[700] The whole Bible in Portuguese was not translated until the
eighteenth century, by JOÃO FERREIRA DE ALMEIDA, _O Novo Testamento_
(Amsterdam, 1681), _Do Velho Testamento_, 2 vols. (Batavia, 1748,
53). This is the version still commonly in use. Another translation,
entitled _Biblia Sagrada_, was made from the Vulgate at the end of the
eighteenth century by ANTONIO PEREIRA DE FIGUEIREDO (1725-97), author
of some fifty theological and historical works in Latin and Portuguese,
and a paraphrase (_Historia Evangelica_, 1777, 78, _Historia Biblica_,
1778-82) by Frei FRANCISCO DE JESUS MARIA SARMENTO (1713-90). See C.
Michaëlis de Vasconcellos et S. Berger, _Les Bibles Portugaises_ in
_Romania_, xxviii (1899), pp. 543-8: _La littérature portugaise est
en matière de traductions bibliques d’une pauvreté désespérante._
The _Parocho Perfeito_ (1675) speaks of _os parochos que não tiverem
Biblias_ (p. 19). See also G. L. Santos Ferreira, _A Biblia em
Portugal, 1495-1850_ (L. 1906).
[701] See _Floire et Blancheflor. Poèmes du xiiiᵉ siècle. Publiés
d’après les manuscrits ... par E. du Méril_, Paris, 1856. In the
original story Flores in a basket of roses enters the tower where
Brancaflor is imprisoned. Señor Bonilla y San Martín (_La Historia de
los dos Enamorados Flores y Blancaflor_, Madrid, 1916) attributes an
Italian origin to the Spanish prose story. The Spanish translation
probably dates from the fifteenth century.
[702] For its popularity with the Provençal troubadours see Raynouard,
_Choix_, e. g. ii. 297, 304, 305.
[703] _A historia de Branca Fror Outra saca a relocer_ (_Chorimas_
(1890), p. 148).
[704] It has been reproduced, from an earlier edition, in T. Braga, _Os
Livros Populares Portuguezes_ (_Era Nova_, vol. i, 1881).
[705] At either side explanatory verses, the only verse in the leaflet,
tell us that ‘Magalona was the most beautiful of all contemporary
princesses, beloved daughter of the King of Naples, and her heart full
of goodness. She was a model of virtues, of pure beliefs and a loving
heart, married with Pierres, Pedro of Provence, a noble knight and
virtuous man.’
[706] One of the Elvas Chapter was _homem versado Na lição de Florinda
e Carlo Magno_.
[707] This charm hangs over many anonymous lyrics of popular
inspiration, as the _Trovas da Menina Fermosa_, seventeenth or
eighteenth century variations of a sixteenth century song: _Menina
fermosa Dizei do que vem Que sejais irosa A quem vos quer bem; Porque
se concerta Rosto e condiçam Dais por galardam A pena mui certa. Sendo
tam fermosa Dizei_, &c. Even less genuinely popular are the _Trovas
do Moleiro_ (1602), written by an obscure native of Tangier, Luis
Brochado, and others.
[708] Luis de Sousa, _Vida_, 1763 ed., i. 462.
[709] e. g. _Em Belem vila do amor_ (i. 183).
[710] e. g. _Que no quiero estar en casa_ (i. 73) (which is _como laa
cantaes co’ gado_, essentially a peasant’s song).
[711] The _leixapren_ occurs in most of the songs accompanied by
dance in Gil Vicente: e. g. _Quem é a desposada_ (_chacota_, i. 147),
_Pardeus bem andou Castella_ (_em folia_) (ii. 389), _Ja não quer
minha senhora_ (ii. 439, _Esta cantiga cantarão e bailarão de terreiro
os foliões_). _Não me firaes madre_ (ii. 440, _em chacota_), _Mor
Gonçalves_ (ii. 509, _bailão ao som desta cantiga_), _Por Mayo era, por
Mayo_ (ii. 525, _a vozes bailarão e cantarão a cantiga seguinte_: i. e.
a _romance_ with _leixapren_ and refrain). They are thus a combination
of glee and dance.
[712] Gil Vicente, _Obras_ (ii. 448).
[713] _Não nas quero ver cantar_ (Gil Vicente) is, however, probably
a misprint, for which D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos suggests
_quer’ eu_.
