GALICIA'S BURDEN-BEARERS
On the road which runs from Vigo to Mondariz I saw a woman walking
with some great burden on her head. She advanced quickly, with
straight and supple gait, but not till she was very near did I notice
what she carried. It was a full-sized coffin, but so perfectly poised
that the bearer did not seem to feel its weight. She went past,
silent, heavy-eyed, and looking straight ahead, her bare feet making
no sound on the gravel of the pavement.
That was one of the first of Galicia's burden-bearers I saw, but
the very first was when I landed at Vigo and observed a woman on
the Alameda carrying an assortment of bedding on her head, a mass
which almost smothered her. A man, apparently her husband, stalked
in front, leading the way, like a Red Indian before his squaw, and
bearing his share, according to Galician ethics, of the family
possessions, for under his left arm was tucked a pillow and in his
right hand he carried an umbrella.
From the day when they can support any burden at all the females
of Galicia are taught that to them is given the conveyance of any
article, however big and clumsy, which is not too big for a human
being to grapple with. Nothing more astonishing can be seen in
Galicia than the size and weight of some of the loads which the women
carry on their heads, and frequently a woman hurries along under a
burden which a Billingsgate or Covent Garden porter would refuse to
have planted on his crown.
Galician women have a passion for consigning burdens to their heads.
Size, shape, and weight are immaterial. The burden may be a bedstead,
a coffin, a load of firewood or seaweed, an enormous trunk packed
with baggage, a bucket of water, a huge basket of fish or vegetables,
or some grotesque article which could be easily carried in the
hand. Big or little, the method of conveyance is the same, a small
protecting pad being put between the top of the head and the burden.
A common, almost universal, way of preparing the pad is to take a
handkerchief, usually a white one, from the pocket, roll it into a
ring, and then put it on the crown of the head. The material prevents
the hard basket, bucket, box, or other burden from being unduly felt,
though many Galician women have bald spaces due to the wearing away
of the hair by the circular pads. If the weight is not too heavy a
woman will hoist it up herself, but the custom is to have the load
lifted up and put in place.
There is a spirit of _camaraderie_ in the burden-bearing, and
frequently a woman who is hurrying along the street, flying light,
will stop to hoist up a burden on to a fellow-creature's head. Small
girls scurry along the pavement or roadway bearing weights that are
out of all proportion to their strength and years, and to this early
toil may be attributed the spoiling of Galician figures. The heavy
weights and strain of carrying them cause the women to walk with
a curious twisting movement of the hips, and to over-develop that
part of the body; but as a rule the carriage of the Galician peasant
woman is perfect, and many have remarkably fine figures. Some of the
women appear to be enormously strong, and the great majority look
healthy and happy. Even when near confinement they will continue
their burden-bearing, and I was told that often a child will be
born to a woman who has gone straight from her work, and that in an
incredibly short time she will be at her task again. In this respect
the Galician peasant seems to be fit sister to the Red Indian women,
of whom it was said that they would fall out of the line of march,
and having given birth to a son or daughter on the prairie, pick the
infant up and overtake their companions.
Women in Galicia work in the houses, the fields, the quarries, on the
road, on the water. You may see them driving bullock-carts, and pigs
and cattle. I observed a tiny girl who could not be more than three
years old piloting an enormous and fractious sow, weeping copiously
as she did so because the stubborn pig refused to answer steering
signals, which were smart thuds on her fat sides; women were helping
men to pull a boat-load of seaweed up Vigo Bay; three women and one
man outside Pontevedra were road-making with pickaxes; not far away
from them other women were filling corves with coal, plying their
shovels like navvies, and women were unloading a stone-laden sloop,
tripping up a springy gangway with their stone-filled baskets on
their heads, and hurrying down another plank for further loads. I saw
women stripping the husks from maize, quarrying granite in the hills,
working on hats and dresses, teaching in little wayside schools,
tending the sick in hospital, and doing a hundred and one odd things
many of which are carried out by women in Great Britain, but most of
which fall only to the lot of men.
On inquiring into the rate of wages paid to women I was told that
a female labourer gets sevenpence daily for her work, which lasts
from sunrise to sunset, and she is as a rule supplied with wine and
maize-bread, although in some places the bread has to be bought. In
cold weather the women are given a little brandy. The wages seem
small enough, but the cost of living is in proportion to the income.
A little cottage may be had for a shilling a week, and although the
dwelling is far from being a desirable human habitation from the
English standpoint, still it is not worse in some respects than many
of the appalling dens in which British labourers live.
[Illustration: A MAID OF CANGAS]
Women appeared on the railway side at every level crossing when
a train was passing, and, armed with a staff as badge of office,
held up the traffic, vehicular and pedestrian. As a rule there
was neither, but the conscientious female went through the solemn
ceremony of standing sentry over the gate or chain which separated
the single track from the highway until the train had passed, and
then lowering the sign of authority and opening the gate or releasing
the chain to indicate that carts and human beings were at liberty to
cross the metals. Often enough this motherly protection was witnessed
only by a dilapidated Spanish infant, who had nothing better to do
than stroll down to the railway and watch the train go past.
