A Midsummer Drive Through the Pyrenees Part 5

Home words, such as these latter, give a glimpse of this people's home life. For they are devoted to their household as to their tribe, and uniformly show a certain homely honesty and simplicity underneath all their free ways. Love of smuggling does not impugn this honesty,--in their own view, at all events; for the Basque, man and woman, is a born smuggler, and believing it right is not ashamed. Indeed, they make common cause of it; for years, if a revenue officer detected and shot a Basque in the act, he had to fly the land at once, for the entire neighborhood united in seeking hot and deadly vengeance.

The race is notably fond of dancing and drama, and the villages hold frequent open-air theatricals, generally upon religious themes, which they always handle with great seriousness. They have at intervals unique contests in improvisation, rivaling Wolfram and Tannhauser, or the Meistersingers, in this special talent. They are fruitful, too, in proverb lore, as would be expected in an old race. Their wise saws are sharp, often rasping:

"Hard bread makes sharp teeth." (_Ogi gogorrari haguin sorroza_.)

"One eye suffices the seller; the buyer has need of a hundred."

"Marriage-day is the next day after happiness."

"Avarice, having killed a man, took refuge in the Church; it has never gone out since."

Husbandmen, herdsmen, fishermen,--such are the majority. The farms are small, averaging four or five acres, and descend by primogeniture; flax, hemp, corn, are their staples. Basques were the first whalers, so it is declared, and St. Jean used to be a noted port for their vessels; the whales have since sought more northern banks, and St. Jean is reduced to the humbler quest of sardines and anchovies. There are iron-mines and marble-quarries, besides, to engage many; hunting and logging are favored pursuits; Basque sailors are to be found in all waters, while great numbers of the younger men are now yearly emigrating to the South American coasts, to make a better living,--and to avoid conscription.

Those of the race we see in our transit impress one, on the whole, favorably. The men have, in the main, the lithe, firm port attributed to them, though there are Basque "trash," as there are Georgia "crackers,"

and average-lesseners everywhere. The women are often noticeably attractive; the younger ones have a ruddy face and full, clear eye, but the skin shrivels and wears with middle age, as does that of their French peasant sisters. The Basques about Biarritz and St. Jean appear to a.s.sociate with the French element in entire amity; the race strives still to keep distinct, but habits and idioms and manners imperceptibly mingle; they speak French or patois quite as much as their own tongue, and in divers ways hint at the working of amalgamation and a.s.similation.

Mention of this bizarre tribe is perhaps not untimely; the leveling process progresses fast, over Basque-land as in all the world; steam and lightning are the genii of the age, but they destroy while they build.

As a significant straw, the French government enforces here, in the public schools, the teaching and speaking of French to supersede the Basque. Similarly, Spanish is required in the schools over the border.

In some of these, a child detected in a lapse into Basque must wear a certain ring, which he is allowed to pa.s.s on to the first companion he catches likewise tripping. The latter may pa.s.s it on in turn. At the end of the week comes the reckoning-day, and the unhappy individual then found with the ring is, punished for the collective sinners of the week.

Few more ingenious, even if demoralizing, expedients could be devised to put the native tongue and sentiments under ban.

"It has been truthfully observed," says one,[8] "that, in ancient times, the Basques kept themselves outside of the Roman world; in the middle age they remained outside of feudal society; while to-day they would fain keep out of the modern world. The spectacle of this little confederacy, steadily maintaining its isolation for so many centuries, is most interesting, and, in some aspects, affecting; but the very stubbornness and the prolonged success of its resistance to all attempts to draw it into the current of modern life and thought only enhances the significance of its ultimate failure, and furnishes an expressive commentary upon the futility of a people's most determined efforts to hold itself aloof from the brotherhood of nations. Contact is G.o.d's manifest decree. The five Basques at Bayonne bridge, helpless against the incoming tide, present a truthful prophecy of the destiny of the whole race before the advancing and mounting wave of modern civilization."