[714] Cf. J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Ensaios Ethnographicos_, ii. 264:
_O povo (principalmente as mulheres) canta-as_ [_cantigas soltas_] _em
qualquer occasião_.
[715]
_Já os campos reverdecem, Já o alecrim tem flor,
Já cantam os passarinhos A resurreição do Senhor._
(Now to the fields returns the green and the rosemary’s in flower, and
the little birds are singing the Lord’s Resurrection hour).
[716]
_Ó triste da minha vida, Ó triste da vida minha,
Quem me dera ir contigo Onde tu vaes, andorinha._
(O how sad my life is, O how sad my plight!
Would I might go with thee, swallow, in thy flight!)
recalls the French _Si j’étais hirondelle Que je pusse voler, Sur votre
sein, ma belle, J’irais me reposer_ (A swallow I Would be to fly And
take my rest Upon thy breast).
[717] All green things in summer Their freshness lose: Only my heart
Its love renews.
[718] When the light of the fire is dead The ashes its heat retain:
When love is over and fled In the heart abides the pain.
[719] To the three kings was given A star in heaven for sign: And thy
eyes have guided My heart unto thine.
[720] Reprinted in his article in _Romania_, vol. vi, and by Dr. Braga.
_Aygua_ in the second line is probably a corruption from _alua_ (dawn)
to _agua_ (water).
[721] Fernam Rodriguez Lobo Soropita, speaking of the _noites
privilegiadas_--the eves of New Year and Epiphany--refers to
_os villões ruins que essas noutes vos perseguem_ and to their
_pandeirinhos, musica de agua-pé que toda a noute vos zune nos ouvidos
como bizouro, e sobre tudo isto haveis de lhe offertar os vossos quatro
vintens, e quando lh’os entregais a candeia vos descobre o feitio dos
ditos musicos: um mocho com sombreiro com mais chocas que um corredor
de folhas_. They thus resembled Christmas ‘waits’.
[722] The Spanish translator of _Eufrosina_ apparently derived this
name from musical notes (= a sung _romance_), since he translates _un
romance de sol la_, _Eufr._ i. 3; iii. 2 (_Oríg. de la Novela_, iii.
77 and 110), but even he would not derive it from the _selah_ of the
Psalms (T. Braga, _Hist. da Litt. Port._ i (1914), p. 205). In the
Spanish _solao_ in _Obras de Dom Manoel de Portugal_ (1605), Bk. XII,
pp. 282-7, each singer takes three lines, of which the last two rhyme
together.
[723] Formerly _verbos_ (e.g. in the _Canc. da Vat._) and _exemplos_
(_enxempros_).
[724] The word _rifão_ does not now mean the refrain or burden
(_estribilho_) of a song but proverb, like the Spanish _refrán_.
[725] There is another proverb _Mentras a pedra vae e vem Deus dará de
seu bem_ (While the [mill?] stone doth come and go God his blessing
shall bestow).
§ 2
_The Galician Revival_
For over four hundred years--with the exception of a few poems by
Padres José Sanchez Feijoo and Martín Sarmiento[726] in the eighteenth
century--the Galician language held aloof from literature. It was
peculiarly fitting that at a time when Portugal was recovering for
her own literature the early Galician lyrics, which are now one of its
most precious possessions, a new company of poets should have sprung
up in the region now, as of old, _fertil de poetas_[727]--Galicia.
They were no doubt multiplied and encouraged by the discovery of the
_Cancioneiros_, but began independently of these, in the wake of that
regionalism which manifested itself so vigorously in the second half
of the nineteenth century, for instance in Provence, Catalonia, and
Valencia. Besides their general character--the mingling of irony and
sentimental melancholy--and a few conscious imitations, the new poets
and the ancient _Cancioneiros_ present several striking similarities.
