Agricultural Elements in Berceo's Descriptions of Hayfields

An important aspect of medieval Spanish agriculture was the hayfield, a location usually further removed from human habitation than the garden (see uerto of VSD 377-80),' comprising a broader area and probably not walled in, except perhaps by hedges.2 The prado of Berceo's VSO 43-5, VSM 246, and Milagros 1-46, along with the anchura of VSO 151 and 155 are representative of this vital segment of agriculture. A greater appreciation of the works of Gonzalo de Berceo is possible if we understand better the hayfield and its place in the medieval economy. Such is the purpose of this article. The word prado is used in the purely literal sense 'meadow, hayfield' in VSM 246. Berceo's protagonist is depicted in this stanza ordering the crowds to sit down, in imitation of Christ's miraculous feeding of the multitude: mand6 qe s'assentassen :: las yentes por el prado, / qe lis diessen del vino :: qe li avi6 sobrado. Even in its literal sense, prado clearly denotes a place of relative comfort. Millan's order to seat the thirsty crowd on the prado attests to this, as does the following excerpt from the Milagros which has the derivative 'a place of many hayfields,' 'meadowlands': tan folgado yacia :: como so un tendal, / o como qui se duerme :: en un verde pradal (610cd). Although the meaning of the word prado in Berceo is thought to be the same as that of modernprado, i. e., tierra muy h6imeda o de regadio, en la cual se deja crecer o se siembra la hierba para pasto de los ganados (DRAE), the most well-known instance of the word in the works of Berceo does not appear to fit this definition. I am referring of course to the allegorical prado of the Introducci6n to the Milagros, the description of which occupies the first forty-six stanzas of this work. It is well-known that this allegoricalprado is an example of the locus amoenus topos, and as such draws together a series of details established and governed by a hallowed literary tradition, and not by the agricultural world to which the prado belongs. The presence of this tradition in Milagros 1-46 has been exhaustively studied through the years by Agustin del Campo, Foresti Serano, Uli Ballaz and Brian Dutton, among others. However, there exists another locus amoenus description in Berceo that has not been so thoroughly examined: that of VSO 43-5 and 151, 155. Curiously enough, both of these beautiful spots are hayfields, and like the prado of the Introducci6n, the hayfields of VSO are the site of abundant fruit trees. While it has been shown that the presence of fruit trees in the Introducci6n is a fundamental and predictable component in the literary re-creation of the locus amoenus, there is reason to resist taking for granted in the same way the fruit trees in the hayfield descriptions of VSO. Furthermore, when the hayfield descriptions of VSO are compared to that of the Introducci6n, common denominators such as the presence of abundant fruit trees raise an interesting question about Berceo's prado

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