[378] A shepherd, we are told, watching his flock in a wild mountain district in Galicia, was astonished at the appearance of a supernatural light. The Bishop of Iria Flavia (Padron) was consulted. The place so divinely illuminated was carefully searched, and in a marble sarcophagus, the body of Saint James the Greater was revealed to the faithful investigators. The king, overjoyed at the discovery, at once erected upon the ground thus consecrated a church or chapel dedicated to the apostle—the forerunner of the noble cathedral of Santiago de Compostella, and from the first, the favourite resort of the pilgrims of Christian Europe. For it was not only a relic, but a legend that had been discovered by the pious doctors of the church.
Saint James, it was said, had certainly preached and taught in Spain during his lifetime. His body, after his martyrdom at Jerusalem in the year of Christ 42, had been placed by his disciples on board a ship, by which it was conveyed to the coast of his beloved Spain, miraculously landed in Galicia, and forgotten for eight hundred years, until the time was accomplished when it should be revealed to the devoted subjects of King Alfonso the Chaste. The date of the discovery of the precious remains is given by Ferreras as 808, by Morales as 835. But as it was Charlemagne who obtained from Leo III. the necessary permission or faculty to remove the Episcopal See of Iria Flavia to the new town of Compostella, the discovery or invention must have taken place at least before 814, the year of the death of the emperor. Whatever may have been the actual date of its first establishment; the mean church with mud walls soon gave place to a noble cathedral, which was finished by the year 874, consecrated in 899, and destroyed by the Arabs under Almanzor, nigh upon a hundred years afterwards, in 997. See also Murray’s Handbook of Spain, 1st edit., p. 660, Santiago.
[380] Or Jet-ery. Azabache is jet or anthracite, of which a great quantity is found in the Asturias. The word—of Arabic origin—is also used figuratively for blackness or darkness generally in modern Spanish.
[382a] “Oh, my God, it is the gentleman!”
[382b] From the German betteln, to beg.
[384] May, 1823.
[386] Meiga is not a substantive either in Spanish or Portuguese (though it is in Galician), but the feminine of the adjective meigo, or mego, signifying “kind,” “gentle.” Haxweib is a form of the German Hexe Weib, a witch or female wizard.
[389] Or El Padron (Iria Flavia), the ancient seat of the bishopric, transferred to the more sacred Santiago de Compostella before the year 814.
[393] French, sur le tapis.
[394] More correctly, Caldas de Reyes.