15.   Good-Bye Rivers, Good-Bye Fountains     (Adiós ríos, adios fontes)

Historical Background

"Good-bye rivers, good-bye fountains" recounts the drama of those forced to emigrate by the crisis of 1850-1860. Apparently due to the unusually cold winters of the decade 1850-1860 and due to the prevalence of subsistence agriculture many family farms of Galicia went bankrupt.

The weather of the decade is sometimes likened to a mini Ice Age. There was notable snowfall over much of Spain in 1850 and by February a large number of wolves roamed the countryside. February 1853 brought heavy snowfall to the port cities of Ferrol and A Coruña. The following year, 1854, Madrid registered a minimum temperature of -8°C on February 14^th. January 1855 was again very cold and snowy over northern Spain. The winter of 1856-57 was especially hard,

Official reports in the official bulletin of the Spanish government highlighted the frostiness of the winter. From Puigcerdá (Girona), "For more than a month the countryside has been snow-covered." From Biscay, "As a consequence of the copious snows that have fallen over our region during the past days, especially on the peaks of the Valley of Carranza, there has appeared down in the valley a strong pack of wolves that is inflicting great losses on herds of sheep and cattle." Announcements of planned wolf culls were numerous during those cold days of 1857... the snow fell over all of northern Spain from Galicia to Catalonia. The province of Santander had by the fourth of February spent three months cut off from the interior, completely snowed in. "No one remembers such a prolonged spell of bad weather."

("Olas de frío, entradas frías y temporales de nieve en España 1830-1985." Meteored)

To compound the problem the main domestic industry also went into crisis.

From the second half of the nineteenth century onward Galicia's textile industry suffered a severe crisis brought on by the legal importation and the smuggling of foreign fabrics, and many families endured hardship because there was no alternate source of employment. To make matters worse, the agricultural sector went into crisis between the years 1850-1860, destabilizing the rural economy. The composite crisis forced the population to look for a better life overseas.

("La emigración española en el periódico la Voz de Galicia en el año 1913." El Rincón del Vago)

The economic downturn accelerated the exodus.

There is evidence of a strong current of emigration from the year 1810 to 1853 that is difficult to quantify because the Spanish government did not condone emigration officially. Consequently some authors refer to this obscure period as the period of clandestine emigration.

But from 1836 onward Spain began to grant official recognition to her newly independent colonies. Mexico was the first former colony to be recognized, in 1836, and Uruguay, Chile and Argentina followed soon thereafter. As a result emigration intensified... In December of 1836 the first commercial advertisement appeared offering transatlantic passage aboard the General Laborde from A Coruña to Montevideo, Buenos Aires and other destinations in Mar del Plata. The offer of transatlantic crossings increased progressively. The majority of the crossings was made on sailing ships. In 1850 the brigantine Juan departed from Carril advertised as a first-class steamer. Relatively reliable data suggest that 93,040 Galicians left between the years 1836 and 1860.

The Spanish government legalized emigration in 1853, and this made the count reliable: 122,875 people left Galicia between the years 1860-1880.

(André Solla. "A emigración galega a América")

The proportion of people leaving was staggering. The census of 1857 gave a count of 1,776,879 inhabitants for the region. According to all these figures, then, over 12% of the population left Galicia during the period 1836-1880.

Affectionate Diminutives

• amoriñas. Dim. and pl. of "amora" (berry, blackberry). Although the appropriate translation would be "sweet blackberries," expressing affection and tagging the flavour of ripe blackberries, the diminutive was laid aside to limit the line length to seven syllables and thus preserve the tempo and flow of the poem (2.13).
• arboriños. Dim. and pl. of "arbore" (tree) translated "dear trees."
• beiriña do mar. Dim. of "beira do mar" (coastline, seashore) translated "precious coastline" conveying deep affection for the land which the protagonist now embarked is set to abandon (11.4).
• camiña. Third person singular present tense of the verb "camiñar" (5.4). Not a diminutive.
• caminiños. Dim. and pl. of "camino" (path, route, trail, way) translated "narrow footpaths," an accurate description of the space between rows of planted corn. "Camino" and "camiño" are synonymous.
• campaniñas. Dim. and pl. of "campana" (bell) translated "cherished...bells" to create internal rhyme with "parish church" on the next line of the poem (2.11-12). Other possible translations: beloved bells, darling bells, dear bells, precious bells. An earlier version, "cherished chiming bells," was discarded for being too strained and in discord with their description farther down (9.4).
• casiña. Dim. of "casa" (home, house) translated "darling cottage" (2.8) to stress the countryside environment of the house and translated "dear house" on the last line of the poem to reflect distance, loss, separation, rupture.
• coitadiño. Dim. of "coitado" (hapless, unfortunate, unlucky) translated simply "hapless" to rein in the author's projected empathy.
• figueiriñas. Dim. and pl. of "figueira" (fig tree) translated "dear fig trees."
• fogueiriña. Dim. of "fogueira" (blaze, bonfire, fireplace) translated "beloved fireplace."
• fontiña. Dim. of "fonte" (fountain) translated "favorite spring" to bring out the farmer's affection for the spring and for the cattle he took there for drinking. A typical "fountain" of the Galician countryside consisted of a pipe incrusted in rock to serve as a spout for human consumption and a sink underneath to serve as a watering hole for the cattle.
• herbiñas. Dim. of "herbas" (blades of grass, grass) translated "hallowed blades" (7.2) to show the protagonist's affection for his father buried underneath and translated "saintly blades" (7.4) to express the same emotion using a different adjective.
• hortiña. Dim. of "horta" (orchard) translated "small orchard" to head off a possible overuse of the adjective "little" in the translated poem: the affection is already expressed by the predicate, "I love so." The previous translation, "little orchard," remains a valid option.
• igrexiña. Dim. of "igrexa" (church) translated "tiny...church" reflecting the size of the building and the economy of a typical rural parish.
• miña (my). Not a diminutive.
• muíño (mill). Not a diminutive.
• paxariños. Dim. and pl. of "paxaro" (bird) translated "little...birds." The phrase connotes size and affection.
• queridiña. Dim. of "querida" (beloved, dear, darling) translated "little darling."
• terriña. Dim. of "terra" (land) translated "dear land."

Explanation of some words, terms or expressions

Virxe da Asunción (8.1, 8.5). The Spanish religious icon known as Our Lady of the Assumption (to heaven).

Pomar (9.2). Also known as Pumar it is a hamlet in the municipality of Urdilde, county Rois, some 20 kilometers from Santiago de Compostela. It was so small that one local ditty chaffed it with these words, "Although from a distance the hamlet of Pumar looks like a town it has but a carnation on the way in and a rose on the way out." Another ditty is more generous, "They say that Pumar is uncomely because its houses do not have balconies, yet it has pretty girls who steal away hearts."¹

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