Toledo, the Story of an Old Spanish CapitalLynch, Hannah
History
Toledo, the Story of an Old Spanish Capital
Lynch, Hannah
Toledo (Spain) -- Description and travel; Toledo (Spain) -- History
In those days the waters of the Tagus ran high, and water here was
abundant. The Moors, those subtle hydraulists, alone possessed the
secret of drawing from river and well their full value, and irrigating
plentifully a thirsty land. To this day Valencia is a garden of flowers
and an orchard of fruit, because the Moors passed by there. Of all this
Toledan Vega they made a paradise of leaf and bloom and rill. It
sparkled and scented the air afar, and such was the over-powering beauty
of the gardens of Galiana that Lozano, in his _Reyes Nuevos_, forgets
that he is writing of the nameless one, and bursts into high-phrased
enthusiasm. One would think the learned doctor of the church was
describing the conventional heaven of his imagination. The river then
flowed further inward than it does now, and ran along one side of the
palace, forming a broad moat. The gardens were a spiced and many-hued
paradise, and the palace a wonder of terraces and arches, with halls of
arabesques and Moorish inscriptions, pillared patios and dainty
boudoirs, with broad-beamed ceilings. Imagination easily fills in all
the omitted details of silks and couches, and marble and silver and
gold, of flowing water and music, of musked solitude and towered
reverie, of the glamour of guarded romance peeping through high arched
windows over the silence of the flowery Vega, and adown the quiet course
of the curved Tagus. No wonder legend makes Charlemagne, from the
blighting disasters of Roncevalles, pass down to this magic spot to fall
enamoured of the lovely Galiana, _la Mora la mas celebrada de toda la
Moreria_, and on her behalf challenge the Moorish prince Bradamante, who
persecuted her with his addresses, cut off his head in a single-handed
encounter, and carry away to France the exquisite creature, when she was
baptised, and reigned picturesquely over a grateful and admiring France.
Spanish legend is not awed by Charlemagne's fame. Either it blows his
armies to pieces at Roncevalles, or it lures him beyond the Guadarrama,
like a mere knight errant in the protection of damsels, caught by
ordinary love, and riveted to its chain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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