His father, João Vaz de Almada Falcão, was an upright public servant who had held the captaincy of Elmina on the West African coast, but died, as he had lived, a poor man.
[1] There is a tradition that in boyhood Cristóvão fell in love with a beautiful child and rich heiress, D. Maria Brandão, and in 1526 married her clandestinely, but parental opposition prevented the ratification of the marriage.
Family pride, it is said, drove the father of Cristóvão to keep his son under strict surveillance in his own house for five years, while the lady's parents, objecting to the youth's small means, put her into the Cistercian convent of Lorvão, and there endeavoured to wean her heart from him by the accusation that he coveted her fortune more than her person.
Their arguments and the promise of a good match ultimately prevailed, and in 1534 D. Maria left the convent to marry D. Luís de Silva, captain of Tangier, while the broken-hearted Cristóvão told his sad story in some beautiful lyrics and particularly in the eclogue Chrisfal.
There is a critical edition of Chrisfal and A Carta (the letter) by Epiphandro da Silva Dias under the title Obras de Christovão Falcão, (Porto, 1893), and one of the Cantigas Esparsas by the same scholar appeared in the Revista Lusitana (vol.