Blind singers’ songs, Ermelinda do Muíño, the pot game and drowned cities

This page gathers four popular traditions with an article in the Galipedia that touch A Limia, written in our own words ^[1]–^[4].

Blind singers’ songs and ballads

Blind singers’ songs and ballads (cantos e romances de cego) are songs performed by one person, man or woman, blind or not, with a guttural or nasal accent and a characteristic posture with the head tilted. The typical instruments are the violin or hurdy-gurdy, sometimes with companions carrying percussion, and they went to festivals and pilgrimages. The themes were very varied: crimes of passion, lives of the condemned, notorious events, loves and adventures, prisoners, miracles and saints, bandits, priests and maids, and local stories that caricatured famous figures ^[1].

In the 19th century, when the media were few, blind singers worked as chroniclers who took the news to the villages. They carried large posters, the maltrañas, with images of the tale; the moinante who guided them pointed with a pointer at the drawing of the text being sung ^[1]. In A Limia, the blind singers of the fairs also appear in the archive texts on the Entroido: see Entroido: memory and archive. Castor Castro studied the ballads and blind musicians of the Upper Limia in Lethes (2010–11) ^[1].

Ermelinda do Muíño

Ermelinda Seguín Matías, known as Ermelinda or Hermelinda do Muíño, was born in Sas (Sarreaus) in 1924 and died in the same place in 2013. She worked and lived for over thirty years in a mill, and her uncle was Ángel López, "o cego de Sas". She was a singer with a wide repertoire of ballads and Epiphany, round, blind-singer and spinning-evening songs, and played the tin. She starred in episode 19 of the programme Alalá and in 2008 received a tribute at the 5th Bagpipers’ Pride Day ^[2].

The pot game

It is a popular Entroido game in several Galician towns: six or more players in a circle, in costume and with sooted faces, throw clay pots through the air without letting them break. Whoever breaks one pays a fine and drinks wine. A "madriña" sets the pots in play, collects the fines, gives out wine and asks the public for money; the referee, on a ladder decked with mimosa, carries a horn and imposes fines at random. In Xinzo de Limia it is played on the second Sunday of the cycle, the cacheleiro or oleiro Sunday; in O Porriño since 1944. The game is documented in France in the early modern period: Rabelais, in Gargantua (1535), calls it cassepot ^[3].

Drowned cities

The theme of towns drowned at the bottom of lagoons, punished for bad behaviour or lack of hospitality, is common in Galician mythology. Luís Monteagudo records 23 drowned places in Galicia, and Xoán Cuba says there is no Galician lagoon without its drowned city. The best-known cases are Antioquía (that of the Lagoa de Antela), Valverde, Duio and the Cospeito lagoon. Some sources raise the figure to over seventy; sometimes the punishment comes through a woman who guards the well or spring, or a sorcerer Moor ^[4]. See Legends of Xinzo de Limia.

Links

• Curiosities of A Limia
• Sarreaus
• Xinzo de Limia
• Legends of A Limia

Sources

1. «Canto de cego», Galipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canto_de_cego
2. «Ermelinda do Muíño», Galipedia. https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermelinda_do_Muíño
3. «Xogo da ola», Galipedia. https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xogo_da_ola
4. «Vilas asolagadas», Galipedia. https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilas_asolagadas