they were the terror of the Christians--indeed, the pilgrims to Santiago de Compostella at all times feared the passage through the Basque Provinces, the strange language adding to their difficulties (“La Biscaye,” they said, “où il y a d’étrange monde, où l’on n’entend pas les gens”). The Basques troop in to early Mass every Sunday, often by rough mountain paths, from farms lying a league away. Yet it must not be thought that the Basques are priest-ridden; the priests are respected, and often take part in their games or walk many miles across the hills to visit the sick. But though the Basques are often narrow and fanatical, they have far too much dignity and independence to be the blind followers of the priests. In the Carlist wars they fought chiefly for their old privileges, or _fueros_, and the result of the wars was that nearly all their _fueros_ were lost, in 1839 and 1876. “Nothing is so fair as liberty,” says one of their songs, and their national song, “Guernikako Arbola,”[71] with its stirring air, celebrates “the holy tree of Guernica, loved by all the Basques.” In the little green-set town of Guernica a fine new oak, some forty years old, has taken the place of the old tree, now a mere trunk protected by glass, while in the little pillared temple are still to be seen the seven marble seats on which assembled-- “Peasant and lord in their appointed seat, Guardians of Biscay’s ancient liberty.” These are the two last lines of Wordsworth’s sonnet to the “Oak of Guernica! Tree of holier power Than that which in Dodona did enshrine, So faith too fondly deemed, a voice divine.”