Ultreïa et Suseïa!

On the Camino, there is an ancient greeting that is exchanged between pilgrims. Oh, those not on pilgrimage – hospitaleros, townsfolk, random people on the Way – will often shout out a hearty “¡buen Camino!”, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

In a tradition that was first recorded in the venerable Codex Calixtinus in the eleventh century, the pilgrim shouts “ultreïa!” and his fellow pilgrim responds “et suseïa!”

“Ultreïa” means something like “go further” or “to the end”.

“Et suseïa” means something like “and go higher” or even “and beyond the end”.

I say “means something like” because the language in which this is said – a rustic Romance language that may be related to Provençal or Catalan or even Galician but is the clear ancestor of none of them – is not only a dead language, it’s a dead language that almost completely avoided being written down and apparantly survives primarily in oral fragments.

In any case, it was a language spoken in the villages along the Camino Françes before the 11th century.

“Ultreïa et suseïa” may be its longest surviving phrase. It remains not only as a pilgrim’s greeting, but also as the refrain of a French pilgrim’s song, common along the Chemin du Puy in France.

Ultreïa (French)

Tous les matins nous prenons le Chemin,
tous les matins nous allons plus loin,
jour après jour la route nous appelle,
c’est la voix de Compostelle!

Chorus:
Ultreïa! Ultreïa! Et sus eia!
Deus adjuva nos!

Chemin de terre et Chemin de foi,
voie millénaire de l’Europe,
la voie lactée de Charlemagne,
c’est le Chemin de tous les jacquets!

Et tout là-bas au bout du continent,
Messire Jacques nous attend,
Depuis toujours son sourire fixe
Le soleil qui meurt au Finistère.

Englished:

Every morning we take the path,
Every morning we go further.
Day after day, the road calls us
It is the voice of Compostela.

Chorus:
Go further! Go further! And go higher!
God assist us!

Dirt road and Faith
Ancient way of Europe,
The Milky Way of Charlemagne
This is the way all my pilgrims.

And while there at the end of the continent,
Santiago waits ahead,
Always his fixed smile
The sun dies in Finisterre.

As the Camino has survived, so has this phrase, which might be best translated as “Onwards and upwards!”

Or perhaps even “To infinity and beyond!”

It is the acclamation of the pilgrim, of the Seeker for Truth, meeting a kindred spirit and exhorting them to continue, to perservere in both a physical and a spiritual sense.

“Ultreïa!”

“Et suseïa!”

(Originally posted to Pilgrims on the Way.)