It is now some three-quarters of a century since regionalism in Galicia
assumed its first literary pretensions. In 1861 the poets had become
sufficiently numerous and distinguished to warrant the holding of
_Juegos Florales_ (_xogos froraes_) at La Coruña. JUAN MANUEL PINTOS
(1811-76) had published eight years earlier a small volume of verses,
_A Gaita Gallega_ (Pontevedra, 1853), and FRANCISCO AÑON (1817-78) had
contributed poems to various local newspapers. Añon led the life of
a wandering _jogral_ of old, and his occasional verses soon won him
popularity, so that he came to be regarded as the father of modern
Galician poetry. He could express his love for his native province in
the tender and melancholy stanzas (_abbcdeec_) _A Galicia_, and in his
other poems, at once ingenuous and satirical; he is also thoroughly
Galician and foreshadowed the poetry that was to follow. A leaflet
of his verses appeared in the year after his death, _Poesías_ (Noya,
1879), and a more satisfactory collection ten years later: _Poesías
Castellanas y Gallegas_ (1889). JOSÉ MARÍA POSADA Y PEREIRA (1817-86),
born at Vigo, the son of a Vigo advocate, published his first volume
of verses in 1865 and others were collected in _Poesías Selectas_
(1888). The second part of this collection (pp. 111-250) is written
in Spanish, but the Galician poems include a series of letters in
octosyllabic verse, the wistful humour of which is attractive. Born in
the same year as Añon, he survived Rosalía de Castro, twenty years his
junior. He survived in disillusion, for he had been one of the pioneers
and now felt himself neglected in the changed conditions. When the
first floral games were celebrated the most talented of these early
poets, ALBERTO CAMINO (1821-61), had but a few months to live. Another
generation passed before his poems were published: _Poesías Gallegas_
(1896). Camino was not a prolific writer, and this tiny book contains
but twelve of his poems; but there is not one of them that we would
willingly miss, whether he is giving harmonious form to a poignant
theme, as in _Nai Chorosa_ and _O Desconsolo_, or in lighter verses
describing with a contagious glow and spirit some scene of village
merriment, as in _A Foliada de San Joan_ or _Repique_.
Galician patriots, indignant at the neglect or contempt habitually
meted out to their region, might persevere in their belief that the
language which had produced the _cantigas_ of King Alfonso X, the
Portuguese _Cancioneiros_, and the poems of Macías was capable of
revival as an instrument of poetry; but it was for the most part by
scattered poems, manuscript or printed in periodicals (especially the
Coruña paper _Galicia_, 1860-6), that they justified their faith,
until in 1863 appeared _Cantares Gallegos_ by ROSALÍA DE CASTRO[728]
(1837-85). The authoress, born at Santiago, was but twenty-six when
this collection of poems gave her a wider celebrity than has been
granted to any Galician writer since Macías. Emilio Castelar wrote a
preface for her second volume, _Follas Novas_ (1880), and hailed her
as ‘a star of the first order’. Indeed, so great was her fame as a
Galician singer that until recently it obscured her Spanish poems,
_En las orillas del Sar_ (1884). It was an unsought fame. Rosalía de
Castro wrote much more than she published and destroyed much that
was worth publishing. She sank herself in Galicia; her voice is that
of the Galician _gaita_ in all its varying moods. In her preface to
_Cantares Gallegos_ she wrote: ‘I have taken much care to reproduce
the true spirit of our people.’ That she succeeded in this all critics
are agreed. A favourite method in the _Cantares Gallegos_ is to take a
popular quatrain and develop it at some length, as, for instance, in
the beautiful variations on the lines _Airiños_, _airiños_, _aires_,
_Airiños_ _da miña terra_, _Airiños_, _airiños_, _aires_, _Airiños_,
_levaime á ela_.[729] Here, as throughout the book, there is such
yearning passionate sadness that we may say, in her own words, _non
canta que chora_. The sadness is of _soedade_ and brooding over her
country’s plight. She has felt all the peasants’ sorrows, the longing
of the emigrant for his country, the fate of the women at home who
find no rest from toil but in the grave,[730] above all the neglect
and poverty in which those sorrows centre--with the result of sons
torn from their families and scattered abroad to Castile and Portugal
and across the seas in search of bread. Her themes are thus often
homely; their treatment is always plaintive and musical. The metres
used are very various. The book opens with a chain of _muiñeiras_
singing _Galicia frorida_, and the rhythmical beat of the _muiñeira_
constantly recurs throughout. Nothing could serve better to express, as
she so marvellously expresses, the very soul of the Galician peasantry
in its gentle, dreaming wistfulness and tearful humour. Her style is
so thin and delicate, yet so flowing and natural, that it is more
akin, almost, to music than to language. Few writers have attained
such perfection without a trace of artifice. It is Galician--_esta
fala mimosa_[731]--seen at its best, clear, soft, and pliant, rising
in protest or reproach to a silvery eloquence. In _Follas Novas_ the
melancholy note is accentuated, without becoming morbid: the new leaves
are autumnal. The music of her sad and exquisite poetry had been forged
in the crucible of her own not imaginary suffering and grief, and in
these lyrics she utters her _inmortales deseios_ (immortal longings)
as well as the woes of the peasant women of Galicia, ‘widows of the
living and widows of the dead’. New metres are introduced, the old
skill and perfection of form is maintained. A few poems in the second
half even succeed in repeating that identification between the poet and
the genius of the people which makes much of _Cantares Gallegos_ almost
anonymous and assures its immortality.
