Ellen M. Whishaw

Popular monarchs—King Alfonso and the washerwoman—Royal charity—No bull-fight required—Reaction against the bull-ring—A monarchical republican—The guardian of the polo ground—The King introduces the Queen—A loyal old gardener—The grief of Enriqueta—The King at Ronda—A lucky donkey-driver—Careful rioters—Viva el Rey!

I am often asked by visitors whether the English Queen is popular in Spain, and I always wonder why such a question should occur to them. How could she fail to be popular, with youth, beauty, and a kind heart to give an extra gilding to her crown?

As a matter of fact, the longer one lives in Spain and the more one sees of the peasantry and the working classes in general, the more delightful tales one hears of the private dealings of the King and Queen and the rest of the royal family with the “common” people; and as very few of these have been published in the English papers, it seems worth while to put them on record before they are forgotten. I do not vouch for their literal truth, but I hardly think such stories would be current coin unless they had some foundation in fact, and in any case the people believe them to be true, and thus they illustrate the popular feeling towards the Royalties.

GOING HOME FROM THE MARKET.

Perhaps the story of King Alfonso and the washerwoman is already a chestnut, although I have never seen it in print. It dates from the days when motors were comparatively in their infancy, and the young King kept his entourage in a state of chronic nervousness by his devotion to the new machine, which in the opinion of the timid might run away or blow up at any moment. One winter afternoon the King did not return at the time he was expected, and there were serious thoughts of sending out a detachment of the Civil Guard with an ambulance in search of the errant motor. When His Majesty appeared, his lateness was explained by his having picked up a lame old laundress laden with clean linen, some little way out of Madrid, and taken her in his motor to the residence of her employers before he came home.

Possibly this may be one of Ben Trovato’s stories, but I can myself quite believe it, having heard at first hand of many other incidents showing the same impulsive kindness to the poor and lowly, and the same disregard of convention and regal state.

Not only the King and Queen, but also the Queen-Mother and other members of the royal family have at one time or another picked up unfortunates who had met with accidents in the streets, and conveyed them to their homes or to a hospital. On one occasion Queen Christina sat for half an hour on a bench in the park at Madrid, while her motor took an unlucky cyclist to hospital. He was a student who had cut his head badly, and the Queen herself directed her servants to lay him as comfortably as possible on the cushions, after binding up his wounds with her own hands.

The Infanta Isabel, aunt of King Alfonso, recently delighted the crowd by an action which is less common now than it was a century ago. True, the vehicle was a fashionable motor, instead of a great royal coach as formerly, but the inspiration was the same.

The Princess on her afternoon drive met a procession carrying the Viaticum from one of the minor churches to a dying person. She got out of her motor, made the priest get in with his sacred burden, and herself walked to the sick man’s house in the procession behind the Host, carrying a lighted candle. She is a great favourite in Spain, especially among the amateurs of the bull-ring, for her devotion to the national sport is so warm as to compensate them for the unconcealed distaste of some other members of her family.

The King and Queen seldom go to a bull-fight, although when they do appear at one the fact is so freely advertised, and photographs of their Majesties are so widely circulated by those interested in maintaining the “sport,” that probably the outside world believes that they are devoted to it. It is of course impossible that those who love horses and are themselves skilled in horsemanship should have any sympathy with an entertainment in which the mangling of horses is an essential feature, although a King and Queen may sometimes have apparently to condone what they cannot approve. But their real feeling may be judged from a little incident which I had from an excellent authority—the private secretary of the man to whom the King spoke.

The occasion was a visit from their Majesties to a certain town which is renowned for its bull-fights, and has the reputation of producing the best toreros in Spain. The Alcalde presented his programme of festivities for the King’s approval, and, pointing out one or two vacant dates, asked—

“When would you like to have the bull-fight, sir?”

The King replied that he and the Queen had come for a holiday, and did not wish to have every day filled up in advance; “and therefore,” said his Majesty, “when I want a bull-fight I will ask for it.”

The Court spent a whole month in that town, and no bull-fight took place.

Of course this, like everything else in Spain, is a political question. The Reactionaries, true to their principles, support existing institutions, while the Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, Republicans, both reforming and revolutionary, Socialists, etc., all combine to denounce what they regard as one of the main factors in the atraso de EspaÑa (the backwardness of Spain).

Foreigners who object to the bull-fight must bear in mind that an immense amount of money is sunk in it, by the owners of large estates who breed the bulls, in the building and upkeep of the bull-rings, and in the very costly apparatus of the show, and it is only natural that capitalists should fight for the institution in which their money is invested. When foreigners indignantly ask why the King does not put a stop to the barbarous “sport,” if it be true that he dislikes it, they do not realise that a constitutional King, however radical a reformer he may be, cannot by a stroke of the pen destroy the vested interests of a great and powerful section of the community. To suggest that King Alfonso should arbitrarily close all the bull-rings would be something like proposing that the King of England should, propio motu, close all the music-halls, regardless of the rights of the shareholders. And the bull-fights can at any rate plead a venerable antiquity. Their origin is not certainly known, but it is possible that they date from the days of the Liby-Tartessians, when Minos ruled and encouraged bull-fights in Crete.

What is new is the reaction against the ring, which is spreading with encouraging rapidity. One of the greatest virtues of Isabel II., in the opinion of her time, was that she “was very fond of the bulls,” and even now old ladies and gentlemen of that unlucky Queen’s generation speak of her affection for the bull-fight as one of her redeeming qualities. Whereas not the least of King Alfonso’s acknowledged claims on the respect and sympathy of the Radical and Republican sections of his subjects (and these include the mass of the working classes) is his obvious preference for other and more manly forms of sport.

The republicanism of the peasant is a curious and interesting study, and I always love to draw him out on the subject. One day when I was digging in the mountains a heavy shower came on, and I took shelter with my workmen in a chambered tomb that we had been clearing. How the subject of the Monarchy came up between them I did not notice, for I was absorbed in a dramatic shifting of the storm-scene as I saw it framed by a rough opening in the rock where a fallen stone had revealed the existence of our burial cave. The hills had been purple, almost black, against the thunderclouds, when suddenly there was a rift in the overcast sky, a streak of sunshine shot out, and through the pouring rain a great sheet of silver appeared like magic on the distant hillside, where an instant before all had been unrelieved gloom. It was only a patch of grey rock, but it was transformed by a cascade of rain-water from the peaks above into a thing of ethereal beauty which vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

A small boy—a goat-herd in his Sunday best on his way to a fair in the neighbouring town—had taken shelter with us in the cave, and at the men’s request had been singing the local songs in a shrill treble for my benefit; and when my thoughts began to wander from the company to that glorified hillside, he was wailing a love-song of which I could not make out a word. It was rather a shock to me to be brought back to earth by hearing the gentlest and most courteous of my two diggers remark that he wished he had the King and the Alcalde of the town together in the cave, so that he might throttle them both.

He explained that the Town Council owed him a considerable sum of money for a contract carried out by his father (recently dead) and himself, and his view was that if the King really was up to his work he would long ago have made an end of corruption and jobbery, and would have replaced the existing bureaucracy with honest men, who would pay poor labourers what they owed them instead of buying motors for their private amusement. And as the King had not done this, let him be throttled, or if not that, at least let us have a republic and make him the President of it.

Poor RamÓn! He was suffering from a bad attack of political indigestion, and no wonder, for the unpaid bill, amounting to some hundreds of pesetas, meant a very heavy loss to a young man who had to support a widowed mother and various young brothers and sisters. I gave him a note of recommendation to the Alcalde, whom I knew to be rather better than most of his class, and I hope he got his money when the next pay-day came. But I sadly pondered over the state of Spain, administered on a system which poisons every limb of the body politic and makes it almost impossible for the local authorities to pay their workers and at the same time meet the demands of the blood-suckers who live without working, while they pull the strings that make the office-holders dance to their piping.

In a country where politics permeate and pollute everything it is not easy to keep clear of them, but I have heard many little anecdotes of the King and Queen which fortunately are free from that taint; and if most of them relate to Seville, my excuse must be that most of my life in Spain has been spent in that city.

About a mile outside the town there is a large expanse of meadow land alongside the Guadalquivir, known as the Tablada, which has played a part many times in Andalucian history.

Here grazed the long-horned Tartessian cattle mentioned in the last chapter. Here Julius CÆsar reviewed the native militia when the natives of Hispalis enlisted under his banner after refusing to open their gates to Varro, the lieutenant of Pompey. Here the offspring of Witiza, the last legitimate King of the Visigoths, grew rich as they cultivated the fertile plain and built ships to carry on that profitable trade with the East which made Ishbiliyah rich under the rule of Witiza’s descendants, who amicably intermarried with Arab princes and ruled the land under nominal subjection to the Sultans of Cordova. Here the Northmen, ten centuries ago, after sailing up the river, were repulsed when they tried to set fire to the town. Here Saint Fernando set up his camp when he besieged Seville in 1248 and spent a year and a half in the vain endeavour to effect an entrance through the imperishable walls which were first built somewhere about the time that Minos brought bull-fighting into fashion.

True the Carthaginians conquered Tharsis, sacked and destroyed the city of their rivals the Greco-Tartessians (who in recent centuries had twice possessed themselves of Cadiz), and even deprived Tharsis of its name, adding it to that of Cadiz by way of an extra jewel in the Gaditanian crown. But the encircling wall defied their vengeance, and although they may have made a breach here and there they could not destroy it, for the “cob” of pre-Roman Spain is as hard as stone, and luckily for posterity the Carthaginians did not know the uses of dynamite.

Unless aided from within, none of her enemies ever got into Seville until the walls fell into disrepair. Even Marshal Soult would hardly have found the siege of Seville such a farce as he did, but for the ruinous condition into which Spanish neglect had allowed the fortifications to decline. True he did not have to encamp on Tablada to starve the town into surrender, as did Saint Fernando, but the inhabitants had time to hide a good many of their treasures, artistic and other, in the subterranean vaults and galleries which have existed since Tharsis was built, before the French general battered down their gates.

The plain of Tablada is now a busy place, for right across it a great canal is in course of construction, which, coupled with a further deepening of the channel of the river, will open Seville, some fifty miles inland, to steamers of over 10,000 tons and make it the principal port in Spain, except perhaps Barcelona.

But part of this plain is devoted to sport of different sorts, and here a polo ground is laid out when the Court comes to Seville. Thus here, as in Moguer, my little anecdotes are linked to a thread of history, and this long digression has more object than at first appears.

