Too many judge the character of the Portuguese from a hasty study of what Beckford nearly a century ago impolitely called the Lisbon canaille. The life of the Portuguese in a political and literary (written literature) sense is concentrated in Lisbon, but outside this narrow circle exists the Portuguese people proper, to the foreigner almost an unknown quantity, taking no concern for the latest political party formed or the latest volume of second-rate verse published, yet constituting in its strength or weakness the political future of Portugal and containing within itself a whole literature of prose and poetry, legend and song. In some measure those who know the Irish peasant know the Portuguese, and those who know the Irish will realise from this comparison what a delightful mine of interest is here to hand. Indeed, if you take the Irish peasantry, add hot sun, a spice of the East, and perhaps something of the negro’s vanity and slight hold on life, you have the Portuguese. The quick intelligence, the dreaming melancholy, the slyness and love of intrigue, the wit and imagination are here, and the power of expression in words. Generosity, too, and habits as unpractical as could be desired.
The politician in Portugal who looks at the statistics, and, seeing that 75 per cent. of this people are illiterate, shrugs his shoulders—non ragionar di lor—makes a great mistake, for it is here that those who have considered the political intrigues of the capital and despaired of Portugal’s present find a new hope: a population hard-working, vigorous, and intelligent, increasing fairly rapidly, content with little, not willingly learning to read or write, but in its own way eagerly patriotic, each loving Portugal as represented by his own town or village or farm, though he may not have grasped the latest shades of humanity, fraternity, or irreligion.
From the earliest times the inhabitants of this western strip of the Iberian peninsula had shown themselves capable of heroic deeds and at the same time impressionable, open to new ideas and foreign influences, more ready to co-operate with the French and English than with their inland neighbours the Castilians. Had the characters of these two neighbours been less incompatible, Portugal might have come to recognise the hegemony of Castille, as sooner or later did all the other regions of the Peninsula, some of which were separated from the central plains by natural barriers more difficult than was Portugal. But to the Portuguese the Castilian too often was and is a stranger and an enemy.
As the power of Castille grew, Portugal called in a new world to redress the balance of the old. Unfortunately in reaching out for this support Portugal fatally overstrained her strength, and the brilliant reign (1495-1521) of King Manoel I (“that great, fortunate, and only Emanuel of Portugall,” Sir Peter Wyche called him) resembled the Cid’s famous coffers, all crimson and golden without, but containing more sand than gold. Those who look at the bedraggled coffer hanging in Burgos Cathedral wonder how it can have deceived the two Jews, and those who see the present somewhat penniless and forlorn condition of Portugal are apt to forget that it was once a great world-empire. Before Portugal became that we have glimpses of the Portuguese as a contented people, fond of song and dance, a pipe and drum at every door, living rustic, idyllic lives as cultivators of the soil in a “land abounding in meat and drink, terra de vyandas e beveres muyto avondosa” (fifteenth century).
ROMAN TEMPLE, EVORA
But the discoveries and conquests followed, the magic of the sea, the mystery of the East wove a spell over the imagination of the Portuguese, the country was drained of men, devastated by plague and famine. Lisbon and the East absorbed energies hitherto given to the soil. Portugal, moreover, was doomed to share Spain’s losses during the period 1580-1640, and later was ravaged by frequent civil wars. In fine one might expect to find a dwindling miserable population, dying out from sheer exhaustion. But this would be very far from being a true statement of the case. Portugal is only lying fallow. There are reserves of health and energy, especially in the north, in the sturdy peasants of Beira and Minho. Politically it is only a potential strength, and the real people of Portugal has never yet come into its own, although it was on the point of doing so at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It was not allowed to develop naturally after the first third of that great century. Even to-day there are said to be certain politicians who would dress it up in a suit of ready-made clothes which has caught their fancy in some shop window when they were on a visit to Paris. The Portuguese people deserves better than that, and if it can be given a national government, and a national policy and ideals, it may yet surprise Europe. It is a question of encouraging the indigenous side of Portuguese civilisation—in language, literature, dress, legislation, drama, cookery, in everything—which since the sixteenth century has been set aside for the imported foreign-erudite; to develop as it were the Saxon element at the expense of the Norman. The people have succeeded in keeping many of their old and excellent customs—but by the skin of their teeth now—as they have their own names for many of the Lisbon streets and their own words side by side with those of learned origin.
