the feast of santiago in galicia 1956

The Feast of Santiago in Galicia 1956Author(s): Violet AlfordSource: Folklore, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Dec., 1957), pp. 489-495Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1258208 .

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Collectanea 489

THE FEAST OF SANTIAGO IN GALICIA 1956 I

THE account of Santiago's Day in Compostella (Folk-Lore, June 1957) was written after a visit there in 1954. My own observations in 1956 show some differences and may be useful as complementary to those of Miss Ruth Partington. They also go beyond Compostella itself.

The Eve of St James, 24th July, was ushered in as described, with aubades of Galician airs played by the gaiteros or bagpipers who are paid by the town. Galician costume and bagpipes cost a great deal now and in the villages these bands are unfortunately disappearing, so the town of Santiago is to be complimented on its regional spirit. At midday the town giants appeared as two years before, the Coca dressed as " a Spanish Tourist ". This favourite giant, smaller than the others, changes his costume to keep up to date. Some years previously he had appeared as Sir Winston Churchill. This word, Coca, I am told, should always be in the feminine form and denotes something frightening.' For instance the Corpus Christi dragon at Redondela and another at Mongao on the Minho river are both Cocas, the latter aspiring to Santa Coca in spite of its ob- scenities exchanged with the crowds. Both are frightening, pretending to eat the little boys tossed to them. The Coca has a wife of his own size and the taller giants consist of a pair of American Indians, very popular in memory of the South American conquests, a pair of Moors, equally popular in memory of the Reconquista and a pair representing unspecified " foreign peoples " so I was told. They processed with their own bag- piper and drummer, but such was the tumult of bombas exploding and the Spanish crowds, that no single note of their giants' tunes came to my ears. The tall giants were made to dance quadrille-like figures in the Plaza de la Quintana before going into the streets. The Cabezudos, dwarfs with enormous heads, all boys in spite of some girls' frocks, make a little unofficial show of their own; they are on a distinctly lower grade than the giants. They take a route through the streets of their own, have their own musician and collect money (for themselves).

The Santiago giants are first mentioned in archives in I66o, late indeed for the giant breed. Barcelona mentions a giant in 1320, Antwerp in 1338, while our own Gog and Magog were first named in 1322 and seen in Guildhall in 1413.2 I do not think it is necessary to seek a different origin for Galician giants from that of others in Spain or elsewhere. I have always seen Moors in Spain, Goliath is a constant figure in the Lowlands and celebrities such as Ferdinand and Isabella naturally appear. These characters were easily received by the Church and given a place in the ecclesiastical processions of the New Feast, Corpus Christi, which was only established in the Church Calendar in 1264. Others, lacking Christian or Biblical background were not admitted-nevertheless ancient ritual

1 Information from the Museum of Pontevedra. 2 Fairholt, Gog and Magog, London, 1859.



490 Collectanea creatures such as Fools, Dragons, Hobby-horses and so forth managed to insinuate themselves into the New Feast, when Interludes were allowed to amuse and instruct the unlettered people. If any country can supply eventually trace of descendence from folk heroes, gigantic because semi- divine, it may well be England. In our country alone do we see them on our hillsides, while in our folk tales and legends giants are more frequent and better remembered than anywhere else known to me it seems.3

I saw no games of skill in the Cathedral Square as were seen in 1954. It would be interesting to know what they were and if there were regional forms of known games.

One of the most remarkable things to be seen on the Feast Day is the swinging of the Botafumeira, the immense and ancient censer. It was used to fumigate the Cathedral after the vigil of thousands of pilgrims. It stands about six feet high and is of medieval silver work. The swinging takes place directly after the procession in the Cathedral itself. It was manipulated by eight men in scarlet cassocks, who pull on the ropes of the pulley and wheel far up in the roof. The gleaming censer swings out further and further, higher and higher, until the length of its trajectory is the length of the cross transepts and its height not far short of the vaulting. Hundreds of townspeople who have not attended Mass, rush in just before the fumigation begins to watch anxiously, for if the censer swings well and evenly and attains the full length, it brings luck to people and crops.

- The Scoppio del Carro outside the Duomo in Florence is a well-known analogue, the setting alight of the car by the flying dove having the same significance and the same acclamation. Santiago Cathedral was filled with sighs and " Oh's " of uncertainty changing to " Ah's " of relief and admiration, when the swing got into its stride, belching out volumes of incense smoke. When the Botafumeira came to earth again and the long Mass was over, into the Cathedral came the Coca and his wife. I had always understood that the clergy hurriedly left before the entry so as not to appear to approve. In 1956 every stall in the Choir remained occupied and amongst the clergy were two Cardinals and, I believe, a Papal Legate. Popular tradition has once again made its impact on the Church in southern European countries and I note in Provence, the Pyrenees and Spain a new interest awaking in the clergy who long have disapproved of many folk doings. The two giants boldly entered the Choir to dance there separately and together, neatly and soberly, before the Hierarchy, the Saint and the High Altar.

