lines which appear to be a romanced version of part of the book _De Consolatione Rationis_, which was written in Galicia by Pedro before he became a priest, and at least ten years before Eadmer in England took up his pen to defend an opinion which was subsequently upheld by a host of eminent Catholic writers, including Feijoó, and which has since been incorporated among the unalterable dogmas of the Catholic Church.” CHAPTER V THE LANGUAGE OF GALICIA A Romance language--The universal language of Spain--A provincial dialect--George Ticknor--The _Cantigas_ of Alfonso el Sabio--Comparison between the languages of Galicia and Portugal--A Celtic trait--The wing of the tongue--The native poets of Galicia--_Trovadors_--The Marquis de Valmar--Latinised forms--Amador de los Rios--The young Italian language--French takes the precedence--Romance poetry in England--The troubadours of Aquitaine--Alfonso the royal trovador--The poet of true love--The martyr to Cupid--The story of Macias--His tragic end With the production of the _Salve Regina_, and with the origination of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Galicia may be said to have entered triumphantly upon her second golden age, an age which extended from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, and in which is comprised the period which witnessed the most glorious triumphs of lyric poetry in Spain. It must be remembered that for a hundred and seventy years previous to the year 585, when the Visigoths became the sole masters of Spain, the present province of Galicia, united to what is now the northern half of Portugal, had formed one united kingdom--that of the Sueves. As an independent nation, this portion of Spain, with a language of its own, and kings of its own, had more pronounced characteristics and traditions than any other part of Spain. Its language, originally Latin, had become, under the Sueves, a distinct Romance language, just as the Latin of central Spain became by degrees a Romance tongue, and finally developed into the Spanish language, as it is spoken in Madrid to-day. The language of Galicia during its second age of gold, the language of its lyric poetry was, like the Spanish language, a child of the Latin tongue; they were, we may say, twin branches from the same stem. But while the one became the universal language of Spain, the other split into two smaller branches, of which one became the national language of Portugal,[72] and the other--while it remained the purest of all the Latin dialects except the Italian--eventually sank to the level of a provincial dialect--that spoken by the peasants of Galicia to-day, a dialect which not even the historians of Spain and Portugal professed to understand till the close of the nineteenth century.