My readers will not be surprised to learn that bacon is an important staple of food in Galicia. The national broth, Caldo Gallego, as known to the well-to-do, could hardly be made without it, neither could the olla podrida.
“No hay olla sin tocino
Ni sermon sin Augustino.”[217]
“In Spain,” says Ford, “pigs are more numerous even than asses, since they pervade the province.” In parts of Galicia, as in the adjoining province of Extremadura, pigs are fattened upon mast and acorns, which are larger than those of English oaks, but in many districts they live upon chestnuts, which give a very fine flavour to the bacon. “The acorns,” says Ford, “formed the original diet of the aboriginal Iberian, as well as of his pigs; when dry, the acorns were ground, say the classical authors, into bread, and when fresh, they were served up as the second course. Ladies of high rank constantly ate acorns at the opera and elsewhere; they were the presents sent by Sancho Panza’s wife to the Duchess, and formed the text on which Don Quixote preached so eloquently to the goat-herds, on the joys and innocence of the golden age and pastoral happiness.”
Poultry and pigs grow up together in the villages. Eggs were sold at the rate of fivepence a dozen in Santiago a few years ago, but in the last decade their price and that of chickens has doubled. The villagers send all their chickens, and everything else they have to sell, to Santiago for the festival of St. James in July, when the town overflows with visitors; and as the supply is greater than the demand, living there becomes very cheap.
The gentle-eyed, long-horned oxen, which take the place of cart-horses, are another feature both of town and country life in Galicia. In northern Italy, in the month of November, I have often counted as many as fourteen and even fifteen pairs of oxen in front of one plough; that is a sight not met with in Galicia, where I have never seen two pairs of oxen pulling the same plough; but in Italy they have modern ploughs, whereas here the plough of Virgil’s day is still in use. It is the identical plough that we see sculptured on Etruscan tombs, and on the Celtiberic coins. The ancients used them also as weapons: Pausanius fought with a plough at Marathon. Hesiod mentions in his Works and Days the ἀροτρον αὐτογυον, which was a stout piece bent like a hook, with beams and share beams all in one piece. When driving along the country roads of Galicia, we used to meet many a ploughman wending homeward his weary way and carrying his plough upon his shoulder, while his oxen walked on either side; and I have often seen a couple of stalwart women engaged in tilling a field, one holding the end of the long handle of the plough, and the other in front guiding the oxen. Why has the modern plough not been long since introduced into this corner of Spain?[218] Are the Gallegan peasants as inimical to improvements in the plough as our Lancashire weavers were to the spinning jenny? By no means: the answer is to be found in their ignorance and poverty.
The carts used by the peasants are almost as archaic as the ploughs; their shape is that of a small boat, and their walnut wheels make a strange screaming sound as they turn on their walnut axles, which can be heard at a considerable distance. There is a special word to denote this sound in the Gallegan language (v. chirriar; n. chirrio). I examined the axles of several, and found them twice the thickness of a man’s wrist and as smooth as satin. This “singing” of the cartwheels is not allowed in the towns, so the peasants soap the axles when they come into the streets; but the louder their carts sing in the fields and on the country roads the better pleased are they, for they believe that the oxen like the sound and will not work well without it. They also find it convenient in narrow lanes where there is not room for two carts to pass each other, because it warns them in good time that they are approaching each other, and that one must halt or turn back. They say, too, that in olden days, when the mountains abounded in wolves and bears, the singing cartwheels frightened and kept them from attacking the oxen and their drivers. Not only the peasants, but everybody likes to hear the cartwheels in the quiet summer evenings; it is like the sound of the scythe in England, and its associations are much the same. Rosalia Castro speaks of it as one of the things she missed when she went to live in Castille:
“Chirrar d’ os carros d’ a Ponte,
Tristes campanas d’ Herbon,
Cando vos ozo partidesme
As cordas d’ a corazon.”
The long horns of the oxen often carried my thoughts to the Highlands of Scotland. The horns of a couple of them as they stood yoked to a cart in one of the narrow streets of Santiago would span the entire thoroughfare, but they never frightened even the smallest child, and their large, gentle eyes more than counteracted the ferocious appearance of their horns. They are very strong, and draw loads that would break the back of many an English cart-horse. In Coruña I saw them drawing a couple of huge iron pipes many yards in length. Seoane,[219] writing on the bulls of Galicia, says that these animals were found wild in Central Europe up to the sixteenth century, and that the Spaniards imported them into South America, and thus brought into existence the immense herds now to be found between the Andes and the Atlantic coast, and called toros cimarrones.
The milk of Gallegan cows is excellent, and nothing but their ignorance prevents the peasants from becoming prosperous dairy farmers. As we have seen, the breeding of herds of cattle was one of the chief industries of Galicia in the eighteenth century, and an authority on the subject has assured me that there is no reason why the finest cattle in the world should not be produced there. Nature has furnished an abundance of pure water and an unusually exuberant vegetation, but so great is the ignorance of the peasants that they actually employ their oxen to draw the plough before selling them for butcher’s meat. This is why the beef is so tough.
The horses of Galicia are sorry creatures; they are still in their primitive state, and have not improved since the days of the Celts. The typical village horse is badly proportioned, ugly, and absolutely untrained; its gait is awkward, and, in fact, it is a mere apology for a horse. Herds of wild horses frequent the mountainous districts; the males defend the females from the attacks of wild animals, and they breed their young without any assistance from man—a proof, as Seoane has observed, that the climate of Galicia is favourable to horse-breeding. And, going back to classical times, we find that Pliny has a good deal to say in favour of the horses of Galicia and Asturias. He says they were much in demand for their powers of resistance and their velocity, adding, “Their ardour gives them wings to devour space.” He also speaks highly of their pleasing and gentle trot. Silicus Italicus mentions the remarkable fecundity of the mares, but Justin is less enthusiastic.[220] Mules and even asses are preferred by the lower classes all over Spain to horses—they require less attention and are more surefooted. “The mule,” says Ford, “performs in Spain the functions of the camel in the East.” I have spoken in a former chapter of the way in which the breeding of Gallegan mules has decreased of late years in Galicia, owing to the free importation of French mules.