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Iquest;quién? 9 page

 

11, 9.rosco:pretzel: the more usual form isrosca.

 

11, 19.personas de campanillas. The usual positive form of the expressionis "personas de muchas campanillas."

 

11, 23 sqq.Vuestra Merced, hereYour Honor, is the courteous form ofaddress to one who has no special title, or whose title is unknown to the speaker; Vuestra Señoría, here Your Worship: these two titles in this book belong exclusively to the laity. Vuestra Reverencia, Your Reverence, is addressed indiscriminately to the more distinguished clergy; Vuestra Ilustrísima,Your Lordship, belongs specially to bishops;Vuestra Paternidadwas originally the address 137 of the humbler members ofreligious orders to their priors and abbots and other superiors. Translate,

 

Your Reverence.

 

11, 26.subsidio, alcabala, frutos-civiles.Three of the very numerous taxesexacted in Spain at the time: cf. note to 6, 28.—The subsidio was a tax on commerce or manufactures, here on the output of the mill; the alcabala was a tax on sales, fixed at the time of the story at 14 per cent. of the amount involved; the frutos-civiles were the tax levied on income from real estate, royal grants, and privileges of jurisdiction.


11, 28 sqq.una poca hoja, una poca leña, una poca madera: this use ofpoco is not literary. The meaning is perfectly clear.

 

13, 8.Ser Supremo, theSupreme Being, the usual denomination of God inthe philosophic writing of the time of the French Revolution.

 

Jovellanos.Gaspar Melchior de Jovellanos or Jove-Llanos, was born in1744, and died in 1811. He has been called the most eminent Spaniard of his time; was distinguished as a writer in economics and politics, and on education; and as a poet. He took prominent part in public life, was twice exiled for his political views and his mode of expressing them; and was minister of Justice, 1797. For a good appreciation of his value in literature, see E. Mérimée, Etudes sur la Littérature Espagnole au XIXe Siècle— Jovellanos. Revue Hispanique, vol. I, 1894, pp. 34-67.

 

13, 10.la señá Frasquita.Señáis a popular corruption of the wordseñora,used as in the present case to qualify one rather above the level of the common, yet unable to claim the conventional doña of the gentlewoman. Compare the use of señor in the case of Juan López in Chapters XVII and XXIV, and the note on tío, 2, 16 above. Frasquita is one of several diminutives of Francisca (Paca, Paquita, Frascuela, Francisquita); so la señá Frasquita is about equivalent to "Mrs. Fanny" or "Mistress Fanny," the discounting quality of the señá being in English in the use of the given name. It may be suggested, however, that it is rarely profitable to force the translation of ordinary proper names.

 

13, 19.golilla,f., a diminutive ofgola,throat, is a high, stiff collar ofcardboard, covered with black silk, over or on which is worn a stiffstarched 138 ruff of white gauze or tulle. The golilla was a very characteristic part of the dress of Spanish officers of the civil government, and is, as here, used by metonymy, with change of gender, to stand for their persons. It is still to be seen in a very few ceremonial official costumes. A few hints of its place and significance may be found in A. Morel-Fatio, Etudes sur l'Espagne, III, Paris, 1904, pp. 229-278: "La golille et l'habit militaire."



 

14, 1. The Royal Academy of History was founded under Philip V in 1738. Ithas in its building in the Calle de León at Madrid a museum of antiquities and a valuable library. Since 1865 it has been in charge of the national monuments of Spain.


14, 2.Franciscanos: the Franciscans, Gray Friars, Minorite Friars, amendicant order of preaching friars founded by St. Francis of Assisi in 1210.

 

14, 14.Niobe, Queen of Thebes, it will be remembered, had seven sons andseven daughters.

 

14, 16.de las que.The force of the preposition goes with theque, althoughlas precedes; that is the present state of the matter; the construction in reality goes a little deeper, being equivalent to "de las (aquellas) de que hay"; i. e. one of those Roman matrons of which we still find, or a Roman matron, one of those of which, etc., the stress being on the characteristics, and their implied disappearance except in the Trastevere; not merely a Roman matron, whereof, etc.

 

14, 17.Trastévere(fromtrans Tiberim): the quarter of Rome lying on thenorth bank of the Tiber west and southwest of St. Peter's, at the foot of the Janiculum hill. It is of all the districts of Rome the one least invaded by the stranger, and has preserved more than other parts of the city a certain pure-blooded Roman individuality. It has a dialect of its own.

