Excursion into Myth and Language

Well, I promised Debora Ferreira I would relate the story of the bat and, I shall. 

I could do so very briefly. Though simple in itself, it un-walls the cave on so many other issues of intriguing history and folklore in this part of Spain. 

Simply, the bat, called in Valenciano, the rat penat or flying mouse, is on its crest prominently.  It stands over other significant symbols of Valencian identity.  Why?

Well, here we go. 

The city of Valencia, a prominent port of the Mediterranean located in marshes on the mouth of the … river., once was a Moorish city. Mosquitos were a terrible problem as one might imagine, perhaps even worse than the pesky Christians that would attack from time to time. 

It is said that the moors relied on bats to control mosquitos, though I do not know about Christians. 

Nonetheless, one time, when the King of Aragon, Jaume I invaded and was outside the city waiting to stage his attack, a bat flew into his camp. It made a big noise by striking the armaments and then flapping its wings on a drum. It sounded the alarm that the Moors were about to stealthfully attack Jaume’s forces. 

As a result of the bat’s sounding the war drums, the Christians were ready and able to fend of the soldiers of Valencia.  As a result, the Christians took over the city and region.

Ever since, they say, the rat penat has been considered a defender of the city; the bat saved it from ongoing Moorish occupation and the Christians from almost certain defeat. 

Curiously, the bat is somewhat similar to the dragon though a mammal rather than a reptile that occupies and important place in Aragon’s history. There they relate that St. George, yes  that St. George, managed to appear in Aragon and defeat the dragon who had been terrorizing the region, demanding a daily human sacrifice to assuage his attacks. The king had promised his daughter to whoever could take out the dragon.

What is it with these kings always wanting to give away their daughters? The King in Alicante was said to do the same thing, though for water rather than to defeat a dragon. 

So anyway. St. George killed the dragon as he did all over Europe. The dude really got around.  He left his image and his red bars on the coat of arms of Aragon.

Though part of Valencia as a Spanish region and though the second city of Valencia in terms of population, Alicante does not ostentate the bat in its heraldry. Instead it has the three red bars of Aragon in recognition of St George.

Jaume did conquer Alicante too, it is said, but his son-in law, King Alfonso the Wise of Castille redid the task.

In these dynastic struggles with the Arabs, and the effort by historians to say whose…”dragon”… is bigger or mightie—as in the flying mouse.

In short, or in tall, if you prefer, these conquests are origin stories for the cultural and linguistic diversity of Valencia and Alicante.  They are also contested but we shall not go there.

Both Valencia and Alicanjte have the language Valenciano, a close relative of Barcelona’s Catalan—Jaume sponsored literature in Catalan and was said to have spoken the tongue as well as, Aragonese, a different language now on the verge of extinction. (kings and noblemen are strangely multilingual).

While Catalan stems from the same family as French—this story helps explain why King Jaume did not go to war against the French—Aragonese is fromn the same family as Castillian.

Now called Churro (like the Iberian-descendent sheep of New Mexico), the Spanish of the western mountains of Valencia is heavily influenced by it if not being in fact its daughter with a more modern Castillian influence. 

The lowlands of Valencia are said to speak a language related to Catalan and the highlands a language related to that of Aragon, due to the fact that Jaume was the head of both provinces. He is said to hav brought colonists from both to “resettle” the lands taken from the Moors. 

However, In Alicante, the issue is more complex.  The north is like Valencia with Valenciano in the East and Castillian—now like Alfonso’s Manchego in the west. 

To the south, the City of Elce (Elx) is officially Valenciano speaking as are highland areas, while the broad southen Vinalopó valley is Spanish speaking. There the Spanish is more like Murcian.

Alicante was near the boundary established between the vassal kingdom of Alphonso, Murcia, and Catalonia. 

Thus in the city you hear Spanishes similar to Murcian in pronunciation if not in all the Murcian words,  and some similar to Manchego. You can also hear Valenciano, as well as their own Spanish of their bilingual life. 

I have now finished my wonderful dim sum from a cool local Chinese place near the sea, and will go back into my bat-world of poetry and strange ideas, like that of dappled sunlight and shadow from the Japanese Komorebi. Later…