[67a] When the Jews were banished from Spain by the Catholic sovereign in 1492, they were received into Portugal by the more liberal John II., on payment of a tax or duty of eight cruzados. Armourers and smiths paid four cruzados only. Before the marriage of his cousin, King Emmanuel, with the widowed Princess Isabella in 1497, the Jews were subject to renewed persecution in Portugal by arrangement between Isabella the Catholic and her son-in-law (see Burke’s History of Spain, chaps, xlvi., xlix.).
[67b] See Appendix to this volume.
[68] A seaport town in North Africa, better known by the name of Mogadore (see chap. lii.).
[69] The name that may not be spoken; that is, Jehovah or Yahweh (see Glossary, sub verb.).
[70] Strange anecdotes, however, are told, tending to prove that Jews of the ancient race are yet to be found in Portugal: it is said that they have been discovered under circumstances the most extraordinary. I am the more inclined to believe in their existence from certain strange incidents connected with a certain race, which occurred within the sphere of my own knowledge, and which will be related further on.—Note by Borrow.
[75] Portuguese real = one-twentieth of an English penny.
[76] The lines, which Borrow, quoting from memory, has not given quite accurately, occur in the ballad of “The Cout of Keilder.” They are, according to the text in the edition of 1858, with “Life by Sir Walter Scott”—
“The hounds they howled and backward fled,
As struck by Fairy charm” (stan. 16).
John Leyden, M.D., was born in 1775, near Hawick, and died in Java in 1811, after an adventurous and varied life. His ballad of Lord Soulis is of the same character as that so highly praised by Borrow.
[81] The place of the brooks, or water-courses. Sp. arroyo = brook.