Ballad Collection of the Madeira Archipelago

In a volume of XXIV + 514 pages, published in this city in 1880, Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo gathered a very large number of poetic compositions. He classified them systematically under the genres Stories, Tales and Games. The first comprised the kinds Sacred ballads (29 compositions), Secular ballads (22 compositions), Xácaras (19 compositions) and Cases (25 compositions); the second, the kinds Fairy tales (3 compositions), Allegorical tales (7 compositions), Children’s tales (3 compositions), Lengas-lengas (5 compositions) and Children’s perlengas (9 compositions); and the third, the kinds Children’s games (6 compositions) and Adult games (4 compositions).

For readers less versed in these matters, it may perhaps not be superfluous to say that, although these compositions were collected from local tradition and among the common people of the various parishes of this island, the great majority of them did not originate in this region. They were brought by the first settlers and by those who came here in succession to engage in trade and agriculture.

The illustrious collector of these poetic compositions does not state this categorically, nor does he refer in any detail to the influence that the environmental conditions of the time would have exerted on them. Yet it is impossible to accept that the origins of this popular poetry could lie in our own milieu. It is certain, however, that various causes would no doubt have modified the original works and also created new ones of a markedly local character and with features of their own, which today it would be impossible to determine even with approximate accuracy.

On the causes that contributed to the preservation of these compositions in local tradition, we shall transcribe some passages from the book’s interesting and valuable preface, which deserve to be placed on record here.

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The historical and geographical conditions of this archipelago of Madeira explain how medieval narrative poetry came to it and has survived in it to this day.

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Feudalism was succeeded by monarchism; the adventurous life of kings and noble lords at war gave way to the leisurely residence of both at court and in royal palaces; the rough customs and brutal sensuality of the Middle Ages gave way to the affected blandishments of urbane courtly libertinism. In the same way, in the sphere of literature, the narrative poetry of the ballads of those iron times was succeeded by the discursive poetry of Provençal-style songs – witty, erotic or critical – of palace cultism. The former, supplanted by the latter and modified in its language by the progress of the modern tongues, took refuge from the Castilian heights in the lower strata of the population; and there it has dwelt to this day as traditional poetry, more or less altered, more or less corrupted.

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Now, this was the period when the islands of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’) and Madeira were discovered, in the first quarter of the 15th century. From then until past the middle of the 16th century, many settlers flocked here – nobles, merchants and commoners, Portuguese in the greater number, but not a few foreigners too: Spaniards, Italians, Flemings, Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans – who, together with the still medieval ideas and customs of each country, brought their ancient poetry to these islands. Many Moors, captured on the opposite Moroccan coast and brought here, spread their tales and rigmaroles here. Finally, Philippine rule, besides the garrison of some four hundred Castilian soldiers it placed in this Archipelago, gave occasion for new peninsular inhabitants to emigrate here, and both groups inevitably brought with them some of those old ballads that so abound in their homeland. – This was the period of Madeiran progress and prosperity. The island of Madeira then became extremely rich through the sugar industry and its building timber; these two branches of trade and its geographical position raised it to an emporium of national and foreign shipping. And because it was the first and chief of the Portuguese colonies, it was made the diocesan metropolis of all our newly discovered overseas territories, from Brazil to Asia. All this contributed powerfully to attracting new settlers to this island and, with them, new examples of the narrative poetry of the Middle Ages. – From all these elements, the nucleus of the Madeiran population, one may deduce the provenance, variety and richness of the traditional narrative poetry of this archipelago.

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Acquired in this way, that poetry took deep root in these islands. For, as we showed in another work (Notas às Saudades da Terra), medieval life and customs were implanted here; and when they were already declining on the mainland, they still flourished here, and became so thoroughly acclimatised that even now, despite so many innovations, they largely endure, especially in agriculture. – In these islands there persist, in name and in fact, the landlord, owner of the land, and the villein, who works it under a half-share tenancy (colonato a meias, sharecropping with half the produce to the landlord) by his own labour and that of his family, as a resident tenant (caseiro) or as a sharecropper (meeiro, without a house on the land) – that is, with or without residence – in the manner of the medieval tenant farmer (colono, under the colonia contract), bound or free, on the seigneurial land he cultivates. – And in such surroundings the narrative poetry of the Middle Ages, rejected by European palace cultism, settled in this Archipelago, living and dominant, like the almost suzerain power of its captains-donatary and the seigneurial rights of the local nobility, which, secured by the barrier of the sea and the delays of navigation, scoffed at royal power and municipal charters.

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Once medieval narrative poetry had taken root in this way, causes no less particular kept it alive until now in the oral tradition of these islands. The island of Porto Santo, from the time it was discovered and settled, remained almost forgotten in its smallness and its poorer productive conditions; and its poetic tradition, scant but genuine, has lain there for almost four centuries, like its neglected population, geographically and socially isolated in the vastness of the Atlantic. The island of Madeira, supplanted in the sugar and timber industries by America and Africa, declined suddenly from the end of the 16th century. As a result of this, and of other causes, it lost its pre-eminence as a nautical emporium and its metropolitan crozier, and for almost two centuries it remained as if abandoned to misfortune in the solitude of the waters, until its precious wines restored it to wealth and to European society. Each of its larger or smaller centres of population, separated from one another by the deep basalt clefts of the land, converged on the parish community, within sight of each bell tower; there, in turn, each family of settlers or farmers, bound by the need for daily labour on the lord’s land that it made fruitful, toils and vegetates around the hearth, which is both its refuge and its prison. And the population, thus doubly isolated from outside contact by the sea and by adversity, and ever more inwardly concentrated by the ruggedness of the country and the servile condition of the farmer, has for that very reason preserved the medieval narrative poetry entrusted to its tradition: prosperity brought it, decline preserved it. In this lies the history of the Madeiran poetic tradition up to the middle of the 18th century. ‘And it was time to collect this tradition and preserve it in a book; for modern institutions and reforms, the new schools and better means of internal and external communication will produce their natural effects; and after another half-century, the new life to which civilisation calls these peoples will have diluted, if not entirely extinguished, the old traditional poetry in their memory.’ In a letter from Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo to the illustrious writer Teófilo Braga, in March 1880 (Quarenta anos de vida literária, page 118), the learned annotator of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) says: ‘Besides the Romanceiro, I have collected the Cancioneiro Popular of this archipelago in two volumes, still in draft. I consider it of no less value than the former. And, being unable to meet my friend’s request with any example of the ballad genre, which I do not have, because I included all of them in the Romanceiro, I offer you the whole Cancioneiro, for which purpose I shall set about putting it in order in good time.’ In a note to this letter, Dr Teófilo Braga reports that, unfortunately, this promise was never fulfilled. It is greatly to be regretted that the songbook collected by Dr Álvaro de Azevedo should have gone astray, if indeed it was ever sent to Dr Teófilo Braga. Or might it still be in the possession of his heirs? If so, it would be desirable to obtain a faithful copy of it and to entrust a competent person with overseeing its publication. We do not know what kinds of poetic composition make up the Cancioneiro referred to above. Notwithstanding the recognised authority of Dr Álvaro de Azevedo shown in his books of literary criticism, we wish to draw the attention of those who may be interested to an interesting article on the Romanceiro of Madeira written by that consummate master of these subjects, the notable philologist Dr Leite de Vasconcelos, published on pages 184–192 of volume XXXIII of the Revista Lusitana, which deserves to be read and considered. He disagrees with some of Dr Azevedo’s assertions, setting out the arguments he judged most compelling to prove his case, while paying the illustrious commentator of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ the tribute of his highest esteem. The length of that article does not allow us to reproduce it in these pages.