[247] In Antonio Prestes' play Auto do Mouro Encantado the golden apples prove to be pieces of coal. So Mello in his Apologos Dialogaes speaks of the treasure of moiras encantadas which all turns to coal.
[269] In Rey, the popular form of El-Rei (the king) is frequent also in the plays of Simão Machado, who died about a century after Vicente.
[272] It is tempting to add the word madraço (fool, ignoramus) for the sake of the rhyme. If O recado que elle dá were spoken very fast the line would bear the addition.
[293] Here, as often, the deeper purpose of Vicente's satire appears beneath his fun. The growing depopulation of the provinces was becoming painfully evident to those who cared for Portugal.
[302] Jorge Ferreira, Ulysippo, III, 5: não haveria corpo, por mais que fosse de aço milanes, que podesse sofrer quanta costura lhe seria necessaria; ib. III, 7: temos muita costura esta noite; muita costura e tarefa; Antonio Vieira, Cartas: tambem aqui teremos costura (1 de agosto de 1673).
[310] trapa in Port. = 'a gin,' 'a trap,' but in Sp., as perhaps here, = 'noise,' 'uproar.'
[327] Cf. Farsa dos Fisicos: Praticamos ali O Leste e o Oeste e o Brasil and III, 377; Chiado, Auto da Natural Invençam, ed. Conde de Sabugosa (1917), p. 74.
[348] The carrier comes along singing snatches of a pastorela of which we have other examples, of more intricate rhythm, in the Cancioneiro da Vaticana and the poems of the Archpriest of Hita and the Marqués de Santillana. A modern Galician cantiga says that
O cantar d'os arrieiros
E um cantariño guapo:
Ten unha volta n'o medio
Para dicir 'Arré macho.'
(Pérez Ballesteros, Cancionero Popular Gallego, vol II, p. 215.)