The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

and book. When I told Don Diego that I had been a pilgrim to his shrine at Bari and mentioned the manna of St. Nicholas for the sore feet of pilgrims, he replied: “You won’t find bottles of St. Nicholas’s manna on the road to St. James; there is, however, a cure that used to be given to Jacobean pilgrims, to harden their feet, namely a mixture of tallow-grease, brandy and olive oil. It is mentioned by a hardy French peasant who came this way in the eighteenth century.”
    After visiting the church and the remains of the ancient hospital I was entertained by Don Diego in his big rambling house. It was a hum of activity, for his niece was an excellent housekeeper, who kept plenty of bread baking in the oven, a good supply of hams and chorizo in the larder, and a bottle of wine on the table in the porch ready for the passing pilgrim. After I bad eaten a mammoth Galician fish pasty or empanada and drunk various glasses of red wine from his vineyard Don Diego gave me some interesting sidelights on the character of the Galicians.
    “It is a strange pilgrimage you are accomplishing,” he said, “for all through north Spain as you advance towards Galicia and the west you come close to the cult of death.”
    “I started off, Don Diego, in les Alyscamps, at Arles, with its avenue of tombs, but it was when I reached Asturias that I began to feel the sensation of travelling along the Jacobean road in the company of ghosts. I have always been fascinated by the cult of spirits, vampires who are endemic in some parts of Hungary, Rumania and Greece, but here in Asturias and Galicia the shadow world beyond the grave becomes an obsession which does not limit itself to the dark hours before the dawn.”
    “The people here, my friend, have always believed that the dead may leave their tombs at twelve o’clock at night and roam round the graveyards and churches. They leave purgatory to remind the living of the prayers they have promised but have forgotten to say for their dead relations. Sometimes they announce their presence by weird cries heard in the night or by the sound of clanking chains. In parts of Galicia the people believe that the souls take the form of stones on the road that groan when they are trodden on by the mule or ass of one who is their debtor in prayers, but commonest of all are the ghosts who take on strange shapes.”
    “In Asturias, I became so obsessed by the Santa Compaña that I could hardly walk up a lonely road by the cemetery without smelling the wax of their tapers.”
    “Here in Galicia,” answered the priest, “the people see lights flickering in the woods and even smell the wax. In villages in this province many women believe that it is a sin to sweep the cottages at night, for that would drive the souls away and prevent them from warming themselves at the fire. In Tuy, on the Day of the Dead, the people throw a big log on the kitchen fire to enable the souls to warm themselves. What is strange is that, though the souls in purgatory are burning in flames, whenever they visit the world they shiver with cold and always make for the fire.”
    “In Asturias, Don Diego, many people spoke to me about the Güestia —a group of ghosts in white shrouds who wander about at night holding torches that give a dim light, and they haunt the houses of one who is going to die.”
    “I’m afraid the old proverb quoted centuries ago by Correas in his Vocabulario: ‘the devil is at work in Cantillana and the Bishop is away in Brenes, still holds. We say today, ‘while the cat’s away the mice will play’. In spite of all that the bishops, parish priests and curates say, the people in Asturias and Galicia will go on believing in the Güestia or the Santa Compaña and in all the rest of their ghosts, spirits and crazy superstitions. They think when the moon shines they will see souls flitting down the mountains in the form of bees.”
    “I have heard a lot about bees on my pilgrimage: for instance the white bees that rose from the tomb of St. John of the Nettles and the singing souls that were seen by our Gaelic Maelduin and St. Brenda on their voyages.”
    “We, in Galicia,” said the old priest, “have a proverb: ‘He who kills a bee will have seven years’ sorrow.’ ”
    “I went to a wake, Don Diego, in Galicia years ago when I had to do a kind of bees’ dance. They called it abellón or abejorro. We all had to join hands and circle slowly round the coffin, making a buzzing sound, as