Tourists rather than pilgrims were noticeable on the Feast Day, but the following day a very large Spanish pilgrimage arrived and filled the streets leading to the Cathedral. They were led by their Parish Priests and banner-bearers and had come by train. It is not the pilgrims who imitate the dress of the Saint as the writer of the 1954 observations thinks. It is the Saint who frequently is depicted in the dress of his own pilgrims, scallop shell and staff, satchel (the scrip) and " sandal-shoon ". One

3 See Folk-Lore, March 1957, for my account of the First Conference on Pro- cessional Giants held at Mons, Belgium, May 1956. This Conference is but the beginning of the study.



Collectanea 491

particular little figure of Santiago, Peregrino,4 comes into my mind. He is carved in alabaster and was bequeathed by the late Dr Hildburgh, sometime President of this Society, to the Victoria and Albert Museum. He wears cockle shells in place of the scallop shell. This is thought to be the English sculptor's doing as cockle shells were more familiar to him. The pilgrims I saw waiting in long and patient rows were in ordinary, modern dress but I once saw a lonely pilgrim on the road, toiling under the weight of a large cross on his shoulders, garbed in poverty-stricken pilgrims' dress.

The first authenticated pilgrimage to Compostella was in A.D. 849, nearly 150 years before the alarming raid of the Moors into Galicia. In spite of the fearful destruction it was no conquest for they did not remain on those stormy Atlantic coasts, but they compelled Christian captives to carry the Santiago bells on their backs to C6rdoba. Over two hundred years later, in the true spirit of the Reconquest, the Christian conquerors forced Moorish captives to carry them back to Santiago.

II. A PILGRIM'S TALE

One of the churches in Santiago, decayed in architecture but rich in associations is Santo Domingo de la Calzada. Santo Domingo of the Paved Way was an anchorite (d. 0og9)5 who lived in the Rioja district, just south of the Ebro, through which came down a track, for there was no road, over the Roncevalles pass of the Pyrenees to Santiago. Santo Domingo was filled with pity for the toiling pilgrims and devoted his life to helping them. He made a paved way, the Calzada, which ran for many miles and became a secondary road to Santiago. He made a bridge and a hospice and walked at night through the woods ringing a bell, so that lost pilgrims might find him. Today the Town Crier of Santo Domingo de la Calzada goes out at dawn and sunset every day drumming in memory of la Vuelta del Santo. The Saint's feast is on I2th May; on the Vigil is el Almuerzo del Santo, the Saint's Lunch. This is lamb ragout and the Saint's Loaves, carried on the heads of girls from the new hospice to the old, la Casa del Santo; twenty-four of them in white, veils covering them to their waists, the food baskets draped in white satin, a china statue of the Saint borne between the files. That day and the next any- one who presents himself at the Casa can lunch-at 4.30 p.m.-off these foods, with an onion and a glass of wine. In 1950 we did not arrive till 12th May itself so changes may have crept in although this is what I read and was told. Indeed the whole organization was then rapidly running downhill. The great church, which has Cathedral status, contains two silver altars and the immense silver reliquary, all beautifully polished and made from some of the first silver to reach Spain from the Nuevo Mundo. In a cage on the west wall live two cocks. They play a part in the pilgrim's

4*The Virgen Peregrina at Pontevedra descended from her place, went to Santiago on pilgrimage and returned to her church in Pontevedra. She wore pilgrim's garb for this expedition and still wears it.

'Analecta Bollandiana.



492 Collectanea

tale, crow loudly during Mass and are constantly associated with the Saint. A large wheel so over-decorated that one wonders what it may be, is kept below the cage. This has a r61e in another tale. After Festal Mass the Procession comes forth. In their places come the dancing boys led by the Fool, Cachiburrio, carrying an oxtail on a stick. He wears a little skirt in the manner of ritual dancing men, the boys' tunics form little skirts above their baggy breeches and shawls decorate their shoulders. They use castanets and everything about them was then old, darned and crumpled. The costume of the Fool on the contrary was clean and well- ironed. Their music consisted of two strident gaitas-in that region these are not bagpipes-and a drum. A good many children followed dressed as pilgrims, while some babies in arms wore capes sewn all over with scallop shells. Under the chdsse carrying the reliquary crept two people, bent double in a vow to the Saint. Clergy and Military brought up the rear.

One supposes these dancers in decay have a long inheritance, and that the young pilgrim to whose story we now come may perhaps have seen them-but in better shape.

He arrived at Santo Domingo's town on his way to Santiago with his parents and no doubt rested at the Hospice. When setting off again the son found in his pilgrim's bag a cup. We now recognize a medieval appli- cation of the story of Joseph and Potipher's wife. It had been put there by a maid servant whose advances he had refused. He was however sentenced to be hanged for the theft, and his unhappy parents went on their way leaving their son on the gibbet. But all the time they were toiling to and back from Santiago, St James or Santo Domingo (according to the devotion of the recounter) held up the young man on the palm of his hand so that he did not hang. When the overjoyed parents took the astonishing tale to the Judge it was naturally disbelieved, until the cock in the dish before him crowed. The cocks in the cage in the Cathedral are descendents of that miraculous bird. The servant who was the cause of it all was hanged in place of the young man and the unbelieving Judges- they become two or three at this point-were condemned to wear rope round their necks and to entertain a pilgrim free of charge every day.

The loaves of the Saint are said to be in the shape of a hanged man (I did not see any)6 and sometime ago a small gibbet, with the figure of a hanged man on it, was carried in the procession of the Saint's Lunch. This tale formed part of a Mystery played by the Confraternity of St James at Compostella and is still alive in the form of a Basque Pastorale, written down safely though the last performance was in 1911, at Barcus in Soule. The young pilgrim is named Hugonel (or Dominique) and the servant Pascaline. So their French origins are assured in the play.7 A French pilgrim's song, perhaps taking shape at the Santo Domingo

I The bakers' shops were full of Tortas del Santo, thin pastries about six niches square.

' Some of this information came from Santo Domingo itself on the feast day, some from the Mus6e Basque de Bayonne. Dr Walter Starkie in his The Road to Santiago gives another variant.



Collectanea 493 Hospice, as the Chanson de Roland is thought to have come to birth in the Hospice at Roncesvalles, shows the tale already fixed, if with a variant, in the popular mind:

Arriv6s . St Dominique Le coq chanta; Nous l'6ntendimes dans l'Eglise, Nous 6tonna; On nous dit que le phlerin Par un miracle A ce signe resuscita, Ce n'est pas une fable.

Having sung this along the paved road three hundred miles away-as the crow flies but more likely five hundred as pilgrims walks--one can picture the company coming through the " French " gate to the Church of Santo Domingo de la Calzada to give thanks to the lesser Saint in the city of Santiago de Compostella.

III. THE FEAST AT CARRIL

On the afternoon of St James' Day we went to Carril, a fishing village on the Ria de Arosa, one of the beautiful inlets of Galicia, to witness and film the Sword dance belonging to the Confraternity of fishermen there. The dancers come out late in the afternoon, after Vespers, accompanied by the village giants, one of which is a policeman, and the village bagpipers and drummers. Fifteen men made up the team, in white shirts and trousers, scarves and sashes round their waists but no ritual head- gear. The Captain in former days wore a red b6ret and was called Gorra Mora, the Moor's Cap. He now wears an old blue beret without decoration. To our astonishment only the first three dancers carried swords. Out from the church swayed Santiago Matamoros on his white charger, borne by fishermen of the Gremio or Confraternity, in clean white trousers and ordinary, dark jackets. Out came the Pirroco, the village municipality and the congregation. The Captain then laid the three swords on the ground, their points towards him and stepped on each in turn. He politely motioned the Priest forward, who repeated the steps on each sword. The dancers standing in rows of three, moved forward to step carefully between the swords, not on them. They then began their dance step, which takes them from side to side of the road and never varies throughout the procession. We now saw that the swordless men were linked by red cord. This was fastened to metal rings through which they slipped their left arms, playing castanets with their right hands. The Captain picked up the points of the three swords, their bearers fol-

8 We need not imagine a pilgrimage as all toil and saintly devotion. There was plenty of enjoyment, drinking and fighting en route. They were often accompanied by musicians and sang as they walked. Pilgrims to Our Lady of Walsing- ham are described " with hooked staves and their wenches after ". The ballad called Walsingham is concerned with the gallantries of a " jolly palmer ".



494 Collectanea

lowing closely behind him, and led off down the slope from the church on to the quay. From time to time he turned back, to pass underneath the chdsse on which the statue was carried. Each row of dancers, with bent heads, passed likewise tightly bunched together and barely finding room. From time to time also the Captain dropped the sword points whereupon the three bearers stabbed him, a point on either side the collar bones, the third at the back of his neck. They must have pressed hard to keep the points in position, for the movement from side to side and forward down the street went on all the time.

I have been told since that the dancers represent captive Moors bound with cord for chains, that they never had swords and that the Carril dance is the most perfectly preserved of the region. I find it impossible to accept this as a true statement though put to me by a member of the Institute for Galician Studies. It seems to me founded on insufficient acquaintance with other sword dances, both in Spain and all over Europe. I am quite ready to believe there once existed a Morisca at Carril with a band of " Moors " and another of Christians, or that there were some Moorish characters attached to the sword dance. This has happened over and over again, as in Arag6n, where at Sena a General and half the dancers are Moors, at Ldrida9 where a Morisca with the Sword dance takes place. Numberless other Sword dances show one or more Moorish characters while in Piedmont we see Sword dancers wearing turbans, in Provence fighting Saracens. In fact all through the last centuries of the Spanish Reconquest the Moorish " motif " fastened like a leech upon the far more ancient Sword dance, and unfortunately has been accepted ever since by travellers and the few writers who mention a Sword dance as its chief ingredient. Those who thus accept a part as the whole also claim the Sword dance of Europe as " the Pyrrhic ", and most strangely see a war dance in its never-breaking chain of swords. The Carril Captain's name, Gorra Mora, looks like the last remnant of a Moor's costume, and it is possible that the interpretation of the cords may be a folk memory of Moors-perhaps those Moorish captives who brought back the Santiago bells from Andalucia. But from scores of analogies and from years of comparative studies it seems certain that all the dancers had swords once upon a time. We may infer that the tradition of a chain linking them together remaining in their minds, they did their best with cords.10 Swords do get lost. Not so long ago Ampleforth, Yorkshire, lost its swords, and found some of them in use in a garden; note also the many teams now using wooden swords, lathes or staves for lack of metal swords. The prodding of the Carril Captain about the neck is meaningless unless it be the relics of the usual decapitation of the Leader. The Baccubert Sword dance of Dauphin6 possesses a figure called La Lkve in which the

O The earliest Morisca known was a battle-dance between Christians and Moors at the betrothal of Petronella of Aragon to Ramon Berenguer of Barcelona.

L.rida had only been freed one year. 10 Many continue to call themselves Sword dancers whatever the connecting link

is made of, as at Lesaca, Navarre, Flamborough, Yorkshire, Huesca, Aragon, by the Perth Glove-makers and Germany Coopers.



Collectanea 495 swords in the well-known " lock " are laid round his neck, but no lifting of the Leader now occurs. Instead of the Carril dance living up to its perfection of preservation it appears to me in a decaying condition with nearby dances in a better state. Nevertheless it was a surprise and a pleasant one, to find it alive and in action on the correct day.

Other Sword dances with peculiar folklore interest sorely need record- ing by film or photographs. These are : Bayona on the opening of the Ria de Vigo. The first reference to this is in 1493 and it is, to the best of my belief still performed, Corpus Christi Day is the probable date. Here are seen the Penlas, those remarkable pairs of little girls and stout fish- wives, the first dancing steps on the shoulders of the second. Each girl, beautifully dressed by the Bakers' Fraternity, carries a silver whistle and a small sword. This strange couple perform outside the ring of Sword dancers, each little girl blowing her whistle and throwing flowers in the procession.

Redondela, far up the same Ria inland, performs its Sword dance on Whitmonday and on Corpus Christi Day. Here are Penlas behaving in the same way, outside the ring of the Sword dance. This dance also is mentioned in 1493.

Marin, a couple of miles from Pontevedra on the coast, possesses a Sword dance without Penlas. In 1956 it was said to be alive.

Hio, on the shore of the Ria de Pontevedra opposite the town, dresses its dancers as pilgrims who use staves instead of swords. They go out on the Feast of St Roque. This information was given in the present tense in 1956.

A Sword dance is performed right away on Finisterre for el Cristo de Finisterre at Easter and on St Michael's Day, 29th September. It is said to be " not ancient but introduced before 1930 ".

Finally Corcubi6n, Cee and Corufia possess Sword dances about which no details could be obtained.

I give this information hoping folklorists will be tempted to take a holiday on that splendid coast, provided with cin6 camera or just a plain kodak before these ancient things fade out and are lost to us for ever.

VIOLET ALFORD

MODERN SWABIAN FOLK-BELIEFS ABOUT WITCHES

WHILE on holiday in South Germany I was shown a recent issue of the Catholic journal Hoffnung (Leutesdorf, Rhein.) which deplored two recent outbursts of witch-hysteria in North Germany and the Rhineland. In both cases old folk-beliefs had been revived by idle talk and people supposed to be witches had been subjected to ostracism and even stone- throwing by their village neighbours.

This led me to enquire among friends with whom I was staying for any information they had about local beliefs regarding witchcraft. I do not give the names of villages because one cannot feel certain that the mention of the subject might not cause a good deal of pain to innocent



the feast of santiago in galicia 1956

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