Midway between the publication of _Cantares Gallegos_ and _Follas
Novas_ appeared the first volume of Galician verse by the blind poet
of Orense, VALENTÍN LAMAS CARVAJAL (1849-1906). This book, _Espiñas,
Follas e Frores_ (1871), has remained the most popular of his
works.[732] He is a true poet of the soil (_poeta del terruño_), the
soil of Galicia which he sings with melancholy charm, and his verse is
filled with _soedades_. He complains of the peasant’s lot, protests
against its injustice and the tyranny of the _caciques_, laments
the drain on Galicia’s best forces through emigration and military
service, and his later work especially betrays a rustic cynicism and
disillusion. But the value both of his first book and of _Saudades
Gallegas_ (1889) and _A Musa d’as Aldeas_ (1890) is that in them speak
the voices of the peasants. Only occasionally does Aesop or Macías
intrude to dispel the charm, and even sophisticated touches--as when he
speaks of ‘this century of enlightenment’, of Galicia as ‘a poetical
garden’, or of the _tamborileiro_ as ‘the inseparable companion’ of
the _gaiteiro_--are not out of keeping, since the peasant, to whom
a long word is a sign of education, will in ambitious moments use
such phrases. The Galician peasants are shown in their sadness and
superstitions, at their common tasks and _festas_. When Lamas Carvajal
is describing an _escasula_[733] or a _fiadeiro_,[734] a dance in the
beaten space before the doors (_baile de turreiro_), a _foliada_[735]
in honour of some saint, a _ruada_ or _rueiro_ (street courting), a
summer _romaxe_ or _romaria_ (pilgrimage), or autumn _magosto_ (feast
of chestnuts), his melancholy almost deserts him, and he can sing, in
his own phrase,
Algun ledo cantar d’a sua terriña.
The toil often becomes a _festa_, in which, he says, there is more
mirth than in all the city’s joys. In _Ey, boy, ey_ he admirably
reproduces the thoughts of the slow-footed, slow-reasoning peasant
as he trudges along to market in front of his droning and shrieking
ox-cart. And, generally, all the life of the province of Orense is
in his poems: witches, exorcisers, _beatas_, _curandeiros_ (to whom
the peasants turn in place of the doctor), pilgrims, blind singers,
_santeiros_ selling images of saints, the wailing _alalaa_, the evening
litany or _rosario_, the angelus (_Ave Maria_ or _as animas_, or tocar
_ás oraciós_). The _gaiteiro_, of course, is a prominent figure, for
without his bagpipe (the _gaita gallega_) and the accompanying drum
(_tamboril_), cymbals (_ferriñas_, _conchas_), tambourine (_pandeiro_,
_pandeireta_), and castanets (_castañolas_),[736] no village _fête_
would be welcome or complete, and his _alborada_ or his rhythmical
dance-song, the _muiñeira_, is the emblem of all the peasant’s
pleasures. Melancholy pervades the _Rimas_ (1891) of D. JUAN BÁRCIA
CABALLERO (born in 1852), but it is no longer the melancholy of the
peasant, but of the poet. His verse is more artificial and subjective,
and expressions such as the ‘bed of Aurora’, ‘Olympic disdain’, ‘the
Nereids’, carry us far away from the peasant scenes so pleasantly
described by Lamas Carvajal. Yet in his lyrics lives a faint music
which raises them above the commonplace. He writes of moonlight, the
fall of the leaves, a flowing stream, tears, death, and admires Heine
and Leopardi; but in his slight fancies, often built into a single
brief sentence, he has a natural charm of his own.
