The Bible in Spain Volume I Part 31

{183} "He will do what you want for you: will gratify your fancy."

{186} "Stuff and nonsense."

{187} Charles III. of Spain (17591788). See _The Zincali_, part i.

chap. xii.

{188} "How goes it?"

{190} Whether this episode of Benedict Mol has any foundation in fact I cannot say. I was on the point of starting for Compostella, where I might have investigated the incident detailed, vol. ii. p. 183, and I had actually paid for my ticket to Irun (May 2, 1895), when I was summoned to a more distant shrine on the slopes of the Southern Pacific.

{191} A _cuarto_, a trifle over an English farthing, being almost exactly 4/34 of 2_d._

{192} "In short."

{193a} Borrow writes indifferently _Saint James_, _St. Jago_, and _Santiago_. The last is the correct Spanish form, while the English usually speak of the place as Compostella. It has been thought best to retain the form used by the author in each case.

{193b} Witch. Ger. _Hexe_.-[Note by Borrow.]

{193c} "Thanks be to G.o.d!"

{194} See note on p. 340.

{196} Senor Menendez Pelayo remarks that the government was too busy with Carlists in the country and revolutionaries in the city to care very much about Borrow or the Bible, and they therefore allowed him for the moment to do pretty much as he pleased (_Heterodoxos Espanoles_, tom.

iii. p. 662).

{197} Or San Ildefonso.

{198} This was August 14, 1836.

{199} The General Post-office.

{204a} Gypsy fellows.

{204b} A compound of the modern Greek p?ta???, and the Sanscrit _kara_, the literal meaning being _Lord_ of the horse-shoe (i.e. _maker_); it is one of the private cognominations of "The Smiths," an English gypsy clan.-[Note by Borrow.] See _The Zincali_, vol. i. p. 31; _Romano Lavo-Lil_, p. 226, and the Glossary.

{206} Of these lines the following translation, in the style of the old English ballad, will, perhaps, not be unacceptable:-

"What down the hill comes hurrying there?- With a hey, with a ho, a sword and a gun!

Quesada's bones, which a hound doth bear.

Hurrah, brave brothers!-the work is done."

-[Note by Borrow.]

{207a} "One night I was with thee."

{207b} Don Rafael, son of D. Eugenio Antonio del Riego y Nunez, whose poems were published in 1844 by D. Miguel del Riego, Canon of Oviedo, was born at Oviedo on the 24th October, 1785. On the 1st January, 1820, he began the revolt against Ferdinand VII. (see Introduction, p. xvi.), at Las Cabezas de San Juan. He was finally hanged at Madrid on the 7th November, 1823. _El Himno de Riego_, the Spanish _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, was composed by Huerta in 1820, the words being written by Evariste San-Miguel.

{207c} "_Au revoir_, Sir George!"

{208} 1836.

{212a} Dom Jose Agostinho Freire was minister of war to Dom Pedro, and subsequently minister of the interior under the Duke of Terceira. In 1836 he was murdered at Lisbon by the National Guard, while driving in his carriage.

{212b} The Carlist leader. See Duncan, _The English in Spain_, p. 88.

{214} Latin, _Baetis_ = the river afterwards named by the Arabs _Wady al Kebir_, the _Guadalquivir_.

{215} The vane, _porque gira_. The modern tower is about 275 feet high.

See Girault de Prangey, _Essai sur l'Architecture des Maures et Arabes_ (1841), pp. 103112.

{216a} The largest and perhaps the grandest of the mediaeval cathedrals, not only of Spain, but of Europe. It was commenced in 1403, and completed about 1520.

{216b} 13501369.

{216c} Triana, for long the Whitefriars or Alsatia of Seville, the resort of thieves, gypsies, and _mala gente_ of every description. See _Zincali_, pt. ii. chap. ii. The Arabic _Tarayana_ is said to perpetuate the name of the Emperor Trajan, who was certainly born in the neighbourhood, and who would not be proud of his supposed _conciudadanos_! The modern suburb was almost entirely destroyed by the overflowing of the Guadalquivir in 1876. There is now (1895) a permanent bridge across the river.

{218} This is, I think, a good English word. The Spanish form would be _desesperados_.

{220} King of the gypsies in Triana.