 

15, 8.congruahere is the temporal income that must be possessed bycandidates for holy orders. The amount varies, and is fixed by the synods of the respective dioceses.

 

15, 10.menores.The minor orders are those below the subdiaconate:ostiariatus, lectoratus, acolythatus; the major orders are subdiaconatus, diaconatus, presbyteratus. On the functions and privileges of each, see S. B. Smith, Compendium Juris Canonici, New York, etc., 1890. 139

 

15, 15.Don Ventura Caro, born about 1742, died 1808. CommandedSpanish army of the West Pyrenees in 1793-94. In 1801 became Captain General of Valencia, and did valuable service in restoring and maintaining order in the province. In 1808 he repulsed an attack of Marshal Moncey on the city of Valencia, forcing a French retreat.

 

Castillo Piñón, in French,Château Pignon, a strongly fortified position inthe French Pyrenees at the northern end of the valley of Roncesvaux. It was stormed by the Spaniards under Caro, June 6, 1793. See Jomini, Histoire Critique et militaire des guerres de la Révolution, Paris, 1819, etc., vol. III. pp. 331 sqq.


15, 18.Estella, town of Navarre, about 25 miles southwest of Pamplona.

 

16, 1.Goya.Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Spanish painter, the greatest namein Spanish art after Velázquez, Ribera, and Murillo. He was born near Saragossa in 1746, and died at Bordeaux in 1828. He is best known for his portraits, his cartoons of popular life and customs and of the events of the Peninsular war, and for his etchings. His work may be seen to advantage at the Prado and the Academy, in Madrid, and at the Escorial. Among his paintings at the Prado is a large portrait of the family of King Charles IV, including the king himself and Queen Maria Louisa, and illustrating admirably the costume of the time—and, it may be said, writing clear in the faces the causes of the decay of Spain.

 

María Luisa. Maria Louisa Theresa, daughter of Philip of Bourbon, Duke ofParma, wife of King Charles IV of Spain, born 1754, married 1767, died 1819. She is notorious in history for her evil part in the downfall of Spain, and especially for her relations with Manuel Godoy, Prince of the Peace. See M. A. S. Hume, Modern Spain, New York, 1900; chapters 1-3.

 

16, 2.falda de medio paso, a very scant skirt, fashionable at about the timeof the story, and for some years later. The name came from the fact that the wearer, in dancing especially, was confined to the taking of a very short step—a half-step. Falda de un paso solo explains itself in view of the foregoing.

 

16, 14.Sábado de Gloria.Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, [p. 140]when music reappears in the Mass after its omission during Holy Week, and bells are rung at the singing of the Gloria in Excelsis, resumed after its suspension during Lent.

 

17, 1.Más feo que Piciois the most common Spanish colloquialism forextreme absence of personal beauty in men. The origin of the phrase I have not been able to find. There is a story of a cobbler of the name, who was more than ugly, and so lives; but the obvious resemblance of Picio to pez , pitch, and to the adjective píceo, suggest that the man was invented after the fact, and named from his wax. For other expressions of the same kind, see Ramón Caballero, Diccionario de modismos, frases y metáforas, Madrid, 1898-1900.

 

18, 20.Quevedo.Francisco Gómez de Quevedo Villegas, born 1580, died1645; one of the greatest names of Spanish Literature—essayist, satirist,


poet, wit, politician. His life and personality are not less interesting than his very varied literary work. Consult E. Mérimée, Essai sur la vie et les œuvres de Francisco de Quevedo, Paris, 1886.

 

19, 9.broma.For a similar use, recall Hamlet's speech: "a fellow of infinitejest," etc. (Act V, Scene I).

 

20, 4.palillos, originallydrum-sticks, here and familiarly in Andalusia,castagnets (castañuelas, postizas). Brisca and tute are two-handed games of cards popular in Spain; in brisca three cards are dealt to each player, a trump is turned, and as the play goes on the hands are kept full by drawing from the pack; tute is a rather more developed game of the same kind, similar in essentials to sixty-six.

 

20, 6.el que;sc. resultadoin its secondary meaning,fact.

 

20, 16.tenía algo de ingeniero:had some of the qualities of an engineer,was something of an engineer.

 

21, 4.jaraiz, lagar.jaraizis primarily the wine-press,lagarthe wine-pit,where the must is preserved before the drawing off into the skin or cask.