BENITO LOSADA (1824-91) gained great popularity in Galicia with his
_Contiños_ (1888), epigrammatic and often far from edifying stories
in verse which mostly do not exceed ten lines. He is said to have had
them printed on matchboxes _ad maiorem gloriam_, but for this he was
probably not responsible. More interesting and equally racy of the soil
are the poems of his _Soaces d’un Vello_ (1886), of which the _contiños
d’a terra_ form only Part 3. The first part consists of a long legend
in octosyllabic verse, and in the second some thirty poems give a
coloured, homely, delightful picture of peasant life in Galicia:
En fias e espadelas,
En festas, en foliadas[737]
--song and dance, the pot of chestnuts (_zonchos_) over the _lareira_
fire on the night of All Saints’ Day, the ox-girl quietly singing,
the girl with spindle and distaff keeping the cows, the sorrowful,
hard-working peasant women, the priests exorcising those possessed by
the Devil. The gay notes of the _gaita_ with its plaintive undertone
sound from his pages. The language, _a garrida lengua nosa_, has rarely
been written more idiomatically or with a surer instinct for the force
and fascination of the native word used in its rightful place. To turn
from Losada to EDUARDO PONDAL (1835-1917), the poet of Ponteceso,
a small village in the district of Coruña, is to go from a village
_praça_ to a high mountain-top. He stands quite apart from the other
Galician poets.[738] Their irony and scepticism, sorrows and mirth, are
mostly of the peasant. But here we have no dance or rustic merriment.
The pipe and the drum give place to the wind blowing through an Aeolian
harp. The poet
soña antr’as uces hirtas
Na gentil arpa apoyado
En donde o vento suspira.[739]
He is a lonely, martial spirit, disdainful but never arrogant, hating
all servitude and looking upon a comfortable inertness as a kind of
servitude. There is no pettiness in him, although details of Nature
he may notice and love. The most learned of Galician poets, and not
sparing of classical allusions, he is yet entirely merged in the
forces of Nature and becomes a voice, a mystery. Some of his poems
are a single sentence of perhaps twenty words, a musical cry borne
slowly away on the wings of the wind. He sings of mists (the Gallegan
_brétoma_) and pregnant silences, the whispering of the pines, the
great chestnut-trees and Celtic oaks, of the swift daughter of the
mists and the ‘intrepid daughter of the noble Celts’, of old forgotten
far-off things, battles long ago. One must go to Ireland for a
parallel. It has been noticed of him that he is entirely pre-Christian;
he is almost prehistoric. His long epic on the discovery of America, in
twenty-seven cantos, _Os Eoas_, remained unpublished at his death. Nor
would it be easy to account for his popularity were it not for the poem
by which he won early fame: _A Campana d’Anllons_. It is full of music
and melancholy, a plaintive farewell addressed to his native village by
a Galician peasant imprisoned at Oran. His subsequent verses, collected
in _Rumores de los Pinos_ (1879) and _Queixumes dos Pinos_ (1886), if
they could not increase his popularity, brought him a wide recognition
among all lovers of poetry. The undefinable fascination of many of
these poems is due to their aloofness, tenderness, and sorrowful music.
He is a genuine Celtic bard, child of the wind and the rain, with
Rosalía de Castro the truest poet produced by modern Galicia.
The most prominent of the later Galician poets was MANUEL CURROS
ENRIQUEZ (1851-1908), whose work _Aires d’a miña terra_ (1880) was
condemned by the Bishop of Orense and republished in the following
year. Born at Celanova in the middle of the nineteenth century, he
studied law at Santiago de Compostela and became a journalist. His
advanced opinions caused him to emigrate, first to London, then to
South America. His anticlericalism was pronounced in _Aires d’a miña
terra_, and even more so in a forcible satire describing a pilgrimage
to Rome, written in _triadas_[740] and entitled _O Divino Sainete_
(1888). He writes of dogma assassinating liberty, heaps abuse on
Ignacio de Loyola, hails the advent of the railway to Galicia as
bringing not priests but progress. All this has caused his poems to
be widely read. But the reader has the agreeable surprise to find
that many of them deal quite simply with the legends (_A Virxe d’o
Cristal_) or customs (_Unha Boda en Einibó_, _O Gueiteiro_, &c.) of
his native country, and show a true poetic power and a quiet and
accurate observation of Nature. We forget all about anticlericalism and
the Pope in reading of spring in Galicia, of the _xentis anduriñas_,
the _anemas_ ringing, and the children who come singing a _mayo_ and
asking for chestnuts. Curros Enriquez would not be a Galician were not
his work of a melancholy cast, and the charm of some of his poems is
also indigenous. The torch of Galician poetry burnt on after Curros
Enriquez had ceased to write. D. EVARISTO MARTELO PAUMAN (born c.
