4. Don Quixote paraphrases a ballad about Lancelot.
3 The cave is near one of the Lakes of Ruidera, the source of the Guadiana River.
4 The weathervane on the tower of the Church of the Magdalena in Salamanca was in the shape of an angel.
5 A pipe that carried Córdoba’s sewage into the Guadalquivir River.
6 The first two were in the Prado de San Jerónimo and the third in the Plaza de Oriente, in Madrid.
7 The book of the Italian humanist Polidoro Vergilio (1470–1550), De inventoribus rerum, which deals with the origin of inventions, was widely read; it was translated into Spanish in 1550.
8 A Spanish term for syphilis.
9 Don Quixote paraphrases the words of a ballad.
10 The phrase means that matters are being handled by someone competent.
11 A Dominican monastery between Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca.
12 A monastery near Naples that is visible from the sea and invoked by mariners.
1 A unit of measurement, roughly seven feet, used to determine height or depth.
2 This was worn by the holders of doctoral degrees.
3 Round caps that were stiffened by metal bands.
4 Montesinos, an important character in the Spanish ballads that recount the legend of Charlemagne, does not appear in French literature; Don Quixote’s adventure is based on the tradition that has Montesinos marrying Rosaflorida, mistress of the castle of Rocafrida that was identified in the popular imagination with certain ruins near the Cave of Montesinos.
5 Durandarte, a name originally given to the sword of Roland, became a hero of the Spanish (though not the French) Carolingian ballad tradition. He was the cousin and close friend of Montesinos, whom he asked, before he was killed at Roncesvalles, to carry his heart to his lady.
6 The poem is composed of lines from several ballads that deal with the subject.
7 The name of one of the lakes is del Rey (“of the King”). All the lakes were the property of the crown except for two, which probably belonged to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
8 A line from the ballad about Lancelot that was cited in chapter XIII of the first part.
9 This is the Spanish version of the name Fugger, the well-known German family of bankers and merchants who were closely associated with Spain.
10 The episode was mentioned in chapter V of the first part.
11 An allusion to the many travels of Pedro of Portugal. There is a traditional tendency to say that he traveled to the seven parts (partidas) of the world, rather than the more usual “four corners,” perhaps through confusion with the Siete Partidas, the treatise on laws compiled by Alfonso the Learned (1221–1284), king of Castilla and León.
12 A vara is a Spanish linear measurement (.84 meter).
1 The count of Lemos, to whom the second part of the novel is dedicated.
2 A variable Spanish poetic stanza of four to seven lines, its verses alternating between five and seven syllables.
3 The word means “miserliness” or “stinginess.”
1 This phrase (literally “what fish are we catching?” or “what are we up to, what are we doing?”) and others like it, as well as the Italian words spoken by the innkeeper, were introduced into Spain by soldiers returning from Italy.
2 A character in the novel Amadís of Gaul.
3 The phrase is based on John 10:38: “…though ye believe not me, believe the works.”
1 The line is taken from the Spanish translation of the Aeneidby Gregorio Hernández de Velasco, 1555.
2 The characters and story are taken from Spanish ballads. Gaiferos, Charlemagne’s nephew, was about to marry Charlemagne’s daughter Melisendra, when she was captured by Moors. For some reason Gaiferos spends seven years in Paris, not thinking of her, until Charlemagne persuades him to free her. Roland lends him weapons and a horse, Gaiferos reaches Sansueña, where Melisendra is being held by King Almanzor, and sees her at a window. He rescues her and they flee, pursued so closely by the Moors that Gaiferos has to dismount and do battle with them; he is victorious, and he and Melisendra return to Paris in triumph.
3 These verses are from a poem on the subject by Miguel Sánchez.
4 The line is from one of the ballads about Gaiferos.
5 The lines are taken from a ballad by Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645), one of the most brilliant literary figures of the Spanish Golden Age.
6 A character in the lliad who was extremely old.
7 These lines are from one of the many ballads that deal with Don Rodrigo, the last Visigothic king of Spain, who lost the country to the Moors.
8 Mono is “monkey,” and mona is “female monkey.” Colloquially, it can also mean “drinking binge” or “hangover.” The Spanish reads, “…no para tomar el mono, sino la mona.”
1. A breed of small donkeys native to Sardinia.
2 The story is based on the cycle of ballads that deals with the struggle for power among the children of Fernando I, and the siege of Zamora, in the eleventh century.
