Part 38

The popular appetite for _autos_, simple Christmas plays, legends of saints, and for long vague _romances_ never flagged, and some of the literature written to satisfy it, by Balthasar Diaz and others, is reprinted and hawked about the country in _folhas volantes_ at the present day, as Diaz’ _Historia da Imperatriz Porcina_ (Porto, 1906)--a _romance_ of some 1,500 octosyllables in -_ía_--and his _Tragedia do Marques de Mantua_. The prose _Verdadeira Historia do Imperador Carlos Magno_ (Porto, 1906) is the last descendant of Nicolas Piamonte’s Spanish translation (from the French original) _Carlomagno_, printed at Seville in 1525 and at Alcalá in 1570, or rather of Jeronimo Moreira de Carvalho’s Portuguese version (2 pts., 1728, 37). It is an instance of the Portuguese delight in strange, even fantastic, but in any case foreign, themes. The _Verdadeira Historia da Donzella Theodora_ (Porto, 1911), daughter of a merchant of Babylon, was introduced from the East and was translated by Carlos Ferreira from the Spanish (1524) and published at Lisbon in 1735. The _Verdadeira Historia do Grande Roberto Duque de Normandia e Imperador de Roma_ (Porto, 1912) is a belated echo of the French story of Robert le Diable, which also came to Portugal through Spain (Burgos, 1509). The _Verdadeira Historia da Princeza Magalona_ (Porto, 1912) has a similar derivation from France (14th or 15th c.) through Spain (Sevilla, 1519), and retains its popularity as a record of unswerving constancy _na fe e na virtude_. The _Verdadeira Historia de João de Calais_, reprinted at Oporto in 1914, is also undisguisedly foreign. The story of _Flores e Branca Fror_, last offshoot (a ‘vile extract’ Menéndez y Pelayo called it) of the charming Greek tale which came originally from the East,[701] was mentioned by several poets (King Dinis, Joan de Guilhade, the Archpriest of Hita) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries[702] and in the _Gran Conquista_ _de Ultramar_ (13th c.), and was condemned by Luis Vives. The prose story copied by Boccaccio in his _Filocolo_ is still popular in Portugal and Galicia. There is an edition printed at Oporto in 1912: _Historia de Flores e Branca-Flor, seus amores e perigos que passaram por Flores ser mouro e Branca-Flor christã_. García Ferreiro refers to _a historia de Branca Fror_ as recited at a Galician _escasula_.[703] Most of these popular threepenny leaflets are very quaintly illustrated on the title-page. The woodcut on the 1912 edition of _Flores e Branca-Flor_ is worth many an epic.[704] The portrait of Robert le Diable (1912 ed.) represents no less a person than Napoleon III, and the ‘true likeness of the beautiful Princess Magalona’[705] (1912 ed.) is Queen Alexandra. These _folhas volantes_ of the _literatura de cordel_ with many _farsas_, such as _Manoel Mendes_ by Antonio Xavier Ferreira de Azevedo (1784-1814), reprinted at Oporto in 1878, and various progeny of the ingenious Bertoldo, as _Astucias de Mengoto_, _Industrias de Malandrino_ (both Porto, 1879), _Astucias de Zanguizarra_ (Porto, 1878), _Vida de Cacasseno_ (Porto, 1904), contain little of the real people and less of literature. More indigenous, but still attracting by virtue of its foreign episodes, is the _Auto_, _Livro_ (1554?), _Historia_ or _Tratado do Infante D. Pedro que andou as quatro (sete) partidas do mundo_, which is attributed to Gomez de Santo Estevam, one of the prince’s attendants in his long travels, and of which the first known edition (1547) is in Spanish. It has been constantly reprinted and, with romances of chivalry, formed the education of the notary in _O Hyssope_.[706] Nor do the _Trovas do Bandarra_ belong to literature, although these verses of the cobbler prophet of Trancoso, GONÇALO ANNEZ BANDARRA (†1556?), which caused him to figure in one of the earliest trials before the Inquisition (1541) and were subsequently interpreted as referring to the return of King Sebastian, exercised the fancy of the people and even the wits of the educated for some three centuries. Forbidden in Portugal, they were printed abroad, probably at Paris in 1603, at Nantes in 1644, Barcelona 1809, London 1810 and 1815. It was not until 1852 (Porto) that an _Explicação_ of them could be published in Portugal. Their interest was then much diminished, since the thirty scissors of the verse,