But in order to become acquainted with the Portuguese people it is necessary to go far afield, to the remote villages of Alemtejo or Minho or of the Serra da Estrella, and, the means of doing this being often primitive or non-existent, the traveller contents himself with swift generalities derived from observation of the inhabitants of the towns, precisely, that is, where the Portuguese most displays his weaknesses and where the population is most mixed. Reclus considered the Portuguese “très fortement croisés de nègres,” and other foreign observers have denied the existence of a Portuguese nationality, dismissing it as a mere pot pourri of many races. If this is an exaggeration, it cannot be denied that the many peaceful or warrior invaders—Phoenician, Celt, Carthaginian, Greek or Goth—attracted by this lovely land from age to age, and the numerous slaves imported from Portugal’s overseas dominions have contributed to form a mixed population, especially in and around Lisbon. At Lisbon many persons evidently have negro blood in their veins, and others are of Jewish descent. Sobieski, the Polish traveller, wrote in 1611: “There are in Portugal very many Jews, so many that various houses have a Jewish origin. Although they have burnt and expelled them, many live hidden among the Portuguese.” This was 114 years after the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal.
But Lisbon is a country in itself, divorced in many ways from the rest of Portugal. The Portuguese provinces present many differences of character among their inhabitants, from the lively chattering algarvio in the south to the duller, quietly poetical and dreamy minhoto on the border of Galicia, unfairly described by Oliveira Martins as “without elevation of spirit, dense, the Dutch of Portugal,” the fervent, hardy beirão mountaineer or the stolid farmers of Alemtejo.
Taking the character of the Portuguese as a whole, its main feature seems to be vagueness. Their minds are not inductive.
They think in generalities and abstractions, and their deductions often have a closer relation to these than to the facts of life. No doubt the dreamy climate (King Duarte in the fifteenth century noted the effect of climate on character), the misty blue skies and wide sea horizons have exercised as much influence on the character of the inhabitants as the many foreign ingredients, the uncertain land boundaries, the fear of attacks from the sea, the indefinite dangers of earthquake and plague. Everywhere in Portugal is this lack of precision evident, in the fondness for abstractions and unsubstantial grandeur, the counting in réis (most transactions continue to be made in réis, which though apparently clumsy is really simpler than the new system of centavos—10 réis—and escudos—1,000 réis), the love of the lottery, the perpetual tendency to exaggerate, the inexhaustible and vague good-nature which some more direct minds find so trying, the facile criticism which encourages the existence of too many poets, politicians and other nonentities, the absence of discipline, the belief in the efficacy of words and rhetoric, the idle expectation of better things, the sebastianismo which looks for the return of the ill-fated king—a later Arthur—“on a morning of thick mist”—the universal cult of undefined melancholy and saudade. The French saying, “Les portugais sont toujours gais,” should be rendered—
None but a nation with a beautiful land and delightful climate could be so sad. Less favoured peoples are fain to be content with what they can get, and, in their necessary efforts to obtain something, often obtain much. The Portuguese, living in a land where it is possible to support life on almost nothing, has little incentive to effort. Moreover, the Portuguese turns his imagination to the ideal, and comparing it with the real, is saddened. His pessimism is essentially that of the idealist: disillusion. He wishes for all or nothing, aims at a million and misses an unit, whereas men more practical with less intelligence it may be, and certainly less imagination, set themselves to the work before them, and prosper. But it must not be thought that, because the Portuguese cultivates a gentle melancholy, he has a poor heart that never rejoices. His sadness is often as superficial as the Englishman’s impassivity. He is, generally, far too intelligent to find life ever dull, or if he yields to ennui it is of the gorgeous philosophical kind which takes a subtle pleasure in saying that “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” As a rule, his sense of ridicule on the one hand and his nervous self-consciousness on the other make of life for him a perpetual feast of little comedies and tragedies. But in practical matters, failing to realise his ideal, he does not attempt to idealise the real, but views it with laughter or disdain. The ideal is usually vague and set apart from practical life.
