Note 2 — Basque Poetry.

The Pastorale, or Tragedy, is certainly a representative and survival of the Mediæval Mystery, or Miracle Play; and in the remoter districts is acted almost as seriously as is the Ammergau Passion Play. It is an open-air performance, which unites in interminable length, and in the same piece, tragedy and comedy, music, dancing, and opera. Though undoubtedly the oldest form in which Basque poetry of any kind is preserved, it can have no claim to be an indigenous product. The subjects of the older Pastorales are drawn from three sources—from the Bible; from the lives of the Saints, or Hagiology; from the Chansons de Geste and Romances of Chivalry. None of the extant Pastorales, even in their earliest form, would, we think, be anterior to the thirteenth century. The anachronisms, the prejudices, the colouring, the state of education evinced, are all those of the date when the Chansons de Geste and the Legenda Aurea were the favourite literature of high and low; the epoch at the close of which flourished the brilliant petty courts of Gaston de Foix at Orthez, and of the Black Prince at Bordeaux. The anachronisms make Charlemagne a contemporary of the Crusaders; Mahomet is an idol, and in the shape of a wooden puppet sits on a cross-bar over one of the stage-entrances, where he is worshipped by all his followers as they pass in and out. The make-up of the characters and the dresses are conventional. But though we cannot assign any higher antiquity even to the original form of any of the extant Pastorales—we say original form, because they have been edited and re-edited generation after generation by almost every prompter at each successive representation—yet several of the accessories and part of the stage-business point to possibly older traditions. The stage, at least in the more inaccessible villages, where alone the Pastorales are now to be seen in anything like their genuine form, may still be described as “modicis pulpita tignis.” It is generally constructed against a house in the “Place” of the village, and is composed of boards resting on inverted barrels; one or more sheets, suspended from cross-bars, hide the house walls, and form the background; to this drapery bunches of flowers and flags are affixed, and thus is formed the whole “scenery”; the rest is open air and sky. Usually behind the sheet, though sometimes in front on a chair, sits the prompter, or stage-director; at the corners and sides of the stage are the stage-keepers, armed with muskets, which are fired off at certain effective moments, and always at the end of a fight. But there are four points in which a Pastorale recalls more ancient traditions: (1) The sexes are never mingled; the Pastorale being played either entirely by men, or entirely by women.2 (2) The speech is always a kind of recitative or chant, varying in time according to the step of the actors. (3) There is a true chorus. (4) The feet and metre of the verse correspond to the step and march of the actors, and to the dancing of the chorus.