A certain old man had been appointed gatekeeper to the entrance to the Tablada sports ground, because his son, a torero, had been killed in a bull-fight and the bulls destined to die in the Seville ring are always enclosed in a field at Tablada a day or two before the fight. He was a conscientious old man and never deserted his post, even when all the town turned out to receive the King and Queen on their arrival from Madrid. They had an exceptionally enthusiastic reception that year, because King Alfonso had recently granted a large piece of ground from the Alcazar gardens to give access, light, and air to a poor quarter packed away behind the lofty walls of the palace; and it was a good deal of a sacrifice on the part of the old man to go out to Tablada at the usual time instead of shouting Vivas with his friends at the station first: but he had his reward in a little-expected shape.

A few days after the arrival of the Court, word was sent to our friend that he must be extra careful to admit no unauthorised persons to the enclosure, because their Majesties would be driving out in the course of the afternoon to see the polo ground preparatory to a match fixed for the next day. So when a young man whom he did not know galloped up, slightly dishevelled from riding fast in a stiff wind, the gatekeeper flatly refused to open the gate, saying in explanation that the King and Queen were coming.

“Do you know the King?” inquired the rider.

“No; nor the Queen either,” answered the old man, “and I only wish I did, for my grandchildren plague the life out of me every day asking whether I have seen her and whether she is as beautiful as everybody says.”

“Well, now you will be able to tell them,” said the horseman, “for here she comes.”

Up drove the Queen, and the old man thereupon became aware that his interlocutor—as of course my readers have guessed—was the King himself, for he proceeded to tell her of the conversation in a way that made her laugh heartily.

“And now that you have seen the Queen, what shall you tell your grandchildren? Is she as beautiful as everybody says?” asked the King in the best of humours, for, as all the world knows, nothing pleases him more than these spontaneous evidences of the admiration bestowed on his wife.

“More, more, a thousand times more,” stammered the old man, quite abashed.

The royal cortÉge waited while the Queen asked about the children, how many there were, what were their ages, and why they lived with their grandfather. And on hearing how they had been orphaned and were dependent on his modest earnings at the gate, the King gave him a bank-note—which could not have been less than twenty-five pesetas, for that is the smallest paper money, and may have been more—telling him to let the children have a feast of cakes and chocolate by which to remember the Queen.

It is pretty to see the real affection inspired by this brilliant young couple even in the humblest of their entourage.

While the piece of ground given to the town was being cut off from the palace gardens, there was for a week or more a long space by the new road which was open to the world at large, for although the work was pressed on with all speed, a high and strong wall had to be built, and that could not be run up in a moment. It was January, and very cold for Seville, and one day when I walked round the gardens I missed the oldest of the gardeners, who with his chubby, cheerful daughter are particular friends of mine.

It appeared that old Toro was crippled with a serious chill, and could only just hobble across from his cottage to the place where the building was going on, where he was acting as watchman until the new wall was finished.

“How has he managed to get ill just now?” I asked, for he was a sturdy old fellow whom no amount of work ever seemed to tire.

“It is because he has been up for several nights, keeping guard over there,” explained his daughter. “The Town Council put on two extra policemen, but my father thought they were not enough to make sure that no bad characters got in in the dark, for it is a long piece of road as you see, and he was not going to have bad characters in His Majesty’s garden if he could help it.”

“Well done, Toro,” said I; “I know how loyal he is to the King, and I hope he will get a handsome tip for his extra care.”

“Oh no, he didn’t do it for that, it is purely voluntary; and anyhow he won’t get anything, because the SeÑor MarquÉs (the Governor of the Alcazar) doesn’t know anything about it. You may be sure my father is not going to tell him. And please, DoÑa Elena, don’t say anything to my father about it, for he would be angry with me for telling you. He feels he is only doing his duty.”

One admires the King whose kindness to his employÉs secures such unselfish affection, and one admires the high ideal of duty which leads an old man nearer seventy than sixty to stop out of doors all night for a week at a stretch to guard his royal master’s garden. I do not know if Toro’s devotion ever reached the King’s ears, but I fear not, for the last time I saw chubby Enriqueta she was in tears because, owing to extensive alterations in that same garden, the house she and her father had lived in for so many years was to be pulled down and they had to seek a new abode outside of the precincts.

She cheered up, however, as I led her back to talk about the royal family, always her favourite subject of conversation.

She adores the little Prince of Asturias, and related with pride how she had long ago heard him talking in English to his pony. “He was hardly four years old, and yet he could already talk in a language I did not understand!”

But her most cherished recollection relates to a day of alarms and excursions when, owing to some political crisis, the Court left Seville at a few hours’ notice, a day or two earlier than had been intended.

“I have never been employed inside the palace,” said Enriqueta, “only to wash table linen and such-like here in our own laundry. But that day every one was so busy that we were all called to help with the packing. There are certain things that the Queen herself directs the packing of, and one of her ladies told me to carry a tray of silver and spoke rather sharply because I was slow with it, being unused to such delicate work. And a voice behind said in the kindest tone, ‘Don’t scold the poor girl; I am sure she is doing her best.’ And there was the Queen herself, who had come to see if the silver was ready! We would all go down on our knees to serve their Majesties, who have kind words for everybody, and it is a deep grief to me that when we live away from the palace I shall have no chance of serving the Queen even by washing her table linen.”

I heard a pleasant story of the King at Ronda, which he visited a year or so ago on his way from a military review at Algeciras.

The Alcalde, although of noble birth, was very old and had not been to Court for so long that he had even forgotten how to address his King. He began by taking the seat of honour in the carriage, and when the King asked him the depth of the Tajo—that tremendous cleft in the rock through which flows the GuadelevÍn—he replied that he did not know. The Tajo is the pride and glory of all good RondeÑos, for the gorge has a sheer drop of between five hundred and six hundred feet, and great was the indignation of the town when the Alcalde’s indifference to those all-important local statistics became known.

The King was driven up to the new hotel, the Reina Victoria, on the crest of a hill where the Tajo opens out into a fertile valley. And here the Alcalde seems to have set his royal guest down and left him to his own devices, without so much as having a glass of wine set before him.

Later in the day a poor muleteer, toiling up the winding path which leads from the flour mills below to the “old town” on the top of the hill, was accosted by a strange young gentleman who, with a companion, was beginning the ascent. No one is more responsive to a pleasant greeting than the Andalucian peasant, and the arriero at once slipped off his donkey in order to carry on the conversation more comfortably on foot.

“I suppose you gentlemen, being strangers, got a sight of the King this morning,” said he. “They say he is very simpÁtico, and very good to the poor.”

“I am glad to hear that,” said one of the strangers, “but haven’t you seen him yourself?”

“Not I,” said the arriero; “I can’t afford to lose my day’s wage merely to enjoy myself, and I have no chance of seeing His Majesty unless he comes down into the Tajo to look for me.”

They climbed on up the stony zigzag path, and presently the young man asked the arriero if the donkey could carry his weight, for he found walking up the almost vertical hill rather hard work.

“Of course he could get on the donkey, and welcome. CastaÑo often carried two hundredweight of potatoes up to the town, and the SeÑor certainly did not weigh that. He, CastaÑo’s owner, thought very little of climbing the hill several times a day when there was a lot of produce to take to market, but he could understand that a forastero [stranger—any one not belonging to the speaker’s native place] who was not used to the Tajo might find it heavy walking.”

So the gentleman got on the donkey, sitting on the panniers with his long legs dangling on each side of the beast’s neck in true country fashion, and in this wise the little procession reached the new road recently made through a breach in the town walls to give an easy approach for motors.

Here the “stranger” dismounted and gave a gratuity to the arriero which left him speechless with surprise and delight, for it was more than a week’s wages that he found in his hand.

“Thank you for my pleasant ride,” said the gentleman. “And you can tell your friends that the King not only went to see you at the bottom of the Tajo, but was very glad to borrow your donkey to come up again.”

When he left that evening King Alfonso is reported to have said that he would never forget Ronda, for it was the first place he had been to in all his life where he was neither offered nor asked for anything.

These are but a few of the many stories we hear of the King, the Queen, and their people, but they will suffice to show the estimation in which their Majesties are held, as well as some of the reasons for it. And to end the chapter I will add one incident in very modern history, which occurred as recently as November 1913, and is significant, it seems to me, of the present state of Spanish politics.

The tax known in France as the octroi and in Spain as the consumos, because it is levied on nearly everything that is consumed in the use,—i.e. food and firing,—bears heavily on the poor and causes more discontent than any other detail of local administration. It is very harshly enforced in many places, every box, basket, or bundle that enters the town being examined with irritating and unnecessary thoroughness. Every traveller has suffered from it on arrival at the railway station, and what is worse, one often sees weary labourers forced to unload and reload again their tired donkeys on their way home from work, because the consumista chooses to imagine that some article of food may be concealed under a hundredweight of charcoal or firewood. I have myself been detained in pouring rain at the entrance to a town after a long day on the hills, while a surly official poked and prodded the panniers of a mule laden with nothing more dutiable than ancient tiles, bricks, and such-like from my excavations. A shocking accident occurred, in connection with this tax, at a seaside village where we spent one summer; for a poor woman had put her sleeping infant in the panniers of her donkey, and the consumista, assuming without inquiry that they contained vegetables, ran the baby through with the long sharp spike used for testing the contents of a load that is not unpacked before them, and killed it on the spot.

At election times, when the whole country is greatly excited, the consumos grievance is always prominent, and the popular indignation is apt to explode in plain language about the Town Councils, for these have a legal right to substitute some other local tax for the consumos, if they choose to do so. Naturally the poor feel that they, in whose starvation wages every farthing is of importance, suffer more by a direct tax on food than do the rich, and thus it has become a class question, needing extremely delicate handling at critical moments.

In a modest village of two or three thousand inhabitants, in the province of Huelva, called Bolullos del Candado, feeling about the consumos had risen to boiling-point before the 1913 municipal elections began, and some mismanagement at the Town Hall led the malcontents to believe—perhaps justifiably—that the voting would not be fairly conducted. In less than no time some five hundred people collected outside the Town Hall, and the authorities, alarmed at their menacing aspect, locked the doors and ordered the Civil Guard to fire on the crowd. Infuriated by being shot at when they had done nothing wrong or illegal, the people burst in the doors, and a free fight ensued. When it ended they were masters of the situation, and then they sacked the Town Hall and made a bonfire of the furniture in the village square.

