home; one knight of Cordova is worth thirty of the house of Lara." Donna Sancha, who was sitting near the bride, replied to her, "Do not say that, since you have married Don Rodrigo of the house of Lara." Donna Lambra answered insolently, "Hold your tongue, Donna Sancha, you merit no attention; you, who have borne seven sons like a sow." At these words Don Nuno Salido quitted the square, much troubled in mind, and returned to the house. Six of the Infants of Lara were playing at chess and backgammon, but the youngest, named Gonzalo Gonzales, was sitting alone in a veranda, and he seeing the vexation on his governor's countenance, plied him with questions till Nuno told him the occurrence, requesting him, however, to take no notice of it, at least at that time. But the young man's indignation was not to be restrained. He mounted his horse, rode to the plaza, and perceiving a mark at which several persons were throwing without effect, flung his cane, struck it, and then exclaimed to the ladies around the bride, as a parody on the words of Donna Lambra, "Let all of you (using a very coarse word) "choose you lovers at home; for one knight of the house of Lara is worth forty, yea fifty of the knights of Cordova." Donna Lambra, full of rage and confusion, immediately returned home; and finding the bridegroom, uttered many falsehoods to him, complaining that all the Infants of Lara had insulted her grossly, and threatened to tear her clothes; to put their hawks into her dove-cot, to beat her female attendants, and to kill the males in her presence; and she vowed that unless her husband avenged her she would turn Mahommedan, and go to live among the Moors. Don Ruy Velasquez, giving his bride too easy credence, without seeking an explanation from his nephews of Lara, promised her an ample vengeance.

In order to effect this, both husband and wife agreed to dissemble their feelings towards the Infants, whom they invited to accompany them on a visit to Barbadilla, the residence of Donna Lambra. One evening, after having spent the morning hawking on the

banks of the river Arlanza,* Donna Lambra and the seven brothers repaired to the garden to enjoy its shade; and Gonzalo Gonzalez, whom Lambra especially hated, was amusing himself at a fountain, bathing his falcon. The lady of Barbadilla privately gave orders to one of her servants to take a large cucumber, to steep it well in blood, and then to strike it in the face of the young Gonzalo. The choice of a cucumber, as the instrument of outrage, was particularly galling to a Spaniard-it being considered peculiarly an Oriental vegetable, and a favourite with the Moors-steeping it i blood, to mark the face of Gonzalo, was an emblematic insinuation that he had Morisco blood in his veins, the greatest insult that could be offered to a proud Castilian, besides being a covert reflection on the honour of his mother. The cucumber, as symbolic of an Oriental origin, is used typically in a contemptuous sense in Spanish proverbs, e.g.-"Let him who reared the cucumber, carry it upon his back;" that is, "Let him who rears a spoiled child, put up with its ill-condition." And, again, "I hated the cucumber, and it grew upon my back ;”‡ said when anything that a man most dreads or dislikes, befalls him.

Donna Lambra's servant obeyed the order of his mistress, who promised to protect him from its consequences; and having steeped a cucumber in blood, he came up suddenly, and struck the young Gonzalo in such a manner as to leave his face all smeared with gore. The seven Infants, all boiling with rage at this gross affront from a menial, drew their swords and pursued the man, who fled to the side of his lady, and caught hold of her robe for protection. The brothers demanded redress from Donna Lambra, but she bade them defiance; and they, carried away by their increased indignation, killed the domestic at her feet; and taking their mother, left Barbadilla, and returned home. Donna Lambra hastened to her husband, incensed him by a falsified narrative, in which she concealed the insult offered to Gonzalo; and represented the murder of her servant, while clinging to her robe,

In old Castile.

as a gratuitous and cruel outrage on the part of the brothers de Lara, and again insisted on revenge,

A

To satisfy this wicked desire of his wife, Don Rodrigo Velasquez (who affected to know nothing of what had occurred) began by requesting his unsuspecting brother-in-law, Don

Gonzalo Gustos, the father of the Infants, to go to the Moorish court at Cordova, on an embassy of amity, to Almanzor, viceroy for the Moorish king, Hissem, to thank him, in the name of Don Rodrigo, for some favours he had bestowed on the Castilian. Gustos consented; and Rodrigo sent by him a letter to Almanzor, in which he described his brother-in-law and his sons as the most deadly and unscrupulous enemies of the Moslems, and recommended the viceroy to put Gustos to death. But the Moor, more humane and more honourable than the nominal Christian, shrunk from slaying his guest in so perfidious a manner, and contented himself by making the Spaniard his prisoner, treating him at the same time with much courtesy and kindness.

