The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

headaches. On the beautifully carved wooden choir stalls San Froilán is accompanied by a wolf carrying his books in baskets, for it had eaten the saint’s ass. Lugo, as early as the twelfth century, was the rallying centre of pilgrims, and there were five hospitals.
    After a comfortable night spent in the old-fashioned Hotel Lucense, which was full of pilgrims, I rose early for a walk round the Roman walls—a fascinating experience, for on either side one looks on to gardens and orchards, and the panorama of the countryside and mountains is the epitome of Galicia, whose rich colours rival those of Connemara. Even at this hour, the city was full of activity and I heard everywhere the rhythmic clatter of the sabots of the peasants on the granite pavements, and the tinkling of goat and cow bells. I followed the pilgrim road out through the Puerta de Santiago near the cathedral, and crossed the majestic River Miño where the road continues through the quarter of San Lázaro where originally there had been a leper house for pilgrims.

THE KNIFE-GRINDER

    On the outskirts, I met an afilador or knife-grinder, who was pushing along his rickety contraption with its big wheel and blowing his panpipes to draw the attention of housewives. As he was on his way to Lestedo we jogged along the road together, and in two hours I learnt a lot about the strange nomadic guild of knife-grinders and, incidentally, picked up odd snaps of one of the many secret languages, which are still spoken by the nomadic groups living on the margin of modern society. He was about forty years of age, black haired and mahogany complexioned with strange, opalescent eyes, and I thought at first he was a Romanichal. He came, however, from the village of Carballo in the hills near Orense, and he informed me that in that mountain region, where the land is poor, most of the inhabitants of the villages have always practised nomadic occupations.
    “All my family are afiladores,” he said as he swallowed the glass of aniseed brandy to which I treated him after we had walked four kilometres together, “and you would be surprised to know how far we travel. My father not only went all over Spain, but also to France, Italy and Germany, and my grandfather went to South America, where he pursued his calling for years before returning to Carballo.” The knife-grinder then answered my questions about his nomad language which is called Barallete. At first he seemed disinclined to tell me about a language which is reserved for the initiates, but he relented when I spoke to him in Romani and explained that we were confederates possessing secret means of communication.
    “We Romanichals also use our language,” I said, “to warn our people of dangers ahead and to give one another information that cannot be understood by the stupid gorgios.”
    “We knife-grinders know the Gypsies,” he said. “We call them, in Barallete, Amieiros, and many a word we took from their language, for they are the past-masters and they know how to trick the Sinados.” “Who are the Sinados ?”
    “Sinados is the word we give to people who are not of our calling and whom we consider ignorant.”
    I was fascinated by the knife-grinder’s music, which made me think of the panpipes of the Albanian shepherds in north Greece. His instrument was made of boxwood and was the classical flute of Pan with ten or eleven notes, and with this he was able to improvise variations. One of his tunes was the following:

    To my surprise, he said that one of the important duties of a knife-grinder was to be a pig gelder ( castrador de puercos ) and in Galicia his panpipe was the sign of such a calling.
    As we tramped on he gave me many words and phrases which I added to my store of words from Calo and Germania. Barallete has borrowed a number of words from the Gypsies, such as the first personal pronoun menda, the word piltra for a bed, lima for a shirt and bato (father), but many come from Basque such as ardoa (wine), argena (meat), arrancios (eggs), guchi (little), gaurra (night). A number of words, to my amazement were evidently derived from English, such as jixo (fish), hote (hot) and doco (dog). When I asked him if he was married and had any chaboros, he uttered a resounding curse in his lingo:

    “Que os mircos da cabeza de meda
    os ticen na hora da felación.”

    which reminded me of a Gypsy Olojai. I understood from him then that his wife during one of his long absences from Galicia had run