These remarkable children are everywhere, and some of them are very
pretty, and as shy as they are attractive. At the old bridge of
Ramallosa I wished to take a photograph of a little Spanish maid
who was hurrying towards me over the arches, but her coyness was
unconquerable, and in spite of all allurements she refused to be a
party to the picture, and at last turned and fled precipitately. At
Cangas, on the north side of Vigo Bay, I craftily secured a shot
at a beautiful maid who was hugging a fat and placid infant on the
shore. Being only a few feet away, I feigned deep interest in a
neighbouring sardine-boat, then, unexpectedly confronting the little
nurse, so that she should not have time to pose, I secured her for
the film. It was not until I strolled away that the subtlety of the
performance struck her; then, for some reason best known to herself,
she burst into screams of laughter. One of the charms of snapshots in
Galicia is that the subjects are quite unconscious. They do not pose,
because they do not understand.
Some of the Galician peasant women have a strange way of dressing
their hair. This consists of plaiting a length of material of exactly
the same colour as the hair into the pig-tail or tails to give the
finished article a more generous and impressive appearance. At first
sight the custom strikes one as tending to vanity; yet it is as
nothing, if men are to believe all they read, compared with one's
own countrywomen's practice of enriching their own locks by adding
to them, not a piece of stuff or ribbon, but other people's shorn
tresses.
Women do most things--nearly, it seems, all things--in this corner of
Spain, but in no respect are they more in evidence than in connection
with washing. Laundry work in England is synonymous with everything
that is hard and sordid, but in Galicia it reaches something
approaching a fine art. Washing seems to be the national recreation
of Galicia. All day long and every day the womenfolk are on the banks
of streams and rivers, standing, bending, or kneeling at their work,
or in public washhouses, such as Corunna possesses, just below the
place where Sir John Moore is buried, or in some open ground in
towns. At Ferrol there is a huge trough around which the women stand
to their work. This is in the open air. Vigo has a covered building
near the bay for laundry operations, but by far the greater part of
the work is done in sunshine, near the running water by the side of
glorious fields or at the edges of green woods, and though the task
may be laborious the conditions of the toil are perfect.
There is incessant talk and laughter--one of the brightest and most
hilarious groups of women that I saw in Galicia was at Ferrol, round
the public wash-tub. There were a score or so of them, busy at work,
but not too busy to turn and laugh at the stranger; merry, but not so
merry that they could not find energy to break into joyful screams at
some playful jest from a passer-by. The spectacle was one on which
Samuel Pepys would have dwelt with rapture, and the joke would have
been recorded with minute precision in his diary. There are many odd
things in Galicia which savour of the England of the Restoration.
The washing is a simple task. The clothes are taken to the water's
edge, mostly in flat baskets, such as those which are used for fish.
The women kneel over the running water, thoroughly soaking and
soaping the garments, which are then placed on stones to be rubbed.
After the rubbing there is a careful rinsing and wringing. The
articles are then spread on the nearest hedges or grass or stones
to dry. A mother may bring her baby with her, and leave the little
creature sitting or sleeping in the basket near her; the young boys
and girls will give a hand with the work; and if it is after dinner
an old woman may come up with her tin and earthenware utensils and
wash them in the running water, which carries all impurities towards
the sea.
There is in most of us that faculty for enjoyment which comes from
watching, at our ease, fellow-creatures toiling, and I will confess
to the keen satisfaction I felt at the quaint bridge of Marin, a
pleasant little run from Pontevedra, as I leaned over the parapet
smoking and watching the washers in the stream below. The sun was
shining hotly, the sky was a clear blue, the little white houses
dotted the yellow sands, and the brown nets hung to dry from the
fishing-boats and fences. The women sang at their labour, and
the children sang as they frolicked or helped their elders. It
seemed like a universal washing-day. Yet even washing in Galicia
is a romantic and picturesque performance, completely free from
the steamy, squalid smells of laundry days in British homes and
institutions.
[Illustration: CARRYING WATER]
[Illustration: A WOMAN THRESHING BEANS]
At Marin I leaned over the bridge and gazed long at the workers by
the stream, then turned towards Pontevedra, walking up the road in
the hot sunshine. Ahead the road was filled with people, moving
slowly, and in their midst a banner and some trappings flashed in the
strong bright light, and there came the strains of solemn music
and the wails of grief, for this was a Galician funeral. The coffin
was borne shoulder-high, with several priests near it, and with them
a man, like a peasant in his Sunday clothes, playing a bassoon, on
which he accompanied some of the responses to the priests' prayers.
Women, mostly in black, of the poorest class, with shawls on their
heads, followed the coffin closely. There were but few men present. A
halt was made for a few moments to rest and change the bearers, and
a peasant woman hurried from her cottage with a small table on which
they could rest their burden. All the time there were the prayers
and the responses, mingled with the strangely sweet and solemn music
of the great reed instrument, until the procession reached a spot at
which a branch of the road led to a little church on the shore, whose
bell was tolling and in whose ground the burial was to take place. It
was a simple ceremony, shorn of pomp and circumstance, and in perfect
keeping with the wondrous peace and beauty of the sun-bathed hills
and water.
[Illustration: AROSA BAY]
[Illustration: THE ISLAND OF LA TOJA]