Thus the humanity of the Portuguese is real, they have no love of violence or bloodshed, but it is a state of mind rather than a course of action, and can be curiously combined with cruel persecutions in practice. The expulsion of the Jews came to Portugal from Spain, and it is difficult to believe that the Portuguese people ever viewed the Inquisition fires in the Rocio with anything but horror. But Vasco da Gama, Affonso d’Albuquerque, Dom João de Castro and other Portuguese in the East perpetrated cruelties as terrible as any practised by the Inquisition. It was the habit of the early discoverers to seize a few natives and, if they desired information, put them to the torture. For sheer callousness the following deed recorded of Vasco da Gama is remarkable (the date might almost be 1915): “Namen wi een scip van Mecha daer waren in drie hondert mannē en̄ tachtich en̄ veel vrouwen en̄ kinderen. En̄ wi namen daar wt wel xii. dusent ducaten en̄ noch wel x. dusent an comanscap. En̄ wi verbranden dat scip en̄ al dat volc te pulwer den tersten dach in October.” (That is: Having captured a peaceful trading ship from Mecca, and taken thereout the ducats and merchandise, the Portuguese under Vasco da Gama blew up the ship with 380 men and many women and children in her.) The Flemish sailor chronicles the fact with more directness than would have marked a Portuguese account. What is so striking is that the dreamy humanity of the Portuguese does not desert him in such an event. To take a recent instance—the murder of Lieutenant Soares in Lisbon—no foreigner could ever forget the gentle good-nature of the assassins, apparently bonhommes and affable, nor the indifference and equanimity of the small crowd that collected. Few Portuguese would consider Stevenson anything but a pagan when he exclaims, at the idea of loving all men: “God save me from such irreligion!” Such directness is foreign to their temperament. They would understand better the cry of the Canadian poet, Émile Nelligan, “J’ai voulu tout aimer et je suis malheureux,” or Corneille’s strange recommendation, “Aimez-les toutes (all women) en Dieu.”
The position of women in Portugal is another instance of vague ideals. Woman is set on a pedestal, but women are not always treated with consideration, and in some parts of the country are little better than slaves. Over and over again you will meet a man and a woman, husband and wife, perhaps, the man in lordly fashion carrying a small parcel or nothing at all, the woman bowing under a huge load. No one thinks of protesting against this, it passes without notice, nor has the Republican Parliament, which has shown itself copious in legislation, bestirred itself to introduce a bill dealing with the position of women, although it has denied them the right to vote. The peasant women continue to do twice the work of the men, and to receive half the wages. Frei João dos Santos at the beginning of the seventeenth century noted (Ethiopia Oriental, 1609) that it was “as natural for Kaffir women to work in the fields as to the women of Minho to spin,” but at the present day it is the women in Portugal who do a heavy part of out-of-door work. To their semi-slavery and Moorish toil may perhaps be ascribed partly the fact that the women in Portugal are less graceful and good-looking than the men. On the other hand, Portuguese women of all classes often display a common sense and strength and firmness of character to a greater degree than do the men.
Another good instance of the gulf between the ideal and the real is to be found in the conception and the practice of liberty. Abstract Liberty with a great L goes to the head of the Portuguese like wine, and in its name they have effected many a revolution and committed many a crime. In practice it can still be used, as two thousand years ago, “for a cloak of maliciousness.” “Luminous in its virginal essence rises the beneficent aspiration of a régime of liberty.” No doubt these celebrated words of Dr. Theophilo Braga on the occasion of the proclamation of the Republic were sincere, in so far as words so abstract can have any concrete quality, but their vagueness was characteristic and ominous. Equally indefinite had been the poet Snr. Guerra Junqueiro’s description of the future Republic in 1897. The Republic was to be “a high road towards a new formula of civilisation.” Such phrases, hollow and resounding like an empty barrel, have an immense success in Portuguese politics.
WOMEN AT WORK
But the same vagueness pervades business. In business the Portuguese appears incurably careless and combines with this fault the most meticulous scruples. The result is too often delay and confusion. There as in other matters the Portuguese shows a genius for setting himself in the wrong, his real ability is eclipsed by superficial errors, the mistakes in estimates or accounts are not always in his favour, and the unscrupulous can easily take advantage of his hesitations and candour. The personal element is always present, and vanity, together with much real delicacy of feeling, enters into business matters. A fact this which Englishmen dealing with Portuguese have been slower to recognise in the past than other nations. Moreover the Portuguese is harassed out of his wits by the details of business, he likes a good lump sum down rather than much larger but gradual profits, he goes for the pounds and leaves the pennies to look after themselves. If he sees the advantage of an enterprise, he rarely combines with this intelligence the necessary perseverance and force of character to carry it through. Yet here as always the Portuguese shows a marvellous inclination to fritter away his energies in matters of the minutest interest and minor importance, an inability to omit, to leave off. They either have no method or a method so minutely conceived that it is almost certain to break down in practice. Portuguese scholarship sometimes vies with German in unprofitable minuteness. For instance, Alexandre Herculano, the historian, wrote a few fine poems: one of his Portuguese critics has taken the trouble to ascertain the number of verses (6,800) contained in all his original poems and translations.