3 The lines in the ballad read: “I challenge you, Zamorans / as false and lying traitors; / I challenge young and old, / I challenge the quick and the dead; / I challenge the plants in the field, / I challenge the river fishes, / I challenge your bread and meat, / and also your water and wine.”
4 This was a nickname given to the Andalusian town of Espartinas because, as the story goes, a clock was needed for the church tower, and the priest sent away to Sevilla for a “nice little pregnant female clock” (relojais the nonexistent feminine form of reloj, or “clock”) so that the baby clocks could subsequently be sold. The same story was also told about other towns.
5 Nicknames given to the residents of Vallodolid, Toledo, Madrid, and Sevilla, respectively.
1 As he has done before, an enraged Don Quixote addresses Sancho in more formal terms and does so throughout this paragraph.
2 Latin for “by the sign of the cross.”
3 In his anger with Sancho, Don Quixote returns to the more distant form of address, which he uses for the next few paragraphs, until he begins to laugh.
4 Latin for “the great sea” or “ocean.”
5 “There is no honey without gall” (No hay miel sin hiel), or “Nothing is perfect.”
1 This was a common belief in Cervantes’s time.
2 This phrase is based on the wordplay growing out of bestia, which can literally mean “animal” or “beast” as well as “dolt” or “dunce.”
1 Hunting with falcons or other birds of prey was a pastime of the upper classes exclusively.
2 An adage that means “Life is full of surprises.”
3 This sentence seems to be a misprint in the first edition; Martín de Riquer indicates in a footnote that two other editors, Cortejón and Schevill, suggest, in his opinion correctly, that it read as follows:
“…there’s no more Sorrowful Face or Figure [there is an untranslatable wordplay involving figura (“face”) and figuro (a nonexistent masculine form)].”
“Let it be of the Lions,” the duke continued. “I say that…”
1 A duenna was an older woman of good family, usually a widow, in the service of a noblewoman. She wore a long headdress and wimple, something like a nun’s, which distinguished her from other, usually younger, ladies-in-waiting.
2 A gesture of contempt or derision made by placing the thumb between the forefinger and middle finger or under the upper front teeth.
3 A military-religious order founded in the twelfth century; Santiago (St. James) is the patron saint of Spain.
4 A galley ship sank in the port of La Herradura, near Vélez Málaga, in 1562, and more than four thousand people drowned.
1 These were artists of Greek antiquity.
2 The word in Spanish, jirón, has several meanings and can also signify a heraldic figure called a “gyron,” a triangular shape that extends from the border to the center of a coat of arms. The allusion is to Dulcinea’s noble blood.
3 A major
figure in an important early ballad cycle, Florinda, La Cava, the daughter of Count Don Julián, had an illicit and disastrous love affair with King Don Rodrigo; according to legend, the ensuing betrayals and acts of vengeance precipitated the Moorish invasion of 711.
1 An allusion to the throne won by El Cid in Valencia.
2 This is an allusion to death.
3 The original proverb is “Straw and hay and hunger’s away” (De paja y de heno, el vientre lleno).
4 A very fine cloth formerly woven in Segovia.
5 As indicated earlier, Wamba was a Visigothic king of Spain (672–680).
6 The phrase means “no matter how fine.” Brocade of three piles was of the very best quality; in chapter X, Sancho exaggerated by referring to brocade of ten piles.
7 The proverb says, “You don’t need here, boy, here, boy, with an old dog” (A perro viejo no hay tus, tus).
8 An idiomatic way of saying “trust and confidence.” The phrase that follows is Sancho’s variation on this and means just the opposite.
9 “Dead in the flower of his youth,” a line from a poem by Angelo Poliziano dedicated to Micael Verino, a poet who died at the age of seventeen, during the age of the Medicis. Verino was famous for his Latin couplets, which were very widely known.
1 This is a variation on the adage about a good wife.
2 A card game.
3 The Spanish reads cazas ni cazos, a nonsensical wordplay based on caza, “the hunt,” and cazo, “ladle,” which seem to be the feminine and masculine forms of the same word but are not.
4 Hernán Núñez Pinciano, who compiled a famous collection of proverbs (Refranes y proverbios) published in 1555.
5 A wizard, the supposed chronicler of the Knight of Phoebus.
1 The name given to those who carried torches or candles in religious processions.
2 A sheer silk fabric.
3 The god of the underworld, associated with Pluto, Orcus, and Hades.
4 Don Quixote addresses Sancho in a more distant, formal way throughout this paragraph. As always, it indicates extreme anger.
