That it is a duty to speak the truth is a proposition practically unrecognised in Spain. This is chiefly, if not entirely, due to the influence of the Church, for, as a great historian says in reference to this question, “when credulity is inculcated as a virtue, falsehood will not long be stigmatised as a vice.”[6] I have heard the peasant’s creed on this point put into a nutshell, thus:

“Very often it is necessary to lie, either for your own or for some one else’s benefit. There is nothing wrong in that. But to tell an unnecessary lie is a sin.”

This sophism, which I have translated word for word, seems altogether too subtle to be instinctive, and we trace in it some echo of the Church’s teaching, instilled into the mind of the uneducated, who have come to adopt it as an axiom of common morality.

The honesty of the Spaniard is, according to our views, relative. It is very rare for a working man or woman to take cash which does not belong to him. But the same people—e.g., servants—who would consider it a disgrace to steal a peseta in coin, will have no hesitation in falsifying their accounts and cheating their employer out of ten or twenty times that amount.

In certain matters there is extreme sensitiveness to any suspicion of dishonesty, but it is not clear that any conscious religious principle underlies this feeling. It seems rather an instinct of self-protection; for when we learn that it is a common practice for employers to examine their servants’ boxes when they leave a situation, even although their good conduct has not been called into question, we see that the friendliest relations between master and man do not necessarily imply confidence in the honour of the latter. The result of assuming evil where there is none is to encourage its genesis. I have heard working-class Spaniards say bitterly: “The rich people believe that we are all thieves, so what is the use of being honest? Yet most of us are honest, even though we go hungry for being so.” Stealing is considered by the poor as a sin, but I am inclined to think that the degree of sinfulness depends in the criminal’s eyes upon the nature of the theft. Thus, while no respectable peasant will steal money or clothes, servants have no hesitation in appropriating sweets and wine, to which, indeed, they think they have a right, very possibly dating from the time when domesticated aliens were fed on the leavings of their masters’ table. It would be difficult to convince them that to drink their employer’s wine without permission is just as immoral as to steal his cash.

The instruction given by the Church on these points is hardly ambiguous, if one may judge by a parish leaflet in my possession. It contains the following questions of conscience resolved under the head of “Consultations.”

Such moral teaching as this would quite account for the conduct of a pious cook once in my employ, who fed her entire family for some time at my expense. She, it is perhaps needless to say, did not “consult her master” on the point. She may have consulted her priest, for all I know, and if she did was probably told that it was a meritorious act to rob a heretic.

To turn to another branch of the subject, it will probably be news to many people that a “Bull of the Crusade” is still largely sold in Spain. This indulgence was first instituted in the days of the Moorish wars, to permit those who were fighting the infidel to keep up their strength by eating meat whenever they could get it. Few or none of the poor purchase this or any other indulgence nowadays, but it is still freely sold to people of means, and the day of its issue is kept as a minor feast day. It now costs the modest sum of pesetas 1.75, having been gradually reduced from pesetas 7.50, and is a source of income to the Government, producing, according to the Budget for 1909, 2,670,000 pesetas, or, say, £106,800. Any one can obtain it, as no questions are asked as to the religion of the purchaser.

An interesting survival is the penitential purple dress, with yellow cord and tassels round the neck and waist, which is worn on occasion by women of all classes in the rural districts, and by the poor in many cities. It is not, generally speaking, a penance imposed by the priest, but a free-will offering to the Virgin, made on behalf of some one dear to the wearer. A woman will promise to wear the hÁbito or penitential robe for a specified number of months, or a year, or sometimes even for life, if the Virgin will intercede for her invalid husband; or a girl will undertake to wear nothing else until the dress is torn or worn past repair, when the sacrifice is completed. A girl of seventeen explained that she had volunteered to assume the hÁbito she was wearing because her only sister was very ill.

“But my sister got better and persuaded me to put it out of my head. Then she suddenly became very ill again; all one night she seemed to be dying, so I knew I must keep my promise to the Virgin, and after that I would not let any of them put it out of my head.”

The Spaniards have two distinct ways of crossing themselves. One, described by the verb santiguar, consists in making the sign of the cross with the first and middle finger from the forehead to the breast and from the left to the right shoulder, invoking the Trinity. The other, called signar, consists in making, with the thumb and first finger crossed, or with the thumb alone, the sign of the cross on the forehead, mouth, and breast, praying God by the sign of our Redemption to deliver us from our enemies. In some parts a third method is often employed, which peasants will tell you “is from the times of the Moors.” In this the nose is touched as well as the forehead and mouth, with the thumb-nail, which is kissed at the end. The two forms are usually combined (persignarse), and the invocation is divided as follows:

A good Catholic, say the peasants, must persignarse thirty-three times in the course of the Mass, “and that would be very well if we understood the language and knew why we were doing it.”

In the south people always take up a handful of water and cross themselves before bathing in the sea or in a river, some even before taking an ordinary bath at home. It will be remembered that the Moslem, when preparing for prayer, washes his nose, mouth, and ears, as well as his hands and feet, and possibly this elaborate mode of making the sign of the cross may be a survival of the Moslem ceremonial of purification, especially when combined with the water. One distinctly Islamic tradition is seen in the custom of touching anything unclean, if it has to be touched, with the left hand, the right being put behind the back. A woman of Andalusia when washing the dead for burial always begins operations with the left hand, just as the Moslem does, and will not use the right until it becomes necessary. Thus it is not impossible that the curious sign of the cross described, like the traditional reason for insistence on infant baptism, even when the other offices of the Church are viewed with indifference, may be connected more or less closely, as the peasants say, with Mohammedan practices.

In the south and west the peasants never put on clean underlinen without the persignar, and previous to the crossing they recite the following prayer:

“Blessed and washed be the most holy Sacrament of the Altar, pure and clean, of the always Virgin Mary, Our Lady, conceived without spot of original sin from the first instant of her most pure human nature. Amen.”

No matter how great their aversion from the Confessional and indifference to the offices of the Church, the most careless never omit this invocation when they change their underclothes.

Another prayer, which is universal, reminds one of the—

of our own peasantry in bygone days. It runs thus:

(“With God I lie down, with God I arise, with the Virgin
Mary, and the Holy Ghost.”)

As will be observed, the Virgin here takes the place of Christ in the Trinity. I have inquired of a number of people how the verse goes, and find it does not vary. They say that evil would befall them if they failed to recite the lines every morning and night.

The Radicals, Republicans, and Socialists, who are all branded alike as atheists by the Ultramontanes, understand the people’s faith better than their priests do. The cry of the Church is that the nation is indifferent to all things holy. But men like Melquiades Alvarez, the novelist Galdos, Sol y Ortega, and many other leaders of the Lefts, continually explain that the national quarrel is only with the priests and the Religious Orders, not with the Church as an institution, for they recognise and proclaim that religion is an essential part of Spanish national life.

There is, indeed, no room for doubt that the mass of the people love God, Christ, the Virgin, and the saints with a warmth and sincerity rare in these materialistic days. His God is a living God to the peasant of Spain, his Virgin a mother always prepared to protect him, her image and those of the saints the most beautiful things in the world to his unsophisticated eyes. This may seem to the enfranchised intellect a degrading superstition. But the fact remains that the religion of the working classes of Spain in the mass does what many a more advanced creed cannot do, for it carries conviction and comfort to its possessors.