But before a hand was laid on the municipal property, one of the “rioters” took down a picture of the King, which hung in the council-room, and a detachment of them conveyed it to a place of safety, while the whole crowd shouted Viva el Rey!

It was the triumph of King Alfonso’s personality over political passion, and shows, I think, that there is not much fear of a popular revolution against the Monarchy in Spain.

A REST AT THE FORD.

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CHAPTER XVII

Music and the people—Arabic instruments—The saetas of Andalucia—The tango in the theatre—A working-class wedding—A drama in a dance—The alarmed widow lady—The Jota of AragÓn—Our Lady of the Pillar—Spaniards in Morocco—Moors, savage and civilised—The Sultan and his prisoners—The tragedy of the Wolf’s Gorge—After the retreat—The salvation of a regiment—The power of the guitar.

The influence of the traditional popular music on the life of the people is perhaps in some ways more marked here than in any other country. It may seem strange to us that this should be the case, for Western ears find it difficult to catch the tuneless songs, with their curious intervals and lack of tonality and rhythm, which are another of Spain’s legacies from the time when her arts and sciences were all Oriental. But the strange and to us pointless cadences of the Guajiras, MalagueÑas, Granadinas, Sevillanas, and the rest offer no difficulties to the Andalucian, though even cultivated foreign musicians find them almost impossible of reproduction.

During the time of the Moslem rule in Spain, Seville was noted for its devotion to music; so much so that in the palmy days of the Khalifate, when for nearly a century Seville and Cordova were on good terms with each other, it was usual, when a rich man died in Cordova, to send his musical instruments to Seville for sale. But during the Moslem period music was cultivated everywhere in Spain, as is shown by treatises on the art existing in the library of the Escorial, and by the long list of instruments in use among the Arabs, some of which, or their counterparts, exist to-day, although others are now unknown. Among these were flutes made of bone and elegantly decorated with carved designs, an almost perfect specimen of which was found in a tomb at Malaga, besides fragments of two others in an excavation at Seville. Possibly the skill of the Andalucian on the military bugle is a legacy from those times, as also his fondness for drum and fife bands. The drum or tambor is of Oriental origin, and I have already described a variety of it known as the zambomba.

It is only to be expected that Arabic music should persist in the repertoire of the people of Andalucia, as indeed it does. But the most curious survival is not in the music of the theatre or the home, but in improvised hymns sung in the streets by fervent devotees when the images of Our Lord and His Mother are carried in procession during great religious festivals, such as those of Holy Week, Corpus Christi, or the patron saint of the locality.

The curious fact about these hymns is that while the music is Oriental, the name, saeta, is not. It means “an arrow” (Lat. sagitta), and the Spanish dictionary gives the other meaning, “a short hymn to excite devotion,” without explanation. I think myself it must date from early Christian times, before the Arab conquest, for one can hardly suppose that the name was applied to these erotic outbursts or the hymns themselves composed after the reconquest of Seville. One has only to compare the hymns sung elsewhere at that period with the saetas, to see how widely they differ in feeling. Here are two lines from a thirteenth-century hymn by “Brother Henry of Pisa”:—

“Christ divine, Christ of mine,

Christ the Lord and King of all.”

And here are two lines from a saeta to Our Lady, of the traditional style improvised anew every year all over Andalucia when the people turn out to see a religious procession:—

“Thou art the passion flower

That opens for thy Son.”

Even more exotic than the words is the ecstasy thrown into them by the singer. Suddenly in the midst of the reverential silence which falls on the laughing, chattering throng as the Santos are carried past, rises the pathetic minor cadence with which every saeta is prefaced, and as long as the hymn lasts those around stand still and listen. When it is over (it never extends beyond four or five lines) the singer is vigorously applauded, and the crowd again becomes mundane. The singer, who for a brief moment seemed absolutely lost to the things of earth, uplifted into unconsciousness of everything save the object of his adoration, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the image, and his whole body tense with pious emotion, comes straight down to earth again, and smilingly accepts the compliments of his friends.

The saeta is always a solo: not necessarily because it is improvised, for there are a few traditional couplets that everybody knows, but because no one attempts to sing a saeta unless and until the spirit moves him. And, the effusion being so short, it is all over before his hearers could catch and join in the air, even if they wished to do so.

It is not the least curious feature of these saetas, considering how infectious religious emotion has always been, that they are never turned into choruses by the crowd. Perhaps this is due to the Arabic strain in the people, for there seems to be nothing to indicate that the Moslem musicians combined their instruments to produce orchestral effects, and at the present time there is singularly little feeling for concerted music of any kind in Spain compared with other European countries. But the sympathy of the crowd with the singer, and still more with the subject of his song, is shown by the breathless hush with which they follow every trill and shake of the interminable recitative, so harsh and unmusical to our ears, but so beautiful to theirs.

To turn to another branch of Spanish popular music. The so-called Argentine tango is of course perfectly familiar here, and the echoes which have reached Spain of the animated discussion in the English press as to its morality or the reverse have caused a good deal of amusement; for as every one here knows, the propriety or otherwise of the tango—whether “Argentine” or Andalucian—depends entirely on the performer. It can be a graceful and inoffensive drawing-room dance, or it can be made an exhibition indecent enough to put a Solomon islander to the blush.

Of its Oriental origin there can, of course, be no doubt whatever, apart from the references in Spanish or Spanish-Arabic history to its parent the zambra, against which the Church more than once fulminated, apparently with very little effect. As for the improvised verses which in Andalucia accompany the tango, they are as changeable as are the movements of the dancer; but among the numerous printed couplets in my possession there is not a word which could offend the most squeamish.

I first saw the tango danced by a handsome gipsy at a public performance, and I am bound to say I never witnessed anything less graceful or more disgusting. That was in the early days of our residence in Spain, and we had stopped to see the end of the entertainment, unaware that everything that might offend the proprieties is always reserved to the last, and that the offence is likely to be considerable in the final scenes of a late function.

It is easy to avoid these when one knows the ropes, for theatrical shows are generally of the “triple bill” variety, and ladies may attend the pieces put on before eleven o’clock quite comfortably. Popular comediettas, musical or otherwise, are given from night to night at different hours, and varied to suit all tastes, being carefully Bowdlerised for the earlier audiences. A play called Las Bribonas (The Impostors—female) had an immense success one winter, and I went with a party to a performance which began at ten. It was amusing and well acted, but there was one scene which was decidedly vulgar, although not actually indecent. I happened to speak of it afterwards to two English friends who had seen it on different occasions. One, who went to an eight o’clock performance, found it food for babes; the other unfortunate lady, who in her ignorance had gone to the latest one, was almost too shocked to talk about it. The tango, it is hardly necessary to say, was one of the chief features in the doubtful scene in Las Bribonas.

The most amusing tango I ever saw was danced at the wedding of a servant of ours, who had politely fixed the day to suit the convenience of her SeÑores, so anxious was she to have the great event graced by our presence.

The mother was a well-to-do laundress who rented the whole of the ground floor of a small tenement house, and the guests overflowed from the patio into the bridal sala and alcoba. The alcoba or alcove is a recess curtained off from the sitting-room and furnished with a bed, which, in the homes of the poor, generally completely fills it. The same arrangement also obtains in the houses of the rich, and here it is usual for the mistress’s bedroom to open out of the drawing-room, with the doors between thrown back and the curtains drawn aside to display the elegant appointments of the marital chamber. Although the other bedrooms are often lacking in what we should call common necessaries, this one is always furnished at least as handsomely as its corresponding sala, forming a striking contrast to the rest of the private rooms. The explanation is that, when a child is born, the mother receives her whole family, her husband’s relatives, and all her intimate friends in her bedroom when the infant is twenty-four hours old; thus this room has to be at least as well furnished as the drawing-room; and the same custom prevails in all classes of society. It never seems to occur to the doctors or any one else that these social celebrations have anything to do with the excessive mortality among young wives and their babies, and I have often been pressed to go and sit with some unfortunate acquaintance, seriously ill after a bad confinement, when I have called to inquire for her and her child, on the ground that she had had only a few callers that day and as she was very weak my company would cheer her up.

The alcoba of Carolina, the laundress’ daughter, just held the bedstead and a table with her Santos—a chromo-lithograph of a Murillo Virgin, flanked by a St. Anthony of Padua and a “San Juan de Dios,” before which were placed vases of artificial flowers and, on this great occasion, a couple of lighted candles. All the rest of the bedroom furniture was in the sala. Here we were invited by the bride to drink Manzanilla, and as the guests of honour we (more fortunate than at Carmencita’s wedding) each had a glass to ourselves. It was all clean and bright and gay, and when we went out into the patio Carolina’s girl friends began dancing seguidillas.

It was a pretty sight to see them dancing under the February sky, with a brilliant moon irradiating the old courtyard and blending its beams with those of an electric bulb hanging from the crazy balcony, which was all the light a generous landlord provided for his twenty or thirty tenants. The thrumming of the single guitar was completely drowned by the hand-clapping and foot-stamping with which the spectators accompanied the dancers, but we did not miss it. Indeed, it would be a powerful instrument that could have made itself heard above all that rhythmical clatter. Personally I find the palmas, as this hand-clapping is called, very trying, for the noise is overwhelming; but that is because I have no Eastern blood in my veins. To Andalucians of whatever class, noise of any kind seems to be sheer delight.

Things gradually grew more lively as the slight restraint caused by our arrival wore off, although the guests were always perfectly well-mannered and decorous; and presently Carolina came to tell me that Juanillo Carrera, a famous singer and dancer, would perform the tango in her mother’s kitchen, if the SeÑores would care to see him.

“Why would he not dance in the patio?” I asked, for I was enjoying the picture made by the moonlight.

“Oh, that would not suit the girls, who wanted to go on dancing themselves. But if we would step into the kitchen and would kindly not mind standing for a few minutes, Juanillo would dance on the table, so that the seÑora viuda (the widow lady) who came with the SeÑora, and so much likes Andalucian dancing, would see him to the best advantage.”

Juanillo was a thin pock-marked man of forty or so, without a redeeming feature in his face save a pair of brilliant deep-set black eyes. He wore a striped cotton blouse and trousers with a black sash wound many times round his waist, and bright yellow boots with long pointed toes. I thought he looked an unfortunate specimen of the Andalucian dancer, but I soon found that appearances were deceptive in this as in so many other cases.

