“Peasant and lord in their appointed seat, Guardians of Biscay’s ancient liberty.”
These are the two last lines of Wordsworth’s sonnet to the
“Oak of Guernica! Tree of holier power Than that which in Dodona did enshrine, So faith too fondly deemed, a voice divine.”
Noble, handsome, graceful in all their movements, hardy and shrewd, the Basques are active and untiring whether as farmers, smugglers, soldiers, or _pelotaris_. They live aloof in scattered farms, a healthy open-air life (their word for rich is _aberatz_, from _abere_, head of cattle), and, indeed, in a town they tend to lose some of their good qualities. Their dress has always an air of careful neatness and distinction, with the _béret_, white shirt (without a tie), dark blue or black coat thrown over shoulder (or long blouse), silent sandals and the peculiar _makhila_, a stout iron-pointed stick of medlar. They are shrinking into their mountains, a race doomed to perish, “un peuple qui s’en va.” They have watched during thousands of years new races spring up and prosper around them, and in the twentieth century they see trains and motors penetrate to the inaccessible places where the Roman legions were checked, or Charlemagne with all his peerage fell. An inscription here and there shows them bowing to destiny and the relentless march of time in saddened resignation, or betaking themselves to the consolation of their religion--the following inscriptions, for instance, along the frontier: “Man is beaten by every hour, and the last leads him to the grave.”[72] “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat.”[73] “Ici fait l’home cequi pevt et fortune ce que elle vevt.”[74] “Post fata resurgo.”[75] “Deum time, Mariam invoca.”[76] “Orhoit hilcea.”[77] The privileges that remain to the Basques are few, consisting in a slightly less acute centralization than obtains in other provinces of Spain.[78] They have no _fueros_ left to make it worth their while to take up arms afresh, and they still have vivid memories of their wasted fields and desolate farms in the last Carlist war. But were their ancient religion to be really attacked, or were an attempt made to expel the monks from the Basque provinces, the peasants could be counted upon to make a desperate resistance, more in defence of their independence than on behalf of the monks themselves. Foreigners have often misunderstood the Basques,[79] for they are reserved and silent towards the new-comer (“Gizonciki arabotz andi,” they say--“Little man, much noise”; “the empty barrel makes the most noise,” and so on). But there is no suspicion of commercialism about their love of liberty such as has often been attributed to the Catalans: they love their beautiful land, the Eskual-erria, for its own sake and the religion and customs of their forefathers, and the strangers who visit their country soon learn to love and admire its broad healing power and spirit of ancient peace. It is a country of civilization without great cities, where exists an intimate and ennobling relation between the soil and the inhabitants.