Don Rodrigo next affected to the seven young knights, a desire to make an incursion into the Moorish territories, in order to obtain the release of their father, and requested them to accompany him, to which they joyfully acceded (contrary to the advice of Nuno Salido, who suspected some treachery), and they set forward with an escort of only two hundred horsemen; and being joined by Velasquez and his troops, reached the plain of Almenar, where they fell into an ambuscade of ten thousand Moors, posted there by preconcert between Almanzor and the perfidious Velasquez. The latter urged his nephew to attack the enemy, declaring that he knew them to be only the dregs of the Moors, who would fly at once if vigorously charged; and enlarging upon the support that he and his soldiers would give to the band of the Infants.

But

he had secretly sent a small party to the Moorish commander, desiring him to give no quarter to the cavaliers of Lara, or to any of their men. This atrocious embassy was overheard by Nuno Salido, whose suspicions had led him to follow the messengers unperceived; and he cried aloud, publishing the wickedness of Don Rodrigo, and warning his beloved pupils to be on

their guard against him. The Moorish army surrounded and attacked the Infants and their small force, who fought with the energy of despair, and performed prodigies of valour, while Velasquez and his soldiers stood aloof, passive spectators of the dreadful scene. But the disproportion between the Moors and the band of the Infants was too enormous for the latter to make head against their assailants. ten thousand against two hundred! All of those that followed the banner of Lara were slain; and amongst them the brave old Nuno Salido, and Gonzalo, the youngest of the brothers.

Then the six surviving Infants remained standing alone, wounded, and disconsolate, yet undismayed, and calmly awaiting death. But they were suddenly and unexpectedly succoured by a body of three hundred men from Velasquez' banner; these abhorring their leader's cruelty and treachery, and filled with pity and admiration for his valiant and betrayed nephews, galloped forward to their rescue. The battle was then renewed between the Moors and the Spaniards; but though the latter fought as though each were endowed with the spirit and the strength of ten, their efforts were in vain against the overwhelming majority of the enemy. The noble-hearted three hundred were killed, and again the six Infants were left alone, weary and covered with blood. They were taken prisoners by the bands of two Moorish captains, Galva and Viera, who, respecting their extraordinary valour, brought them into a tent, and on hearing their story, and the villany of their uncle, showed them every kindness. But the detestable Rodrigo, on finding that his unhappy kinsmen still lived, reproached the Moorish commander with this breach of agreement; and the latter ordered Galva and Viera to put their prisoners to death, which these captains humanely refused, saying it would be disgraceful, particularly in so atrocious a case. The representations of Rodrigo, however, prevailed with the Moorish commander; the Infants of Lara were taken from the merciful hands of Galva and Viera, and decapitated on the battle-field, and their heads, together with those of Gonzalo their brother, and of Nuno Salido, were sent to Cordova.

Gustos, the father of the ill-fated knights of Lara, who was still a pri

soner at the Moorish court, on learning the fate of his children, burst into excessive lamentations, and reproached Almanzor so bitterly for his barbarity in seconding the horrible designs of Velasquez, that the viceroy, touched with pity and remorse, gave Gustos the only reparation in his power, his liberty; and the bereaved parent returned home to Salas, to his afflicted wife, Donna Sancha. The remains of the Infants and their governor were restored by the Moors to Gustos for Christian burial in the Convent of St. Peter of Arlanza, where their tombs were extant for several centuries. Great was the exultation of Donna Lambra at the accomplishment of her dreadful wishes but an unexpected avenger of her victims was growing up.

While Don Gonzalo Gustos was at Cordova, he had gained the affections of a Moorish princess, the sister of Almanzor; and she became the mother of a son born in strict privacy after Gustos had returned home. Tho boy, whom she called Mudarra, was brought up at the court, where his parentage was kept a profound secret. But when he was in his sixteenth year, having had a quarrel one day with a noble Moor, named Aliator, with whom he was playing at chess, Almanzor, in whose presence it occurred, repri manded Mudarra, and reproached him as one of dishonourable birth.

Mudarra hastened to the princess, whom, from the manner in which she had always treated him, he suspected to be his mother, told her the words of the viceroy, and implored her to inform him of his real origin. She complied, and related to him the history of his father, and the tragical fate of his half-brothers, with which Mudarra was so much affected that he vowed to punish their unnatural uncle; and he requested permission to go to Salas, in order to become known to his father, and to comfort him. To this request his mother acceded; and he proceeded to Salas handsomely equipped, and accompanied by a small

escort.