In religion, again, the same vagueness. Many Portuguese prefer an undefined pantheism and a mystic love of Nature or Humanity to dogmatic beliefs. The ostentatious art of Roman Catholic ceremonies and the exact precision of Protestant services are both in a sense congenial to them, the former appealing to their fondness for pomp and show, the latter to their quiet thoughtfulness. But neither the one nor the other affects them with sufficient force to fasten upon their minds a fanaticism which is foreign to dreamy and comfortable natures. The Roman Catholic religion exercises a greater influence on the dramatic character of the Spanish than on the essentially lyrical and idyllic nature of the Portuguese. Nor do the latter show any marked enthusiasm for Protestantism, although the number of Protestants is certainly larger than it is in Spain. Perhaps it is too clear and reasonable for them. They require vagueness and mystery.
The character of a Portuguese is much more rarely than that of a Spaniard all of one piece. The Spaniard’s, clear-cut and angular, admits less readily of contrasts and contradictions, whereas the very vagueness of the Portuguese enables it to combine opposing elements. Certainly, at least, there would seem to be many puzzling inconsistencies in the character of the Portuguese people. For they are like a quiet stream with sudden falls. They are fatalists, but with moments of heroic rebellion and effort, apathetic, with bursts of energy in private and revolution in public life; kindly and docile, yet with outbreaks of harshness and arrogance, indifferent yet with fugitive enthusiasms and a real love of progress and change. They are mystic and poetical with intervals of intense utilitarianism, erratically practical, falling from idle dreams to a keen relish for immediate profit. They combine vanity with diffidence and pessimism; naïveté, which makes them the butt of Spanish stories, with slyness, whereby they have their revenge; indolence with love of sport and adventure; respect for the feelings of others with fondness for satire, sarcasm, and ridicule. They go easily from heights of rapture to depths of melancholy and suicidal despair, from frank trustfulness to extremes of suspicion and intrigue, and their dreamy thoughtfulness passes at rare intervals to explosions of passion and abuse.
The fact is that both in life and literature they are incorrigibly romantic, and when they turn from their romantic dreams to reality they are peculiarly exposed to the danger of not considering it worth an effort. They let things be, they easily persuade themselves that things must be as they are, or that they are as they in words imagine them; and so in their saudade for some impossible ideal they sink into desleixo and drift (deixarse-ir, deixarse-estar). Or the Portuguese will continue to live in his romanticism and ignore reality altogether; his vanity helps him to ignore it; he will wear cheap and garish chains and rings and trinkets and imagine himself rich, he will eke out the picture by the help of his quick imagination and ever-ready flow of words, heaping rhetoric and exaggeration, and in his vagueness drifting ere he is aware into falsehood. Then, if his efforts to impose the picture of his imagining on others at his own valuation fail, he will feel hurt by their brutal directness, their incapacity to see that a mere string of words may move mountains.
They are taxed with laziness, but it should at least be observed that the laziness is not due to lack of energy, but rather to the conviction that “it is not worth while”—desleixo. When a thing does appear to be worth while the desleixo disappears like a cast-off mask. The amount of work achieved, for instance, by some Portuguese politicians or men-of-letters is extraordinarily large.
More serious is the accusation that they do not know what the word justice means, hate or love, acquit or condemn, fawn or bully, persecute or place on a pinnacle as occasion offers, and lose all sense of fair play in their vindictiveness. But after all it is the attraction of the Latin temperament that it is quick and impulsive, even if it therefore rarely attains that impartial justice which is all-important for the ruling of an Empire, but the absence of which certainly adds a picturesque and unforeseen element to life.