[8] VINCENT: _In the Shadow of the Pyrenees_. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

V.

In this region, too, lies the famous pa.s.s of Ibaneta or Roncesvalles. It may be readily visited in a two days' excursion from St. Jean or from Biarritz. There is a carriage-road to Valcarlos, a small village on the way; beyond, a mule-path winds on up through the pa.s.s and down to the convent on the other side.

This convent was founded to commemorate the one greatest tradition of the pa.s.s,--the destruction of Charlemagne's rear-guard by the Basques in ambush and the death of the hero Roland.

"Oh for a blast of that dread horn On Fontarabian echoes borne That to King Charles did come; When Rowland brave and Olivier And every paladin and peer On Roncesvalles died!"

Of the few writers who have visited this region, all make airy mention of the battle of Roncesvalles; scarcely one, however, condescends to details. Yet it gave rise to a great epic poem,--the greatest epic of France, the delight of all her ancient minstrels. One often hears named the _Song of Roland_; one seldom hears more than the name. By many the charm of its story is all unknown.

"In truth and fact," observes a recent anonymous writer, "the chain can claim one single real legend. That one, however, is so great, so grand, so dominating,--it is so immense, so universal, so world-wide,--that it suffices all alone; it creates a doctrine by itself, it needs no aid, no support, no companions,--it is the mighty tale of Roland. The mountain is full of Roland. His hands, his feet, his horse, his sword, his voice, have left their puissant mark on almost every crest, in almost every glen. Above Gavarnie, amidst the eternal snow, gapes the slashed fissure hewn by Durandal, his sword; ten miles off in a gorge you see the indents of the hoofs of Bayard on a rock which served as his half-way touching-point when he sprang in two flying bounds from the Breach to the Peak of the Chevalier near St. Sauveur. At the Pa.s.s of Roland, above Cambo, the rock remains split open where the hero stamped and claimed a pa.s.sage. The ponds of Vivier Lion, near Lourdes, were dug by the pressure of his foot and knee when Vaillantif, a charger which carried him in his last fight, but who was then unbroken, had the audacity to throw him. At St. Savin, where the monks had lodged him, he paid his bill by slaying the irreverent giants, Pa.s.samont and Alabaster, whose neighborhood, was unpleasant to the convent. And so on, all about. His tremendous figure is everywhere, all full of the superbest violence and of the most wondrous acrobatry. But it is at Roncesvalles that his great name is greatest. There, where he died, his memory lives in an unfading halo. In Spain, beneath the Peak of Altabiscar amongst the beech groves, on the 15th of August, 778, perished the astounding paladin. The _Song of Roland_ tells how he fell, not quite exactly but very amazingly; the story is so intensely interesting that the reader is carried away by it and finds himself for a moment almost able to believe it. It does not matter that the defeat is attributed to the Saracens, not one of whom was present, (the whole thing having been got up and carried out by the Basques alone;) that error was indispensable to the tale, and gives it much of its strange charm."

There is an excellent reason why the poem might fail in sharp historical accuracy; it was not formally composed until between three and four hundred years after the battle. The event itself happened in 778; the first known MS. was made, by a scribe, about 1150. All during the long interval, ballad-singers and minstrels had been extolling France and Roland; the love of the heroic was as strong as before Homer; the hero's name had grown: with his fame into t.i.tanic proportions; the actual author, (conjectured to have been one Turoldus or Theurolde, a monk,) had but to take the poetic material ready at his hand and fas.h.i.+on it into the epic. Time had dimmed and enlarged the details; the _Song of Roland_ deals in ma.s.s and ma.s.sive heroes; in this it is like a book from the Iliad.

It is not a long poem; there are only about 3,500 lines in all, but the Old French in which it is written makes it difficult reading, at least to one not a Frenchman. The briefest citation will show this:

"Carles li Reis, nostre Emperere magnes, Sela anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne; Tresqu'en la mer, cunquist la tere altaigne.

N'i ad castel ki devant lui remagnet."