The widow lady, although no longer in her first youth, was tall, handsome, and very well dressed. She had been for days past expressing her desire to see this tango of which she had heard so much before she came to Spain, and I am afraid she rather hoped to be shocked by it. I saw the moment she came in that Juanillo admired her, and heard him remark to Carolina that she was guapisima, meaning extremely attractive. Carolina rapped him over the knuckles, unaware that I was watching, and told him to behave himself and remember that the tango was to be performed for distinguished ladies and must have nothing of the corral (low-class tenement house) about it; but I rather wondered what was going to happen.

He sprang on to the table with the graceful agility of a cat, and began the tapping with one foot which prefaces all these dances, his eyes meanwhile fixed on the widow, who as yet had not realised that she was his objective. Then suddenly, regardless of the din of voices, palmas, and stamping in the patio, he burst into song.

I could not catch all the words, but I heard enough to grasp their tenor. The rascal was addressing a passionate declaration of love to the American widow; and now his cavernous eyes began to light up, and even she, unconscious as she was of the meaning of his song, realised that he was looking very hard at her. And when he began the dance not only she but every one else in the room was made fully aware that the entire performance was wholly and solely addressed to her. I never saw a cleverer pantomime of devotion, jealousy, scorn, pride, humility, and final despair than the impudent scamp contrived to act by his movements in this tango. And all without moving from the middle of the kitchen-table on which he danced—indeed, if he had not kept to the dead centre of it he would inevitably have come down with a crash, for it did not measure over three feet any way. The whole thing was dramatic to a degree: one’s attention was caught at the outset by the expression of his eyes, and he never allowed his hold on us to relax for an instant. His ugly face, shabby dress, and hideous yellow boots all fell into the picture, which was none the less effective because the only light was a flaring petroleum lamp held up by the bridegroom, whose delight in his friend’s performance caused him to wave it about dangerously in his efforts to keep it, like the lime-light at a theatre, always on the dancer’s face.

“I never saw anything so horrible in my life,” murmured the widow in my ear when the tango came to an end. “Do let us go; I am quite frightened! The man looks as if he could commit a murder. No more tangos for me, thank you! I felt as if he might stick a knife into me at any moment.”

She was really frightened, and, humour not being her strong point, I felt that it would be useless to try to make her see the joke of it. Dramatic expression comes naturally to the Andalucian, and I knew that Juanillo had taken her as the heroine of his pantomime simply because she was the most noticeable member of our party, expecting her to be as gratified as a Spanish SeÑorita would have been at the compliment. During the remainder of her stay the lady ceased from troubling me with demands to be taken to see the local dances; but when her nerves had recovered from the shock it became evident that not the least pleasing of her recollections of Spain would be the little comedy of admiration played by Juanillo. In that version of the tango there was nothing to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty, but I imagine that it is not quite what is danced in London or Paris.

Another dance with its accompanying song, which is known, at any rate by repute, outside Spain, is the Jota of AragÓn, the music of which does not seem to be of Oriental origin. No one attempts to decide when it first came into being, but the probability is that, like the “war dance” of the Basques, it dates from prehistoric times, when women were won not by favour but by force. Be this as it may, the Jota now is the hymn of AragÓn as well as her national dance, and has the same extraordinary religious influence over the Aragonese as the saeta has over the Andalucians. Fully to appreciate its swing and dash one must hear it sung by a native of the province, but wherever and by whomsoever performed it sets the blood dancing when the refrain bursts out—

“À la jota, jota,

Que viva AragÓn

Y la PilarÍca

De mi corazÓn.”

(Sing to the jota,

Long live AragÓn

And the Pilarica

Of my heart.)

The patron saint of Zaragoza, the capital of AragÓn, is Our Lady of the Pillar (Nuestra SeÑora del PilÁr), who is said to have come down from heaven when St. James was converting Spain, to encourage him in his holy labours. She sat, so the story goes, on a pillar while he said Mass before her, and he, as a good saint should, founded the Cathedral of Zaragoza on that spot, with the pillar of Our Lady as its shrine.

Zaragoza has two Cathedrals, one dedicated to N. S. del PilÁr, and the other to Our Lord of the Seo (Aragonese for a cathedral church). The people will assure you that that of the PilÁr is much the older of the two, regardless of their architectural styles, and it is quite possible that the black image of Our Lady is older than anything in the Seo, although when it comes to relics of the Mozarabic Church in Spain it is never wise to dogmatise about dates. Indeed, there are cases in which popular tradition has received material confirmation from unexpected sources long after it had been pronounced mere fantasy by the learned. The Cathedral of the PilÁr, or as her adoring Aragonese love to call her, the Pilarica, is quite modern, whereas parts of the Seo date from before the twelfth century. But the actual image of Our Lady of the Pillar, with the column on which it stands, are of immemorial antiquity. The column had been so worn away by the kisses of the faithful that it is now protected by a case of silver and crystal. One may imagine the many centuries of devotion which must have gone by ere a stone could be thus impressed by the touch of human lips alone.

A singular performance takes place in Zaragoza every year on the 12th of October, the festival of the Pilarica, in which certain strange figures called gigantes y cabezudos take a prominent part. The giants represent a man, a woman, and a negro (not a Moor), while the big-heads (cabezudos), worn by men of ordinary height, seem to have no special meaning. I have tried in vain to discover the origin of this festival. It must date from before the reconquest of Zaragoza (which took place about 1120), for the negro would certainly have been a Moor had it been introduced after Zaragoza was incorporated with the dominions of the King of AragÓn, but no convincing record exists. A replica of the Pilarica is borne through the streets, and the gorgeous procession of the Cathedral Chapter, the military, civil, and municipal authorities, all in their gala dress, the town band, and the devout of both sexes, carrying candles, is wound up by these singular survivals of some forgotten and probably pagan festivity. One of the fascinations of Spain is this intimate connection between the present and the past, with its picturesque and quite unintelligible jumble of the sacred and profane.

It is only natural that the love of the Pilarica, which is so bound up with the religion of the Aragonese, should colour every action of their daily life; and an incident that took place during the war in Morocco in 1909 is a good illustration of this.

The Aragonese are good fighting men, and make excellent soldiers, although it is true that the same may be said of all the Spaniards. But there are times in every war when the martial spirit droops before human pain and the sorrow of seeing comrades cut down in the flower of their youth. Such a day came to the Spanish troops at Melilla when the fatal attack upon the mountain of GurugÚ was made, to which I have already referred in connection with mourning customs.

So little was heard about it in England at the time, owing to the rigorous censorship, that I may be excused for briefly relating what I heard from one of those engaged in it, who was himself severely wounded.

When the trouble with Morocco began, the Spanish Government made the common mistake of underestimating the strength of the enemy. They had to deal with scattered tribes, some of them barbarians of the most savage description, others gentle, comparatively civilised, and quite ready to take advantage of the commercial and educational facilities afforded by contact with European nations.

Although they have no connection with the Pilarica and the Jota of AragÓn, it may be of interest to tell two little stories which illustrate the wide difference between these two classes of Moors, for the facts speak for themselves.

In the summer of 1913 a Spanish gun-boat, the General Concha, went ashore in a fog on the Moorish coast, and a hostile tribe attacked the wreck. They shot down some of the sailors who tried to swim ashore, and after a plucky defence led by a junior officer, the captain and the senior lieutenant having been killed by the first volley, they got on board, looted the vessel, and took the survivors prisoners. To make matters worse, they had begun by pretending that they belonged to a friendly tribe, and thus had managed to get within close range of the boat without opposition, opened fire from the cliffs above, and shot down the two officers and several men before the crew could get the guns to work.

Naturally the gravest fears were entertained for the fate of the prisoners, but two or three weeks later it became known that through the influence of a friendly chief they had been taken to the house of one of his friends, where they were well treated and eventually aided to escape to a small boat hidden on the beach a few miles from their prison. The friendly Moors, besides guiding them to the boat, helped to row them out to a Spanish man-of-war which had been sent to bombard the coast villages. Not only had they been provided with the necessaries of life as long as they remained with the friendly Moors, but the women had done their best to cure the wounded, and thanks to them, only one—a case for amputation—failed to recover. And the Moors carried those who were unable to walk some twelve miles across the enemy’s country to the boat, although they well knew that there would be short shrift for them and for the prisoners were the flight discovered.

So much for the “civilised” Moors. Now for the reverse of the medal.

A Spanish officer told me that he had himself seen the following incident, which was only one out of many that occurred during the eight years that he was quartered at Ceuta, whence in times of peace his work took him to various parts of the country.

The father of the present Sultan, who was opposed to any sort of change in his methods of government, used to make an annual “royal progress” from Fez to Morocco, and picked troops went before him to remove any possible source of danger to the monarch. He paid these men a dollar for a live prisoner and two for a dead one, so, said my friend, “you may imagine that more were brought in dead than alive.” Any one who could be even remotely suspected of disaffection was promptly beheaded and his property confiscated. In a word, the “royal progress” was in fact a murderous raid, the loot of which paid for the upkeep of the troops and saved some collecting of extra taxes.

On one occasion my friend, in his official capacity, met the Sultan at a place where two hundred prisoners were marshalled in a row, each with a wooden collar round his neck, tied with a rope to that of the next man. As the Sultan rode up a poor woman flung herself on the ground before him, and clasped his horse’s knees with such force that it could not move, crying that her son who was among the prisoners was innocent, and imploring that the collar be taken off his neck. The Sultan turned to the two negro executioners who accompanied him everywhere.

“Take off her son’s collar,” he said, “and his head with it, and give them to the woman.”

And this was done on the spot.

“You will understand,” said the officer who told me the story, “why we who have seen such things feel that we cannot abandon our civilising mission in Morocco, although it may be years before we get any material return for the blood and money it is costing us now. But,” he went on to say, “every year we are making more friends among the tribes, and since 1909 we have been getting on very hopefully with our Spanish-Arabic schools and hospitals and colleges of agriculture and commerce, while our native troops are already the pride of our army in Morocco.”

