The scattered members of one of these popular traditions I have
gathered together, collated them with infinite pains, and digested
them into the following legend; which only wants a number of learned
notes and references at bottom to take its rank among those concrete
productions gravely passed upon the world for Historical Facts.
Legend of the Moor's Legacy.
JUST within the fortress of the Alhambra, in front of the royal
palace, is a broad open esplanade, called the Place or Square of the
Cisterns (la Plaza de los Algibes), so called from being undermined by
reservoirs of water, hidden from sight, and which have existed from
the time of the Moors. At one corner of this esplanade is a Moorish
well, cut through the living rock to a great depth, the water of which
is cold as ice and clear as crystal. The wells made by the Moors are
always in repute, for it is well known what pains they took to
penetrate to the purest and sweetest springs and fountains. The one of
which we now speak is famous throughout Granada, insomuch that
water-carriers, some bearing great water-jars on their shoulders,
others driving asses before them laden with earthen vessels, are
ascending and descending the steep woody avenues of the Alhambra, from
early dawn until a late hour of the night.
Fountains and wells, ever since the scriptural days, have been noted
gossiping places in hot climates; and at the well in question there is
a kind of perpetual club kept up during the livelong day, by the
invalids, old women, and other curious do-nothing folk of the
fortress, who sit here on the stone benches, under an awning spread
over the well to shelter the toll-gatherer from the sun, and dawdle
over the gossip of the fortress, and question every water-carrier that
arrives about the news of the city, and make long comments on every
thing they hear and see.
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