 

21, 8.reales.Therealat par was worth about five cents. It is no longercoined, but is still a favorite unit for reckoning in many parts of Spain, as the sou is here and there in France. The coinage at the time of our story was the system renewed and simplified by King Charles III, about 1770. It comprised copper coins: maravedi 141 (34 to the real); ochavo, cuarto, dos cuartos, worth respectively two, four, and eight maravedis; silver coins: real, dos reales, peseta (four reales); medio duro (ten reales); duro (twenty reales); and gold coins: duro, dos duros, doblón (four duros); media onza and onza, (eight and sixteen duros respectively). The present decimal system, with the unit one peseta = 100 centimos was introduced in 1868. It is modeled on the system of the Latin union.

 

22, 24. The reference throughout this passage is to Othello, though there isno one passage in the play where the qualities here suggested are enumerated or directly ascribed to the Moor; see, however, specially, Act II, Scene 3, Act III, Scenes 3 and 4, and the Acts IV and V. It has been suggested, in view especially of line 25, that Alarcón may have had in mind Hamlet's characterization of his father (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2): "He was a man, take


him for all in all," etc. This seems to me to come of erroneous reading both of the lines of the play and the passage here in the text.

 

23, 6.alpargatasare rough shoes or slippers of canvas, with hempen soles;the montera is a woolen peasant's cap used in many provinces of Spain, and varying in form and color with the locality.

 

24, 16.granais the Englishgrain, familiar in English literature as late asMilton; e. g. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 1, IV, 96 (1617): "The Spaniards and Portugals bought Graine for Scarlet Dye." Cf. the present English ingrain and ingrained.

 

24, 18.Cf.note to8, 2.

 

24, 22.Fernando VII, King of Spain, son of Charles IV and Maria Louisa ofParma. He was born in 1784, became king on the abdication of his father in 1808, was prisoner in France until 1813, was restored to the throne on the expulsion from Spain of Joseph Bonaparte, and reigned until his death in 1833. He was succeeded by his daughter, Isabella II.

 

25, 8.Constitucionales de la de 1837.Constitutions were decreed in Spainin 1812, 1834, 1837, 1854 and 1869. The Constitution of 1837 was accepted by Queen Isabel on June 17th of that year; on its provisions, and on the events that led to its promulgation, see M. A. S. Hume, op. cit., pp. 338-340. It was an essentially radical programme, though much less broad than the Cadiz Constitution 142 of 1812, and thus while it appeared reactionary and insufficient to the older Radicals, it pleased the younger Liberals with whom Alarcón cast in his lot when he first went into politics.

 

25, 9.la, sc.constitución.

 

25, 14.deshollinador, a long-handled scraper used by chimney sweeps todislodge the soot.

 

25, 16, 17. The reference in these lines is to Alarcón's own public career, andto his changes of political faith. He began as a revolutionary, and with growing years and discretion found himself in the ranks of the moderate conservatives, and a devoted royalist.


25, 30.las Castillas: the Castiles, Old and New Castile. Madrid is in NewCastile, the central part of Spain, reconquered from the Moors after the formation of the kingdoms of Castile, Leon and Navarre.

 

26, 9.D. Eugenio de Zúñiga y Ponce de León.Spanish proper names whenwritten in full regularly include the family name on both father's and mother's side. Thus D. Eugenio's father was a Zúñiga, his mother a Ponce de León. Women, when they marry, usually retain their own family name, adding the husband's with the copulative de; widows sign their own names, usually with the addition viuda de.... Thus Juana Suárez on her marriage to a Fernández becomes Suárez de Fernández; as a widow, she is Juana Suárez viuda de Fernández.

 

26, 19.desembozarse.The Spaniard usually wears hiscapa(cape or cloak)wrapped closely about the neck and the lower part of the face; this is embozarse (59, 13). Desembozarse is to throw back the cloak and leave the face exposed. Compare embozo, 46, 28.

 

26, 19.vídose; fromver. "Han escrito buenos autores, y aun suele decir elvulgo, en el pretérito perfecto, yo vide, él vido, formas desterradas ya del buen lenguaje" (Gramática de la Lengua Castellana, por La Real Academia Española, ed. 1890, p. 139, note).