But to return to the Jota, after this long digression. In the summer of 1909 things were going very badly indeed, and the Government, true to the time-honoured Spanish rule of directing a distant war from the arm-chairs of Ministerial offices in Madrid, ordered the General in command to make a frontal attack on the GurugÚ, the peak which towers over Melilla. This was intended partly to dislodge, once for all, the hornet’s nest of sharp-shooters who were worrying the Spanish garrison, but mainly to silence by a brilliant victory the growing murmurs of the nation against a campaign which popular orators declared to have been begun in the interest of a few wealthy capitalists owning valuable mines in the immediate neighbourhood of Melilla.

The General, Marina, a good officer and able strategist, protested in vain. The orders were explicit. Public opinion was dangerously excited, and a brilliant and decisive action had to be fought at once. The attack was accordingly attempted, with the result that one of the infantry regiments was caught in an ambush, and a whole battalion of the Cazadores de las Navas was practically wiped out. Considerably over a thousand officers and men of that and other regiments fell in the Wolf’s Gorge of the GurugÚ, and so complete was the defeat that for three months the bodies of those martyrs to duty and a preposterous governmental system could not be recovered.

On the night of the catastrophe the Colonel of the Cazadores went to offer what cheer he could to the few survivors of his ill-fated regiment. Heart-broken himself, he found no words to say to the heart-broken men who hardly had spirit enough to stand up and salute him—half their comrades dead, their soldierly pride humbled, their demoralisation seemingly beyond repair. But as he stood among them, silent and grief-stricken as themselves, he saw that one of the men, hardly conscious what he was doing, had picked up his guitar and was lightly touching the strings. It must here be explained that although the Cazadores de las Navas is a Catalan regiment, it is mostly recruited in AragÓn.

“A gleam of hope entered my heart,” said the Colonel, when many days after he related what had taken place. “If only he would play loud enough to be heard he would save us; I know what their music means to the men of AragÓn. I dared not speak, I was so afraid of putting him off, for if he had known I was there he would have dropped the guitar to stand at attention. But he went on, a little louder and a little louder, and another man took up the air, and then another, until at last all the regiment—all that was left of it—followed suit, and all began singing—

“‘La Virgen del PilÁr dice

Que no quiere moros ni moras,

Que quiere ser capitana

De la tropa aragonesa.’[8]

“Very softly they sang at first, as if it were a dirge for their dead friends, but when they came to the chorus their voices rang out as bravely and gaily as if all were well with us—

“‘À la jota, jota,

Que viva AragÓn,

Y la PilarÍca

De mi corazÓn.’

“Then,” said the Colonel, “I quietly slipped away. They no longer needed consolation from me, for they remembered that, whatever they had lost, they still had the Pilarica, the beloved of all hearts.”

When the GurugÚ was finally taken, an English newspaper correspondent commented on the extraordinary lightness of heart and irresponsible gaiety of these Spanish soldiers, saying that he had actually seen one of them carrying a guitar under his arm as he scrambled up the precipitous slopes that had been the scene of disaster three months earlier. The newspaper man jumped too hastily to his conclusion, for which, however, he may be forgiven, for he could hardly know what the Jota, played on the guitar, may mean to the men of AragÓn.

THE COLUMBUS MONUMENT.

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CHAPTER XVIII

Holy Week in Seville—What not to see—The Blessing of the Palms—Cathedral dignitaries—The Cardinal and the children—The Dean’s smile—The Cathedral steps—The Entry into Jerusalem—Light in dark places—Mozarabic ritual—The Display of the Banner—Our Lady of the Old Time—Mozarabic art—The Banner of the Menestrales—A portrait of San Fernando—The Roman eagles—The Entombment—The silver shrine and its golden key—Wheeled traffic forbidden—Brotherhoods, rich and poor.

I suppose My Spanish Year would be incomplete without a chapter about the Holy Week ceremonies and the Seville Fair; but so much has already been written on these subjects from the tourist’s point of view that, if I am to say anything about them, I must try to describe some characteristic features which are apt to pass more or less unnoticed.

Every one knows that during Holy Week numerous Brotherhoods and Guilds pervade the streets of Seville and other Andalucian towns in procession, the original intention of which was to show images representing events in the Passion of Our Lord, in order to bring home to the illiterate people the tragedy of the Crucifixion. And every one who sees these processions in Seville remarks on the artistic merit of many of the images, the magnificent dresses, and the picturesque effects produced in the streets and in the Cathedral by the innumerable candles flickering round the platforms on which the images are borne.

These are the common-places of Holy Week in Seville. They catch the eye of every visitor who has the slightest knowledge of or feeling for art; but long before the week is out, those who come merely to see something new are sick to death of the eternal repetition of the same thing—the “Brothers” or the “Nazarenes” in their voluminous robes and tall peaked hoods, the brass bands, the Civil Guard, the first paso draped with velvet or satin, and surrounded with silver candelabra and vases of flowers, with an image of Our Lord in the centre; more Brothers or Nazarenes, more music, more Civil Guards, and then the paso of Our Lady, which closes every procession save some which were instituted before the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin became a dogma of the Roman Church.

When one has seen between twenty and thirty of the pasos, all creeping along at a snail’s pace, with a pause every few yards for the bearers to rest and the people to admire, one does begin to get a thought weary of certain features in them. But we who know Seville have learnt what to see and what to avoid, and we are careful not to exhaust ourselves physically and mentally by attempting to watch the slow progress of a dozen pasos past the same point on the same day, for indeed the processions are but one feature in the manifold ceremonies of Holy Week, and if you set about it the right way you may vary your emotions almost every hour of the day.

Therefore I, who have often felt sorry to see my compatriots enduring the maximum of fatigue to see the minimum of what is most interesting in these curious survivals of the early Church, will try to indicate a few incidents in the long programme of ecclesiastical ceremonies which do not figure in the official account of what are incongruously described as las fiestas de Semana santa.

The Blessing of the Palms on Palm Sunday is one of the most beautiful of all the Cathedral ceremonies. I go early—not later than 8 a.m., and as much earlier as I find convenient, and when the early Mass is over I go across to the Columbus monument in front of the south door, and there get a perfect view of the procession on its stately march down the long aisle to the door of San Miguel. First goes the bearer of the Cathedral cross, its brass gleaming above the curious round frame here used to drape the parish crosses with the ritual colour for the day. Then follow the minor clergy in black soutanes and stiffly starched rochets with flowing sleeves; the censer-bearers in beautiful dalmatics of old brocade, swinging chased silver censers worthy of a place in a museum; the choir boys in scarlet soutanes and white rochets; the beneficed clergy—recently granted, as a special favour to the Cardinalate of Seville, permission to wear red silk linings to their black silk cloaks (capa corÁl); the portly canons in purple silk, the officiant and his servers in magnificent embroidered vestments centuries old, and then, supported by the Dean and the Arch-priest of the diocese, the Cardinal-Archbishop.

He is already very stout although hardly past middle life, but his unwieldy figure is counterbalanced by a strong face with a powerful jaw and friendly humorous grey eyes, and he looks magnificent in his white fur hood and robe of scarlet silk, with a train four yards long, borne behind him by two of the Seises, whose history has already been related. He has only been here four years, and came after a long interregnum due to two sudden deaths in the episcopate, but the way in which he has stirred up the diocese is surprising. The Cathedral music, from being the worst, now ranks among the best in Spain, the services begin punctually instead of at any hour that happened to be convenient, and above all, he has put a stop to the illicit sale by parish priests, monks, and nuns of objects of artistic value belonging to their churches. Formerly a brisk trade was carried on in such, but our energetic Cardinal has had every picture, carving, and church ornament in his diocese inventoried, and now not so much as a painted tile can be touched without a licence from the palace.

Yet he is a kindly man, this vigorous prelate. I once followed in his train at a charitable affair in which I had the privilege of presenting to him some twenty small children of the working class whom I had put into fancy dress, to their and my own great enjoyment. And for every child the Cardinal, as he gave them his ring to kiss, had a smile and a kind and a witty remark on their costume or the historical character it represented; so that all the little faces beamed behind him as he made his progress round the hall where they stood to attention. Kissing episcopal rings is hardly in my line, but Cardinal Almaraz’s kindness to the children always makes me remember my share in that ceremony with pleasure.

Next in gorgeousness of vestment to the Cardinal comes the Dean, a most courteous gentleman not much over forty, and blessed, like his Bishop, with a strong sense of humour. On one memorable Palm Sunday, as the procession passed the Columbus monument, the Dean caught sight of me standing there with a tall English girl, whose broken Castilian he had been helping out at a dinner party at our house a few weeks before, and his eyes began to twinkle and his fingers instinctively went up to give us an Andalucian salute. He recovered his gravity in an instant, and with great presence of mind converted his salute into a motion which the public would take for a blessing. But the deed had been done. When next we met outside the Cathedral we thanked him for his “blessing,” and now he can never look at us in the crowd during a procession without a twinkle in his eyes and a visible compression of his lips, lest he should indecorously smile at us again.

The attitude of a Spanish congregation during the Mass is remarkably reverent compared with the behaviour in many foreign Cathedrals: one really finds here an atmosphere of sincere devotion. But the processions are regarded from a different standpoint. The dignitaries there are in the midst of the crowd, and the crowd, although perfectly respectful, does its best to win a sign of recognition from its friends and acquaintances in the long lines of clergy, choir-men, and monocillos (little monkeys), as the singing-boys are familiarly called.

The door of San Miguel—opposite to the College, or cloister of that name, in which dwelt all the Mozarabic priests who still survived when San Fernando entered Seville—is thrown wide open as the procession approaches, and a wonderful shimmering effect of light and shade is produced when the waving palms borne by the clergy move out from the dimness of the Cathedral into the blazing sunshine of the street. But I never follow the palms; one only gets lost in the crowd, and misses all the best of the picture. As soon as the last gleam of the Cardinal’s scarlet disappears through the door, I turn round and go to meet the procession on its way back.

One has time to go out by the door of the Bells (campanillas), where formerly bells were rung to call loiterers to Mass, and walk round to that of los Palos—so-called because it once opened on to a grove of trees (poles, palos, now long cut down)—getting a good view of the procession as it comes round outside the Orange Court on the broad terrace raised by six steps above the level of the road. This terrace is a relic of the half-century during which the ancient Visigothic Cathedral was converted to Moslem uses. Every Mozarabic church that was used as a mosque has a raised terrace on one or more sides, like that of the mosque of Cordova. It was originally intended to accommodate the overflowing congregations during Ramadan, but after the reconquest the Christians allowed it to degenerate into a meeting-place for merchants to transact business, like the money-changers in the Temple, until the scandal became too great, and the Casa Lonja (now containing the archives of the Indies) was built in the seventeenth century. The terrace forms a fine vantage-ground for those who want to see the Holy Week processions, the recent widening of the Calle Canovas del Castillo giving an uninterrupted view from the door of San Miguel, where they enter the Cathedral, right away to the Town Hall.