Old Gonzalo, who had never ceased to mourn for his slaughtered sons, joyfully welcomed and acknowledged

Mudarra, who immediately renounced Mahommedanism, was baptised into the Catholic Church, and declared himself ready to espouse the quarrel of his father. He sedulously sought for an opportunity of falling in with Don Rodrigo; and having met him one day, while out hunting, he defied him to single combat, overthrew him, and, refusing to grant him more mercy than he had granted to the Infants of Lara, slew him on the spot. Mudarra then marching with a force against Velasquez' Castle at Barbadilla, took it; and having got Donna Lambra into his power, in retribution for all the blood she had so inhumanly caused to be shed, he ordered her to be stoned to death, and her corpse to be burned.

The maternal love and grief of Donna Sancha were gratified by the posthumous affection testified by Mudarra for the memory of his halfbrothers. She forgave the former infidelity of her husband, and adopted his son as her own, and her heir. She signified this adoption by a singular ceremony, performed in public. She took a shirt to attire Mudarra; but instead of putting it upon him in the usual manner, she caused him to get into it through one sleeve, which was purposely made very large, so that his head came out at the top of the sleeve, and at the collar. Hence came a Spanish proverb, "To enter at the sleeve and come out at the collar," which is now used to express a person who, being once taken into favour, gains a complete ascendancy. Hence, also, comes the adage, "To creep up a person's sleeve;" expressive of getting intimately into favour. Mudarra, at his baptism, assumed the name of Gonzalo Gonzalez, in memory of the youngest of the Infants of Lara. He is said to have displayed many fine qualities; and he became ultimately heir to all the possessions of the house of Lara, and is the ancestor of the noble and eminent family of the Larriques de Lara.

The exact date of the death of the seven Infants of Lara is uncertain; but it occurred between A. D. 967 and 993. This tragedy has been made the subject of a long series of Spanish roman

ces, which narrate minutely all the details in simple versification, having only the assonance of the vowels at the second and fourth lines of the stanza instead of rhyme; and Tempest engraved at Antwerp, in 1612, a collection of forty copper-plates from designs by Van Veeus, illustrative of the story. None of the romances are short enough for insertion here; but we will translate, as a specimen, from one of them, the grief of Gonzalo for the slaughter of his sons:

THE LAMENT OF GONZALO.

FROM THE SPANISH.

"Despues que Gonzalo Gustos
Dexo el Cordoves palacio."

From Cordova Gonzalo fled,
Home from its palace walls:
Amid the statutes of the dead
He dwelt in Salas' halls.

He wearied mem'ry musing there;
He blam'd his feeble arm,
By time unnerv'd-Time, chronicler
Of all his grievous harm.

"Ah, lonely tree!" thus would he say,
"Trunk void of branch and fruit,

The cruel spoiler hew'd away

The saplings from thy root.

"Time was when there were seven that thou Thine own didst proudly call:

How blest with one thoud'st deem thee

now

One, weakest of them all.

"My sons! my fancy find ye here

Each hour to lose again;
Thoughts of the absent, oh, how dear!

Till I behold ye slain.

"The blood is fresh-the little still
In my veins wildly flows,
When the base author of my ill

His baneful aspect shows.

"Woe to the land where bitter foe
Is arbiter of fate,

With power to strike a ruthless blow
On victims of his hate.

"Rather than on my native ground,
Among the Moors I'd be ;
For, oh! my sons, with them I found
Some hearts that pitied me."

So Gustos mourn'd reclined in chair,
Beside a lattice set;
The long locks of his snowy hair
With falling tears were wet.

ONIONS together with GARLIC, were held in such estimation by the Egyptians, that they swore by these vege

*

tables as divinities.* The satirist Juvenal ridicules them for their superstition, and calls them a happy people in whose gardens their deities grow

"Porrum et capas nefas violare, aut frangere morsu, O sanctos gentes! quibus hæc nascentur in hortis numina."

The Egyptian onion being a very fine vegetable, was forbidden to the priests of that country, as too great a luxury. Some have thought that the priests did not eat the onion from some superstitious dislike. But the bulb they hated was the red squill, because it was dedicated to Typhon, their evil deity. Our English name of onion is derived from the Latin unio (one); because the bulb is solitary, and throws out no offshoots.

Garlic was highly esteemed among the Greeks. The Athenians believed that it counteracted the effects of bad air. Garlic, with flour and honey, was the fare set before Machaon, in the royal tent of Nestor (Iliad, book ii.) The herb moly, given by Mercury to Ulysses to protect him from the enchantments of Circe, is believed to have been the garlic, called allium magi-(Odyssey, book x.)

cum.