 

26, 25.quirotecas.The wordquiroteca—etymologicallyhand-case,—[Greek: cheir thêkê]—is a jocular, almost a slang term, for misshapen gloves or gauntlets. Similar but more ephemeral expressions for gloves and especially for shoes and stockings are not uncommon in English. 143

 

28, 2.se descubrían hasta los pies:bowed to the ground, hat in hand;uncovered and bowed to the ground.

 

30, 6.estaba subido.Subidois here an adjective in connection withestar,—the nearest approach possible in Spanish to the common Romance construction of verbs of motion with the substantive auxiliary. The idea is that Uncle Lucas has climbed up and is still up. We have the same construction in 30, 14, estoy agarrado, and 32, 26, estoy subido.

 

31, 3. Note the pun onmono"monkey," andmono"pretty."

 

32, 9.puede [ser] que: Cf. Frenchpeut-être que,il se peut que.


32, 15.pedazo de bárbaro:you wild man. Compare with this use ofpedazothe French use of espèce: espèce de vaurien, espèce de barbare, etc., and espèce de type.

 

33, 5.ramblilla, diminutive oframbla, originally the washed-out, sandy bedof a stream, left dry after freshets. The secondary meaning, "hollow way," "low path," comes from the use frequently made of the beds of streams in the dry season.

 

33, 10.fandango.An Andalusian dance, very old and very lively. CompareFord, op. cit., ed. 1845, p. 187; Pellicer, op. cit. I, beginning p. 121.

 

34, 4.tanto bueno, sc.por aquí, i. e.,so much honor done us, lit., "so great agood thing here."

 

35, 8.donde primero le coge:wherever it catches him;primerois anadverb.

 

35, 25.Pamplonaor Pampeluna, the old capital of Navarre, señá Frasquita'scountry, and a prominent border fortress, has been besieged frequently in the course of its long history. It was taken from the Romans by Euric in 466, sacked by the Franks under Childebert in 542, destroyed by Charlemagne in 778; in 907 it beat off the Moors, and in 1138 the Castilians, in the war between Alfonso VII and García Ramón II, after the dissolution of the union with Aragon; and it has been occupied not infrequently by the French, who gained possession of it by stratagem in 1808, and held it until October 21, 1813, General Cassan making a fine defence against the English and Spaniards; and it has suffered since then in the civil wars. Ignatius Loyola was one of the city's defenders 144 in its siege by the French in 1521, and it is said that it was during convalescence from wounds in the hospital of the citadel that he planned the Order of Jesus. The special appositeness of Pamplona as an illustration here lay doubtless in the fact that señá Frasquita was of Navarre.

 

36, 2.Rubens.Peter Paul Rubens, celebrated Flemish painter, born 1577,died 1640.

 

36, 19.bestia, really a feminine noun, appears as masculine here, in50, 6,and elsewhere; so also calavera, 45, 25, 111, 11, and espía, 86, 15. The three words are grouped in this note as being good illustrations of three stages of the same tendency: a disposition constantly more evident in Spanish to


recognize association of real and grammatical gender in nouns that are of very common use. Espía, whose masculine signification is as old as the word itself, appears in Tolhausen's Dictionary (1891), and the thirteenth edition of the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy (1899), as both masculine and feminine. Calavera is given as masculine in the transferred sense by the Academy dictionary, but not by Tolhausen; bestia is exclusively feminine in both. The conclusion is clear, though it may be tempered by the consideration that bestia in the figurative sense is coarser and of lower use than the other words, and so slower in achieving recognition, in spite of its appearance in the more colloquial pages of such standard authors even as Alarcón.—un maula, 82, 10, is to be accounted for as bestia , or perhaps better, as a careless use of un by the unlettered Garduña; un ave, p. 60, is analogical to el ave, a regular form; so also un agua, 40, 16.

 

38, 20.Ave María Purísima.(Cf. p. 97, title to Chapter XXVIII). Byproclamation of 22d October, 1617, the Spanish Dominions in Europe and America were declared to be under the protection of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin; hence the addition of the word Purísima to the Ave Maria gratia plena of the prayer. Hence also, doubtless, the frequent expletive use of the words, as here, and their crystallization into formulæ of daily life, as in the other passage cited above. Hence also the frequency of the appearance of the Conception in Spanish Art. For notes of Spanish customs and rites connected with this doctrine see Ford, op. cit., ed. 145 1845, pp. 265 sqq. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was made part of the faith of the whole church by an apostolic Letter of Pius IX, dated December 8, 1854; it had been a matter of theological controversy since the thirteenth century.