5 A formula in the liturgy (abrenuncio) used to renounce Satan. Since Merlin is supposed to be the child of the devil, the phrase is strangely appropriate, even though Sancho mispronounces it (abernuncio).
1 This last statement (“and be advised…are worth nothing”) was suppressed by the Inquisition in some editions following the Indice expurgatorio of 1632.
2 A person who was whipped publicly was displayed to the crowd mounted on a jackass.
3 An allusion to the proverb “God grant that it’s oregano and not caraway,” which expresses the fear that things may not turn out as hoped.
1 Sancho hears the name Trifaldi as tres faldas, or “three skirts,” leading to his comments on skirts and trains.
1Lobo is “wolf,” and lobuna is “wolflike”; in the next phrase, zorro is “fox,” and zorruna is “foxlike.”
2 Sancho’s statement is taken from a story about a beardless man, frequently teased because he lacked facial hair, who said, “We have a mustache on our soul; the other kind doesn’t matter to us.”
3 According to Martín de Riquer, the name Candaya is probably fictional; Trapobana was the old name for Ceylon; Cape Comorín is to the south of Hindustan.
4 Maguncia is the Spanish name for the German city Mainz; Antonomasiais a rhetorical figure in which a title is used instead of a name (calling a judge “Your Honor”) or a proper name instead of a common noun (calling a womanizer “Don Juan”); Archipielaseems to be related to archipiélago, or “archipelago.”
5 The lines, in Spanish translation, are by the Italian poet Serafino dell’Aquila (1466–1500).
6 These lines are by Commander Escrivá, a fifteenth-century poet from Valencia, whose work was greatly admired by many writers of the Golden Age.
7 This was in the first edition. Martín de Riquer believes it is an intentional corruption of Ariadne, for comic purposes.
8 The last two references in the list were poetic commonplaces.
1 “Farewell,” in Latin.
2 A line from Virgil’s Aeneid (II, 6 and 8): “Who, hearing this, can hold back his tears?”
1 The phrase in Spanish (…más oliscan a terceras, habiendo dejado de ser primas…) is based on wordplay that contrasts terceras (“go-betweens” or “panders”) and primas (in this case, “principal party to a love affair”). The humor lies in the connection of the former term to “third” and the latter term to “first.”
2 Martín de Riquer points out that the History of the Fair Magalona, Daughter of the King of Naples, and Pierres, Son of the Count of Provence (Burgos, 1519) a Provençal novel translated and adapted into almost every European language, has no reference to such a horse, though one does appear in other narrations of this type.
3 Clavileño, like Rocinante, is a composite name, made up of clavifrom clavija (“peg”) and leño (“wood”).
1 Sancho mentions this same Neapolitan monastery during the adventure of the Cave of Montesinos, when he blesses Don Quixote before his descent (chapter XXII).
2 A place where the Holy Brotherhood executed criminals.
3 The reference is to the myth of Phaëthon.
4 A reference to an actual person, Dr. Eugenio Torralba, tried by the Inquisition of Cuenca in 1531, about whom it was said that he flew through the air on a reed.
5 The name of a Roman prison.
6 Charles, duke of Bourbon (1490–1527), fighting in the armies of Charles V of Spain, was killed during the sack of Rome.
5. Real was the name given to a series of silver coins, no longer in use, which were roughly equivalent to thirty-four maravedís, or one-quarter of a peseta.
1. These were all famous underworld haunts.
2. An ancient copper coin whose value varied over the years; it eventually was worth half a maravedí.
3. The unwarranted use of the honorifics don and doña was often satirized in the literature of the Renaissance.
1. It was considered insulting to call someone a liar in front of others without first begging their pardon.
2. Martín de Riquer, the editor of the Spanish text, speculates that the error in arithmetic may be an intentional, ironic allusion to Cervantes’s three imprisonments for faulty accounts.
1. These characters appear in the well-known ballad that Don Quixote recites.
2. The story is included in book IV of Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana (1559?), the first of the Spanish pastoral novels; it is one of the volumes in Don Quixote’s library.
3. Knights chosen by the king of France and called peers because they were equal in skill and courage. They appear in The Song of Roland.
4. The nine were Joshua, David, Judah Macabee, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon (commander of the First Crusade).
7 Magallanes, the Spanish for Magellan, the Portuguese navigator, is used for comic effect to indicate Sancho’s ignorance of courtly tales and the names of their protagonists.
Don Quixote Page 123