Augurai gentes vindouras Que o Rey que de vos ha de hir Vos ha de tornar a vir Passadas trinta tesouras,

had been thought to signify the year 1808, i.e. thirty closed scissors = 30 × 8: 240 years after King Sebastian began to reign (1568). A more reasonable computation would have been from Alcacer Kebir (_de vos ha de hir_) = 1818, or, if the scissors were open: ✂ (10), = 1878. Many sought to connect with Bandarra’s prophecies the sayings of Simão Gomez (1516-76), the ‘Holy Cobbler’, and his biography, written by the Jesuit MANUEL DA VEIGA (1567-1647), _Tratado da Vida, Virtudes e Doutrina Admiravel de Simão Gomes, vulgarmente chamado o Çapateiro Santo_ (1625), a book in more than one respect singular and charming, was burnt by the public hangman at Lisbon in 1768 in ‘Black Horse Square’. The 1759 edition had received the ordinary _licenças_. But farther afield, deeper in the heart of the people and far more ancient, exists another literature. Writers who have gone to this source have never come away unrewarded. Their work has gained a freshness and a charm[707] which the most successful disciples of imported learning and latinity have in vain attempted to rival, and gives the reader the impression that if he is not plucking the bough of gold he is not far from the tree on which it grows. And the reason is, perhaps, that the Portuguese people still retains an element pre-Christian, even pre-Roman, an element which goes back to solar myths and pagan beliefs, and about which hangs a primaeval mystery and wonder, a glamour and enchantment born of direct contact with the forces of Nature, and the worship, fear, and propitiation of many unseen powers and divinities. A great part of the people still inhabits a region of fiery dragons and apples of gold, and with ready imagination peoples streams and woods, sea and air with spirits. December and June are connected with the birth and supremacy of the sun’s power, and paganism, thinly disguised, survives in several of the ceremonies of the Christian Church, and serves to increase the Church’s hold on the minds of the people. Both the songs and the dancing with which it was accompanied were no doubt originally religious. The movements of the dance seem to have influenced the song, so that its metre was divided by real feet. When the Archbishop of Braga, Frei Bartholomeu dos Martyres, was visiting his diocese in the sixteenth century he was met by Minhoto peasants with _danças e folias_ and with _cantigas que entoavam entre as voltas e saltos dos bailes_,[708] songs evidently similar to those in the works of Gil Vicente, with _leixapren_ and refrain (_aaxbbx_[709] or _abxbcx_).[710] The _volta_ would correspond in action to the _leixapren_[711] of the song, the _salto_ to the refrain. The origin of the refrain was perhaps the pause (preceded by a final leap into the air) made by the breathless dancers, as in the words _no penedo_ of this version of ‘The House that Jack Built’: _Quaes foram os perros que mataram os lobos que comeram as cabras que roeram o bacello que posera João preto no penedo._[712] The phrase _ver cantar_, ‘to see these songs sung’, might be defended.[713]

In modern times the refrain has not been entirely lost, it occurs occasionally, e.g. _Valhame Deus_, or _Valhame Deus e a Virgem Maria_, but the usual song is a refrainless quatrain rhyming in the second and fourth lines, perhaps originally a distich broken up into four lines like the sixteen-syllable lines of the old _romances_, and from which the refrain has disappeared. It is essentially a love song: instead of the song of the people, sung to the tread of dancing feet, the song of the love-lorn individual, sung to the strumming of his guitar or of the professional _cantadeira_ at a rustic pilgrimage. But they are also sung by the people generally, often by women[714] who can neither read nor write but have a large stock of these _cantigas_, which, indeed, are almost innumerable. They may be read in their thousands in Antonio Thomaz Pires’ _Cantos Populares Portuguezes_ (4 vols., Elvas, 1902-10), Dr. Theophilo Braga’s _Cancioneiro Popular Portuguez_ (2 vols., Lisboa, 1911, 1913), Snr. Jaime Cortesão’s _Cancioneiro Popular_ (Porto, 1914), and in other collections, and hundreds of thousands die uncollected and unknown. Although it is perhaps a pity that all the popular poetical talent should tend to adapt itself to one mould--the quatrain--their brevity is excellent in that it imposes concision. Their thought has to be expressed in some twenty words, although they are rarely epigrammatic in the sense of the modern epigram. Some are geographical, or local, in praise of some town or village, river or fountain. Many are religious, that is, they combine love and religion in honour of the Lady of the Hills, the Star, the Snows, the Rosary, the Sands, Pity, Affliction, Health, Hope, or in honour of saints, and especially of the three popular saints of June: St. Anthony, St. John, and St. Peter. Others are devoted to special festivals: Christmas (_Natal_), the New Year (_Anno Bom_), the Epiphany (_Os Reis_), the Resurrection.[715] The majority are concerned with Nature, either generally or in detail. Sometimes they are frankly pantheistic, more often they content themselves with singing the praises of a favourite flower, rosemary, myrtle, the rose, and especially the carnation--the red _cravos_ which glow in doorway or window-ledge of countless houses and cottages in June. Among the birds the swallow,[716] ‘the bird of the Lord’, as the peasants call it, is rare--perhaps its rhyme is disdained as too easy--the parrot, the dove, and the nightingale are far commoner. Numerous _cantigas_ are concerned with the sea, fewer with the sun, the stars, superstitions, witches, sirens; many with dancing and various occupations--the herdsman (_ganadeiro_), yokel (_ganhão_), shepherd (_pastor_), harvesters (_ceifeiros_, _ratinhos_, _malteses_, _mondadeiras_). But of course the principal subject is love, jealousy, separation, constancy, _saudade_, satire. The occasional presence of a French word, e.g. _négligé_ or _cache-nez_, is not necessarily a proof that the _cantiga_ in question is not of popular origin, but merely that it is urban. Of many _cantigas_ the first line consists simply of a long-drawn _Ailé_ (αἴλινον, αἴλινον εἰπέ, τὸ δ’ εὖ νικάτω) or _Ai lari lari lolé_ (where the fanatic of Basque can find _il_ (= dead) as easily as in the refrain of C. V. 415), so that they really consist of three lines, the _ailé_ being introductory.

Some of the quatrains rise to real poetical beauty, and most of them are charmingly spontaneous, forming in their unpremeditated art the natural song-book of a nation of poets. The number in print already approaches fifty thousand. In the mass they perhaps produce a monotonous effect, being mostly of the one pattern, despite the variety of their contents:

Tudo o que é verde se seca Em vindo o pino do verão: Só meu amor reverdece Dentro do meu coração.[717]

Inda que o lume se apague Na cinza fica o calor: Inda que o amor se ausente No coração fica a dor.[718]

Os tres reis foram guiados Por uma estrella do ceu: Tambem teus olhos guiaram Meu coração para o teu.[719]

A few links in these modern _cantigas_ carry us back to the songs in Gil Vicente’s plays and beyond: a dialogue between mother and daughter, a reference to dancing _de terreiro_, _balho_, dance and song, to the _casada_, _mas mal casada_, or _i-a_ sequence, as _Filho da Virgem Maria_ (_Sagrada_). Other links in the popular literature throughout the ages are the riddles (_adivinhas_) at which Gil Vicente’s shepherds played in the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ (the example given in João de Barros’ _Grammatica_ (1540) is:

Ainda o pae não é nado Já o filho anda pelo telhado (1785 ed., p. 176)

