapren_[711] of the song, the _salto_ to the refrain. The origin of
the refrain was perhaps the pause (preceded by a final leap into the
air) made by the breathless dancers, as in the words _no penedo_ of
this version of ‘The House that Jack Built’: _Quaes foram os perros que
mataram os lobos que comeram as cabras que roeram o bacello que posera
João preto no penedo._[712] The phrase _ver cantar_, ‘to see these
songs sung’, might be defended.[713]
In modern times the refrain has not been entirely lost, it occurs
occasionally, e.g. _Valhame Deus_, or _Valhame Deus e a Virgem Maria_,
but the usual song is a refrainless quatrain rhyming in the second and
fourth lines, perhaps originally a distich broken up into four lines
like the sixteen-syllable lines of the old _romances_, and from which
the refrain has disappeared. It is essentially a love song: instead of
the song of the people, sung to the tread of dancing feet, the song of
the love-lorn individual, sung to the strumming of his guitar or of the
professional _cantadeira_ at a rustic pilgrimage. But they are also
sung by the people generally, often by women[714] who can neither read
nor write but have a large stock of these _cantigas_, which, indeed,
are almost innumerable. They may be read in their thousands in Antonio
Thomaz Pires’ _Cantos Populares Portuguezes_ (4 vols., Elvas, 1902-10),
Dr. Theophilo Braga’s _Cancioneiro Popular Portuguez_ (2 vols.,
Lisboa, 1911, 1913), Snr. Jaime Cortesão’s _Cancioneiro Popular_
(Porto, 1914), and in other collections, and hundreds of thousands die
uncollected and unknown. Although it is perhaps a pity that all the
popular poetical talent should tend to adapt itself to one mould--the
quatrain--their brevity is excellent in that it imposes concision.
Their thought has to be expressed in some twenty words, although they
are rarely epigrammatic in the sense of the modern epigram. Some are
geographical, or local, in praise of some town or village, river or
fountain. Many are religious, that is, they combine love and religion
in honour of the Lady of the Hills, the Star, the Snows, the Rosary,
the Sands, Pity, Affliction, Health, Hope, or in honour of saints,
and especially of the three popular saints of June: St. Anthony, St.
John, and St. Peter. Others are devoted to special festivals: Christmas
(_Natal_), the New Year (_Anno Bom_), the Epiphany (_Os Reis_), the
Resurrection.[715] The majority are concerned with Nature, either
generally or in detail. Sometimes they are frankly pantheistic, more
often they content themselves with singing the praises of a favourite
flower, rosemary, myrtle, the rose, and especially the carnation--the
red _cravos_ which glow in doorway or window-ledge of countless houses
and cottages in June. Among the birds the swallow,[716] ‘the bird of
the Lord’, as the peasants call it, is rare--perhaps its rhyme is
disdained as too easy--the parrot, the dove, and the nightingale are
far commoner. Numerous _cantigas_ are concerned with the sea, fewer
with the sun, the stars, superstitions, witches, sirens; many with
dancing and various occupations--the herdsman (_ganadeiro_), yokel
(_ganhão_), shepherd (_pastor_), harvesters (_ceifeiros_, _ratinhos_,
_malteses_, _mondadeiras_). But of course the principal subject
is love, jealousy, separation, constancy, _saudade_, satire. The
occasional presence of a French word, e.g. _négligé_ or _cache-nez_,
is not necessarily a proof that the _cantiga_ in question is not of
popular origin, but merely that it is urban. Of many _cantigas_ the
first line consists simply of a long-drawn _Ailé_ (αἴλινον, αἴλινον
εἰπέ, τὸ δ’ εὖ νικάτω) or _Ai lari lari lolé_ (where the fanatic of
Basque can find _il_ (= dead) as easily as in the refrain of C. V.
415), so that they really consist of three lines, the _ailé_ being
introductory.
