Annette M. B. Meakin

“ WE rose early on a glorious April morning to catch the first train to Orense. The sun shone brilliantly, and the outline of the blue-grey hills with which Tuy is surrounded stood out clear and distinct. On some of these peaks there are still the ruins of fortifications raised by the ancient Celts when they fled from the Romans in the valley. As the railway omnibus was taking us through the pine woods to the station, we caught, at a bend in the road, a view of the Cathedral of Tuy. “What ancient castle is that?” I inquired of a fellow-passenger. “It is the Cathedral,” he replied, smiling. ”

“ To any one who is fond of beautiful sculpture a walk round the gallery which encircles the cathedral of Santiago is nothing short of a delight. The arches of windows through which we look down into the naves are supported by carved capitals of the most perfect workmanship; there are many hundreds of them, and there are not two alike.
Frenchmen claim that all this beautiful work was done under the supervision of monks from Cluny; if not, indeed, by them, they argue that the same class of finely sculptured foliage is to be found at Toulouse and elsewhere in Southern France. ”

“ Rich and poor alike repeat her verses to express their deepest and most tender thoughts; there is not a Gallegan who does not quote her, not a peasant girl who does not love her name. All Galicia’s sorrows find an echo in her poems, and her sorrow of sorrows, the pain of parting, the anguish of absence, the throb of home-sickness—the sorrow of emigration, is felt in almost every line. [197]
Rosalia’s lyrics are sweet and simple idyls of Galicia’s pastoral life. As we read them we wander among the green valleys and beside the clear waters of her myriad brooks ”

“ The wide glass-covered verandah was brilliant with the January sunshine: here the inmates could take the sun, as they say, and can truly say, in Spain. The chapel, which we inspected next, had a gallery for the nuns, with fretwork-covered windows looking down upon the pauper congregation. When there is a great function, all the chairs are taken away, and the people stand. There was also a neat dispensary, and an infirmary. The dining-rooms were cheerful and spacious, with marble-topped tables. The kitchen was a fine, airy room, with a great stove in the centre. ”

“ Every kind of fruit tree known to Europe thrives upon the lower slopes of the ever-verdant valleys, the fruit upon the higher slopes ripening twenty days later than that upon the sea-level. Woods of oak and chestnut cover the hillsides, and pines dominate the loftiest crags of the mountain peaks. Within a radius of ten miles my eyes have rested upon pine-clad mountain scenery wild and beautiful as that of Norway, and upon a riviera of vegetation like that of Mentone, embracing the orange, the cactus, the olive, the fig, and even the lemon tree laden with its ripening fruit. ”

“ NOYA is a town of nearly five thousand inhabitants, but the hills and valleys by which it is surrounded are so thickly dotted with villages that on market days and feast days, when the people flock in by every road, there is a great deal more life in it than the above statistics would lead a visitor to expect. Noya is almost a seaside town, for it lies on the banks of a magnificent ria, an inlet of the Atlantic, and so close to the ocean that the rocky coast can be distinguished by the naked eye. ”

“ Every peasant house has its vine-covered verandah, and the beauty of many a Gallegan landscape is greatly due to the vine-clad terraces that cover the hillsides. In the early spring, when the branches are still bare, they look, in the distance, like fishermen’s nets spread out to dry in the sun.
Most of the peasants grow grapes for themselves and make sufficient wine to supply their own households. A peasant who lived in a little cottage near Orense showed me in an outhouse a large vat in which he made his wine. ”

“ Every step of land visible from Noya is cultivated, every peasant is a proprietor. Yes, I had begun to understand the devotion of the Gallegans to their beautiful native land. Who would not love passionately so sweet a birthplace? Even the Russian loves his steppe, where the scene never changes for thousands of miles. In Galicia, every nook, every crag, every peak, every valley has a distinctive character that is all its own, with its own peculiar beauty. Galicia’s cottage homes are of granite, they last for many generations ”

“ There are many devoted Gallegans who compare their beloved territory to Finland, to Ireland and Hungary, and are never tired of saying that self-government alone could restore to her the prosperity that has forsaken her shores. They feel that as long as she is governed at a distance and by strangers she can never hope to raise her head.
Less troubled by invaders, less influenced by the Moors than the rest of Spain, Galicia at one time became the centre in which was propagated the purest of Spain’s lyric poetry ”

“ Then we went to see the pretty spot on the river-bank where the market is held, and the house where Rosalia Castro died, with its tablet to her memory. Padron seemed to me an ideal place for a poet to live and die in; its beauties are so varied, its outlines so delicate, and the blue haze upon its surrounding hills so romantic. One great charm about this miniature beauty{230} is, that at every few steps, whether you walk or drive, the scene changes; nothing is so big as to appear unchanged when the observer has moved on. ”

