Machim (legend)

The poetic and moving legend of Robert Machin, with its tragic twists, has been celebrated in prose and verse by Portuguese and foreign writers alike, stirring the morbid sensibility of those who believe such tales of love or are easily swayed by them. After the exhaustive work of Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo, who subjected the case of Robert Machin to all the rigour of historical criticism, no one may legitimately accept that this charming but fantastic invention could be true. From 1563, when António Galvão first set this legend in circulation in his Tratado dos Descobrimentos, down to some writers of our own day, it has been told with many variations. It takes its most interesting and attractive form, however, in the third Epanaphora of Francisco Manuel de Melo, above all for the beauty of its language and the vividness of its narrative. The best-known version, nevertheless, is that of Gaspar Frutuoso, which does not differ in essentials from that of Francisco de Melo. We shall transcribe the ingenuous account of the historian of the islands, so as not to commit the fault of omitting from these pages the story of the famous legend of Robert Machin and Ana de Arfet.

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In the time of King Edward of England there was a noble Englishman, a renowned knight, known by the nickname of Machim, who, having lofty thoughts and being also a man of honourable deeds, was in love with a lady of high lineage called Anna de Arfet. As he pursued his love with great ardour, she in turn came to love dearly the one who loved her, for in the end love, if not repaid with love, has no equal reward. And since love (like fragrant things) cannot be hidden where it is enclosed, the lovers were found out through the signs and suspicions they gave of themselves, for they loved each other greatly (since the prohibition of a thing is sometimes the cause of greater desire for it, and trying to put out the fire of love is tinder for a greater blaze, for our nature is most stirred by, and most aspires to, what is most forbidden it). Just as the owners of irrigated fields, in times of great floods, dig great ditches at the head of the waters where they come in, to turn them elsewhere, and as physicians, to cure a stitch in one side, order bleeding from the opposite side, so her kinsmen, thinking to pour water on the fire and not the pitch that burns in it, acting as masters of the field and physicians of her lovesickness, sought to divert the current of love that was flooding her and to draw the blood away from the contrary stitch, as though making opposing ditches and bleedings; and with the King’s consent they married her in Bristol to a man of high estate. Machim was deeply grieved by this and she most unhappy. Finding no remedy for the passion and pain of the extremes in which both found themselves, and showing with burning tears their sorrow at this marriage, they agreed in great secrecy to flee to France, with which England was then waging great wars. Machim spoke with some aggrieved men and kinsmen, to whom he opened his heart and all his mind and treasure (which he kept locked where his heart and love were), and they pledged their faith and swore to go with him to France. To carry out this departure the better, they went secretly, a few at a time, to Bristol, where certain merchant ships lay laden for Spain, resolved to board one of them, set sail by force and cross to France. With all secrecy they informed Anna de Harfet of this plan, so that she might join them and flee. A day was fixed when the ships would be empty of their principal people, a feast day, when the master and merchants were ashore. Anna de Harfet, having been warned, rode off as secretly as she could on a palfrey and, taking a crucifix and all her precious jewels, reached the appointed place, where they were already waiting for her with a ship’s boat. She got into it with her Machim, and he, with his servants and friends, took her aboard one of the ships they had in readiness, which they at once set under sail; and, having cut the cables, they took the boat aboard. It happened, however, that a great storm blew up, churning the waves as though they envied that unrestrained love, and with it they were soon driven away from land. When night fell, reckoning that the other ships might come out after theirs, since it would be understood that they were crossing to France, they turned aside from that course, hoping to make for the furthest parts of France in Gascony, or Spain. And since the pilot and master had stayed ashore, and those aboard the ship knew neither how to make land nor how to take its latitude, finding a favourable wind they ran under full sail wherever fortune carried them, so as not to be overtaken; and within a few days they found themselves off a point of a wild land, covered all over with woods down to the sea, which left them astonished and bewildered. Just behind the point they saw a large cove; entering it, they cast anchor, put the boat out and went to see what land it was. Unable to land because of the breaking surf, they made for a cliff that jutted into the sea on the eastern side, where they landed at their ease. From there they went along the beach between the woods and the sea until they came upon a beautiful stream of good water, which flowed out to the sea through the woods. They found no animal or creature of any kind, but they did find many birds, and they saw that the woods were so dense and thick that it filled them with amazement. Among other trees, they found near the sea a very large and thick one, which from great age had a hollow at its foot that they could enter as if it were a house. Returning to the ship with this news, Machim and his companions, understanding that it was a new land, resolved to ask the Kings of Spain for it. Anna de Harfet, who was sick and seasick from the sea, begged Machim to take her ashore to see that stream and recover from her sickness for a few days. He did so: he had clothing and provisions taken ashore so as to stay there at leisure for some days while the weather allowed, taking some companions with him to keep them company on land, while others went back and forth to the ship; but when fortune runs against someone, it gives them no leisure to rest. On the third night after their arrival, so strong a wind rose over the land that the ship broke from its moorings. Those aboard set sail, unable to stop, and ran wherever the wind carried them; and within a few days, it is said, they were cast upon the coast of Barbary, where they were at once taken captive by the Moors and carried off to Morocco.