--the father is still unborn and the son is on the roof: a fire and its smoke; modern instances are printed in Dr. Theophilo Braga’s _Cancioneiro Popular Portuguez_, vol. i (1913), pp. 363-70); the lullabies (cf. the modern _Ró ró, meu menino, Dorme e descansa, Tu es meu alivio E a minha esperança_ with Gil Vicente’s _Ro, ro, ro, Nuestro Dios y Redentor, No lloreis_, &c., i. 57); the _cantigas de Anno Bom_; the ‘pagan _janeiras_’, as Filinto Elysio called them; the _cantigas dos Reis_, the _alvoradas_, the _maios_. The _alva_ or _alvorada_ should properly contain the word _alva_ in the refrain, as in C. V. 172, or Guiraut de Bornelh’s

Qu’el jorn es apropchatz, Qu’en Orien vey l’estela creguda Qu’adutz lo jorn, qu’ieu l’ai ben conoguda, Et ades sera l’alba.

(For day is near, and high in the East appears the star that brings in the day: I know it well, and soon it will be dawn.) The theme is the parting of lovers at dawn:

Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day....

A Catalan _alba-cossante_ is given in Milá y Fontanals’ _Romancerillo Catalán_[720]:

Marieta lleva’t lleva’t de mati Que l’aygua es clara, el sol vol sortir. Como m’en llevaré si gipo no tinch? Marieta lleva’t, de mati lleva’t, Que el sol vol sortir, que l’aygua es clara. Como, &c.

An example of a Galician _mayo_, that is, a song introducing the _Mayo_ or May-boy (corresponding to our Queen of the May), is given in Milá’s article in vol. vi of _Romania_. It closely resembles that of Gil Vicente (_Este é o Mayo, o Mayo é este_) in the _Auto da Lusitania_:

Este é o Mayo que Mahiño é, Este é o Mayo que anda d’o pé. O noso Mayo anque pequeniño Da de comer á Virxen d’o Camiño. Velay o Mayo cargado de rosas, Velay o Mayo que las trae más hermosas.

It then breaks into a _muiñeira_ (in Castilian):

Ángeles somos, del cielo venimos (bajamos), Si nos dais licencia a la Reina le pedimos (la cantamos).

To the _janeiras_ more than one classical author alludes. Mello (_Epan._ i) thus notices them at Evora on New Year’s Eve, 1638, before the house in which the Conde de Linhares was lodged: _a fim de se lhe cantarem certas Bençoens & Rogatiuas (costume de nossos anciãos que com nome de Janeiras entoavam placidamente pelas portas dos mais caros amigos) se congregou grande numero de pouo_.[721] Some _romances_ (also _xacara_, _xacra_, and in the Azores _arabia_) have been printed direct from the lips of the people by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos in his _Romanceiro Portuguez_ (1886). The degenerate, more modern, and subjective form of the _romance_ is the _fado_, a ballad (melancholy as the old _solao_[722]), composed by the professional _fadistas_ of the towns. The _fado_ is even more modern than the _modinha_ (end of eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century). It dates from the first third of the nineteenth century, and has not even now penetrated to the south, being indeed largely a Lisbon product. It may be composed in verses of four (_quadras_), five (_quintilhas_), or ten (_decimas_) lines.

