and honest, yearning like a true Celt for his own home and his own kin again: sometimes, indeed, though rarely, so overcome by the homesickness as to be unable to resist the craving for his native hill-side before even he has amassed the few crowns that will enable him to provide some little comfort for him and his.
This Celtic instinct and need to wander in search of work in order to render less hard the lot of the weaker ones left behind, is the main reason for the almost universal labour of the women of Galicia in tasks elsewhere usually allotted to men. The constant drain of the best and strongest of the male population of Galicia by emigration is the saddest phase of Galician life. Something like twenty thousand Gallegos emigrate to the Argentine Republic every year. They are usually men of the soil, crowded out by a vicious system of taxation and the infinite subdivision of the soil amongst a multitude of peasants owning their tiny crofts. The soil and climate of Galicia are the best in Spain and the people are by far the most laborious; and yet it is calculated that three-quarters of the poorer classes in the province are only kept alive by remittances sent by the hardworking sons, husbands, and brothers in America. Not less than eight millions of pesetas (£280,000) thus finds its way, mostly in very small sums, annually to those who stay at home living upon the hard fare and keeping the wolf from the door as best they may by constant toil upon land or sea.
But a better time, it is hoped, is dawning for this favoured land. The unrivalled fishing grounds are providing now not only food for those who live upon the shores. All along the Ria of Vigo and elsewhere factories are working, preserving and packing sardines for the markets in the world. The abundant vegetables and fruits, which according to the altitude upon the hill-sides may be gathered from early spring to late autumn, are likewise being preserved for export to countries less abundant than this. Other industries, too, are awakening after the stifled sleep of generations, and if the burden of taxation upon land and labour can be lightened in its incidence there may yet be sunshine for the humble cottages of the Galician valleys, and prosperity flowing from the labour of Gallegos in their own land rather than from remittances from abroad. The living of these poor, patient folk is incredibly frugal; and like that of their kinsmen in Western Ireland inferior in stamina. Maize bread, and brona, a coarse millet bread, is the staple food with potatoes, though wheat of the finest quality can be grown; and the province which provides cattle for the consumption of half Spain, and once did a splendid trade in oxen with England, feeds its own population mainly on fish, varied by an occasional meal of cow-beef too poor for export.
PEASANTS IN THEIR SUNDAY BEST
FISHWIVES
Of all this the casual visitor sees nothing, and perhaps cares nothing. He drives through a smiling land greener than Kerry, more sunny than the overrated French Riviera: he lingers in abundantly supplied markets, where all the fruits of the earth and ocean seem spread in glowing heaps: he spins in a comfortable motor-car along good roads cut upon the steep sides of mountains, and at every turn of the tortuous way admiring some new enchanting prospect of far-flung valley, towering cliffs or smiling fjord. The white cottages with their attendant conical dovecots and tiny granaries, their cobs of maize hung to ripen in fringe-like rows from their verandahs, are, it is true, mean and dark within; but they form a gracious note amidst the lush green of never-failing vegetation. Not even in the depth of winter is the landscape free from flowers. In February the wallflowers are in full bloom in the crannies of ancient masonry, and the sweet-scented mimosa is bent down by the weight of its masses of yellow flowers; a few weeks later the starry white and crimson camellias grow in the open with marvellous luxuriance, and by the middle of April the cherries are ripe in the sheltered valleys.
The air blows soft and moist from the sea through most of the year, tempering the ardent sun even in the height of summer; and this fact, which accounts for the marvellous verdancy and fertility of the soil, also brings with it frequent showers and mists drifting up the Rias, especially in the winter and early spring. But the rains are seldom of long continuance, and the sunshine invariably follows close upon them, drying everything with wonderful rapidity and leaving the country more sparkling and green than ever.
Through such a country as this the traveller may go by motor-car or railway from one fjord to another, rarely long out of sight of blue water most of the way from Vigo to the bellisima Noya, by the holy town of Padron, where the body of St. James first took harbour on its miraculous voyage from the Holy Land to the country that thenceforward was to be its home. In old times it was part of the great pilgrimage after worshipping at the shrine of the Saint at Santiago to trudge on to Padron, the Iria Flavia of the Romans, and the ancient Galician verse says:
"Quien va á Santiago
E non va al Padron
O' faz romeria ó non."
Through the Middle Ages a stream of pilgrims wended their way from all Christian lands to Santiago. The innumerable stars of the Milky Way are called by Spaniards "the road of Santiago," expressive of the vast concourse of the faithful that flocked to the Galician shrine.
I have before me as I write a naïve relation of a German priest, the envoy, by the way, of an emperor seeking a Portuguese bride, who thought it his duty on the way to worship at the sainted tomb of Santiago. His narrative marks quaintly the immense difference that has come over the world since the mid-fifteenth century in which he wrote. On arriving at Astorga the band of pilgrims who travelled together, and of which he and his colleague formed part, were advised to go no farther for the present, as one of the great rieving territorial nobles, who afterwards gave Ferdinand and Isabella so much trouble to crush, was ravaging Galicia and making war on the all-powerful favourite of the King, Don Alvaro de Luna. The pilgrims being very numerous, decided to run the risk, confiding in the harmless and meritorious character of their journey. Not far from Pontevedra, however, they fell in with a strong force of freebooters, who at once attacked them, wounding many and stripping the whole company to the skin. On their knees, and in mortal terror, the Emperor's envoys showed their credentials and prayed for mercy, but no attention was paid to them, though they invoked Santiago and all the other saints in the calendar. They were allowed, at last, to go on the way with their companions, despoiled and, as the narrator says, "full of pain, suffering and anguish, passing through towns burnt and sacked by the marauders."
At last arriving at Pontevedra some kindness was shown them, and, on foot still, the whole band trudged on to Santiago. After visiting the shrine there they walked, as in duty bound, "with certain pilgrims from Ireland," to Padron, where beneath the waves they were shown the stone ship that had brought to the port the body of the apostle. Then to another shrine at Finisterre also they went on foot, and finally, their religious duty being ended, they proceeded on their matrimonial mission to Portugal.
The streets of Santiago can have changed but little since those far-off days of pious pilgrimage, when from all points of Christendom came the countless thousands to expiate sins or seek salvation. As the big omnibus from Cornes station bumps and rumbles into the streets of the ancient city, almost the only vehicle that ever invades them, a plunge is made into the centuries of long ago. Narrow slab-paved streets with dim arcades on both sides, above which houses of unimaginable antiquity are reared. Scallop shells adorn the fronts of many of them, indicating that they were formerly pilgrims' lodgings, and carved coats of arms with knightly casques above remind us that in the old days nobles, too, lived in the streets of the holy city. It looks almost an anachronism for men and women in modern garb to wander through these silent streets and to tread the very slabs worn thin by the pilgrim shoon of the centuries of faith so long ago.
Though lacking its sacred associations, Pontevedra
