Between each shaft are narrow mouldings, and between the outer five four bands of ivy, not as rich or as elaborately undercut as on the chapel side, but still beautiful, and interesting as the ivy forms many double circles, two hundred and four in all, in each of which are written the words 'Tãyas Erey' or 'Tãya Serey,' Dom Manoel's motto. For years this was a great puzzle. In the seventeenth century the writer of the history of the Dominican Order in Portugal, Frei Luis de Souza, boldly said they were Greek, and in this opinion he was supported by 'persons of great judgment, for "Tanyas" is the accusative of a Greek word "Tanya," which is the same as region, and "erey" is the imperative of the verb "ereo", which signifies to seek, inquire, investigate, so that the meaning is, addressed to Dom Manoel, seek for new regions, new climes.' Of course whatever the meaning may be it is not Greek, indeed at that time in Portugal there was hardly any one who could speak Greek, and Senhora de Vasconcellos--than whom no one has done more for the collecting of inscriptions in Portugal--has come to the very probable conclusion that the words are Portuguese. She holds that 'Tãyas erey' or 'Tãya serey' should be read 'Tanaz serey,' 'I shall be tenacious'--for Tanaz is old Portuguese for Tenaz--and that the Y is nothing but a rebus or picture of a tenaz or pair of pincers, and indeed the Y's are very like pincers. In this opinion she is upheld by the carving of the tenacious ivy round each word, and the fact that Dom Manoel was not really tenacious at all, but rather changeable, makes it all the more likely that he would adopt such a motto.
The carvers were doubtless quite illiterate and may well have thought that the pincers in the drawing from which they were working were a letter and may therefore have mixed them up to the puzzling of future generations.[122] Or since nowhere is 'Tayaz serey' written with the 'z' may not the first 'y' be the final 'z' of Tanaz misplaced?
The arched head of the opening is treated differently on the two sides. Towards the Pateo the two outer mouldings form a large half octagon set diagonally and with curved sides; the next two form a large trefoil. In the spandrels between these are larger wreaths enclosing 'Tanyas erey,' which is also repeated all round these four mouldings.