The history and adventures of the renowned Don Quixote

156. In the original there is a play upon the words Descarnado, Cordero, and Carnero, which I have endeavoured to imitate, by substituting goose in the room of mutton, which is the literal meaning of the text.

157. The patina was a small consecrated plate which the Spanish women, especially those of an inferior rank, wore upon their breasts.

158. Fouckar was a very rich merchant of Augsburg, and a great favourite of Charles V. who owed him a very considerable sum. It is reported of him, that when the emperor lodged at his house, in his return from Tunis, the fire in his chamber was of cinnamon, and his landlord lighted it with his imperial majesty’s own obligation, thereby cancelling an immense debt. The wealth of these traders, for there were two brothers, became proverbial, and it was usual to say of any very opulent person, ‘He is as rich as a Fouckar.’

159. This was the great patron of the Portuguese discoveries along the coast of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope.

160. A knavish trick.

161. In the original there is a miserable pun upon the words Mono and Mona, the first of which signifies an ape, and the other drunkenness.

162. Literally, ‘When choler quits the mother, the tongue has then no father.’

163. I have ventured to deviate a little from the precise meaning of the original, which the reader will own to be very insipid when he reads the literal translation: ‘For it would be good, if the inhabitants of the town of Reloxa,’ (signifying a watch, or clock) ‘should, at every turn, slay those that call them so.’

164. As it is altogether impossible, in a translation, literally to preserve the low humour arising from blunders upon words or sounds, I have been obliged to substitute an equivalent jingle, in the room of puto, gafo and meon, which are Spanish words, signifying, a a whore, a catamite, and a piss-a-bed: so that Sancho, deceived by the affinity of these sounds to computo, cosmographa, and Ptolemeo, thought he had reason to say his master had produced a fair set of evidences.

165. In allusion to the speech that Virgil puts in the mouth of Panthus Othryades, who says to Æneas,

——fuit Ilium, et ingens

Gloria Teucrorum!

166. Sayago is a district in the kingdom of Leon, the inhabitants of which were extremely poor, and very meanly cloathed.

167. In Spain and Italy there is, upon every Holy Thursday, a procession of disciplinants, or people who do penance in sackcloth, carrying a flambeau in one hand, and in the other a scourge, with which they belabour their own shoulders, in such a manner, that the very street is sometimes coloured with their blood: some of these disciplinants, however, are mere hypocrites, who under their sackcloth wear women’s stay’s, buff jackets, and even plates of tin; so that they are often detected from the sound of the stroke: and at Rome nothing is more common than to hear the people who accompany these devotees, call out, according to the report of the application, ‘Guipponi di Buffalo!—Busti di Donna! and Corrazini di Latta!’

168. ‘Su alma en su palma.’ The original expression literally signifies, ‘His soul is in his hand,’ i. e. ‘He is at his own discretion.’

169. In Spain the people always retire after dinner, and sleep till six o’clock, whence the afternoon’s nap is called siesta.

170. This is an expression proverbially applied to any story that is vague, inconsistent, or of dubious authority; for the hills of Ubeda make an extensive chain, the different parts of which are differently denominated, from the different countries or districts through which it extends; so that the whole is not easily ascertained.

171. In the original, ‘And thoroughly understand “Tus, tus”’; which is an expression in Spain, to wheedle a cur.

172. A young Florentine, of great genius, who died in the seventeenth year of his age, and was lamented by all the poets of his time.

173. Literally, ‘And you shall see it will be worth a loaf that will serve a hundred.’

174. Disciplinante de lux, is a cant phrase, applied to those who are exposed to publick shame.

175. Literally, cacique, which was the appellation given to Indian princes.

176. The other translators have interpreted mosqueo into a fly-flap, which is undoubtedly one of his meanings; but as it likewise signifies flagellation at the cart’s tail, I have taken it in this last acceptation, which, I think, heightens the humour of the passage.

177. Faldis, in Spain, signifies skirts.

178. A kind of pea that grows at Martos, a town in the province of Andalusia.

179. This blunder is much more natural in the Spanish criado for criada; but, as in the English language, the gender is not distinguished by the termination, I have been obliged to substitute the words varlet and handmaid. Varlets were the servants of yeomen, though formerly squires were known by that appellation.

180. Or, in English, ‘Wooden Peg the Winged.’

181. Equivalent to Abington law; in consequence of which, a criminal is first executed, and then tried. Peralvillo is a village near Ciuidad Real, in Castile, where the officers of the holy brotherhood execute robbers taken in flagrante, who require no trial. Hence the phrase, ‘La justicia de Peralvillo, que aborcado el hombre, le baze la Pesquisa.’ i. e. ‘Peralvillo law, which begins the process after the man is hanged.’

182. In Spain, the Pleiades are vulgarly called cabrillas, i. e. nanny-goats.

183. There is a kind of pleasantry in this question of the duke, which cannot be translated; for the Spanish word, cabron, signifies a cuckold, as well as an he-goat.

184. The phrase, No quiero de tu capilla, alludes to the practice of friars, who, when charity is offered, hold out their hoods to receive it, while they pronounce a refusal with their tongues.

185. Instead of saintly.

186. Cervantes has been frequently caught napping, and here in particular: How could this be any proof of the antiquity of ruffs, when the adventure happened after the first part of Don Quixote was published? But, perhaps, this is no other than an ironical animadversion upon the trifling discoveries of antiquarians.

187. Barato, signifies cheap.

188. The Spanish name is Pedro Rezio de Aguero; which, together with Tirte Afuera, the place of his nativity, I have translated into English, that the humour may be better understood.

189. The original Ponga en pretina, signifies, I will put in my girdle.

190. She is in the original called Perlerina, which I have changed into Paralina, in order to preserve the subsequent play on the words.

191. Podrida, signifies rotten or mortified; hence the olla podrida is in French stiled pot-pourri.

192. Literally, The devil’s in Cantiliana, which is a town of Andalusia, near Seville.

193. Literally, the Aranjuez of the fountains. Fuentes signifies, either fountains or issues; and Aranjeuz is the name of a delightful palace, about seven leagues from Madrid, famous for gardens and fountains.

194. This was a Moorish princess, for whom her father built a stately palace near the Tagus, the ruins of which remain to this day.

195. A critick inclined to enumerate the inadvertencies of Cervantes, might observe that Sancho pulled a piece of bread out of his wallet and gave it to Dapple, after he had given the contents of the said wallet to the pilgrims; that he tells the duke and duchess he had governed ten days, whereas he had continued but seven days in office; and, lastly, that Tosilos contemplated the beauties of the damsel, though we are previously told that she was veiled down to the bosom.

196. In the romance of Gerard de Nevers we read, that a certain young lady, perceiving the eagerness with which that knight undertook her defence, pulled the glove from her left-hand, and presented it to him, saying, ‘Sir Knight, my body, life, lands, and honour, I commit to the protection of God and you, to whom I pray he may grant grace to obtain the victory, and deliver us from the danger in which we are now involved.’

198. The original word is Mendoza, the name of a great family in Spain, one of whom was remarkably superstitious.

199. The Moors are said to be descended from Hagar.

200. Sancho must have been very simple indeed, to be satisfied with this explanation, which does not even hint at the main point of his question; namely, Why do the Spanish soldiers, when they charge their enemy, cry, ‘Close, Spain?’ A phrase of encouragement, by which the soldiers exhort one another to do their duty, and close with the foe.

201. Why might not this innkeeper have had eggs in his house, as he had sent no less than fifty pullets to market the very day before?

202. I am apt to believe that this remark was intended as an ironical sarcasm on the trivial observations of hypercriticks: for we cannot suppose Cervantes did not know, by this time, that he himself had more than once, in the first part of this history, actually called Sancho’s wife by the name of Mary Gutierrez; an oversight which I have taken notice of in the proper place.

203. The proverb in the original, alludes to a kind of tabor: as if one should say, ‘He alone should attempt to play, who knows how to beat the tabor.’

204. This rhime is substituted in lieu of Sancho’s playing on the word fuera, in the original.

205. Literally, ‘Use the times as I find them.’

206. This was Michael Scot, who lived in the thirteenth century, and was such an adept in medicine, mathematicks, chymistry, alchymy, and other branches of natural knowledge, that the vulgar looked upon him as a wizard or magician. But as this philosopher died in 1291, and this conversation between Don Antonio and our knight must have happened after the year 1605, when the first part of Don Quixote was licensed, how could the disciple of Scot be in the house of Don Antonio? Yet this anachronism might easily pass upon Don Quixote, as it related to matters of inchantment.

207. But in this very chapter he has already told Don Quixote, that he knew the virtue of the head from experience.

208. Antonio’s wife must have been here before the others entered: for she is not in the list of those who went in with her husband.

210. About Martinmas they killed the hogs designed for bacon.

211. ‘Wherever it may hit:’ an answer that has no affinity with the question, but the faint resemblance of sound.

212. In the original, ‘as fine as Mingo,’ who was a bad poet, and tawdry beau, contemporary with Cervantes.

213. Lines probably taken from some old ballad or romance.

214. The author of the Second Part hinted, in his preface, a design of bringing his hero into the field again, in Old Castile.