Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain

by Annette M. B. Meakin

lines which appear to be a romanced version of part of the book De Consolatione Rationis, which was written in Galicia by Pedro before he became a priest, and at least ten years before Eadmer in England took up his pen to defend an opinion which was subsequently upheld by a host of eminent Catholic writers, including Feijoó, and which has since been incorporated among the unalterable dogmas of the Catholic Church.”

CHAPTER V
THE LANGUAGE OF GALICIA

A Romance language—The universal language of Spain—A provincial dialect—George Ticknor—The Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio—Comparison between the languages of Galicia and Portugal—A Celtic trait—The wing of the tongue—The native poets of Galicia—Trovadors—The Marquis de Valmar—Latinised forms—Amador de los Rios—The young Italian language—French takes the precedence—Romance poetry in England—The troubadours of Aquitaine—Alfonso the royal trovador—The poet of true love—The martyr to Cupid—The story of Macias—His tragic end

WITH the production of the Salve Regina, and with the origination of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Galicia may be said to have entered triumphantly upon her second golden age, an age which extended from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, and in which is comprised the period which witnessed the most glorious triumphs of lyric poetry in Spain.

It must be remembered that for a hundred and seventy years previous to the year 585, when the Visigoths became the sole masters of Spain, the present province of Galicia, united to what is now the northern half of Portugal, had formed one united kingdom—that of the Sueves. As an independent nation, this portion of Spain, with a language of its own, and kings of its own, had more pronounced characteristics and traditions than any other part of Spain. Its language, originally Latin, had become, under the Sueves, a distinct Romance language, just as the Latin of central Spain became by degrees a Romance tongue, and finally developed into the Spanish language, as it is spoken in Madrid to-day. The language of Galicia during its second age of gold, the language of its lyric poetry was, like the Spanish language, a child of the Latin tongue; they were, we may say, twin branches from the same stem. But while the one became the universal language of Spain, the other split into two smaller branches, of which one became the national language of Portugal,[72] and the other—while it remained the purest of all the Latin dialects except the Italian—eventually sank to the level of a provincial dialect—that spoken by the peasants of Galicia to-day, a dialect which not even the historians of Spain and Portugal professed to understand till the close of the nineteenth century.

It was as recently as the last decade of the nineteenth century that students of Spanish history became conscious of the fact that a true knowledge of the history of Spanish civilisation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries could only be attained by careful study of the literature produced in the Galician tongue during Galicia’s second age of gold. An American writer, George Ticknor, whose work is still considered an authority on Spanish literature, erroneously attributed to flattery the words of the marquis of Santillana in his famous letter to the Constable of Portugal, “non ha mucho tiempo, cualesquier deçidores e trovadores destas partes, agora fuesen castellanos anduluces o de la Estremadura, todas sus obras componian en lengua Gallega o portuguesca”[73]; but we know now that it was the simple truth, the language universally chosen by the famous trovadores of Spain, no matter which might be their native province, and by all Spain’s greatest poets of the Middle Ages was that of Galicia. “Ticknor thought it an insoluble mystery,” says Valmar, “why King Alfonso el Sabio should have left in his will a command that the poetry of Galicia should be sung over his tomb, seeing that he was buried in Murcia, where that tongue was not spoken; but if he had studied the Spanish poetry of that time, if he had read the beautiful Cantigas written by Alfonso himself, he would not have called the idiom spoken in Galicia in the thirteenth century a dialect, nor would he have been surprised that Alfonso should wish Gallegan poetry to be sung over his tomb.”

As we have seen, northern Portugal was once part of Galicia. When Portugal became a separate kingdom, she retained her original (the Gallegan) language. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Feijoó pointed out that it was an error to suppose that there only existed three dialects derived from the Latin language, namely, Spanish, Italian, and French: there was a fourth—the Lusitanian language, that is, the language of Galicia, which was once identical with that of Portugal. The chief difference between the two is the pronunciation, and this is not sufficient to prevent individuals of the two countries respectively from understanding one another. Feijoó went on to insist that the Gallegan idiom was not, as generally supposed, a sub-dialect of Latin nor a corruption of the Spanish tongue, but an independent branch from the Latin tree, a branch more closely connected with the parent stem than even the language of Castille. “No one denies,” he says, “that Latin words have degenerated less in the Portuguese and Gallegan idioms than they have in Spanish: this could not be the case if they were sub-dialects of the Spanish language—the nearer the fountain the purer the stream. Italian is the purest of the Latin dialects; Portuguese comes next.”

The Gallegans have been a poetic people from the very earliest times, and this fact tallies with the traditions of their Celtic origin. Like the Irish, they have preserved even to our own day the Celtic predilection for spontaneous wit. The poetical contests indulged in by the trovadores of the Middle Ages were only an elaboration of the Celtic contests of wit so popular among the ancient Irish, and which are still part of the programme connected with a Gallegan peasant’s wedding. On the eve of her wedding-day the peasant girl in Galicia hears before her window the witty and often sarcastic couplet flung by the friends of a disappointed rival at the successful suitor and his friends who have come to serenade her, and then, as quickly as an echo, it is answered by the triumphant couplet of the happy bridegroom. Verse comes as readily as prose to the lips of these people, and the peasant bride may listen half through the night to their poetic banter.[74] Where the disappointment of the rival is very great, not only is the sentiment confessed in his spontaneous couplets very bitter, it is sometimes even cruel. French critics in Feijoó’s day complained that Italian and Spanish poets put too much enthusiasm (poetic frenzy) into their poetry, and to this charge Feijoó replied that he who wishes to turn the poets into prudent, discreet, and sensible beings, wishes to do away with them altogether, for enthusiasm is the soul of poetry, the ecstasy of the mind is the wing of the pen. In Galicia it is the wing of the tongue. “Impetus ille sacer, qui vatum pectora nutrit.”

The fact that Portugal and Galicia had for several centuries one common language accounts for the other fact that both have more than once laid claim to the honour of having produced the same great poet or literary man. Hence it comes that the trovador Macías el Enamorado appears as a Portuguese poet in the works of Portuguese writers, and as a Gallegan poet in the works of Spanish writers. The same apparent contradiction occurs with regard to the Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio.[75] Great was the importance of Galicia in the Middle Ages. Constantly was she visited by royalty, by princes, and by the flower of chivalry, attracted to the sepulchre of St. James. The greatest and noblest families of Spain had their senorial estates in Galicia. It was there that they founded the “Order of the Knights of Spain,” and later the Hermandad de Cambiadores, institutions which lent their powerful protection to the pilgrims who passed to and from Santiago on the French road (Camino francés).

Not only did the nobles speak the language of Galicia, that tongue was also the language of the court. It was in those days that a taste for la poesia provenzal penetrated into Galicia from France (brought by French pilgrims of aristocratic birth), and was imitated by the nobles of Galicia. “This persistence of the sentiment of love,” says the marquis of Fegueroa, “the chief argument of provençal lyric poetry, necessarily influenced our Knights of the Order of Spain, as it did the knights of northern France, Theobald IV, Count Champagne, and Charles of Orleans.” King Alfonso deliberately chose the language of Galicia in which to compose his hymns to the Virgin (Cantigas de Santa Maria); he chose it because it was so much more poetical than the language of Castille, so much more expressive, so much more tender; and for the same reason it became the favourite medium of all the poets of Spain. The native poets of Galicia were among the most famous of their age. It is now known that the curious book of poetry so long preserved in the Vatican library under the title of Cancionero de la Vaticana, was composed almost entirely by Gallegan poets, and not by Portuguese—as was believed until about twenty years ago.[76]