“ The cathedral of Santiago is constructed of sparkling grey granite; that of St. Sernin is of brick and mortar. Not only the cathedral, but practically the whole town of Santiago, is built, like Aberdeen, of granite, that material being exceedingly abundant in Galicia. Travellers used in former times to complain of the sombre look of the houses on that account. But now almost every dwelling is well whitewashed, and presents, with its green shutters, quite a cheerful appearance. And the grey cathedral itself lights up beautifully under the golden rays of the afternoon sun. ”

“ High up among the mountains the peasants breed large herds of cattle, which graze upon the fertile plains and slake their thirst in the crystal water of the running brooks. “As one travels through Galicia,” wrote a monk of Osera in the seventeenth century, “one experiences at every mile—nay, at every step, let me say—a change of air, a change of sky, and a change of scene sufficient to create the impression that one has entered another country. ”

“ How Byzantine art was carried to the furthest corners of the Christian world it is not difficult to see. Constantinople had become the centre of the Roman Empire. From her shores there poured forth warriors, traders, missionaries to every part of the earth.
Byzantine architecture borrowed her massive cupolas, supported by square pillars over a square edifice, from Persia, and from Syria she borrowed her floral ornamentation; while her love of colour, of brasses and mosaics, is traceable to the influence of all the Oriental centres where wealth and ostentation abounded. ”

“ Huge and massive and costly they are, but have they the spiritual and subtle beauty of the Gothic or the charm of the Renaissant architecture? Can they be judged by the same standard? No; for, to use the words of Spain’s great architect, artistic collectivism has succeeded personal art, just as personal art once succeeded symbolic art. [98] And architecture, according to the eternal laws of its being essentially an interpretative, not an imitative art, it interprets the soul-language of the human beings amongst whom it rises into existence. ”

“ All this exquisite sculpture was produced during Galicia’s second Golden Age. In the Middle Ages there was a far stronger tie between the artist and the public than there is in our day. “Le moyen age n’aurait pas fait un si grand nombre de sculpteurs pour plaire a’ une coterie, l’art s’était democratisé autant qu’il pent l’être.” In our day art speaks only to the few, the chosen and the cultivated few, with money in their pockets. It is a dead language to four-fifths of the world, not because the people have rejected it, but because it has neglected the people. ”

“ South America, with its wide prairies under a merciless sun, its wild and savage mountains where one may travel for days together without finding a sign of human life, is very different from populous Galicia with its gentle, smiling scenery, its mountains whose slopes are veritable gardens, its innumerable springs, its rias and its rivers, its vines and its orchards. ”

“ The hermit who first discovered the spot where the monastery of San Estevan now stands must have been a lover of nature, of trees, of birds—an artist; the saint who first elected to dwell among the bare granite rocks of Osera must have sought unrestrained liberty for the eye and the foot, rather than a leafy nest, and have eschewed not only his fellow-man but nature as well. ”

“ Galicia of the twentieth century has inherited from Galicia of the Middle Ages poetry, sculpture, and architecture, each of which, in its own line, is absolutely unrivalled. These offer a wide and fascinating field of research to all those who seek to understand the civilisation of that period in the world’s history. The architecture of Galicia can be said to be exclusively Christian, for Moorish influence, which, penetrating into every other part of Spain, mingled itself with Christian art and produced what Spaniards cell el estilo mudejar, never gained any footing in this province. ”

“ The imposing churrigueresque retable (reredos) behind the chief altar is falling into melancholy decay, and offers a most depressing spectacle. It is sad, indeed, that Spain has not yet seen fit to make Osera a national monument, and that architecture, sculpture, and wood-carving of such high excellence should be left to rot and perish like things of no value. ”

“ Thence also there came those pious caravans who, attracted by the throngs of French, Belgians, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, juglares and troubadours, who animated the streets and palaces of Compostela, the Holy City of the West, the emporium and centre of a powerful movement which carried multitudes of clever men from Galicia to occupy the professional chairs of the most celebrated schools of the Middle Ages, and multitudes of inspired Gallegan poets to sing before the most splendid courts of Europe. ”

“ How sad it seems that Spain has not sufficient energy to rehabilitate her own excellent handiwork! An Englishman who travelled in the Peninsula in 1810 wrote: “The Spaniards are brave, acute, patient, and faithful, but all their characteristics are insulated, all their exertions are individual. They have no idea of combining, either publicly or privately, in a manner to call forth their respective talents and render every one useful to the common cause. The Germans may be said to combine too much and the Spaniards not at all.” ”