Some of the quatrains rise to real poetical beauty, and most of
them are charmingly spontaneous, forming in their unpremeditated
art the natural song-book of a nation of poets. The number in print
already approaches fifty thousand. In the mass they perhaps produce a
monotonous effect, being mostly of the one pattern, despite the variety
of their contents:
Tudo o que é verde se seca Em vindo o pino do verão:
Só meu amor reverdece Dentro do meu coração.[717]
Inda que o lume se apague Na cinza fica o calor:
Inda que o amor se ausente No coração fica a dor.[718]
Os tres reis foram guiados Por uma estrella do ceu:
Tambem teus olhos guiaram Meu coração para o teu.[719]
A few links in these modern _cantigas_ carry us back to the songs in
Gil Vicente’s plays and beyond: a dialogue between mother and daughter,
a reference to dancing _de terreiro_, _balho_, dance and song, to the
_casada_, _mas mal casada_, or _i-a_ sequence, as _Filho da Virgem
Maria_ (_Sagrada_). Other links in the popular literature throughout
the ages are the riddles (_adivinhas_) at which Gil Vicente’s shepherds
played in the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ (the example given in João de
Barros’ _Grammatica_ (1540) is:
Ainda o pae não é nado
Já o filho anda pelo telhado (1785 ed., p. 176)
--the father is still unborn and the son is on the roof: a fire and
its smoke; modern instances are printed in Dr. Theophilo Braga’s
_Cancioneiro Popular Portuguez_, vol. i (1913), pp. 363-70); the
lullabies (cf. the modern _Ró ró, meu menino, Dorme e descansa, Tu es
meu alivio E a minha esperança_ with Gil Vicente’s _Ro, ro, ro, Nuestro
Dios y Redentor, No lloreis_, &c., i. 57); the _cantigas de Anno Bom_;
the ‘pagan _janeiras_’, as Filinto Elysio called them; the _cantigas
dos Reis_, the _alvoradas_, the _maios_. The _alva_ or _alvorada_
should properly contain the word _alva_ in the refrain, as in C. V.
172, or Guiraut de Bornelh’s
Qu’el jorn es apropchatz,
Qu’en Orien vey l’estela creguda
Qu’adutz lo jorn, qu’ieu l’ai ben conoguda,
Et ades sera l’alba.
(For day is near, and high in the East appears the star that brings in
the day: I know it well, and soon it will be dawn.) The theme is the
parting of lovers at dawn:
Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day....
A Catalan _alba-cossante_ is given in Milá y Fontanals’ _Romancerillo
Catalán_[720]:
Marieta lleva’t lleva’t de mati
Que l’aygua es clara, el sol vol sortir.
Como m’en llevaré si gipo no tinch?
Marieta lleva’t, de mati lleva’t,
Que el sol vol sortir, que l’aygua es clara.
Como, &c.
An example of a Galician _mayo_, that is, a song introducing the _Mayo_
or May-boy (corresponding to our Queen of the May), is given in Milá’s
article in vol. vi of _Romania_. It closely resembles that of Gil
Vicente (_Este é o Mayo, o Mayo é este_) in the _Auto da Lusitania_:
Este é o Mayo que Mahiño é,
Este é o Mayo que anda d’o pé.
O noso Mayo anque pequeniño
Da de comer á Virxen d’o Camiño.
Velay o Mayo cargado de rosas,
Velay o Mayo que las trae más hermosas.
It then breaks into a _muiñeira_ (in Castilian):
Ángeles somos, del cielo venimos (bajamos),
Si nos dais licencia a la Reina le pedimos (la cantamos).
To the _janeiras_ more than one classical author alludes. Mello
(_Epan._ i) thus notices them at Evora on New Year’s Eve, 1638, before
the house in which the Conde de Linhares was lodged: _a fim de se lhe
cantarem certas Bençoens & Rogatiuas (costume de nossos anciãos que
com nome de Janeiras entoavam placidamente pelas portas dos mais caros
amigos) se congregou grande numero de pouo_.[721] Some _romances_
(also _xacara_, _xacra_, and in the Azores _arabia_) have been printed
direct from the lips of the people by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos in
his _Romanceiro Portuguez_ (1886). The degenerate, more modern, and
subjective form of the _romance_ is the _fado_, a ballad (melancholy
as the old _solao_[722]), composed by the professional _fadistas_ of
the towns. The _fado_ is even more modern than the _modinha_ (end of
eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century). It dates from the
first third of the nineteenth century, and has not even now penetrated
to the south, being indeed largely a Lisbon product. It may be composed
in verses of four (_quadras_), five (_quintilhas_), or ten (_decimas_)
lines.
