APPENDIX A
THE LEGEND OF SAN MIGUEL IN EXCELSIS
Towards the year a.d. 707, when Witiza was king of Spain, there dwelt at the castle of Goñi, not far from the city of Pamplona in Navarre, a cavalier named Don Theodosio, whose wife, Doña Constanza de Viandra, was a lady of remarkable beauty. On one occasion Don Theodosio found himself obliged to quit his native country for a time, in order to command a military expedition against the Berbers, and before his departure he begged his father and mother to cheer his wife's loneliness while he should be away, by taking up their residence at his castle. They came accordingly, and as a special mark of honour to the parents of her lord, Doña Constanza gave up to them her own chamber, together with the nuptial couch. After a time, when Theodosio's enterprise was concluded, and the warrior, safe and sound, was returning to Navarre, the Devil, disguised as a hermit, one evening lay in wait for him at a spot called Errotavidea, situated at a few miles' distance from Goñi castle, in the wooded and romantic valley of the Ollo. Stepping up to the cavalier's side, Satan assured him, in a tone of smooth hypocrisy, that during his absence the lady Constanza had been seduced by one of Theodosio's own servants. Upon the knight's demanding proof, “proceed,” replied the Devil, “to your castle, enter your nuptial chamber, and there you will find your consort in the very arms of her paramour.” Frantic with apprehension, the warrior spurred home, broke into his chamber at the dead of night, and, passing his hand over the bed, encountered, as Satan had malignantly foretold, two bodies; whereupon he drew his sword and, in this moment of fatal and irreflective haste, murdered his own father and mother. Then, just as he was rushing from the room, he met, carrying a lighted lamp, the lady Constanza herself, returning from the chapel in which, as was her custom every night, she had been praying for his safe return.
Smitten with deep repentance for the crime, whose enormity had been discovered by the impetuous lord in so dramatic and dreadful a fashion, Theodosio journeyed to Rome, and related what had happened to the Pope, who sentenced him to wear a heavy iron collar round his neck, and chains about his body, and to wander, in a state of rigorous penance, through the loneliest regions of Navarre, without setting foot in any town, until, as a sign that divine justice was satisfied, the chains should fall from off him. Wherever this should come to pass, he was instructed to build a temple in honour of the archangel Michael.
The sentence was patiently performed, and Theodosio had spent some years in solitary wandering, when on a day a single link dropped from his ponderous chains. This happened on the top of a high mountain called Ayedo, in the Sierra de Andía, and accordingly the penitent erected on the spot a simple fane in the archangel's honour, known by the name of San Miguel de Ayedo, and which, in the form of a little hermitage, still exists.
This proof of heavenly grace presaged a further and a more complete deliverance. When Theodosio's wandering had lasted seven years, he reached one day the summit of Mount Aralar, at two leagues' distance from his own castle, and was there met by a ferocious dragon of appalling size. Being, as a penitent, unarmed, as well as encumbered by his massive chains, the miserable man fell helpless to his knees, and called to God to succour him. The prayer was heard. Suddenly the form of his patron the archangel flashed out against the sky, the dragon fell dead, and all of Theodosio's chains were shattered, and dropped from him. Here, therefore, he built another and a larger temple in honour of his guardian, and, accompanied by Doña Constanza, passed the remainder of his life in peaceful and secluded piety.
The castle of Goñi, which was also called “Saint Michael's palace,” and “the palace of the cavalier to whom Saint Michael revealed himself,” was standing as late as the year 1685, but, according to Padre Burgui, by the close of another century the walls were crumbling fast. Until about the year 1715 there also stood an ancient wooden cross to mark the spot where Satan, in a hermit's garb, had appeared to Don Theodosio.
APPENDIX B
JET-WORK OF SANTIAGO