Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (mobile ebook reader .txt) 📖

Jervas’s suggestion is more probable, that the words are the beginning of some old song or story, and are equivalent to saying that the remark made has as much to do with the question as the old song, “Over the hills,” etc. ↩

Proverb 118. ↩

Proverbs 172, 105, 72, 98, 166, 20, 63, 192, 189. ↩

Proverbs 75 and 161. ↩

From a modernised version, apparently, of the ballad, Despues que el Rey don Rodrigo⁠—Cancionero de Romances Antwerp, S.A. Duran, Romancero, No. 606. ↩

The passage is apparently corrupt. Don Juan Calderón defends the text in his Cervantes Vindicado; but it cannot be said that his vindication is satisfactory. ↩

Proverb 115. ↩

Proverb 183. ↩

Proverb 252. ↩

Proverb 156. ↩

Catonian sentences, i.e. in the style of Dionysius Cato. Michael Verino was the author of a book entitled De Puerorum Moribus Disticha, somewhat in the style of Cato’s Disticha, and, like it, a well-known schoolbook at the time. The Latin quoted by the duchess is from the epitaph on him by Politian. ↩

Proverb 36. ↩

A popular way of describing drinking without getting drunk. ↩

Proverb 39. ↩

Don Quixote told them nothing about the cave of Montesinos: all they knew of it was through Sancho. Hartzenbusch inserts the correction. ↩

Favila was the son and successor of Pelayo. Don Quixote is hardly correct in describing him as a Gothic king, for the Gothic kings, properly so called, ended with Roderick. ↩

Vereis como os vale un pan por ciento; literally, “you’ll see it will be worth a loaf per cent to you.” There has been a good deal of discussion about this phrase. Critics, assuming that, as it stands, it must be wrong, have suggested various new readings, such as tan por ciento, pamporcino, and the like; forgetting, apparently, that Cervantes uses it again in precisely the same form and way in Chapter LXXI. There can be no doubt it is some old popular, perhaps local, phrase, now obsolete, but in use in his day in the sense I have given. ↩

Proverb 148. Sancho adapts the proverb to his argument. ↩

Triunfo envidado; “brag” would be a closer translation, but the game seems to have been more like “all fours.” ↩

Proverb 76. ↩

Proverbs 164, 84, and 232. ↩

I.e. Hernán (or Fernán) Núñez, of the noble family of the Guzmáns, professor of Greek at Alcalá and afterwards at Salamanca, and one of the greatest scholars of the sixteenth century. He made a collection of proverbs which was published in 1555, after his death. He was Commander of the Order of Santiago, and hence commonly called the Greek Commander, El Comendador Griego, a title absurdly translated “Greek commentator” by Jervas, Viardot, Damas Hinard, and others. ↩

The cry of La Alla ila Alla⁠—“there is no God but God.” ↩

In the carts described wheels and axle are all in one piece. They are in use to this day in the Asturias, and their creaking may be heard on a still evening miles away. The country folk there maintain it has the effect Cervantes mentions. ↩

Proverb 152. ↩

Disciplinante de luz: one in the costume of the disciplinants who used to walk in procession in Holy Week. ↩

For abrenuncio. ↩

That which holds back the string of the crossbow. ↩

Proverbs 17, 68, 85, and 227. ↩

Proverb 108; i.e. a perfectly natural accompaniment. ↩

Proverb 225. ↩

Proverb 58. ↩

Proverb 52. ↩

Properly the thick knotted ends of the cords forming the lashes of the scourge used by penitents. ↩

Proverb 127. ↩

The last clause of this paragraph was expunged by order of the Inquisition in 1619, and have not been since restored in any edition I am acquainted with. ↩

Proverb 29. A proverb that evidently had its origin in the words of some philosophical culprit after having been whipped through the streets mounted on an ass, according to custom. Sancho quotes it again in Chapter LXXII. ↩

Proverb 57. ↩

A reference to Proverbs 200 and 53. ↩

A popular phrase expressive of extreme eagerness. ↩

This date is obviously the date at which Cervantes was writing. ↩

Orégano, properly wild marjoram. See Proverb 160. ↩

Proverb 50. ↩

Trifaldi = Tres faldas, or three skirts. ↩

Proverb 204. ↩

Proverb 231. ↩

Proverb 137. ↩

Proverbs 39 and 95. ↩

Martos, a town of Andalusia to the southwest of Jaén, apparently famous for its garbanzo crops. ↩

From zorra, a fox. ↩

Perhaps an allusion to the story in Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo’s Diálogos of the pious young man who said if he had moustaches to his soul he did not care for any others. ↩

A translation from the Italian of Serafino Aquilano (1500). The original is interesting as an Italian imitation of Spanish