{221} Isidore Justin Severin, Baron Taylor, was born at Brussels in 1789. His father was an Englishman, and his mother half Irish, half Flemish. Isidore was naturalized as a Frenchman, and after serious studies and artistic travels throughout Europe, he returned to France on the Restoration with a commission in the Royal Guard. His _Bertram_, written in collaboration with Charles Nodier, had a great success on the Paris stage in 1821. In 1823 he accompanied the French army to Spain, and on his return was made Commissaire Royal du Theatre Francais, in which capacity he authorized the production of _Hernani_ and the _Mariage de Figaro_. In 1833 he arranged for the transport of the two obelisks from Luxor to Paris, and in 1835 he was commissioned by Louis Philippe with an artistic mission to Spain to purchase pictures for the Louvre, and on his return, having transferred the Standish collection of paintings from London to Paris, he was named Inspecteur-General des beaux arts in 1838. He died in 1879.

{223} _Alcala de Guadaira_; Arabic, _Al-Kal'ah_, the fort, or castle. A name necessarily often repeated in Spain, where the Goths, who are so proudly remembered, have left so few records of their three hundred years' dominion in the place-names of the Peninsula, and where the Arab, at all times detested, is yet remembered in the modern names of wellnigh every town, river, and headland in Southern Spain, and in many places throughout the entire Peninsula. The most celebrated of all these castles is, of course, _Alcala de Henares_, the birthplace of Cervantes, the seat of the great university of Ximenes. This _Alcala_ is known as that of Guadaira, _i.e._ the river of Aira, the Arabic _Wady al Aira_.

The town at the present day, though small, is a very important place, with some eight thousand inhabitants, and over two hundred flour-mills, and is known as the "oven of Seville," _El horno de Sevilla_.

Carmona-the Roman Carmo and Arab Karmanah-with double the population, was the last stronghold of Peter the Cruel, and is full of historic a.s.sociations.

{226} Madoz, in his _Diccionario Geografico-estadistico_, published in 1846, half a dozen years after the date of Borrow's visit, says nothing under _Carolina_, _Carlota_, or _Luisiana_ of this supposed German colonization. Yet Carolina and eighty-four neighbouring villages form a most interesting district, known as the _Nuevas poblaciones de Sierra Morena_, especially exempted from taxation and conscription on their foundation or incorporation by Olavides, the Minister of Charles III., in 1768. It is possible that some German colonists were introduced at that time. Among the eighty-five _pueblos_ const.i.tuting this strange district is the historic _Navas de Tolosa_, where the Moors were so gloriously defeated in 1212.

{230} Wellington.

{232} Cordova was taken on October 1, 1836.

{234} "Look you, what men they were!"

{235a} 'The king has come, the king has come, and disembarked at Belem.'-_Miguelite song_.

{235b} Charles V., or _Carlos Quinto_, is the t.i.tle all too meekly accorded even in Spain to their king Charles I., fifth only of German Karls on the imperial throne, the Holy Roman Emperor. If Charles himself was not unpopular in Spain, even though he kept his mother Joanna, the legitimate queen, under lock and key, that he might reign as Charles the _First_ in Spain, his Germans and his Germanism were devoutly hated. The next Carlos who reigned in Spain, correctly styled the _Second_, was nearly a fool, but Charles III. was the best and most enlightened of the sovereigns of Spain until the days of Alfonso XII. Charles IV. abdicated under pressure of Napoleon in 1808, and then Don Carlos the Pretender naturally a.s.sumed the style and t.i.tle of Charles the _Fifth_.

{236a} See Introduction.

{236b} The Genoese was presumably referring to the sister-in-law of Don Carlos, called _La Beira_. See Ford, _Handbook of Spain_, 1st edit., p.

822.

{239} This is not strictly accurate. The Mezquita, as designed by Abdur Rahman I. in 786, contained about 1200 pillars; when the mosque was enlarged by Almanzor at the end of the tenth century, the number was doubtless increased. Yet at the present day more than nine hundred are still standing in the building, which ranks _second_ as regards area among the churches of Christendom, and in historic interest is surpa.s.sed only by the Mosque of Agia Sofia at Constantinople (see Burke's _History of Spain_, vol. i. pp. 130133).

{240a} Morocco.

{240b} The Abencerrages were a family, or perhaps a faction, that held a prominent position in the Moorish kingdom of Granada for some time before its fall in 1492. The name is said to be derived from Yusuf ben Cerrag, the head or leader of the family in the time of Mohammed VII., but nothing is known with any certainty of their origin. In the _Guerras civiles de Granada_ of Gines Perez de Hita, the feuds of the Abencerrages with the rival family of the Zegris is an important incident, and Chateaubriand's _Les Aventures du dernier Abencerages_ is founded upon Hita's work.