Charles Morris
speaker
4,189 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 18 Aug
Charles Morris’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
For a number of years this small band of fugitive Christians gathered between the mountains and the sea in northwestern Spain, remained quiet, desiring only to be overlooked or disregarded by the conquerors.
But in the year seven hundred seventeen a leader came to them.
And Spain once more lifted her head in defiance of her invaders.
Pelaio, the leader named, is a hero shrouded in mist.
Fable surrounds him, a circle of romantic stories have budded from his name.
He is to us like his modern namesake, the one battleship of Spain, which, during the recent war, wandered up and down the Mediterranean with no object in view that any foreigner could discover.
Of the original Palaio
Some who profess to know, say that he was of the highest rank.
Young, handsome, and heroic, one who had fought under Roderick at the Guadalete.
had been held by the Arabs as a hostage at Cordova, and had escaped to his native hills, there to infuse new life and hope into the hearts of the fugitive group.
Ibn Hayan, an Arabian chronicler, gives the following fanciful account of Pelayo and his feeble band.
The commencement of the rebellion happened thus there remained no city, town, or village in Galicia, but what was in the hand of the Muslims, with the exception of a steep mountain, on which this Palaio took refuge with a handful of men.
There his followers went on dying through hunger, until he saw their numbers reduced to about thirty men and ten women, having no other food for support than the honey which they gathered in the crevices of the rock, which they themselves inhabited like so many bees.
However, Pilaio and his men fortified themselves, by degrees, in the passes of the mountain until the Muslims were made acquainted with their preparations, but perceiving how few they were, they heeded not the advice given to them, but allowed them to gather strength, saying, What are thirty barbarians perched upon a rock?
They must inevitably die.
Die they did not, that feeble relic of Spain on the mountainside, though long their only care was for shelter and safety.
Here Pellaio cheered them, doing his utmost to implant new courage in their fearful hearts.
At length the day came when Spain could again assume a defiant attitude, and in the mountain valley of Cagas de Onis, Pelaio raised the old Gothic standard and ordered the beating of the drums.
Beyond the sound of the long roll went his messengers, seeking warriors in valley and glen, and soon his little band had grown to a thousand stalwart men, filled with his spirit and breathing defiance to the Muslim conquerors.
That was an eventful day for Spain, in which her crushed people again lifted their heads.
Showing 721–740 of 4,189 · page 37 of 210
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