 

38, 29.San Miguel. St. Michael the archangel, the first and mightiest ofcreated spirits, mentioned in the Bible in the books of Jude and Revelations. In churchly tradition he is the chief, and sometimes the sole archangel, and the one to whom was assigned the expulsion from Heaven of Satan and the other disobedient angels. His present office is two-fold: he is patron saint of the Church on earth, and lord of the souls of the dead. His feast, Michaelmas, is September 29. In art he is always young and handsome. His attributes vary with the function symbolized: as conqueror of Satan he stands with his foot upon his foe, who is always a monster, sometimes a dragon, sometimes part human, part dragon.

 

39, 4.¡Jesús, María y José!trans.:Mercy on us!


40, 24.derritiéndosele la gacha. Gacha is a sort of gruel made by boilingbroken rice in a large quantity of milk. When it is about to boil over, a very few drops of cold water stop the boiling and bring the mass down again. This is called derretir la gacha. So here, his anger fell suddenly.

 

41, 10.Ticiano,Titian. Tiziano Vecelli, born at Cadore in Venetia, 1477,died at Venice 1576; the greatest of Venetian painters.

 

41, 19.Pomona, the Italian divinity of the fruits of trees, especially of apple-orchards. She is usually represented as a Hamadryad, young, and beloved of many rustic gods. Her worship was very important in Rome. Cf. Ovid,

 

Metamorphoses, XIV, 623; Varro, De Lingua Latina, VII, 45.

 

42, 5.quinto, the fifth of the six commandments or precepts of the Church,"to contribute to the support of our pastors." See Butler's Catechism, lessons XX and XXI.

 

42, 7. Thediezmo(tithe) was at this time paid to the civil authority, and by itmade over to the Church.

 

43, 4.Licenciado:licentiate. Primarily the title given to the holders of thesecond academic degree; at the present time generally used in Spain, as here, to designate a lawyer. 146

 

43, 12, sqq."Thou hast said it," replied the latter, with the kindly severity ofa saint, which they say he was indeed. "An excuse unasked (is) a manifest accusation. As is the man, so are his words. But enough has been said, let there be no further speech."

 

44, 6.cordonazo de San Francisco,the autumn equinox,the autumnequinoctial; in the narrower sense, the four days preceding and the four days following St. Francis' day (October 4). It is originally a maritime expression.

 

44, 16.torta sobada, a cake, perfectly solid, made of dough that has beenvery much kneaded.

 

44, 17.pan de aceiteis bread made of dough to which olive oil has beenadded, giving a peculiar and much esteemed taste, when the bread is fried. Or it may be used as here, of the dough.


45,tit. XIII.Le dijo el grajo al cuervo:The pot said to the kettle.The fullform of the proverb is: le dijo el grajo al cuervo: quítate allá que tiznas; and the Spanish has also the other sayings, nearer our own in form: dijo la sartén a la caldera, tírate allá, culinegra, and dijo la sartén al cazo, quítate allá, que me tiznas.

 

45, 24.pelar la pava,to pluck the turkey-hen, is to stand at night under thewindow of the beloved, and so to make love. In Andalusia it is often called also comer hierro, from the bars that protect almost all windows there. Cf. R. Ford, op. cit., ed. 1845, pp. 153-154, for admirably witty remarks.

 

46, 12, 15.penitenciario, magistral. The Canon Penitentiary, or diocesanconfessor, has general charge of confessions and public penance; he is, with the Dean, the Secretary, the Treasurer, the Sacristan, and the Canon Theologian, a necessary officer of the minimum organization of the cathedral chapter; (a collegiate chapter may consist simply of Dean, Secretary, Treasurer and Sacristan). Cf. Rev. S. B. Smith, Compendium Juris Canonici, New York, etc., 1890, Caput V, De Adjutoribus Episcopi, Art. VII. The Magistral, in the capitular organization, is the Canon whose special duty is preaching. Other Canons frequent in Spanish Chapters are the Canónigo Doctoral, the advocate and man of affairs, who must always be a doctor of canon law, and the Canónigo lectoral, a doctor or licentiate in theology, who expounds the Scriptures. The 147 word magistral has other special meanings which do not concern us here.

 

46, 29.Predicador de Oficio, theMagistral;Confesor de la Catedral; the


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