Just as the Palm Sunday procession reaches the door of the Palos it is closed, and the whole procession comes to a stop, while the Master of the Cathedral Ceremonies raps on it three times. This, with the palms and olive branches strewed before the Cardinal, represents the entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem. A verse is intoned and then in the midst of a dead silence the doors slowly open, and the many-coloured procession with its waving palms fades into the twilight within, while women and children try to secure an olive twig, for they, like the palms, are blessed. A palm branch hung on the balcony protects the house from lightning, and the olive branch brings peace and contentment if carried home and placed before your “Saints.”

Palm Sunday evening is devoted to the first of the street processions. These are late ones, reaching the stands of reserved seats in front of the Town Hall when night is falling. It is wise to get one’s first impressions from the Sunday evening pasos after their candles are lighted, so that the images of the Passion and of Our Lady convey the beautiful symbolical idea of carrying with them light into dark places. Formerly all the street lamps were extinguished on the line of march, so that the way of the people was literally lighted by their “Saints”; but that was a long time ago, and now we can only imagine how impressive the old custom was, from the glow that floods the street of Sierpes before the procession itself comes into sight.

It is impossible to compress into a single chapter all the interesting and beautiful ceremonies of Holy Week in this Cathedral, apart from their historic aspect. Seville does not retain the actual Mozarabic or Visigothic ritual in any of her chapels, as does Toledo, for when San Fernando got here the Popes for over a century and a half had been trying to suppress the rite of the Church, which from force of circumstances had been so long cut off from and almost independent of Rome, and therefore the rite was not retained after the reconquest. But it is clear that the sainted king permitted the faithful Mozarabic priests of the College of San Miguel to take a leading part in the offices of the transformed mosque when it once more became the Cathedral of Seville, for the Oriental survivals we see to-day could never have been introduced in the middle of the thirteenth century by priests and bishops from Castile.

Many such survivals are mere details, more interesting to ecclesiastical archÆologists than to laymen. But others are so striking that no visitor of intelligence should miss them.

One of these is the so-called “Rending of the White Veil” after the nine o’clock Mass on the Wednesday of Holy Week. This is represented by drawing apart immense curtains of beautiful old white tafetÁn, a fine soft silk of the kind worn by Moslem princes when Seville was celebrated for her manufacture of velvets, brocades, and satins, all of which were lined with this filmy tafetÁn. No one knows exactly why the White Veil is rent on this day, though I am told that it is another heritage from the Mozarabs. It is torn from the rod on which it hangs, so that when divided one curtain falls in a heap on either side of the altar, whence they are drawn into the sacristy by the Seises.

At 3.30 on Tuesday in Holy Week we have what is known as the Display of the Banner, another ceremony foreign to the ritual of Rome. Two priests kneel on the altar steps, while a third waves over them a voluminous banner of the same soft gauzy tafetÁn as the White Veil. The banner is of a dark green, so dark as to appear black in the dim Cathedral, where all the painted windows are shrouded with black curtains during this season of penitence. Formerly the two priests used to prostrate themselves; now they only kneel. No one can explain the ceremony, which takes place four times in all, from the eve of Passion Sunday to Holy Tuesday, but it is supposed to have some connection with the Mozarabic Virgen de la Antigua, a twelfth-century fresco in the chapel of that name, whose history is worth relating.

When the Almohade Moors took Seville and appropriated the old Gothic Cathedral for their new mosque, this mural painting of Our Lady was left in its place. Alfonso X. in his CÁntigas de la Virgen Maria (Hymns of the Virgin) says that more than once the fanatic Almohades wished to destroy the image, but such a glory shone from it as to dazzle their eyes and they retreated, afraid to touch it. The truth probably was that the Almohade ruler, who was dependent on Sevillian artists for his alterations and additions to his mosque and his Alcazar,[9] did not venture to risk a revolt among his Mozarab subjects, for the Christian community was always more numerous here than anywhere else in Moslem Spain. Therefore, although he appropriated or perhaps bought the old Cathedral, as Abderrahman I. had done with that of St. Vincent in Cordova, he left this venerated image and its chapel to the Christians, who made an entrance to it from the street and closed the former door, which otherwise would communicate with the mosque.

It is related in the same CÁntigas that when San Fernando was besieging Seville, he was miraculously admitted one night through the Jerez gate—the nearest to the Cathedral—into the Chapel of N’ra SeÑora de la Antigua (Our Lady of the Old Time), and being discovered there by the Moors he hardly escaped with his life. Tradition suggests that Our Lady of the Old Time was walled up after this by the Moslems, probably from indignation at what must have seemed to them treachery on the part of the Mozarabs within the walls, for they alone could have admitted the Christian king into their own chapel. The city surrendered not many weeks later, and there is at present nothing to show when the picture was uncovered. But reference is made to it from the thirteenth century onwards, and my own impression is that the chapel was reopened immediately, for there had certainly not been time to forget its situation, as happened elsewhere in the case of images buried to save them from desecration.

In the sixteenth century the fresco was removed from the wall on which it was painted to the altar of the present chapel, which had been built to receive it. It was at that time unfortunately “restored,” “renovated,” and “beautified” as well as removed, as a contemporary account tells us, and much of its mediÆval character was thus lost. But the Child still has the characteristic round bullet head with stiff black curls, which is seen in all the Mozarab work in this region, and is in every case so curiously inferior in technique to that of the Mother that one can only accept it as a type, venerated and copied from one generation to another from primitive times. The Virgin, on the other hand, as in all the work of the twelfth century, is beautiful in technique as well as in feature, and her strange drapery with its stiff diagonal folds is singularly reminiscent of the drapery of some of the Egypto-Tartessian figures found in the Cerro de los Santos several years ago, and now in the ArchÆological Museum at Madrid.

Long and bitter have been the quarrels of local art critics over the period and origin of this fresco, but once the history of the Christians of Seville under Islam has been made clear, all combines to show that Our Lady of the Old Time was here when San Fernando came, and that the image was worshipped by the Mozarabs throughout the Almohade occupation. And in the light of present knowledge it seems highly probable that the Display of the Banner is a reminiscence of some act of humiliation imposed on the faithful priests who, even after their last Bishop fled in 1239, still lived in the Cloister of San Miguel and continued to exercise the rites of their religion. The Moors may perhaps have made the ceremony a condition of the retention by the Christians of their chapel within the precincts of the mosque; and it is by no means impossible that something conclusive on the subject may come to light one day, when the mass of unexamined documents in the Cathedral archives are at length sorted and read.

Though so little is known about it as yet, the interest of this curious Display of the Banner is seen to be great when one realises that it is a direct link with the Moslem dominion in Seville, taking us back six centuries to the time when the splendid ritual which now delights the eyes and ears of thousands was represented in this ancient basilica by a few poor priests who said Mass in the Chapel of La Antigua, perhaps at the risk of their lives.

Most of the remaining ceremonies of Holy Week are the same as in Rome and elsewhere, save in minor details which need not be described here. But the processions in the streets date from the thirteenth century, and we can hardly doubt that they too have survived from the early Christian Church.

San Fernando himself gave a banner with his portrait embroidered on it to the Brotherhood of the Menestrales (Mechanics: the Guild was of working tailors); and that too must have existed before the reconquest, for the King died only four years later, and we are not told that he founded the Brotherhood in the interval. Indeed, if he had done so it would have been very carefully recorded in their annals, as was his gift of the banner. They, as the oldest of the Brotherhoods and favoured by the King, were given the privilege of watching beside his coffin when he died, and they maintained their right to this place of honour on the anniversary of his death until their Guild dissolved for lack of funds not many years since. Another and richer Guild tried to oust them two or three centuries ago, but the Menestrales went to law and won their case. The banner given by San Fernando now hangs in a glass case in the church of St. Isidore. Very little is left of the portrait, and what little there is was hidden in the sixteenth century by an embroidered head of Charles V. which was sewn over it. This was removed for examination a few years ago, and the thirteenth-century portrait was found beneath. Although, like the banner of San Fernando in the Town Hall, it has been so much repaired and restored that very little of the original remains, enough can be seen to convince any expert in embroidery that it is Mozarabic work of the period in question.

The strongest evidence of the early origin of the Brotherhoods lies in the fact that the Roman eagles and a standard with S.P.Q.R. are borne in advance of every paso, while “Roman soldiers” ride after some few of them. These cannot have been “put on the stage” in the thirteenth century, for illuminated MSS. of that period, including the exceedingly valuable contemporary works of Alfonso X., all depict sacred characters in the costumes of the day. Nor were they introduced in the fourteenth century, for there is a missal of that date in which the Roman soldiers at the Crucifixion wear the dress of the fighting-men of Alfonso XI., and one of the men casting lots for the coat of Our Lord is dressed in parti-coloured hose with cap and bells, like a court jester.

The consecration of the Holy Oils, the great procession with the Host to the “Monument” erected at the west end of the Cathedral (over the tomb of the Columbus family), the washing of the feet of twelve poor men by the Cardinal-Archbishop in the Cathedral, the dinner given to them in the Archbishop’s palace, the Miserere on the night of Holy Thursday, the Adoration of the Cross, when the clergy and the Dean and Chapter walk barefoot round the nave, the consecration of the Paschal candle, which weighs about 70 lb., and the Rending of the Black Veil, when the Host is returned to the high altar—all these things are described in the programmes hawked about the streets, and only one of them calls for notice here.

This is the ceremony of Holy Thursday, when the Host is taken to the “Monument,” symbolising the burial of Our Lord. In silence the pyx is removed, its shrine is left open, and the cloth is dishevelled in careless folds across the altar, to show that the sacred elements are gone from it. The procession, all clad in funeral vestments, moves slowly and silently down the nave to the west end, where the sixteenth-century “Monument” towers almost to the roof, its white and gold columns supporting life-sized saints and angels, while beneath its tall dome gleams the great silver Custodia in which the Host is to lie until the day of Resurrection. This shrine, which is ten feet high, is one of the master-pieces of that master of Spanish silversmiths, Juan de Arphe, and the idea of its representing the tomb of Christ is one more among many anomalies. The golden pyx is placed in the Custodia, the doors are closed and locked with a golden key, and the key is handed to the Civil Governor, who hangs it on a gold chain round his neck. It will remain in his keeping until Easter Eve, because, so we are told, the body of Christ was laid in unconsecrated ground after the Crucifixion; and therefore, while the Host is within the tomb, the Chapter transfers the care of it to the lay authority.