The individual in the favourite _quadras_ expresses his personal sorrow and his love; the immemorial lore of the Portuguese people as a whole survives less in them than in the no less numerous proverbs--_um bosque de muitas e varias maneiras de adagios_. There is scarcely a Portuguese writer whose works do not furnish a goodly crop of these proverbs, often in evidently popular form, sometimes betraying their Spanish origin in the rhyme. They have been collected in Antonio Delicado’s _Adagios Portugueses_ (1651), in _Adagios_ (1841), _Philosophia Proverbial_ (1882), and elsewhere. The language is full of proverbial phrases, and most Portuguese could at will conceal their meaning from a foreigner in a maze of idiomatic expressions. The variety of their names is sufficient proof of the extraordinary number of the proverbs. They are crystallizations of some forgotten fable or event (_adagios_)[723] or of a more personal anecdote (_anexins_), or the refrain of a long-lost song (_rifões_).[724] Or they are moral (_maximas_ and _sentenças_), biblical (_proverbios_), satirical (_dictados_ or _ditados_, _ditos_). Many of them embody the wisdom of the ages in a form admirably concise and forcible, e.g. _Quem muito abarca pouco abraça_ (which is the very reverse of Portuguese history: _e nulla stringe e tutto ’l mondo abbraccia_), or _Até ao lavar das cestas é vindima._ Many of course correspond more or less closely to those of other countries, e.g. _Muitos enfeitadores estragão a noiva_ (Too many cooks spoil the broth), _Gato escaldado de agua fria ha medo_ (The burnt child fears the fire); _Manhan ruiva, ou vento ou chuva_ (= _Alba gorri, hegoa edo uri_); _Pedra movediça não cria bolor_ (= _Pierre qui roule n’amasse pas mousse_).[725] Many of these saws as well as the _contos_ (folk-tales) have their birth at _fiandões_ as the women sit spinning, or as _nossas velhas_ sit at their cottage doors and gossip in the sun (_soalheiro_), or as all gather round the spacious _lareira_. After the day’s work on the farm, in field and granary, to the sound of singing, legend and tradition come into their own of an evening round the great fire of logs and scented brushwood. The _contos_ have been collected by Z. Consiglieri Pedroso, _Portuguese Folk Tales_ (London, 1882); F. Adolpho Coelho, _Contos Populares Portuguezes_ (Lisboa, 1879); Dr. Theophilo Braga, _Contos Tradicionaes do Povo Portuguez_ (2 vols., Porto, 1883); F. X. de Athaide Oliveira, _Contos Tradicionaes do Algarve_ (2 vols., Tavira, 1900, 5). As was to be expected, they have their equivalents in the folklore of other nations, a fact which does not prevent them from possessing an indigenous character, a charm and flavour of their own. The glowing imagination of the peasants spins out fairy and allegorical tales with marvellous facility. Thus old Mother Poverty (_Tia Miseria_) owned a pear-tree in front of her cottage, and had obtained the privilege that whoever went up it to steal her pears should be unable to come down. When Death comes she asks him to fetch her one more pear. Once up the tree all the priests and lawyers cannot bring him down, and only when he agrees to the bargain that Poverty shall never die is she willing to release him.

A great part of the popular literature has been set down in cold print during the last half-century. Much remains ungarnered. In every province there are peculiar words, phrases, traditions, heirlooms of times prehistoric, waiting to be gathered in, and both the Portuguese literature and the Portuguese language of the future will owe a debt of gratitude to their collectors, and find rich material in the pages of the _Revista Lusitana_.

FOOTNOTES:

[700] The whole Bible in Portuguese was not translated until the eighteenth century, by JOÃO FERREIRA DE ALMEIDA, _O Novo Testamento_ (Amsterdam, 1681), _Do Velho Testamento_, 2 vols. (Batavia, 1748, 53). This is the version still commonly in use. Another translation, entitled _Biblia Sagrada_, was made from the Vulgate at the end of the eighteenth century by ANTONIO PEREIRA DE FIGUEIREDO (1725-97), author of some fifty theological and historical works in Latin and Portuguese, and a paraphrase (_Historia Evangelica_, 1777, 78, _Historia Biblica_, 1778-82) by Frei FRANCISCO DE JESUS MARIA SARMENTO (1713-90). See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos et S. Berger, _Les Bibles Portugaises_ in _Romania_, xxviii (1899), pp. 543-8: _La littérature portugaise est en matière de traductions bibliques d’une pauvreté désespérante._ The _Parocho Perfeito_ (1675) speaks of _os parochos que não tiverem Biblias_ (p. 19). See also G. L. Santos Ferreira, _A Biblia em Portugal, 1495-1850_ (L. 1906).

[701] See _Floire et Blancheflor. Poèmes du xiiiᵉ siècle. Publiés d’après les manuscrits ... par E. du Méril_, Paris, 1856. In the original story Flores in a basket of roses enters the tower where Brancaflor is imprisoned. Señor Bonilla y San Martín (_La Historia de los dos Enamorados Flores y Blancaflor_, Madrid, 1916) attributes an Italian origin to the Spanish prose story. The Spanish translation probably dates from the fifteenth century.

