 | LOCAL TRADITIONS. The Alhambra |  |
LOCAL TRADITIONS.
The common people of Spain have an oriental
passion for story-telling and are fond of the marvellous.
They will gather round the doors of
their cottages in summer evenings, or in the
great cavernous chimney corners of their ventas
in the winter, and listen with insatiable delight
to miraculous legends of saints, perilous adventures
of travellers, and daring exploits of robbers
and contrabandistas. The wild and solitary nature
of a great part of Spain; the imperfect state
of knowledge; the scantiness of general topics
of conversation, and the romantic, adventurous
life that every one leads in a land where travelling
is yet in its primitive state, all contribute
to cherish this love of oral narration, and to produce
a strong expression of the extravagant and
prevalent or popular than that of treasures buried
by the Moors. It pervades the whole country.
In traversing the wild Sierras, the scenes of ancient
prey and exploit, you cannot see a Moorish
atalaya or watch-tower perched among the cliffs,
or beetling above its rock-built village, but your
muleteer, on being closely questioned, will suspend
the smoking of his cigarillo to tell some tale
of Moslem gold buried beneath its foundations;
nor is there a ruined alcazar in a city, but has
its golden tradition, handed down, from generation
to generation, among the poor people of the
neighbourhood.
These, like most popular fictions, have had
some groundwork in fact. During the wars
between Moor and Christian, which distracted
the country for centuries, towns and castles were
liable frequently and suddenly to change owners;
and the inhabitants, during sieges and assaults,
were fain to bury their money and jewels in the
earth, or hide them in vaults and wells, as is often
done at the present day in the despotic and belligerent
countries of the East. At the time of
the expulsion of the Moors, also, many of them
concealed their most precious effects, hoping that
would be enabled to return and retrieve their
treasures at some future day. It is certain that,
from time to time, hoards of gold and silver coin
have been accidentally digged up, after a lapse of
centuries, from among the ruins of Moorish fortresses
and habitations, and it requires but a few
facts of the kind to give birth to a thousand
fictions.
The stories thus originating have generally
something of an oriental tinge, and are marked
with that mixture of the Arabic and Gothic
which seems to me to characterize every thing in
Spain; and especially in its southern provinces.
The hidden wealth is always laid under magic
spell, and secured by charm and talisman. Sometimes
it is guarded by uncouth monsters, or fiery
dragons; sometimes by enchanted Moors, who
sit by it in armour, with drawn swords, but motionless
as statues, maintaining a sleepless watch
for ages.
The Alhambra, of course, from the peculiar
circumstances of its history, is a strong hold for
popular fictions of the kind, and curious reliques,
dug up from time to time, have contributed to
strengthen them. At one time, an earthen vessel
of a cock, which, according to the opinion
of shrewd inspectors, must have been buried
alive. At another time, a vessel was digged up,
containing a great scarabæus, or beetle, of baked
clay, covered with Arabic inscriptions, which
was pronounced a prodigious amulet of occult virtues.
In this way the wits of the ragged brood
who inhabit the Alhambra have been set wool
gathering, until there is not a hall, or tower, or
vault, of the old fortress that has not been made
the scene of some marvellous tradition.
I have already given brief notices of some related
to me by the authentic Mateo Ximenes,
and now subjoin one wrought out from various
particulars gathered among the gossips of the
fortress.
| LOCAL TRADITIONS. The Alhambra | |