Fabled Shore - From the Pyrenees to Portugal

by Rose Macaulay

A Greek mariner from Marseilles compiled in the sixth century B.C. a topographical sailing book of his voyage from the Lands of Tin in the northern seas, down the western coast of Portugal and round the Sacred Cape, and so along the southern coast of the Iberian peninsula, through the Pillars, and along the Mediterranean coast to Marseilles, his home. The later part of this sailing book, from the Tartessos region (near Cadiz) to Marseilles, had great detail, describing each bay, each cape, each port, for the benefit of those Greek merchant mariners who adventured and trafficked down that far and fabulous coast to the Pillars of Hercules, and beyond these into the dark and questionable Atlantic where the silver mountains stood back from the Tartessian shore. From this sailing-log, or rather from some later Greek version of it, the late Roman poet, Rufus Festus Avienus, made, towards the end of the fourth century A.D., the poem that he called Ora Maritima - dull and prosy verse enough, but fascinating material; to those making part of the same journey, every line has interest. And from Avienus I had thought to borrow the title of this travel book. But it did not go down well with my publishers, for the booksellers believed that their clients would take it for a girl's name, and when they came to read the book, be profoundly disappointed and return it. So I renounced Ora Maritima for a title less deceiving. Fabled Shore is a true description of this long strange coast and its haunted hinterland, to which Homer sent Odysseus voyaging, where, in the regions about Tartessos, dark Tartarus was placed, and the Elysian plains, the abode of the blest, 'at the ends of the earth, where life is easiest. No snow is there, nor great storm, nor ever any rain; but always Oceanus sends forth the breezes of clear-blowing Zephyrus.' That, as Strabo observed, is obviously Iberia. As to the Islands of the Blest, they lie opposite Cadiz. And it was in the Cadiz region too that Herakles killed Geryon and drove away his cattle. Herakles indeed was the hero of all this shore; he sought the Hesperides and their golden apples off it; and he it was who clove in two the bridge of land that joined Africa to Spain, so that to this day its two halves are called the Pillars of Hercules. Indeed, most Greek legends were at one time placed in that far western land that stretched, mysterious and unknown, beyond the Pillars and the familiar Mediterranean, along the fabulous Outer Ocean to the Sacred Cape.

Genres: Travel, Spain, Nonfiction, Portugal

248 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1973

About the author

Emilie Rose Macaulay, whom Elizabeth Bowen called "one of the few writers of whom it may be said, she adorns our century," was born at Rugby, where her father was an assistant master. Descended on both sides from a long line of clerical ancestors, she felt Anglicanism was in her blood. Much of her childhood was spent in Varazze, near Genoa, and memories of Italy fill the early novels. The family returned to England in 1894 and settled in Oxford. She read history at Somerville, and on coming down lived with her family first in Wales, then near Cambridge, where her father had been appointed a lecturer in English. There she began a writing career which was to span fifty years with the publication of her first novel, Abbots Verney, in 1906. When her sixth novel, The Lee Shore (1912), won a literary prize, a gift from her uncle allowed her to rent a tiny flat in London, and she plunged happily into London literary life.

From BookRags: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ros...

Reviews

[Julian Worker]

This is a travel book from 1949 when the English writer Rose Macaulay made a journey in a car she drove herself. Macaulay started on the Mediterranean coast at the French frontier with Spain and finished at the western end of the Portuguese Algarve on the Atlantic Coast.

The physical and mental scars of the Spanish Civil War were still present as were the potholes in the roads. Churches were being rebuilt. A single female traveller was an unusual sight.

The past is everywhere in Spain and the author can feel and appreciate this history, searching for places that aren't in the guidebooks and can't always be found - they are there somewhere and it makes me want to go there and try to find those same places. Rose Macaulay must have read a lot of history books before her journey.

[Barbara]

Had been hunting for this for ages and then managed to borrow a 1951 edition from Highgate Institute (Amazon has it for over £16!)
If you know the coast of Spain, read this and weep. It is an evocative account of what things were like in the 1940s and although it is rather repetitive it is beautifully written and, at times, very funny (e.g. the section about Gibraltar). It makes you reflect on places you know as they are now, and as they were before tourism hit the coast, which some of the older people must still be able to remember. Rose Macaulay is a brilliant writer, not nearly well-known enough, I think.

[Alison]

I flew through this before my trip to the Algarve. And then read the Algarve chapter again while I was there. Perfect!

[Dvora Treisman]

Reading Spanish names of Catalan places and people did not sit well with me. I find it hard to believe that all those names were turned into Spanish, even kings such as Jaume I, etc. Perhaps they were, but my response to them remained negative. It was involuntary -- emotional. I tried. I did not succeed.

Besides the Spanish names, most of what Macaulay was talking about didn’t appeal to me. This book is an inventory of present places that once were Greek and Roman. It is a long list of Greek and Roman place names, ending up with the dreaded Spanish names. The rest of the commentary was of buildings – architectural and decorative styles. These also read like lists. There was a little bit about the people, but very little. When she was in Catalunya, I found the reading vaguely (but not very) interesting. But once she passed down into Valencia and Murcia, I was no longer interested. These are places I have never been and even if I intended to go, what she had to say had nothing to say to me. I don’t care what the Greeks and Romans called these places.

I might have carried on anyway, because I did so like the other book of hers that I’ve read (Towers of Trebizond), but my basic antipathy for Spain came through. I like Catalunya (it is a mixed emotional thing for me, part love, part betrayal) but I dislike Spain. So a little after half way through, I quit. If I had kept at it, it could have taken me a year to get to the end (whenever I picked the book up I wanted to put it back down), and life is too short for that.

It isn't a bad book, Macaulay is very well educated and intelligent and writes well, just that I didn't like it.

[Lisa]

Wonderful - a must-read if you are travelling to Spain, see http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...