During Holy Thursday and Good Friday the lights on the “Monument” are kept burning day and night. Then on the Saturday morning the gold key is returned to the priests, the Custodia is opened, and the Host is taken out and carried in procession back to the altar. And the moment the pyx is replaced in the shrine the organ peals out, all the bells are rung, and guns are fired.

It will be noticed that the Church in Seville anticipates both the Crucifixion and the Resurrection by a day, celebrating the former on Thursday and the latter on Saturday. The Sevillian divines profess to explain this, but I am bound to say I could never understand their explanation, which connects it in some way with the mystery of the Eucharist. The people have their own account of the matter. They say that “in old times” the fast was kept from Wednesday until Easter morning, during which days no wheeled traffic was permitted in the streets, the shops were closed, and all business was suspended. After a time the four days’ fast was found so inconvenient that it was reduced to three, and in order to make this possible it was arranged that the Resurrection should be celebrated on Easter Eve instead of on Easter Day! Many people implicitly believe this, and the explanation was given to me in such good faith that I actually accepted it at first, although it seemed a strange way out of the difficulty. Wheeled traffic is still forbidden in the streets on Holy Thursday and Good Friday even in “modern” Seville, and in other places in Andalucia not so much as a donkey can be hired at any price on Good Friday.

“I should be mal mirado” (sent to Coventry), said a village arriero to me one Good Friday, “if I took money for my beast on the day Our Lord died. On that day rich and poor alike must walk in penitence, no matter how tired they may become.”

In Seville people do not trouble so much about being mal mirado on ecclesiastical grounds, and strenuous efforts were made one year by the Radical party to induce the authorities to withdraw the prohibition of driving, even at the cost of altering the route of the processions. But such an outcry was raised by the public at the proposal that it had to be dropped; for Seville business people know very well that any interference with the processions would injure trade by diminishing the influx of tourists, who flock here every year for Holy Week, far more than is done by closing the central streets to cabs and tram-cars during the two days.

Indeed, the slightest change in the time-honoured regulations stirs up sentiments which are anything but pious, as I have already shown in regard to the Corpus Christi festival.

For years past there has been a latent enmity between a wealthy Brotherhood, whose name it is kinder to suppress, and a very poor one. The hours of their respective appearance at the “Stations” (as the route taken is called, because in former days the progress of the processions represented the Stations of the Cross) are fixed by the Dean and Chapter, for if two processions meet at any “Station,” hopeless confusion results; and the two Brotherhoods in question have long been liable to meet if the first is unpunctual. Two years ago the rich Brotherhood arrived an hour late at one of the “Stations,” and were met by the poor one from the other side of the town. The poor Brothers were in the right of it, for this was the hour at which their paso was due to cross that street, but the others were determined to take precedence, as they would naturally have done had they started at the proper time. These particular Brothers are largely of the aristocracy, and expect to be obeyed without question by their inferiors in worldly position. Their leader autocratically commanded the poor men to stand back and make room for him and his followers to pass. But the poor men refused, as they had every right to do in the circumstances, whereupon the aristocrat, regardless of his gorgeous velvet mantle and satin hood, forgot all the penitence and humility he was supposed to be feeling, and attacked the other man with his fists.

What might have happened had the leader of the poor procession hit back, no one can say; but the belligerent “noble” was quickly brought to his bearings, for the “Elder Brother” of the poor Guild with presence of mind laid their great processional cross on the ground before the feet of the would-be fighters. No Sevillian, however angry, would dream of desecrating the cross, so the irate aristocrat had to retire, while the other procession passed on. Pride, I fear, swelled the hearts of the Brothers under the homely calico habits, bought out of their poor wages at the cost of long thrift and self-denial, which thus for once took precedence of their wealthy rivals.

Personally I find the poor Brotherhoods far more interesting than the rich, for they all have history behind them, and sometimes modest pasos whose Brothers are dressed in cheap calico, are draped with ancient damask and brocade more valuable and far more beautiful than the stiff new gold-embroidered mantles with which the modern Brotherhoods deck their “Virgins,” regardless of cost. Some day I shall write a book about the stories of the pasos, grave and gay, but I must not begin upon them here, for I have already dwelt too long perhaps on these aspects of Holy Week in Seville.

CHAPTER XIX

The April Fair—From the harem to the caseta—The Prado of San Sebastian—The Inquisition—Conscripts and the Flag—Spanish football clubs—Buying votes—The cattle at the Fair—Harnessed À la Jerez—The Sevillian ÉlÉgante: fourteen dresses for three days—The afternoon drive—Dancing at night—The marriage market—Mantillas, velos, and Paris hats—Midnight in the Fair—The curtained casetas of the clubs—Manila shawls—The Queen and the mantilla—“John-a-Dreams” and the national dress—Three engagements and a marriage—The year ends in Paradise.

The true history of the April Fair at Seville, like so much else in Spain, is lost in the mists of ages; but old prints and pictures combine with tradition to show that it was at first merely a cattle fair, where dealers coming from a distance set up tents in which to sleep and transact business, attended by the itinerant gipsies who flock to fairs of every kind in every country. Gradually the tents of the dealers became a meeting-place for their families and their friends from the town, and then refreshments had to be provided, and amusements such as music, dancing, and singing soon followed. Now the Seville Fair on the Prado de San Sebastian almost suggests, in some respects, a show at Earl’s Court or Olympia, with the important difference that it is a living reality, not a scenic representation for which one takes a ticket at the gate.

The most curious feature about this three days’ riot of festivity is its extraordinary contrast to the daily life of Spain. I have already referred to the seclusion of women, the extreme privacy of domestic life, typified by the lace curtains which shroud every window on the street and are never drawn aside, the darkness of the rooms thus guarded from the intrusion alike of the sun and of the stranger’s eye, the strict surveillance exercised over young girls not only in the street but in their own homes—in short, the persistence of the Oriental tradition that the women belong to their men, not to themselves, and that no stranger has a right to look at and admire them.

This is the mode of life imposed on the women throughout the whole year. But when April comes and the Fair begins, all these restrictions are thrown to the winds, the mothers escort their daughters to the Prado, and there, seated in the “reception-room” of a caseta or booth, with its wooden floor raised three feet above the ground to give a better view, they look on while their girls dance in full view of the public, hour after hour and night after night, for all the world as if they were professionals at a theatre. The whole thing is an anomaly without explanation, unless indeed one takes it as an unconscious protest of the Sevillian women against their lifelong imprisonment in a home which in respect of its seclusion is not very different from a harem.

The visible result, however, is quite charming. There are whole streets of canvas booths, large and small, luxurious and the reverse, simple, artistic, and fantastic; handsome buildings of brick and iron set up by the fashionable clubs; ephemeral representations of favourite corrales and ventas, beloved of artists, who paint their typical casetas with their own hands; there are acres of canvas covering hundreds of toy and sweetmeat stalls, drinking stalls, Aunt Sallies or their Spanish equivalents, and, above all, stalls for the sale of the ever-popular buÑolitos described in an earlier chapter. The casetas—a name given without distinction to every erection in the Fair—make in all directions boundary-lines between the carriage ways and the ground occupied by the cattle, of which there are thousands upon thousands, crowded together over the great plain, herd by herd, without any sort of partition between them, donkeys cheek by jowl with pigs, sheep rubbing shoulders with mules, all peacefully lying or standing in their appointed places.

Here San Fernando encamped for a time when he was besieging Seville, and here later on stood the Quemadero, the burning-place of the Inquisition. Now, except during the great fair in April and the lesser one at Michaelmas, the Prado is the exercise-ground for the troops of the garrison. Here the annual batches of new recruits are drilled, and here takes place the interesting ceremony of the Jura de la Bandera, when thousands of conscripts, all kneeling together, swear fealty to their God, their Flag, and their King. Here, too, the football clubs, of which there are several, play on Sundays all the year round, even in the heat of summer. I don’t think many Englishmen would care to watch, far less to play, football with the thermometer at 100 in the shade; yet the “Sevilla BalompiÉ” plays right through the summer, beginning their matches at 6 a.m. when the afternoons get too hot for running. And the more praise is due to these energetic lads because they get no support either in money or approval from those in a higher social position. What their financial difficulties are I learnt last summer from an English clerk who umpires for one of the clubs. He told me that now the weather was getting so hot they wanted to start cricket instead of football, but they had no money to buy the cricket things and knew no one who would help them to raise funds! And yet at election times, whether parliamentary or municipal, there is always plenty of money to buy votes, and one of these same footballers told me that he had been offered up to fifteen pesetas during a hotly contested election to go and personate a voter who was safe in his decent grave! It has never yet occurred to candidates that a subscription to football clubs and the like would be a more respectable form of bribery than offering money to a half-back.

But during the Fair nobody pays any attention to football, politics, or anything else of a serious nature. We are out to enjoy ourselves, and we do it.

A drive through the actual cattle fair surprises those who think that Spaniards are cruel to animals. Sheep, goats, pigs, donkeys, mules, horses, cattle, are all herded together, quite tame and happy, most of them loose and kept from wandering only by the voice of the herdsman and the bark of his dog; troops of young horses and young mules are enclosed only by an impromptu rail consisting of a rope tied to iron stakes driven into the ground; great long-horned oxen and bulls lie on the ground without any sort of tether or fence. The only animals really shut in are the well-bred riding and carriage horses, which occupy wooden stables on the farther side of the ReÁl de la Feria. This is the street where are the fashionable casetas, where the fireworks are let off at night, and where horsemen and women display their skill in a game which may be called threading the maze, among the countless motors and carriages of all sorts and kinds, private and hired, most of which contain daughters in white mantillas and mothers in black, all intent on seeing and being seen by the crowd.