Unhappily the Portuguese delicacy often meets with rougher manners in foreigners and shrinks as from a rebuff. The Portuguese himself is excessively sensitive and he will go out of his way and sacrifice his own comfort and indolence in order not to hurt the feelings of others, perhaps in some trifling matter of which the person thus contemplated, especially if he is a foreigner, remains serenely unaware. The Portuguese do not know how to treat foreigners. This may seem a strange statement to those who have visited Portugal and experienced the kindness and courtesy of high and low on all sides. But they make too great a difference between themselves and foreigners, and have an almost morbid desire to stand well in the eyes of the stranger, to appear civilised and bien élevés. On one occasion when a spirited affray was proceeding in the Rocio of Lisbon, and several persons were killed and wounded, a Portuguese spectator did not seem in the least concerned by the fact that men were being shot down, but much concerned that it should be witnessed by foreigners. “A nice thing for foreigners to see,” was all he said. Outwardly he pays too much deference to the foreigner, and one cannot help suspecting that all the time he is aware of his own greater delicacy and of the poor foreigner’s ill manners. Being self-conscious and susceptible and, moreover, himself intimately persuaded that Portugal is a backward country unworthy of Paris or London’s civilisation, he does not conceive that the foreigner may be making comparisons favourable to the country he is visiting, but easily imagines that he is slighting or smiling at him and his customs. His own love of satire and ridicule which is apt to paralyse his private initiative and political action, makes him prone to suspect ridicule in others. He will then brood silently over his offended feelings, and nurse his susceptibilities till they have vent in one of those sudden outbreaks not unknown to quiet natures. But the Portuguese, despite his exaggerated politeness towards the stranger in his land, and a very real and hospitable wish to be of help to him, does not love foreigners. A Spanish writer in the seventeenth century, Vicente Espinel, described the Portuguese as “gente idólatra de si propria, que no estima en nada el resto del mundo.” If he despised foreigners then, it is scarcely to be wondered at if he should dislike or distrust them now. Vast colonies and the lordship of the sea, which were once Portugal’s, are now in the hands of other nations, and she never forgets this. She considers herself to be, like the fallen Napoleon, at once “conqueror and captive of the earth.” Were Germany mistress of the seas, and London fallen from its high estate to a provincial destiny, the English would probably feel some bitterness towards not only their German conquerors but all foreigners.
And if the Portuguese does not easily forget that Portugal was once the greatest empire in Europe, he considers that other nations forget it too often. It may be that other nations sometimes do not allow sufficiently for the fact that without pioneer Portugal their own empires had been less easy of acquisition, but it would certainly be to Portugal’s advantage were she herself to forget it occasionally. Under modern conditions it is of little use for a penniless person to dwell on the fact that his ancestors possessed vast estates: he must make the best of his present poverty, and, if he has some estates left which cost him more than they bring in, he will think no shame to sell part in order to be able to administer the rest—always provided he can find a purchaser. But the majority of Portuguese reject indignantly the idea of parting with an inch of their Indian or African possessions. Rather their thoughts run to extending their territory, to the construction of a fleet, or the conquest of Spain. Even the idea of a general subscription among the whole population is not unknown, with a view to securing one or more of these objects. Dr. Affonso Costa knew his countrymen well when he promised them a large surplus, to be employed in building a fleet. Such is the great but misguided patriotism of the Portuguese people, while the interests and well-being of Portugal itself, which only needs proper development to become a flourishing country, are overlooked. They dream of high-flown projects and the work immediately to hand is—postponed. The Portuguese people is not really indifferent, or at least its indifference is confined to the play of party politics in Lisbon. In the fall and rise of a ministry, in the debates of Parliament or in the elections, the interest of the country at large is of the slightest. The expectations of the people have been too frequently disappointed for it to set great store now by political promises, but the Portuguese have a real love of their country for which they are willing to sacrifice much—everything, it sometimes seems, except personal vanity and party intrigues.