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When day broke and those who had stayed ashore could no longer see the ship, they were plunged into deep sorrow, at once giving themselves up for lost and despairing of ever being able to leave that place. Machim’s lady, seeing herself left there, was struck dumb and never spoke again, and three days later she died. Machim, for the great love he bore her, was bursting with grief; and, seeing himself banished from his homeland and his love dead, she who had been the whole comfort of his banishment, he no longer felt any longing for his country; he felt only an unbearable longing for his Anna de Harfet, whom he had so swiftly seen turned to earth before his eyes. With this grief that remained to him, and with ardent sighs and tears, he mourned her there; and in the place where they had taken shelter he had her buried, and set a wooden cross at the head of her grave, and a board (mesa) or slab of stone with his crucifix upon it, and at the foot of the crucifix he placed an inscription in Latin, in which he told the whole of his most sorrowful fate and all that had befallen him on that most unfortunate voyage, asking that, if Christians should ever live there, they build a church in that place with the dedication of Christ. This done, he asked his companions to take the clothing they had and such birds as they might catch, and to go wherever fortune might guide them, since he had not had the fortune to keep his beloved alive; and he said that he wished to stay there and die where he had killed Anna de Harfet, keeping company with her dead body with his longing alone, since she had kept him company while she lived. His companions, moved to pity, all told him that they would not leave him, and that they would die and remain there with him. Machim, who thanked them warmly for that love, and would have thanked them more for the cruelty of leaving him alone, lasted no more than five days, out of grief and sorrow for his beloved. His companions, who felt no small sorrow at the loss of his company, buried him beside his Anna de Harfet and placed another cross at his head; and, leaving the crucifix just as Machim had placed it, and leaving these two graves in that deserted land as a most sorrowful spectacle of longing and love, they boarded the ship’s boat in which they had come from the ship (although others would have it that they made it from the trunk of the tree, which was thick and could hold many people) and, reaching the coast of Barbary, were taken captive there by the Moors and carried off to Morocco, where the other companions from the ship were also already held captive, so joyless and unfortunate. Such are the brief, fleeting and costly pleasures of the world’s great and long-cherished hopes, whose custom, condition and nature always was and always will be to pay out very little or nothing to those who ask much.’ Dr Rodrigues de Azevedo, in some of his annotations to ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) and in a lengthy article in the Diccionario Universal Portuguez Illustrado, deals with this subject at the greatest length, not only to show the utter falsity of the claims of those who believed they saw historical truth in the legend, but also to vindicate for the Portuguese the priority in the discovery of this archipelago. The assertions of the British writer Richard Henry Major in his monumental work on Henry the Navigator also led the annotator of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ to undertake this study, since the recognised authority of the English scholar could lead readers of his notable book on our first maritime discoveries into serious errors. Anyone wishing to gain a deeper knowledge of this subject should turn above all to Dr Azevedo’s interesting and erudite dissertation included in note V of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (pp. 340–429) and in the Diccionario Universal Illustrado Portuguez (volume for the letter M, p. 190), and may also consult the Historia de Portugal (vol. II, pp. 230 ff.) by Pinheiro Chagas, which contains laudatory references to the annotator of ‘Longing for the Homeland’, ‘a Madeiran scholar and one of the most erudite writers that Portugal possesses’.

The most brilliant narrative of the legend, or romance, of Robert Machin and Ana de Arfet is that of Rebelo da Silva, published in vol. IX of the Archivo Pittoresco.