("Charles le Roi, notre grand Empereur, Sept ans entiers est reste en Espagne; Jusqu' a la mer, il a conquis la haute terre.

Pas de chateau qui tienne devant lui."

--GAUTIER.)

However, it has been trans.m.u.ted into modern French, and latterly twice translated into English verse; and the English translations appear to have preserved remarkably both the power and sweetness of the original.

The poem centres almost wholly upon this deadly battle in the Pyrenees,--the last battle of Roland its hero. Charlemagne and the Franks had invaded Spain, and spent seven years warring with the Moors and conquering their cities. On their return, as the poem narrates it, the Moors, instigated by a traitor in Charlemagne's army, plotted an ambush in this pa.s.s of Roncesvalles. The army began its march. The main body defiled through in safety, and turned westward to await the rear-guard nearer the coast. But when that division, the flower of the Frankish forces,--commanded by Roland, his bosom friend Oliver, the warrior-archbishop Turpin, and the others of the twelve great paladins,--reached the pa.s.s, hostiles began to appear,--in front, above, behind. More and more they thickened around it,--fierce Basques or swarthy Moslems, "a hundred thousand heathen men;" and the three leaders soon realized their betrayal. Oliver exclaimed:

"'Ganelon[9] wrought this perfidy!

It was he who doomed us to hold the rear.'

'Hush,' said Roland, 'O Olivier, No word be said of my step-sire here,'"

--a touch of magnanimity strange for that brutal age, yet only one of many in the poem. Roland rather exulted than shrank at the prospect of a battle, by whatever means brought about. Oliver was the cooler of the two, and he promptly urged Roland to sound his great horn, which might be heard for thirty leagues, and so summon Charlemagne to the rescue. He saw that the danger was real, for the odds were overwhelmingly against them. But Roland impetuously refused. Thrice, though not in cowardice, Oliver pleaded with him:

"'Roland, Roland, yet wind one blast!

Karl will hear ere the gorge be past, And the Franks return on their path full fast.'

'I will not sound on mine ivory horn!

It shall never be spoken of me in scorn That for heathen felons one blast I blew.

I may not dishonor my lineage true.

"'Death were better than fame laid low.

Our Emperor loveth a downright blow!'"

[9] Ganelon was the traitor and Roland's own step-father. The lines quoted are from the late version by JOHN O'HAGAN, outlined in an article in the _Edinburgh Review_ to whose appreciative commentary much indebtedness is acknowledged.

The Moors at last swarmed to the attack. They were no cravens, the Moors; the fight grew rapidly desperate. The Franks performed wonders; they tingled with the Archbishop's glorious a.s.soilment:

"In G.o.d's high name the host he blest, And for penance he gave them--to smite their best!"

The twelve paladins slew twelve renowned Paynims; the mailed phalanx hewed its way into the infidels, laying them low by thousands. But thousands more were behind,--the reserve was inexhaustible; the "hundred thousand" were cut to pieces, when the Moorish king, hastily summoned, came up with a fresh army of myriads more. It was too much; little by little the Franks were beaten down, not back, and melted unyielding away. The peers fell one by one, upon heaps of the Moslem dead; the day wore on; of the twenty thousand Frankish warriors, but sixty men at length remained. Too late Roland would wind his horn; it was Oliver's turn to disdain the now useless expedient. Roland sounded nevertheless:

"The mountain peaks soared high around; Thirty leagues was borne the sound.

Karl hath heard it and all his band; 'Our men have battle,' he said, 'on hand!'

Ganelon rose in front and cried; 'If another spake, I would say he lied!'"

Again the desperate sound was faintly heard:

"'It is Roland's horn,' said the Emperor, 'And save in battle he had not blown!'

'Battle,' said Ganelon, 'is there none.

Old you have grown,--all white and h.o.a.r!

"'He would sound all day for a single hare.'"

The third time, Roland blew; his nostrils and mouth are filled with blood, his temples crack with the stress: