 | A
RAMBLE AMONG THE HILLS. The Alhambra |  |
A
RAMBLE AMONG THE HILLS.
I frequently amuse myself towards the close
of the day, when the heat has subsided, with taking
long rambles about the neighbouring hills and the
deep umbrageous valleys, accompanied by my historiographer
Squire Mateo, to whose passion for
gossiping, I, on such occasions, give the most unbounded
license; and there is scarce a rock or ruin,
or broken fountain, or lonely glen, about which he
has not some marvellous story; or, above all, some
golden legend; for never was poor devil so munificent
in dispensing hidden treasures.
A few evenings since we took a long stroll of the
kind, in which Mateo was more than usually communicative.
It was towards sunset that we sallied
forth from the great Gate of Justice, and ascending
of fig and pomegranate trees at the foot of a huge
ruined tower, called the Tower of the Seven Vaults,
(de los siete suelos.) Here, pointing to a low arch-way
at the foundation of the tower, he informed
me, in an under tone, was the lurking-place of a
monstrous sprite or hobgoblin called the Belludo,
which had infested the tower ever since the time
of the Moors; guarding, it is supposed, the treasures
of a Moorish king. Sometimes it issues forth
in the dead of the night, and scours the avenues
of the Alhambra and the streets of Granada in the
shape of a headless horse, pursued by six dogs, with
terrific yells and howlings.
“But have you ever met with it yourself, Mateo,
in any of your rambles?”
“No, señor; but my grandfather, the tailor,
knew several persons who had seen it; for it went
about much more in his time than at present:
sometimes in one shape, sometimes in another.
Every body in Granada has heard of the Belludo,
for the old women and nurses frighten the children
with it when they cry. Some say it is the spirit
of a cruel Moorish king, who killed his six sons,
and buried them in these vaults, and that they
hunt him at nights in revenge.”
Mateo went on to tell many particulars about
this redoubtable hobgoblin, which has, in fact, been
time out of mind a favourite theme of nursery tale
and popular tradition in Granada, and is mentioned
in some of the antiquated guide books. When he
had finished, we passed on, skirting the fruitful orchards
of the Generaliffe; among the trees of which
two or three nightingales were pouring forth a
rich strain of melody. Behind these orchards we
passed a number of Moorish tanks, with a door cut
into the rocky bosom of the hill, but closed up.
These tanks Mateo informed me were favourite
bathing-places of himself and his comrades in boyhood,
until frightened away by a story of a hideous
Moor, who used to issue forth from the door in the
rock to entrap unwary bathers.
Leaving these haunted tanks behind us, we
pursued our ramble up a solitary mule-path that
wound among the hills, and soon found ourselves
amidst wild and melancholy mountains, destitute
of trees, and here and there tinted with scanty
verdure. Every thing within sight was severe and
sterile, and it was scarcely possible to realize the
idea that but a short distance behind us was the
Generaliffe, with its blooming orchards and terraced
gardens, and that we were in the vicinity of
But such is the nature of Spain—wild and
stern the moment it escapes from cultivation, the
desert and the garden are ever side by side.
The narrow defile up which we were passing is
called, according to Mateo, el Barranco de la Tinaja,
or the ravine of the jar.
“And why so, Mateo?” inquired I.
“Because, señor, a jar full of Moorish gold was
found here in old times.” The brain of poor Mateo
is continually running upon these golden legends.
“But what is the meaning of the cross I see yonder
upon a heap of stones in that narrow part of
the ravine?”
“Oh! that's nothing—a muleteer was murdered
there some years since.”
“So then, Mateo, you have robbers and murderers
even at the gates of the Alhambra.”
Not at present, señor—that was formerly, when
there used to be many loose fellows about the fortress;
but they've all been weeded out. Not but that
the gipsies who live in caves in the hill-sides just
out of the fortress, are, many of them, fit for any
thing; but we have had no murder about here for
a long time past. The man who murdered the
muleteer was hanged in the fortress.”
Our path continued up the barranco, with a
bold, rugged, height to our left, called the Silla del
Moro, or chair of the Moor; from a tradition that
the unfortunate Boabdil fled thither during a popular
insurrection, and remained all day seated on
the rocky summit, looking mournfully down upon
his factious city.
We at length arrived on the highest part of the
promontory above Granada, called the Mountain
of the Sun. The evening was approaching; the
setting sun just gilded the loftiest heights. Here
and there a solitary shepherd might be descried
driving his flock down the declivities to be folded
for the night, or a muleteer and his lagging animals
threading some mountain path, to arrive at
the city gates before nightfall.
Presently the deep tones of the cathedral bell
came swelling up the defiles, proclaiming the hour
of Oracion, or prayer. The note was responded to
from the belfry of every church, and from the
sweet bells of the convents among the mountains.
The shepherd paused on the fold of the hill, the
muleteer in the midst of the road; each took off his
hat, and remained motionless for a time, murmuring
his evening prayer. There is always something
solemn and pleasing in this custom; by which,
the land, recites, at the same moment, a tribute
of thanks to God for the mercies of the day.
It diffuses a transient sanctity over the land, and
the sight of the sun sinking in all his glory, adds
not a little to the solemnity of the scene. In the
present instance, the effect was heightened by the
wild and lonely nature of the place. We were
on the naked and broken summit of the haunted
Mountain of the Sun, where ruined tanks and cisterns,
and the mouldering foundations of extensive
buildings spoke of former populousness, but where
all was now silent and desolate.
As we were wandering among these traces of
old times, Mateo pointed out to me a circular pit,
that seemed to penetrate deep into the bosom of
the mountain. It was evidently a deep well, dug
by the indefatigable Moors, to obtain their favourite
element in its greatest purity. Mateo, however,
had a different story, and much more to his humour.
This was, according to tradition, an entrance
to the subterranean caverns of the mountain,
in which Boabdil and his court lay bound in
magic spell; and from whence they sallied forth at
night, at allotted times, to revisit their ancient
abodes.
The deepening twilight, which in this climate is
of such short duration, admonished us to leave this
haunted ground. As we descended the mountain
defiles, there was no longer herdsman or muleteer
to be seen, nor any thing to be heard but our own
foot-steps and the lonely chirping of the cricket.
The shadows of the valleys grew deeper and deeper,
until all was dark around us. The lofty summit
of the Sierra Nevada alone retained a lingering
gleam of day-light, its snowy peaks glaring against
the dark blue firmament; and seeming close to us,
from the extreme purity of the atmosphere.
“How near the Sierra looks this evening!” said
Mateo, “it seems as if you could touch it with your
hand, and yet it is many long leagues off.” While
he was speaking a star appeared over the snowy
summit of the mountain, the only one yet visible
in the heavens, and so pure, so large, so bright
and beautiful as to call forth ejaculations of delight
from honest Mateo.
“Que lucero hermoso!—que claro y limpio es!
—no pueda ser lucero mas brillante!”—
(What a beautiful star! how clear and lucid!—
no star could be more brilliant!)
I have often remarked this sensibility of the
common people of Spain to the charms of natural
of a flower—the crystal purity of a fountain,
will inspire them with a kind of poetical delight—and
then what euphonous words their magnificent
language affords, with which to give utterance
to their transports!
“But what lights are those, Mateo, which I see
twinkling along the Sierra Nevada, just below the
snowy region, and which might be taken for stars,
only that they are ruddy and against the dark side
of the mountain?”
“Those, Señor, are fires made by the men who
gather snow and ice for the supply of Granada.
They go up every afternoon with mules and asses,
and take turns, some to rest and warm themselves
by the fires, while others fill their panniers with
ice. They then set off down the mountain, so as
to reach the gates of Granada before sun-rise.
That Sierra Nevada, Señor, is a lump of ice in
the middle of Andalusia, to keep it all cool in
summer.”
It was now completely dark; we were passing
through the barranco where stood the cross of the
murdered muleteer, when I beheld a number of
lights moving at a distance and apparently advancing
up the ravine. On nearer approach they
figures arrayed in black; it would have been a
procession dreary enough at any time, but was peculiarly
so, in this wild and solitary place.
Mateo drew near and told me in a low voice,
that it was a funeral train bearing a corpse to the
burying ground among the hills.
As the procession passed by, the lugubrious light
of the torches, falling on the rugged features and
funereal weeds of the attendants, had the most
fantastic effect, but was perfectly ghastly as it revealed
the countenance of the corpse, which, according
to Spanish custom, was borne uncovered
on an open bier. I remained for some time gazing
after the dreary train as it wound up the dark defile
of the mountain. It put me in mind of the
old story of a procession of demons, bearing the
body of a sinner up the crater of Stromboli.
“Ah, Señor, cried Mateo, I could tell you a story
of a procession once seen among these mountains—
but then you would laugh at me, and say it was
one of the legacies of my grandfather the tailor.”
“By no means, Mateo. There is nothing I relish
more than a marvellous tale.”
“Well, Señor, it is about one of those very men
we have been talking of, who gather snow on the
many years since, in my grandfather's time, there
was an old fellow, Tio Nicolo by name, who had
filled the panniers of his mules with snow and ice,
and was returning down the mountain. Being
very drowsy, he mounted upon the mule, and soon
falling asleep, went with his head nodding and
bobbing about from side to side, while his sure-footed
old mule stepped along the edge of precipices,
and down steep and broken barrancos just
as safe and steady as if it had been on plain ground.
At length Tio Nicolo awoke, and gazed about him,
and rubbed his eyes—and in good truth he had
reason—the moon shone almost as bright as day,
and he saw the city below him, as plain as your
hand, and shining with its white buildings like a
silver platter in the moonshine; but lord! Señor!—
it was nothing like the city he left a few hours before.
Instead of the cathedral with its great dome
and turrets, and the churches with their spires, and
the convents with their pinnacles all surmounted
with the blessed cross, he saw nothing but Moorish
mosques, and minarets, and cupolas, all topped off
with glittering crescents, such as you see on the
Barbary flags. Well, Señor, as you may suppose,
Tio Nicolo was mightily puzzled at all this, but
army came marching up the mountain; winding
along the ravines, sometimes in the moonshine,
sometimes in the shade. As it drew nigh, he saw
that there were horse and foot, all in Moorish armour.
Tio Nicolo tried to scramble out of their
way, but his old mule stood stock still and refused
to budge, trembling at the same time like a leaf—
for dumb beasts, Señor, are just as much frightened
at such things as human beings. Well, Señor, the
hobgoblin army came marching by; there were
men that seemed to blow trumpets, and others to
beat drums and strike cymbals, yet never a sound
did they make; they all moved on without the
least noise, just as I have seen painted armies move
across the stage in the theatre of Granada, and all
looked as pale as death. At last in the rear of the
army, between two black Moorish horsemen, rode
the grand inquisitor of Granada, on a mule as white
as snow. Tio Nicolo wondered to see him in such
company; for the inquisitor was famous for his hatred
of Moors, and indeed, of all kinds of infidels,
Jews and heretics, and used to hunt them out with
fire and scourge—however, Tio Nicolo felt himself
safe, now that there was a priest of such sanctity
at hand. So, making the sign of the cross, he
received a blow that sent him and his old mule
over the edge of a steep bank, down which they
rolled, head over heels, to the bottom. Tio Nicolo
did not come to his senses until long after sun-rise,
when he found himself at the bottom of a deep
ravine, his mule grazing beside him, and his panniers
of snow completely melted. He crawled
back to Granada sorely bruised and battered, and
was glad to find the city looking as usual, with
Christian churches and crosses. When he told
the story of his night's adventure every one laughed
at him: some said he had dreamt it all, as he dozed
on his mule, others thought it all a fabrication of
his own. But what was strange, Señor, and made
people afterwards think more seriously of the matter,
was, that the grand inquisitor died within the
year. I have often heard my grandfather, the
tailor, say that there was more meant by that hobgoblin
army bearing off the resemblance of the
priest, than folks dared to surmise.”
“Then you would insinuate, friend Mateo, that
there is a kind of Moorish limbo, or purgatory, in
the bowels of these mountains; to which the padre
inquisitor was borne off.”
“God forbid—Señor!—I know nothing of the
grandfather.”
By the time Mateo had finished the tale which
I have more succinctly related, and which was interlarded
with many comments, and spun out with
minute details, we reached the gate of the Alhambra.
| A
RAMBLE AMONG THE HILLS. The Alhambra | |