Portugal of the Portuguese
CHAPTER I
CHARACTERISTICS
The People.
Too many judge the character of the Portuguese from a hasty study of what Beckford nearly a century ago impolitely called the Lisbon canaille. The life of the Portuguese in a political and literary (written literature) sense is concentrated in Lisbon, but outside this narrow circle exists the Portuguese people proper, to the foreigner almost an unknown quantity, taking no concern for the latest political party formed or the latest volume of second-rate verse published, yet constituting in its strength or weakness the political future of Portugal and containing within itself a whole literature of prose and poetry, legend and song. In some measure those who know the Irish peasant know the Portuguese, and those who know the Irish will realise from this comparison what a delightful mine of interest is here to hand. Indeed, if you take the Irish peasantry, add hot sun, a spice of the East, and perhaps something of the negro’s vanity and slight hold on life, you have the Portuguese. The quick intelligence, the dreaming melancholy, the slyness and love of intrigue, the wit and imagination are here, and the power of expression in words. Generosity, too, and habits as unpractical as could be desired.
Patriotism.
The politician in Portugal who looks at the statistics, and, seeing that 75 per cent. of this people are illiterate, shrugs his shoulders—non ragionar di lor—makes a great mistake, for it is here that those who have considered the political intrigues of the capital and despaired of Portugal’s present find a new hope: a population hard-working, vigorous, and intelligent, increasing fairly rapidly, content with little, not willingly learning to read or write, but in its own way eagerly patriotic, each loving Portugal as represented by his own town or village or farm, though he may not have grasped the latest shades of humanity, fraternity, or irreligion.
A minha casa, a minha casinha,
Não ha casa come a minha.
From the earliest times the inhabitants of this western strip of the Iberian peninsula had shown themselves capable of heroic deeds and at the same time impressionable, open to new ideas and foreign influences, more ready to co-operate with the French and English than with their inland neighbours the Castilians. Had the characters of these two neighbours been less incompatible, Portugal might have come to recognise the hegemony of Castille, as sooner or later did all the other regions of the Peninsula, some of which were separated from the central plains by natural barriers more difficult than was Portugal. But to the Portuguese the Castilian too often was and is a stranger and an enemy.
King Manoel the Fortunate.