Another apparent inconsistency is the democratic feeling which, in private life, prevails in Portugal to a greater degree than perhaps in any other country, social distinctions being often ignored there, not only by those who are not distinguished but by those who are, to an extent that would be utterly impossible in England. For this democratic usage has to be reconciled with the widespread vanity of the Portuguese. In place of the plain “you” employed in England in addressing king or cobbler, there are in Portugal all kinds of gradations, from Vossa Excellencia to O senhor (in the third person), Vossemecé, or the more familiar Vossé, which even so is a contraction of “Your Worship.” Ladies are always addressed as Vossa Excellencia, and are given the title of Dona (= the Spanish Doña). The title Dom is only given to men belonging to old aristocratic families, whereas in Spain the use of Don is, of course, far more general, and in South America it descends still further, corresponding there, indeed, to the English use of “Mr.” instead of “Esq.” Letters are often addressed to the Most Illustrious, Most Excellent, Senhor, and, generally, the Portuguese are more ceremonious even than the Spanish. The humanist, Luis Vives, in the sixteenth century, complained of the pomposity of address then beginning in Spain (i.e., Spain and Portugal) and Italy: and soon, he said, we shall be saying “Your Deity”—mox, ut opinor, Deitas. But the fiery Spanish dignity is absent, although the Portuguese have a quiet resolution and dignity of their own, and their gentle sadness rarely sinks to a spiritless despondency, and still more rarely to the grovelling abjection—lowest of the low—described by Byron.
The Portuguese peasantry, especially, is gifted with a delicacy and intelligence which make life pleasant and poverty no hardship in that climate. The illiterate are often the flower and cream of the nation. They are able to express themselves with fluency and correctness, in fact you will often find a peasant’s speech purer and more refined in accent than that of an educated Portuguese, and will be amazed at the clearness and delicacy of tone and expression coming from a person barefoot and in tatters. Thrice fortunate they who can associate and converse with the peasants during the summer romaria or village festa, or as they sit round the winter fire (a lareira), or gather for some great common task, a shearing (tosquia) or esfolhada (separating the maize cob from its sheath), for they are certain to glean a rich store of proverbs, folk-lore, and philology, and will learn much about spirits and witches. These peasants have poetical imagination, witty speech, no dearth of ideas, a ready sympathy, and, moreover, a sobriety, patience and self-control which are the more remarkable in that by nature, although not quick, they are impulsive and extraordinarily sensitive. It may be said without exaggeration that the Portuguese people, for all its colossal ignorance and lack of letters, is one of the most civilised and intelligent in Europe.
It is full of superstitions, and in few countries—Ireland again naturally occurs to the mind—can there be more legends and charms and incantations, ignorance thus fostering an immense popular literature in prose and verse. The varieties of sorcerers and diviners are many: there are benzedores and imaginarios, magicos and agoureiros, bruxas and feiticeiras, etc., etc. Only during the last thirty years has this begun to be a written literature, thanks to the brilliant initiative and untiring researches of Z. Consiglieri Pedroso, A. T. Pires, Snr. F. Adolpho Coelho, Snr. Leite de Vasconcellos, Snr. Theophilo Braga and others. Round every hill and stream of the country has the people woven some quaint fancy or preserved some ancient myth or fact. To take a solitary instance: the great rock (Pedra Amarella), above the convent of Pena Longa, at the foot of the Serra de Cintra, is covered with yellow moss. What is the explanation of this? That the moss grew there, you say. But the Portuguese people is not likely to dismiss anything in heaven or earth with four words. The fact is that an old woman, believing this rock to contain a hidden treasure, was anxious to break it open and to that purpose kept throwing eggs at it. She did not succeed in her object, but the rock remains covered with the yolks of the eggs. The Portuguese people is especially devoted to music, flowers, dance and song. The humblest, most ramshackle cottage will have an old tin of carnations on its window ledge or hanging anyhow from the wall. Many of the flowers have popular names of no little charm. Goivo, the old Portuguese word for joy, is given both to the stock and the wallflower, the fuchsia is lagrimas (tears), anemones beijinhos (little kisses), the roadside iris is lirio (lily), any downhanging creeper is chorão (weeper). A common creeper of that name grows extraordinarily fast, and once boasted that it would scale heaven, whereupon it was sentenced to advance always in a downward direction.
Of the fascinating popular quatrains (quadras) an immense collection might be formed, indeed some of those already in existence are not trifling, as, for instance, the 10,000 Cantos populares portuguezes, collected in four volumes by A. Thomaz Pires (Elvas, 1902-10). Those who are alarmed by so great a number may read the Cancioneiro popular (Porto, 1914), selected by Snr. Jaime Cortesão, which contains 563. Or, still better, make a selection of their own, writing them down at the dictation of many a peasant who can himself neither write nor read. These cantigas or quadras spring up continually like mushrooms, and perish unrecorded, or go from mouth to mouth of the illiterate in endless variation. They are delightful examples of unpremeditated art, many of them showing real delicacy and poetical imagination, more so than the melancholy fado or ballad of fate of the professional fadistas. A vague melancholy underlies most of these cantigas. Sadly in the soft summer evenings many a canção perdida is sung to the slow and plaintive accompaniment of the guitar—
The pun on the words pennas (feathers) and penas (woes) is untranslatable.
With this cantiga readers of Julio Diniz may be already familiar. It occurs in his Ineditos (1900).
Anyone with a spirit of enterprise and a thorough knowledge of Portuguese might collect a goodly crop of such cantigas, together with thousands of delightful expressions and sayings peculiar to each region of Portugal. Minho especially, that charming province of crystal streams and cool maize-fields, offers a wide scope. But it is a narrowing opportunity, since education, however slow its progress in Portugal, is gradually advancing. Many of the cantigas, composed by illiterate persons, are not intended to survive the occasion that gave them birth. Hence their naturalness and charm. The lovely Greek epigrams show a more conscious art. They are the perfect daffodils and hyacinths, whereas the Portuguese cantigas are the forgotten celandines and primroses of the lanes and woods. In 1911 died an old workman of Setubal, Antonio Maria Euzebio (born in 1820), who could neither read nor write, but had composed verses with great ease from an early age. A volume of his verses was published in 1901, with introduction by Snr. Theophilo Braga and Snr. Guerra Junqueiro. Of a poetic art as such he had no glimmering, but, in Portugal at least, such ignorance would help rather than injure him as a poet.
The Portuguese are richly gifted by nature, but, in matters of art or in artificial surroundings, their natural taste sometimes seems to desert them. Corruptio optimi. Under circumstances which do not allow them to be themselves some of the aspersions of an eighteenth century writer may be true of them: “Ils sont jaloux au suprême degré,” wrote the author of the Description de la ville de Lisbonne (Amsterdam, 1738), “dissimulés, vindicatifs, railleurs, vains et présomptueux sans sujet.” (The same writer admits that they have great virtues: “Ils ont avec beaucoup de vivacité et de pénétration un attachement extraordinaire pour leur Prince; ils sont fort secrets, fidèles amis, généreux, charitables envers leurs parens, sobres dans leur manger, ne mangeant presque que du poisson, ris, vermicelli, légumes, confitures, et ne buvant pour l’ordinaire que de l’eau.”) The family life of a Portuguese, especially in some country quinta, is extremely attractive, and he only becomes uninteresting when he follows the customs of foreign nations. So long as he is natural, few nations excel him; when he ceases to be natural he lags woefully behind in the ruts of foreign imitation. There was a grain of truth in the remark of a critic that Camões, with a great lyrical gift, was unsuccessful in the sonnet owing to his attempt to introduce naturalness into an essentially artificial form. The Portuguese, where their love of nature does not help them, are left at the mercy of extravagance and tawdriness.
Not that the ordinary artisan does not turn out much good honest work. Indeed, while the Spanish make things for show rather than for use, and the French for a little of both, the Portuguese agrees with the English in making them with a regard for comfort and a sublime unconcern for the look of them. And in this no doubt they show their good sense. But they are not artistic. This is shown in a thousand ways, in the curve of a chair, the finish of a book-case, in their buildings, in the colour of their dress and of the wash for their houses, in which squashed hues, and especially pink, predominate; in the shape of the water-jars, in which the soul of a Latin people is often expressed. (The Portuguese jars are often rather useful than ornamental, squat in shape, fashioned to contain the greatest possible quantity of water, and with but one handle, for use, instead of two, for art’s sake.) In the construction of modern houses, as in many matters of daily life, the Portuguese makes comfort or a saving of trouble the principal consideration. Their ancient buildings in which, indeed, foreign architects had no little part—Batalha, for instance, or Alcobaça—can vie in beauty with those of any country. But, although Manoeline architecture in some cases may have justified its existence, in principle it was an outrage against pure Gothic, and a similar tastelessness may be noted in daily life at the present time. The undertakers add a horror to death in other cities besides Lisbon, but in no other can the grandest funerals be marked by a more grotesque and fantastic ugliness. Nor is it easy to forget a coffin at a funeral in the provinces—not that of a child. It was bright pink with silver scales. It is most curious, this tendency to tinsel on the part of a people which appears to have natural good taste. Perhaps it is an importation from the East.