Page images
PDF
EPUB

smooth and inviting ones, that it is 'défendu de jouer à la paume contre ce mur.' 1 In the summer great matches are played between the French and Spanish Basques, which are equivalent to our University boatraces. Scores of thousands of Basques then pour down from their mountain homes and sit cheerfully in the burning sun from morn to dewy eve, eagerly following the fortunes of their favourite heroes.

They have a fondness for bright colour that makes their country very cheerful to a stranger's eye. Their houses are invariably of dazzling whiteness, and roofed with resplendent scarlet tiles. And these cheerful colours are repeated in their dress, which consists of white shirt, scarlet sash, a dark-blue béret, or round, flat cap, and short jacket. Their feet are shod with silence, for their white canvas shoes, laced with red and blue tapes, are soled with plaited hemp, which renders their wearer as noiseless as a cat.

The origin of the Basque race is so ancient as to be lost in the mists of time, and the most opposite theories are held with regard to it. The only points on which I believe all ethnologists agree are the extreme antiquity of the Basques as a distinct race, and the impossibility of connecting them with any known race of Aryan descent. Some have held that they are descended from Noah's son Japhet, by his fifth son, Tubal, who emigrated to Europe before the confusion of tongues, and therefore transmitted the language of Paradise in all its purity to his descendants. This theory has the double merit of being bold and difficult to refute. Certain it is that their language is curiously distinct from all other known tongues. It is extremely difficult to acquire, and there is a French saying-useful as a means of exasperating a Basque, if desired-that 'le diable lui-même a passé huit ans dans le pays Basque sans qu'il a pu apprendre la langue.'

One authority says that in the Basque tongue 'the undoubtedly native words for cutting instruments seem all to have their root from words signifying stone or rock, while all such words as imply the use of metal seem to be borrowed. The language, as it were, represents the Stone Age, before the use of metals was known!'

Another tells us that their dances are distinctly of astronomical

1 The game is usually spoken of in English as tennis, but its real name is jeu de paume, and it far more resembles fives. It is played with the hand, or with a basket-work scoop strapped on to the hand.

significance, and must date from the time when their ancestors emigrated from Asia to the Pyrenees; and he sums up his arguments by pronouncing the Basques to be the débris of the primitive peoples of Asia, and the unique representatives of that prehistoric race. In M. Garat's own words: 'I have attempted to throw light on this remarkable people, their incredible antiquity, their Semitic origin, and the purity of their descent, and to show that they, as much as the Israelites under the Patriarchs, are entitled to call themselves God's people.'

I have said enough to show that, whichever theory may be the right one, there is no doubt that the Basques are a people of singular interest. It is true that the only two men of world-wide fame that their country has produced have been St. Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola. But it must be remembered that the Basque race is, numerically, a small one-considerably under half a million some ten years ago—and that their mountainous country and their unique language alike have tended to isolate them from the rest of the world.

They have in them a strong dash of Moorish blood, dating from the time when the Saracens invaded France and were utterly discomfited at Poitiers by Charles Martel. Many of the fugitives took refuge among the Basques, and, being hospitably received, they cast in their lot with their protectors, and by intermarriage became gradually fused with them. The Arab practice of medicine is said even yet to linger among the Basques, and many of their surnames are Moorish or of Arabic origin.

A curious custom among them mentioned by Count Henry Russell, and which he says is called a toberac, has its exact counterpart in Somersetshire, where it is known as rough music or skimmity-riding. The occasion in either case is the villagers' desire to express their indignation at some striking lapse from the path of virtue on the part of one of their number. The ceremony takes place after dark, when the performers parade near the offender's house and make night hideous by an appalling din of bells, oxhorns, tin pans, and other such instruments of torture.

They doubtless find it answer the same double purpose of amusing themselves and vexing their victim as the music of the Scotch pipers formerly did. Froissart says of it that it may be heard four miles off, to the great dismay of their enemies and their own delight.' He further tells us that when the English army approached within a league of the Scots the latter began

to play such a concert that it seemed as if all the devils in hell had come thither to join in the noise, so that those of the English who had never before heard such were much frightened.'

In Somersetshire the concerts of rough music sometimes lead to proceedings at law; but the musicians are usually backed by strong public opinion, and have, in consequence, an amount of moral weight not easily defied.

On the occasion of our first visit to St. Jean de Luz we were struck by the number of persons we met leading or carrying white pigs, and we began to think that pigs must again be in fashion as pets, as they appear to have been at Bayonne in the seventeenth century. In the letters of a French lady of quality written in 1679,' she tells us that 'some of the ladies who came to see me at Bayonne brought little sucking-pigs under their arms, as we do little dogs. It is true they were very spruce, for most of them had coloured ribbons tied round their necks and tails. When they dance, they must set them down and let these grunting animals run about the chamber, where they make a very unpleasing harmony.'

[ocr errors]

The matter, however, was presently explained by our discovering that a cattle market was being held. Many hundreds of horned cattle were there, besides donkeys, ponies, mules, and pigs. The cattle used in this part of France for agricultural and draught purposes are of a very handsome tawny-coloured breed, of great size-very similar, I should imagine, to the Charolais breed used in the Morvan. They are strong, beautiful creatures, softeyed and sleek, and fetch from 300fs. to 500fs. apiece.

For milking purposes the small black-and-white Breton breed is used. They are extremely insignificant in appearance when compared with the stately tawny cattle, but their milk is rich and abundant.

We noticed that many of the ponies had their ears split, and we were told that the ponies bred on the slopes of La Rhune were marked in this way, and were a very hardy, useful breed.

The writer of the old letters already quoted broke her journey— as all travellers at that time did-at St. Jean de Luz, and says: 'We were well entertained, for our table was covered with wild fowls; but our beds were not answerable, being stuck with feathers whose pinions ran into our sides.'

The lady was on her way to Madrid, and I cannot refrain from 1 Cositas Españolas.

VOL. XVII.--NO. 97, N.S.

4

quoting a little sketch she gives of manners in Spain at that time. Speaking of servants in great families, she says: "The Spaniards give but two reals (5d.) a day both for food and wages, but then the servants live only upon onions, peas, and such mean stuff, which makes them as greedy as dogs. The pages and footmen are kept so very hungry that in carrying the dishes to the table they eat half the victuals that is in them. I advised my kinswoman to get a little silver stewpan made, fastened with a padlock, like that I saw of the Archbishop of Burgos, and this she did. So now, after the cook has filled it, he looks through a little grate to see whether the soup does well, and thus the pages get nothing of it but the steam. Before this invention it happened a hundred times that when we thought to have taken broth, we found neither that nor any flesh.'

Is it possible that any custom of the present day will seem as quaint to our descendants two hundred years hence as this naïve narration does to us now? The world moves slowly; but when we look back a couple of centuries we see that its progress has been greater than we might think.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »