The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

through the lonely mountain valleys hereabouts, mixing with the shepherds, always ready to get his earfull.from the minstrels who turned aside from the Camino francés to visit the tomb of his saint in the monastery beyond.”
    The little hawk-eyed man who was the apothecary of the village then began a long argument with his rival hedge-scholar of the tousled hair, the saddle-maker, and they went at it hammer and tongs, while the rest of the company listened gravely, adding from time to time their pithy comments, mostly in proverbs. So living a memory was the thirteenth-century patriarchal author to these sons of the soil that I felt as if at any moment the ghost of the poet himself would appear before us and cap the quotations that were bandied about.
    The scene in the tavern reminded me of a similar one in Don Quixote when the innkeeper, his wife, his daughter and even the cross-eyed wench Maritornes argue in learned fashion about the books of chivalry. Here in the village of Berceo I felt as if the Father of Spanish poetry had only died the day before, for the older men had created his personality in their own image out of the fragments of his works they remembered, and he lived on as a ghostly presence inspiring a perpetual obituary.
    In his days seven hundred years ago there were two kinds of poets in Castile: those who were wandering minstrels, whose untutored lays were called the mester de joglaría, and educated poets who wrote in monorhymed Alexandrine quatrains called the cuaderna via and whose poems were called the mester de clerecía, or clerkly measure. *
    Berceo spent all his life among the Benedictine monks of San Millán, who owed their allegiance to their mother-house at Cluny, and made of their monastery a cultural oasis in these mountains. He wrote mostly about devout legends and the lives of the local Saints, such as San Millán and St. Dominic of Silos, the founder of the celebrated monastery near Burgos called by his name.
    In Berceo’s day the countryside of Castile rang with the deeds of Christian warriors against the Infidel, and so saturated was he with Spanish epic poetry that he continually introduces into his life of San Millán references to the Poema del Cid, calling his patron saint Cid-wise El buen Campeador and Santo Domingo, the hero que nascio en buen punto (who was born in a lucky hour). Then when he warms up to his subject and discovers, as folk-singers would say, his duende or demon, he ceases to be a cleric and calls himself Juglar de Santo Domingo (minstrel of St. Dominic), and like the juglar of the Poema del Cid he reminds his audience that a glass of good wine would be most welcome.
    Even today the recitation of rhapsodic poetry produces thirst in minstrels and their audience, and very soon our friend the saddle-maker in his harsh, guttural voice called for ‘Wine of the Moor’, and our host himself brought a fresh porron, saying that the wine was ‘on the house’.
    The apothecary, after quenching his thirst, began in a singsong voice to recite the beautiful rhythmic cantica or ‘Watch Song’, Eya Velar, which was probably suggested to Berceo by some of the muineiras, which he might easily have heard intoned by Portuguese or Galician pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. *
    The apothecary’s voice with its chanting made me dream of the early thirteenth century, when the pilgrims thronged the road to San Millán’s tomb before continuing their way towards Santo Domingo de la Calzada, the next stage on their journey. The verses were intended to be sung in the open air and the refrain eya velar was chanted by the chorus of pilgrims in response to the minstrel:

    Keep watch, keep watch, keep watch,
    Keep watch on the Council of the Jew,
    Keep watch;
    That they steal not God’s Son from you
    Keep watch!
    To steal Him off they are set upon;
    Keep watch,
    Andrew, Peter, likewise John,
    Keep watch
    Lie not in your trust so long,
    Keep watch;
    Hearken rather to my song Keep watch;
    All of them light robbers are,
    Keep watch. *

    To my ears the chanting with its intonation rising to the reciting note on the dominant of the mode, followed by the mediating cadence at the end of the first half and the final cadence, sounded like a church litany, but the rhythm imparted to the words and the refrain were like primitive folk music.
    I made a strange discovery during that evening gathering at Berceo Among the party was a young guitarist from the village of Rueda in