The individual in the favourite _quadras_ expresses his personal sorrow
and his love; the immemorial lore of the Portuguese people as a whole
survives less in them than in the no less numerous proverbs--_um bosque
de muitas e varias maneiras de adagios_. There is scarcely a Portuguese
writer whose works do not furnish a goodly crop of these proverbs,
often in evidently popular form, sometimes betraying their Spanish
origin in the rhyme. They have been collected in Antonio Delicado’s
_Adagios Portugueses_ (1651), in _Adagios_ (1841), _Philosophia
Proverbial_ (1882), and elsewhere. The language is full of proverbial
phrases, and most Portuguese could at will conceal their meaning
from a foreigner in a maze of idiomatic expressions. The variety of
their names is sufficient proof of the extraordinary number of the
proverbs. They are crystallizations of some forgotten fable or event
(_adagios_)[723] or of a more personal anecdote (_anexins_), or
the refrain of a long-lost song (_rifões_).[724] Or they are moral
(_maximas_ and _sentenças_), biblical (_proverbios_), satirical
(_dictados_ or _ditados_, _ditos_). Many of them embody the wisdom of
the ages in a form admirably concise and forcible, e.g. _Quem muito
abarca pouco abraça_ (which is the very reverse of Portuguese history:
_e nulla stringe e tutto ’l mondo abbraccia_), or _Até ao lavar das
cestas é vindima._ Many of course correspond more or less closely to
those of other countries, e.g. _Muitos enfeitadores estragão a noiva_
(Too many cooks spoil the broth), _Gato escaldado de agua fria ha medo_
(The burnt child fears the fire); _Manhan ruiva, ou vento ou chuva_
(= _Alba gorri, hegoa edo uri_); _Pedra movediça não cria bolor_ (=
_Pierre qui roule n’amasse pas mousse_).[725] Many of these saws as
well as the _contos_ (folk-tales) have their birth at _fiandões_ as
the women sit spinning, or as _nossas velhas_ sit at their cottage
doors and gossip in the sun (_soalheiro_), or as all gather round the
spacious _lareira_. After the day’s work on the farm, in field and
granary, to the sound of singing, legend and tradition come into their
own of an evening round the great fire of logs and scented brushwood.
The _contos_ have been collected by Z. Consiglieri Pedroso, _Portuguese
Folk Tales_ (London, 1882); F. Adolpho Coelho, _Contos Populares
Portuguezes_ (Lisboa, 1879); Dr. Theophilo Braga, _Contos Tradicionaes
do Povo Portuguez_ (2 vols., Porto, 1883); F. X. de Athaide Oliveira,
_Contos Tradicionaes do Algarve_ (2 vols., Tavira, 1900, 5). As
was to be expected, they have their equivalents in the folklore of
other nations, a fact which does not prevent them from possessing an
indigenous character, a charm and flavour of their own. The glowing
imagination of the peasants spins out fairy and allegorical tales with
marvellous facility. Thus old Mother Poverty (_Tia Miseria_) owned a
pear-tree in front of her cottage, and had obtained the privilege that
whoever went up it to steal her pears should be unable to come down.
When Death comes she asks him to fetch her one more pear. Once up the
tree all the priests and lawyers cannot bring him down, and only when
he agrees to the bargain that Poverty shall never die is she willing to
release him.
A great part of the popular literature has been set down in cold
print during the last half-century. Much remains ungarnered. In every
province there are peculiar words, phrases, traditions, heirlooms of
times prehistoric, waiting to be gathered in, and both the Portuguese
literature and the Portuguese language of the future will owe a debt of
gratitude to their collectors, and find rich material in the pages of
the _Revista Lusitana_.