Garlic was sacred to the Roman penates, but the goddess Cybele admitted no one to her rites who had recently eaten garlic. Horace's third epode is an execration of the strongscented herb. We must remember the tale in the "Arabian Nights," that delightful book of our youth, in which the merchant is so severely punished by his lady wife for entering her presence with unwashed hands after eating a ragout of garlic. Pliny tells an easy mode of doing away with the unpleasant smell of garlic, by eating with it beet-root roasted in the ashes. There is a sweet-scented garlic (allium odorum), a native of the south of Europe. In the Levant garlic is hung over the doors of houses to avert sorcery; a relic, among the modern Greeks, of the veneration of Mercury's moly with its anti-Circean virtues. Our wild garlic, with its pretty, white, star-like flower, is an ornament to our woods, as far as the sense of sight goes, at least.

The LEEK, the national badge of the Welsh, is worn by them in their caps on St. David's day (March 1), in commemoration of a victory gained by

their ancestors on that day over the Saxons. According to tradition, the scene of the battle was close by a garden of leeks belonging to an old Welsh peasant, who advised his countrymen to pull up the leeks and wear them as cognizances, to distinguish them in the melée; a precaution by no means superfluous, in days when uniforms were unknown. Legendary tales afterwards exalted the peasant into an apparition of St. David, the tutelar saint of Wales, whose advice and assistance led his protegés to victory on his patron day. St. David was the son of a prince in that part of Wales now called Cardiganshire: he early embraced the monastic life, and founded a strict rulehard labour, spare diet, and as constant a silence as could be maintained consistently with duties. He died about A.D. 544.

The vegetable originally used as the POTATO was the production of the convolvus batata, or batato edulis, which grows wild in the Malayan peninsula, and has a creeping perennial root, angular leaves, and pale purple flowers about an inch long. At every joint it puts forth tubers (the edible part). These plants were introduced from South America by Captain Hawkins Gerarde, who cultivated them in his garden, in London, in 1597, and called them potatoes (from batata). They are impatient of cold; but are still cultivated in the south of France and Spain. They have the disadvantage of being difficult to preserve, as they are apt to grow mouldy. These are the potatoes of Shakspeare and his contemporaries. They were supposed to be restoratives for persons of decayed constitutions, and of advanced age; wherefore, Falstaff "Let the sky rain potatoes.”—(Merry Wives of Windsor, act v. scene 5.)

says,

The present potato, which has derived its name from the old batata, was brought to Ireland from Virginia, by Sir Walter Raleigh, about 1589, and planted in his lands near Youghal. At a meeting of the Royal Society, 1693, Sir Robert Southwell, the President, stated, that his grandfather was

the first person in Ireland to whom Sir Walter Raleigh gave tubers of the potato. They were called Virginian potatoes, to distinguish them from the batatas, called Spanish potatoes. So late as 1629, potatoes in England were roasted, peeled, sliced, and put into sack with sugar, and were also candied by confectioners. They were introduced into France, 1742, but were long held in contempt, as only fit for the use of very poor people.

The potato, though a most useful, is a very unromantic vegetable. Yet there is a reminiscence of interest attached to it. In the imperial gardens of Schonbrun, near Vienna, where poor young Napoleon, the sometime King of Rome, spent the greater part of his short and semi-captive life, there was a plot of ground appropriated for his own amusement, which he tiled with his own hands. Instead of the fruits and flowers in which a boy might be expected to delight, he cultivated only potatoes, whose white, or purple wheel-shaped flowers he endeavoured to train into tufts, or bouquets, of some grace. When his crop was ripe, he always presented it to his grandfather the Emperor of Austria, for his own table.

As the potato is now considered peculiarly the vegetable of Ireland, we shall accompany it with our translation of an Irish song, addressed by a peasant to a fair cousin with whom he was in love. The name of the writer is unknown to us, but the song was very popular in Munster, in the days now gone by, when the country people sang like the birds. The girl sang as she milked her cow, or sat at her spinning-wheel; the peasant sang at the plough, or following his cart along the road; the herdsman sang as he sat on a stone watching his four-footed charge, and the mother sang to her child. But since the blight of sadness that has fallen on the spirit of the people, and that is maintained by the daily parting from their fast-emigrating friends, we have remarked that, go where we will, we never hear the sound of Irish song:

THE

VALLEY.