Entering the tiny church, I found that its granite walls were painted, and, worse still, the sculpture of its granite capitals was decked out in glaring colours. To paint stone in this way was a fashion peculiar to the eighteenth century. At one time the Cathedral of Santiago was thus painted over. It is only since 1840 that the colour has been removed; we still see red and white stripes where the blocks of granite are joined.
As I was returning to the carriage, some children presented us with some branches covered with cherry-blossom which they had picked from their garden in their wish to please us; they were indignant when we offered them silver in return.
Returning to Padron, we lunched at the little inn, and found a salad made of red peppers particularly cool and refreshing after rather a hot drive. Then we went to see the pretty spot on the river-bank where the market is held, and the house where Rosalia Castro died, with its tablet to her memory. Padron seemed to me an ideal place for a poet to live and die in; its beauties are so varied, its outlines so delicate, and the blue haze upon its surrounding hills so romantic. One great charm about this miniature beauty is, that at every few steps, whether you walk or drive, the scene changes; nothing is so big as to appear unchanged when the observer has moved on. In the great valleys of Switzerland and the Tyrol you may walk long distances without getting any perceptible change in the picture, but in Galicia, and especially in places like Padron, the scenery may almost be termed kaleidoscopic—only that the employment of such a word suggests suddenness, and there is nothing sudden here—it is a gradual melting process, where no beauty is so large and coarse as to obstruct another or become monotonous. Macìas, the Poet of True Love, was born near Padron, and Juan Rodriquez was born at Herbon: we have already seen that it was in the monastery there that this trovador chose to end his days. Rodriquez wrote, El Siervo Libre de Amor, “The Free Slave of Love.” He flourished in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. He is sometimes called Rodriquez de la Camara.[233]
On the bank of the river near the monastery where Rodriquez breathed his last is the summer residence of the Archbishop of Santiago, standing in a beautiful garden with luxuriant trees. On one side of the house is a tall cypress and on the other a still taller palm. Near Padron, but seen better from the train than from the road, are the picturesque ruins of two ancient towers, the Torres de Oeste (a corruption of Turres Augusti).[234] Molina[235] said they were among the greatest antiquities of Spain, that there were five of them close to the river at sea level and very strongly built, and from them a great chain used to be thrown across the river to guard the water passage from the sea by way of the ria (loch). These towers are close to the spot where the Sar flows into the Ulla.
The sun was setting as we drove back to Santiago, and we saw it reflected like brilliant fires in the cottage windows; when it had quite set and the road was getting dark, we passed through a village where the people were all dressed in their best, and lined the road on both sides; the women and girls were on the right and sat on the bank four rows deep, all dressed in their gayest attire with coloured handkerchiefs on their heads. The men on the other side formed a dark lined crowd round a party of musicians who were about to strike up for a dance. As we approached Santiago we saw rockets and other fireworks that were being let off in honour of St. Joseph’s Day.
CHAPTER XIX
LA BELLISIMA NOYA
Situation of Noya—Antiquity of the town—The coach drive from Santiago—Singing cartwheels—Where the golden torques were found—Copper and iron—Mountain valleys—Waterfalls—Paper mills—A ruined monastery—Nearing Noya—A peep at the sea—A village green—The oldest church—Noya merchants of the fourteenth century—The Sunday before Easter—My visit to a nun—The church of San Martin—The interior—The castellated apse—The rose window—Imitation of the Pórtico de Gloria—The wooden roof—Strange brackets or corbels—Lamperez—An alderman of Noya—An old house—The old wall—The Franciscan monastery—The Noya magistrate—An old family mansion—Drives in the neighbourhood—Puente de Alonso III.—The Tambre—Fruit blossoms—Flowers—Examining the cartwheels—Inside a granite cottage—A cross by the roadside—The Ria—Greek colonies—Roman inscriptions—Our drive to Portosino—A famous trovador—English ships—Muros—A good port—Greek type of beauty preserved—A Greek costume—Visit to a dolmen—Pena de Oro—Gallegan peasants and the Moors—Another granite cottage—A Grenadier in the Engineers—A square apse—Noya pilgrims—A leper chapel—Scene from our balcony—Maunday Thursday—Good Friday—Fetching home the candlesticks—A Good Friday dinner—A lady resident—Market baskets in church—Thirteenth century houses—José Ferreiro—Galicia’s first vocabulary—Bull fights at Noya—Two kinds of homesickness—The music of the gaita
NOYA is a town of nearly five thousand inhabitants, but the hills and valleys by which it is surrounded are so thickly dotted with villages that on market days and feast days, when the people flock in by every road, there is a great deal more life in it than the above statistics would lead a visitor to expect. Noya is almost a seaside town, for it lies on the banks of a magnificent ria, an inlet of the Atlantic, and so close to the ocean that the rocky coast can be distinguished by the naked eye. The river Tambre, which has its rise in the centre of Galicia, flows into the ria to the north of the town, and the river Trava on the west, so that Noya is bounded on three sides by water. High green hills slope away from the water and shelter the town from cold and wind. It is a lovely and romantic situation.
“Noya,” writes Molina,[236] “is a pretty town, and one of the oldest in Galicia, and it has inhabitants of noble blood. Here they make many and good ships, both great and small, because the district abounds in timber. Noya has the best sardines in the realm, so that people wanting sardines ask especially for those of Noya.”
Pliny mentions this town under the name of Noela, and Florez heard that there was a stone in the bridge over the Tambre which had the word “Noela” inscribed upon it. According to popular tradition, the town was founded by Noah, or by one of his daughters, and received its name from that patriarch. However that may be, the arms of Noya, which may be seen over the door of the little hospital, and which are printed at the head of municipal letter paper, are Noah’s ark and a dove.[237] Both Pliny and Pomponius Mela speak of all the coast of Galicia between the Duero and Cape Finisterre as Celtic, and the dolmens with which the neighbourhood of Noya abounds are another indication that this part of Galicia was inhabited by Celts.