Читать книгу The Magic of Spain - Aubrey F. G. Bell - Страница 11

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THERE are few peoples more deserving of study than the Basques, and few countries more pleasant to visit and to live in than the Basque Provinces. After the treeless, unsheltered mountains and plains, and the compact villages of Castille or Navarre, the villages of the Basque country, set in green, and, to quote the phrase of a Spanish novelist, “all in the peace of prayer,” are a delightful contrast. The sky has no longer the harsh intensity of the Castilian, and everywhere is a softness of outlines; everywhere, too, is green—the green of chestnut and oak, of maize and trefoil, meadow and cider-orchard. The maize is the principal crop of the year, providing the heavy, yellow bread, artoa, as well as food for the oxen and material for mats, mattresses, and even cigarette-papers. The fields are divided by slabs of stone, and in the mists of the early mornings the Angelus rings from hidden towers; and the only other sound is that of scythes cutting the drenched grass or trefoil. Every true Basque is of noble, ancient family, and the Basque farmhouse, with its wooden façade and carved projecting buttresses, its wide balcony and deep ornamented eaves, is handed down from father to son without change. It stands surrounded by orchards and fields of maize, and often overshadowed by an immense fig-tree or a group of splendid walnut-trees. The roof slopes down on one side till it nearly reaches the ground. The lower part of the front is hollowed into a court, and on one side of this a door leads straight into the spacious kitchen, with its huge fireplace and many vessels of scoured bronze and copper, which forms the principal room of the house. A dark, narrow staircase leads to the bedrooms; through the cracks of the floors may often be seen the oxen in their stalls beneath. Large chests of oak, some of them beautifully carved, are to be found in most Basque farms. In Vizcaya a large vine-trellis, running forward on posts from the inner court beneath the balcony, further deepens the dark velvet spaces in the whitewashed front of the farm; in Guipúzcoa many houses have no balcony or trellis, but are overgrown with heavy vines, that often entirely cover all the windows. From the windows hang long strings of red piments or white onions; above the door there is frequently an ancient stone coat-of-arms or an inscription with the name of the founders and the date, and above this a cross or the letters I. H. S. The house is thus half sacred. After the father’s death, the eldest son becomes “Lord of the house, etcheco-jauna,” while the younger sons often emigrate.

It was from their farms, so dear to them, that the Basques formerly took their names, so that they are called not Smith or Collier, but At-the-head-of-the-hill (Mendiburu) or Under-the-new-road (Bideberripe). Even now a Basque in the country is never called by his surname, but either by his Christian name or a nickname, or the name of his house or property. Etche (“house”) is perhaps the commonest compound. Etcheberri (“newhouse”) has numerous variants—Echeverri, Echevarri, Echavarri (in Vizcaya and Alava, where the Basque spoken is broader than in Guipúzcoa, new is “barri”), Chavarri, Echarri, Echave, Xavier, Javer, etc. The number of Basque-speaking people can now but little exceed half a million, and only very rarely is a Basque found who is unable to speak Spanish or French.[63] Of the three Spanish-Basque provinces, Guipúzcoa (capital San Sebastián) alone is entirely Basque. At Bilbao, the capital of Vizcaya, no Basque is spoken; and long before reaching Vitoria, the capital of Alava, the language spoken is Castilian. Nor is Basque spoken at Pamplona, the capital of Navarre, though it reaches almost to its walls, and till quite recently had a wider extension in Navarre, names of places such as Mendigorria (“red mountain”) surviving. The difficulty of the language has been somewhat exaggerated; there is a well-known story that the Devil spent three years in the Basque country, and only succeeded in learning two words: Bai, “yes;” and Es, “no.” But it remains true that the immense and complicated system of Basque conjugations is for a foreigner almost impossible to master; and at the same time the Basque literature to reward the learner is of the scantiest. Interesting indeed are the proverbs, some of the songs, and the pastorales, which have been compared in more than one particular with the Greek drama, but which are now acted only in the province of Soule. The stage, in the open air, is formed of plain planks, supported most often on barrels. A curtain cuts off a part for the actors to change their costumes, the same person often taking several parts in a play. The curtain has two doors, one for the good and one for the wicked. The good and the wicked are kept strictly separate. The pastorale is always in honour of Christianity and the Roman Catholic religion, and the wicked are the heathen, the Turks, the English, etc. Red is the colour of the wicked, that of the good is blue; in this respect no change is ever made. The good always walk slowly and solemnly, but when the wicked come on the stage the music is immediately changed to a lively air, and they never remain long quiet, their movements continuing quick and agitated. The acting is very simple; a journey, for instance, is represented by walking up and down the stage several times. The characters are usually taken exclusively by men and boys, but there are a few pastorales acted by women only; the sexes are never mingled. Strange and amusing anachronisms abound. In the pastorale entitled Abraham, Abraham appears in high boots and felt hat; Sarah in a modern, bright-coloured dress, with hat, veil, and fan; Isaac carries one or two sticks on his shoulder for the sacrifice; the Angel is a little boy in white. Then there are the heathen and the Christian kings, the former dressed in red, with high crowns arrayed with plumes and ribbons, the latter in blue with crowns of gold. In the middle of the play one of the Christian kings leaves the stage, and presently appears above the curtain and speaks with Abraham. He represents the “Eternal Father.” The verses are spoken in a loud monotonous chant, each verse being literally measured out by motion up and down the stage, the only change being when the music becomes faster or slower. The music is composed of the two Basque instruments the churula, a shrill pipe, and the tamboril, a kind of guitar with six strings, played by the same person. The strangeness of the scene, the loud chanting of the actors as the tone rises and falls, the fantastic costumes, the dances of the “Satans,” the prayers of the Christians, and especially the slow march and action of the blues, dignified and majestic, and the turbulent, restless movements of the reds, are not soon forgotten.

The Basque language, Eskuara, was described by the Spanish historian, Mariana, as “coarse and barbarous,” and a traveller among the Basques in the Middle Ages recorded that to hear them speak one would say they were dogs barking. In English, the word “jingo” has been said to derive from the Basque Jincoa, “God,” introduced by Wellington’s troops after the Peninsular War. The Basque word is an abbreviation of Jaungoicoa, “the Lord on high,” jauna, “lord,” being the common form of greeting between peasant and peasant. It becomes more and more rare to hear pure Basque spoken; foreign words creep in and, with the definite article “a” suffixed, hide under a Basque form: dembora (Lat. tempus) thus ousting the Basque word eguraldia for “weather,” gorphuntza (Lat. corpus) being “body,” and so on.[64] Pure Basque recedes to remote villages in the mountains, and there the Basque maintains his ancient customs, as averse from change to-day as when Horace described him as “Cantabrum indoctum juga ferre nostra.”[65]