Who hasn’t played goose as a child or as an adult with their churumbeles? It is an entertaining game, easy to understand, with few rules… and it accompanies wonders on any rainy afternoon, right?
But behind the famous “from goose to goose and I shoot because it’s my turn” hides an origin that you would not have thought of at all when you were rolling the dice. According to the journalist Pedro García Cuartango in his book magical Spain (Penguin Random House), the game would have been a medieval guide of Templar origin to warn the pilgrim of the dangers of the Camino de Santiago. Amazing, right?
Its origin is not entirely clear: some associate it with the Templars, dating it back to the 12th or 13th century. There are also traces that the Greeks entertained themselves with this game; There is evidence that it was played in the time of Philip II but several studies link its birth with the Camino de Santiago.
According to the latter, The 63 squares of the game reproduce the different stages towards Santiago, with its stops, bridges, hostels… and the different dangers that pilgrimage posed during the Middle Ages. In addition, there are constant allusions to the goose as a bird with magical powers along the way: for example, with bird marks that the stonemasons made on the walls of the temples but also, in names of the route such as the Oca River, Ansó, Oyón, The Goose…
The labyrinth indicates the dangers
There are those who have analyzed the arithmetic correlation of the figures on the board, concluding that they reflect the distances between the different points of the Camino. Cuartango affirms that “much more plausible is the identification of the symbols with the topography of the route.” Thus, bridges would have a spiritual meaning of transition towards divine order (“from bridge to bridge and I shoot because the current takes me”); The inn would become the shelter where the pilgrims rest and the prison is the punishment for sin. Wells refer to the sacred water of temples and drinking enclaves. The labyrinth indicates the dangers of getting lost along the route and the dice would refer to fortune. The last goose would allude to Finisterre, the end of the Camino.
If we try to look for these references on the board on the Camino, we would be left with Oyón, Ansó, Villafranca de Montes de Oca, the Valdueza River and San Esteban being the enclaves associated with the bird. “The well could be the crypt of the Burgos cathedral. The dice, Triacastela. The labyrinth, the mountains and the crossroads would be in León”defends the author in his work.
In this way, the goose game would have been born as a way to warn pilgrims of the risks of the French Way, the most used at that time, and also as a kind of map to guide them. The Templars were the ones who protected and defended the Christians who went to holy places and the goose game would have been that particular guide, a kind of GPS, to guarantee the pilgrim’s journey.
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