1853) in his _Líricas Gallegas_ (1891) showed that he possessed the
traditional charm and satire of Galician verse, but a charm and satire
that in his case had become all individual and subjective. AURELIANO
J. PEREIRA (†1906), author of _Cousas d’a Aldea_ (1891), displayed
a rustic humour in sketching with many a gay note the life of the
Galician peasantry, and, in his more subjective poems, a very real and
delicate lyrical gift. A sly humour also marks the work of ALBERTO
GARCÍA FERREIRO (1862-1902) in _Volvoretas_ (1887) and _Chorimas_
(1890). It is sometimes marred by the bitterness of his anticlerical
and anti-Spanish feeling. In the stream’s voice he hears a murmur
against the mayor and the judge, the _cacique_ is ‘dragon, tiger and
snake’, the monks and priests are greedy and ignorant. On the other
hand, when they describe a fair (_N’a feira_) or a pilgrimage or the
woes of the Galician emigrant, his poems are moving, vivid, and full
of local colour. In a slight volume of poems, _Salayos_ (1895), MANUEL
NÚÑEZ GONZÁLEZ (1865-1917) shows true lyrical power. They are poems
in Galician rather than of Galicia, telling in a plaintive music of
night, autumn, _morriña_, _soedades_. For all the author’s love of his
smaller country, it is Galicia seen from without,[741] or sung from
memory. The ‘vintage songs and the gay din of chestnut gatherings’ are
no longer, as with Losada and Lamas, a part of life, but ‘a dream in
the ideal realm of thought’,[742] a subject of disillusion and regret.
_Folerpas_[743] (1894) by D. ELADIO RODRÍGUEZ GONZÁLEZ (born in 1864)
is also essentially not of the people. In its less elaborate poems it
often describes, attractively and with much colour, popular customs
and dances, the night of St. John, _as festas d’a miña terra_. Yet
after recording the pleasant superstition that on St. John’s Day the
sun rises dancing, the author must needs pause to say ‘away with these
fanatical beliefs, unworthy of a civilized region’, to which the answer
is that such reflections may be sincere but are unworthy of poetry,
and should be expressed in prose. But the author of these verses
can, when he wishes, identify himself with the peasants whose life
he depicts,[744] and is capable of writing poems of great delicacy.
The general impression is that he has not grown up among these scenes
but is observing them keenly as might a stranger. The edict of the
Archbishop of Santiago (June 26, 1909), which made it a deadly sin to
read _Fume de Palla_ (1909), by ‘ALFREDO NUN DE ALLARIZ’, as containing
impious, blasphemous, and heretical propositions, gave these poems
a wider publicity than they might otherwise have attained, and they
received a second edition in the same year. It certainly savours of
blasphemy and is bad criticism to call Curros Enriquez the Galician
Christ, but it is to be feared that the excommunication of the author
will only encourage him to abandon ‘simple verses written without
art’, as in his preface he describes these, for more studied poems
with a thesis to prove. It is perhaps disquieting to find that three
poets in most respects so different, agree in this, that between them
and popular poetry a gulf is fixed, owing to the sensitive aloofness
of a true poet (for Núñez González was undoubtedly the most talented
of the younger Galicians), or owing to the adoption of the superior
standpoint of the rationalist or the anticlerical. Younger poets of
remarkable promise and achievement are D. GONZALO LÓPEZ ABENTE (born
in 1878), a relative of Eduardo Pondal, whom he sometimes recalls in
the original inspiration of _Escumas da Ribeira_ (1914) and _Alento
da Raza_ (1917); D. ANTONIO NORIEGA VARELA (born in 1869), whose deep
love for his native moors and mountains gives an eternal magic to
_Montañesas_ (1904) and _D’O Ermo_ (1920); D. RAMÓN CABANILLAS, who
voices the sorrows and aspirations of Galicia in _Vento Mareiro_ and
_Da Terra Asoballada_ (1917); and D. ANTONIO REY SOTO, who, however,
writes chiefly in Castilian. D. XAVIER PRADO expresses the very soul
of the peasantry in _A Caron do Lume_ (1918). The poets of the last
half-century have unquestionably justified the literary revival of
the Galician language, and even if in the future no poetry of the
highest order be written in Galicia, it is unthinkable that so musical