Many of the horses in this medley of conveyances are harnessed À la Jerezana—a heavy collar and saddle, and rope traces covered with leather where they touch the horses, with many tinkling bells and innumerable balls and tassels of gay-coloured wool tied on wherever possible, and especially to the headpiece. I do not know why this harness is called “Jerez fashion,” for I have seen far more animals thus decorated in the Sierra than I ever saw at Jerez. But even the most persistent seeker after information is fain to put aside his notebook here, and merely enjoy the picturesqueness and old-world air of these family coaches with their Goya-like occupants, and the life, colour, and animation of the whole scene. For in spite of the exhilaration produced by the pure fresh April air with its brilliant sunshine, and the universal atmosphere of enjoyment, one never quite loses the feeling that it is a play, even though oneself be one of the players, and that all too soon the curtain will ring down on one of the prettiest scenes to be found in Spain if not in Europe.

I have been told that the really smart young lady has fourteen new dresses every year for the Fair. How she contrives to wear them all I don’t know, unless she puts one on over the other, for she can only change her frock three times a day, because all the rest of the day and night she is en evidence. In the morning she puts on the latest hat from Paris to drive round and look at the cattle, hiding her almond eyes and her pretty arched eyebrows with some horrible “creation” utterly unsuited to her style. Few Spanish women can put on a hat—very likely from want of practice, for it is only in the last twenty years or so that the mantilla or velo has ceased to be the universal wear.

When our ÉlÉgante shows herself in the afternoon in her second new dress, with her hair done very high, a mass of carnations resting against it and the immense comb of pierced tortoiseshell which she has inherited from her great-grandmother, and with the soft folds of a white silk mantilla floating about her face as she drives (or motors—dreadful anachronism!) up and down the ReÁl, we hardly know her for the same girl who looked so dull and heavy under that Paris monstrosity this morning. Her eyes flash, her white teeth gleam, and one begins to understand what poets mean when they talk about the sparkling brilliance of an Andalucian beauty.

By this time the casetas are full of dancers, mostly schoolgirls and children as yet, for coquettes of sixteen and upwards are well aware that they will show to more advantage after nightfall, in the brilliant artificial light. The older girls, unless they own carriages or have the entrÉe to the fashionable clubs, stroll up and down with their friends of both sexes, criticising the “carriage folk” and thinking no doubt how much better they themselves would grace those expensively appointed vehicles. At six o’clock, when the bull-fight ends and the spectators come to the Prado, the already crowded drive, nearly a mile long with carriages four deep, becomes so congested that nothing can move beyond a foot’s pace, and nervous pedestrians can only cross the ReÁl and the intersecting roads at the entrance to the Fair by a sort of diminutive Eiffel Tower erection which was built some fifteen years ago for this particular purpose.

At night the Eiffel Tower, or Pasadera, as it is called, is illuminated from top to bottom, the whole of the ReÁl is arched over with garlands of coloured electric bulbs, and every caseta vies with its neighbours in the lighting of the reception-rooms in which the girls, in their third new frocks, are to dance. For the display of youth and beauty is the main object of the social side of the Fair, which is in point of fact the marriage market of Seville. It is said that more young people come to an understanding during these three days than in all the rest of the year, and it is easy to believe it, for we know that all the world over spring is the prettiest ring-time, and the young man’s fancy in particular lightly turns to thoughts of love at that season here in Seville.

Dancing goes on from nine o’clock till two or three in the morning. Whether it be good or bad, the sight of waving arms and bending heads in seguidillas and peteneras never fails to attract the passers-by. Often as many as a couple of hundred people will collect in front of a fashionable caseta where half a dozen SeÑoritas are dancing together, although only the first row of the crowd, pressed against the steps leading up from the footpath, can see anything beyond faces draped in white lace or black madroÑos, and white hands waving be-ribboned castanets.

The greater the crowd in front, the better the dancers are pleased; indeed, I remember some girls telling me one year that they had had a tremendous success over-night, “for there were so many people watching them that some of the invited guests had tried to get through to the caseta no less than three times in vain.” And these are the girls who would lose their reputations if they were seen in the street alone in the daytime, or even two sisters together, without a chaperone! Mysterious indeed are the social customs of Spain!

I have already written of fireworks. If these are good even in villages, it may be supposed that they are considerably better in wealthy Seville. The only wonder is that the whole street of the ReÁl is not set alight every night of the Fair, for the fireworks always end with the dangerous traca, a chain of crackers laid from tree to tree the whole length of the canvas street, and the crackers seem to explode actually into the casetas. And alongside of the footpath is a double or treble row of carriages, whose horses seem to be merely bored with the squibs and other noisy and fiery arrangements which explode under their noses. It is sheer good luck that no terrible accident has yet occurred. But no one protests, although every year people mildly remark that it is horribly dangerous and very disagreeable to have sparks falling all over the footpaths. In the matter of fireworks Andalucian laissez faire is peculiarly apparent.

At midnight the fun of the Fair is in full swing. Merry-go-rounds are numerous and highly popular, and each one has its steam organ or mechanical piano grinding out popular airs long since done to death in the streets. There is one in particular, called “Serafina,” which for years has had a vogue equal to that of “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay” in England when we were young, and it is just as fatuous a tune with even more fatuous words, if that be possible. This nightmare pursues us all along the street of the gipsies, and that of the toy stalls, and that of the bourgeois casetas to the right of the ReÁl. The only place where it is not heard is at the top of the ReÁl, where are the casetas of two of the principal clubs. Here all the curtains are carefully closed lest any profane eye should see the glories within, and military bands play valses and rigodones—a quite peculiarly dull form of quadrille—for the amusement of the alta aristocracia.

Why these clubs should go to the trouble of receiving guests behind drawn curtains in the Prado instead of in their handsome club-houses in the town does not appear. There certainly is nothing in these entertainments of the traditional spirit of the Fair, the essence of which is that all the amusement should go on in full view of the public. One of their morning receptions is, however, quite delightful. This is the children’s ball, which begins at 10 a.m. and ends before lunch. It is attended by a crowd of fascinating babies in fancy dress, all Spanish—the boys as toreros, majos (the Andalucian “nut” of a bygone day), bandits, and what not, the girls in miniature mantillas, Manila shawls, or gipsy dress, and their innocent vanity makes the ReÁl charming when they drive up and down after the party in their mothers’ carriages, pretending to be quite grown up.

A Manila shawl is the gala dress of every working woman who can manage to buy or hire one for the Fair. In some cases they are heirlooms, handed down from mother to daughter. Just as the mantilla is the survival of the Moslem veil among the well-to-do, so this shawl, like the black one worn every day, is the survival of the veil among the poor. As late as the seventeenth century, Spanish women still covered their faces; indeed, in the Provinces of Cadiz, Malaga, and Granada there are even now villages where the women leave only one eye exposed when they go out, especially to Mass. Decrees were issued by more than one king, forbidding this “pagan” veiling of the female face, on the ground that it tended to immorality by rendering the charms thus concealed irresistible to the opposite sex. The ladies retaliated by refusing to come out of their houses at all if they were compelled to expose themselves in that “indecent” fashion (I quote from contemporary writers); but at last a compromise was arrived at. They still covered their faces when they appeared in the street, but it was with transparent embroidery and lace, thus observing the letter of the law but most effectually violating the spirit. We owe a certain debt of gratitude to those ladies, whose strong sense of propriety gave birth to the mantilla, the prettiest head-dress ever invented by woman.

When we first came to Spain in 1902 fashionable ladies were doing their best to suppress the mantilla, on the ground that it was ridiculous to keep up a “national costume” in Spain when all civilised countries had adopted Paris fashions; and at one time it really seemed as if it would soon cease to be worn by any woman who had money enough to buy a hat. Fortunately, however, these women were in a minority, for here hats are only bought by the rich, and are very expensive. The simpler form of lace head-dress known as the velo, which is worn for the Mass, and by middle-aged women out of doors, had happily not begun to fall into disuse outside of Madrid and Barcelona, even among the well-to-do, notwithstanding the crusade against the more conspicuous mantilla. And then at the psychological moment came the young English Queen, with all a foreigner’s admiration of the beautiful head-dress. The first portrait of her that was sold at a price within the means of the masses showed her beauty enhanced by the typical drapery of exquisite lace, and “She puts it on as if she were a Spaniard,” said the people, for the arrangement of the mantilla is subject to strict rules, and no foreigner can hope to penetrate those mysteries unaided. This saved the mantilla. It soon became apparent that Her Majesty intended to wear it on every suitable occasion, and naturally all fashionable female Spain followed suit, to the delight of everybody except the milliners.

In the last Seville Fair there were more mantillas than hats, and if it was a shock to artistic sensibilities to see them in motors, it was at any rate a great deal better than not seeing them at all, as was almost the case six or seven years ago. One year about that time we had a caseta, to which came a good number of English and American visitors. All these ladies wore mantillas, and were delighted to have the chance (for the mantilla, it should be said, is only worn en grande tenue), and our Spanish friends agreed to stand aloof from the then prevailing fashion and leave their hats at home when they came to dance in the caseta de los ingleses. If there was a little self-consciousness among the Englishwomen—one or two of them said the first day that they felt rather like being at a fancy ball—it disappeared when we read the local papers next morning. For there in large type was an article on the decline of the mantilla and a poetical paragraph thanking, in almost pathetic terms, the foreign ladies for wearing “with peculiar grace” the lovely head-dress which Andalucians now seemed to despise.

We never found out who the writer was; he called himself “John-a-dreams” and begged us not to try to pierce his incognito when we wrote to invite him to the caseta he had been good enough to praise. But we were pleased to find that our adoption of the mantilla was regarded as a compliment to Spain, and now we and our friends follow the Queen’s example and wear it as often as we can. Apart from all other considerations, the festival mantilla and its humbler relative the velo, for common wear, are not only universally becoming, but are also very economical, for although a good piece of lace costs as much money as a Paris hat to begin with, it lasts for years and never goes out of fashion.

Our caseta that year fulfilled its duty well. We had the light carefully arranged to fall becomingly on the girls’ faces, and we had a platform raised extra high for them to dance on. We said that if the object of the caseta was to show off the SeÑoritas we might as well set the stage with special regard to its purpose. And no less than three engagements were the outcome, one of which at least has led to what seems to be a very happy marriage.

As for me, I have come back to the point from which I started. The summer, autumn, and winter are past, and the April Fair has come and gone. My Spanish year is over and the bride’s new year has begun, with the scent of roses, jessamine, and orange blossom, the murmur of fountains, and the warble of the nightingales among the elms up the hillside at Granada. For that is where girls who wear mantillas go for their honeymoon, and where good tourists go when they die.