[702] For its popularity with the Provençal troubadours see Raynouard, _Choix_, e. g. ii. 297, 304, 305.

[703] _A historia de Branca Fror Outra saca a relocer_ (_Chorimas_ (1890), p. 148).

[704] It has been reproduced, from an earlier edition, in T. Braga, _Os Livros Populares Portuguezes_ (_Era Nova_, vol. i, 1881).

[705] At either side explanatory verses, the only verse in the leaflet, tell us that ‘Magalona was the most beautiful of all contemporary princesses, beloved daughter of the King of Naples, and her heart full of goodness. She was a model of virtues, of pure beliefs and a loving heart, married with Pierres, Pedro of Provence, a noble knight and virtuous man.’

[706] One of the Elvas Chapter was _homem versado Na lição de Florinda e Carlo Magno_.

[707] This charm hangs over many anonymous lyrics of popular inspiration, as the _Trovas da Menina Fermosa_, seventeenth or eighteenth century variations of a sixteenth century song: _Menina fermosa Dizei do que vem Que sejais irosa A quem vos quer bem; Porque se concerta Rosto e condiçam Dais por galardam A pena mui certa. Sendo tam fermosa Dizei_, &c. Even less genuinely popular are the _Trovas do Moleiro_ (1602), written by an obscure native of Tangier, Luis Brochado, and others.

[708] Luis de Sousa, _Vida_, 1763 ed., i. 462.

[709] e. g. _Em Belem vila do amor_ (i. 183).

[710] e. g. _Que no quiero estar en casa_ (i. 73) (which is _como laa cantaes co’ gado_, essentially a peasant’s song).

[711] The _leixapren_ occurs in most of the songs accompanied by dance in Gil Vicente: e. g. _Quem é a desposada_ (_chacota_, i. 147), _Pardeus bem andou Castella_ (_em folia_) (ii. 389), _Ja não quer minha senhora_ (ii. 439, _Esta cantiga cantarão e bailarão de terreiro os foliões_). _Não me firaes madre_ (ii. 440, _em chacota_), _Mor Gonçalves_ (ii. 509, _bailão ao som desta cantiga_), _Por Mayo era, por Mayo_ (ii. 525, _a vozes bailarão e cantarão a cantiga seguinte_: i. e. a _romance_ with _leixapren_ and refrain). They are thus a combination of glee and dance.

[712] Gil Vicente, _Obras_ (ii. 448).

[713] _Não nas quero ver cantar_ (Gil Vicente) is, however, probably a misprint, for which D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos suggests _quer’ eu_.

[714] Cf. J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Ensaios Ethnographicos_, ii. 264: _O povo (principalmente as mulheres) canta-as_ [_cantigas soltas_] _em qualquer occasião_.

[715]

_Já os campos reverdecem, Já o alecrim tem flor, Já cantam os passarinhos A resurreição do Senhor._

(Now to the fields returns the green and the rosemary’s in flower, and the little birds are singing the Lord’s Resurrection hour).

[716]

_Ó triste da minha vida, Ó triste da vida minha, Quem me dera ir contigo Onde tu vaes, andorinha._ (O how sad my life is, O how sad my plight! Would I might go with thee, swallow, in thy flight!)

recalls the French _Si j’étais hirondelle Que je pusse voler, Sur votre sein, ma belle, J’irais me reposer_ (A swallow I Would be to fly And take my rest Upon thy breast).

[717] All green things in summer Their freshness lose: Only my heart Its love renews.

[718] When the light of the fire is dead The ashes its heat retain: When love is over and fled In the heart abides the pain.

[719] To the three kings was given A star in heaven for sign: And thy eyes have guided My heart unto thine.

[720] Reprinted in his article in _Romania_, vol. vi, and by Dr. Braga. _Aygua_ in the second line is probably a corruption from _alua_ (dawn) to _agua_ (water).