an instrument should be allowed to perish. Galician poetry may be a
thin, an elfin music, a scrannel voice, as of a wind blowing through
tamarisks, but it has a natural charm, a raciness, a native atmosphere
which give it a peculiar flavour and attraction. Literary contests,
_veladas_, _certames_, _xogos froraes_, keep the flame of poetry alive
in Galicia, but in its anonymous form it is a very vigorous growth
which needs no fostering, and flourishes now as it flourished in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as it flourished in the time of
the Romans. Hundreds of anonymous _quadras_ (_cantiga_, _cantar_,
_cantariño_, _cantilena_, _cantiguela_, _cantiguiña_, _copra_, or
_canció_) have been collected in the _Cancionero Popular Gallego_
(Madrid, 3 vols., 1886) by JOSÉ PÉREZ BALLESTEROS (†1918). The peasant
women compose and sing their songs to-day[745] as when Fray Martín
Sarmiento (1695-1772) noticed that _en Galicia las mujeres no solo
son poetisas sino tambien músicas naturales_,[746] or the Marqués
de Montebello listened to _los tonos que a coros cantan con fugas y
repeticiones las mozuelas_, or the Archpriest of Hita watched the
cantaderas dancing (as well as singing) in neighbouring Asturias.[747]
The ancient _muiñeira_ rhythm continues, and the parallel-strophed
songs of the early _Cancioneiros_ have their echoes in the anonymous
poetry of to-day. It is, indeed, of interest to note how the poets of
the revival fall quite naturally into the same parallelism and the same
repetition.[748] Besides these _muiñeiras_ the popular poetry consists
principally of _quadras_.[749] Traditional _romances_ are nearly
non-existent. This popular poetry (soft, musical, malicious, satirical)
connects by a thread of anonymous song the Galicia of to-day with the
whole of its past life, and the revivalists are likely to prosper in
proportion as they seek their inspiration in popular sources, as did
Rosalía de Castro. For the Galician peasants, living in a land of
mists and streams, inlet arms of sea, dark pinewoods, deep-valleyed
mountains, green maize-fields, and grey mysterious rocks, a land of
spirits and fairies and witches, of legends and ruins, have the Celt’s
instinct and love of poetry. Poetry is their natural expression.
For prose in Galician literature there is less genius, and perhaps
less incentive, since the country has been described with intimate
knowledge and charm in the Castilian novels of Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán
(1851-1921) and Don Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (born in 1870), and
more recently by Don Jaime Solá (born in 1877). But the value and
possibilities of Galician prose have been shown by D. AURELIO RIBALTA
(born in 1864) in _Ferruxe_ (1894) and by D. MANUEL LUGRIS Y FREIRE
(born in 1863) in _Contos de Asieumedre_ (1909). It is, indeed, in the
_conto_ that especial success has been won, and HERACLIO PÉREZ PLACER,
whose novel _Predicción_ appeared in 1887, is widely known for his
_Contos, Leendas e Tradiciós de Galicia_ (1891), _Contos da Terriña_
(1895), and _Veira do Lar_ (1901). _Contos da Terriña_, thirty-four
stories in some two hundred brief pages, are various and unequal in
value. Most of them are sad, even the harmless St. Martin _magosto_
ends in a death. They contain many intimate descriptions of Galicia
and the life of the villages about Orense. There is much pathos in
_Velliña, miña velliña!_, in _Rapañota de Xasmís_, and especially in
_Follas Secas_, an exquisite picture of an old peasant dying alone in
a dark room--its walls are black with smoke, yellow maize-cobs hang
from the ceiling--while through the open door come all the gay sounds
and colours of a Galician vintage. The poetess FRANCISCA HERRERA,
author of _Almas de Muller_ (1915) and _Sorrisas e Bágoas_ (1918), has
recently turned to prose with remarkable success in _Néveda_ (1920).
Few Galician poets have published volumes of prose, although many
have contributed as journalists to the local press, but it would be
difficult to find a prose-writer who is not also a poet.[750] And it
is by its poetry that Galicia has won for itself a notable place in
modern literature and added another leaf to the literary laurels of the
Peninsula.