Barraca,” will remember the scene at the “Door of the Apostles” when
Batiste, unable to check his indignation at the unjust charge brought
against him, is fined for his excited interruptions and fined too for
the misdeed which he had not committed. But as a rule the scene is a
quiet and almost a solemn one. The tribunal has the sanctity of years;
the peasant respects an institution which was the same in his father’s
time and in his grandfather’s, and in that of his ancestors five
centuries ago. The judges who before and after are simple peasants, are,
for the moment invested with the power of settling matters of vital
importance; for disregarding the sentence of the tribunal they may
deprive a man entirely of his right of water, and so render him and his
family penniless. They represent the whole Huerta, embodying alike its
independent spirit and its conservative traditions. A few minutes after
the judges have risen, and sometimes before the Cathedral clock has
struck twelve, sofa and railing have disappeared, and it is hard to
realize that the time-honoured Judging of the Waters, so primitive and
impressive, has actually been held in this city of two hundred thousand
inhabitants, and in this paved square where now there are but few
wayfarers, and the central fountain flows and trickles in silence.
XIII
SEVILLE IN WINTER
It is in spring, from March to May, that Seville is chiefly visited; the
warm air and hot sun, the orange-trees in flower, the great religious
festivals, the famous bull-fights, attract a host of foreigners, and the
city has an animation unwonted even in the gay and lively capital of
Andalucía. In winter Seville has a quieter, but perhaps not less potent
charm. Winter often brings with it a succession of cool clear days, when
the sky is of a serene, almost transparent blue, with golden sunsets.
The white lines of flat-roofed houses seen against the blue of the
evening sky have the soft light and colouring of opals, while the
distant hills of the horizon are faintly purple. On these still days the
motionless river reflects the lines of leafless silver birch and yellow
tamarisks in all the tracery of their slender branches. A few yards
further from the bank on either side thousands of dark orange-trees are
hung with gleaming fruit, circling the city with a fringe of lamps.
Above and through the trees, now bare and grey, of the _Paseo de las
Delicias_ show the various greens of the tall eucalyptus-trees and
palms, the orange-trees and cypresses of the Santelmo gardens. On the
quay lie immense mounds of oranges ready to be packed: the hot sun fills
the air with their scent, children make flying attacks and retire
precipitately with an orange apiece, while an occasional beggar also
receives his dole from the apparently inexhaustible store. In the
ever-crowded _Calle de las Sierpes_ small open stalls display fresh
violets and magnificent carnations and roses, and in some gardens one
may see roses and geraniums in flower. In the lovely gardens of the
Alcázar the sun draws a deliciously mingled scent from the box-hedges,
myrtles and oranges.
Occasionally--still in unclouded weather--the wind is cold and piercing
and all go muffled to the eyes, the men in their _capas_, the women with
long shawls. In the _Patio de los Naranjos_, beneath the trees laden
with oranges, the wind sweeps across the pavement of rough bricks,
intergrown with grass and the duller green of mosses, and rattles the
fallen leaves in lines and circles. Far above, the great Giralda tower
stands pink and creamy grey in the clear winter sky. By the Gate of
Pardon, in a corner of hot sun and sheltered from the wind, a few
beggars sit warming themselves and watching with Oriental patience and
immobility. The streets are mostly too narrow to let in the sun, but in
the _plazas_ and any open space men are seen basking in sunshine,
_tomando el sol_. Along the bridge that leads to the suburb of Triana
the seats on both sides are crowded. Triana, better than Seville,
corresponds to Cervantes’ description of a city where adventures are to
be met at every street corner, and Triana supplies an army of loiterers
whose life’s mission in winter is to “take the sun.”
On the eve of high festivals in winter, such as the Epiphany, it is
already growing dark when services are held, and the vast Cathedral is
faintly lit with hundreds of candles and dim hanging lamps, though the
last daylight still lingers awhile in the deep reds and purples, green,
orange, and every colour of the windows overhead. There is no procession
of the Three Kings through the city; at Alcoy, in the province of
Valencia, the Three Kings come riding, laden with presents, into the
town from beyond the grey mountains that surround it, and half the
population goes out to meet them, but Seville is too “civilized” for
this.
Even in Seville not all the winter days are cloudless and serene. On
some of them the sky is a uniform grey, and the rain falls unceasingly
till the centre of the narrower, unevenly cobbled streets, raised at
either side and without a pavement, becomes a running stream. But when
the Andalusian sun reappears, the houses have an added freshness in
their glowing white, or in their coats of faint green or red, yellow or
purple (though even these usually have a line of white along the roof),
and in the air is a feeling of spring. There is an ancient Andalusian
song that makes March say to January--
“Con tres días que me quedan
Y tres que me preste mi compadre Abríl
He de poner tus ovejas
Que te acordarás de mí.”
(With the three days that are left me and three lent me by my friend
April, I will put your sheep in such a plight that you will remember
me.) This is the Cumbrian:--
“March said to Aperill
‘I see three haggs [sheep] upon a hill.
And if you will lend me dayes three
I’ll find a way to make them dee.’”
But the rigour of the days that follow in Cumberland has no place or
parallel in the low-lying districts of Andalucía:--
“The first of them was wind and weet,
The second of them was snaw and sleet,
The third of them was sic a freeze
It froze the birds’ nebs to the trees;
When the three days were past and gane
The three silly haggs came hirpling hame.”
At Seville a few weeks after the Day of the Kings winter is really over:
in February the sky has an intenser blue, and with the longer sunshine
the warmth increases. The spring days follow in their matchless
splendour, till finally the sun’s fiery heat drives all who can leave
the city to the cooler refuge of the sea or the hills.
XIV
FROM A SEVILLE HOUSETOP
In winter Seville’s sky is sometimes for weeks entirely cloudless. Day
after day opens and dies peacefully away like a perfect flower; or, if a
strong cold wind drives across the day, it still blows in a heaven of
limitless clear blue. But in early spring the sky is often veiled in a
floating canopy of grey, or one may watch the white masses of clouds
thin and melt on the blue. And the blue is no longer fixed, distant, and
serene; even when apparently clear it has a vague movement of dissolving
mists, an intangible white softness interlacing it. It is this quality
of the sky, harmonizing so well with the soft lines and delicate colours
of the city, that gives to Seville in spring its unfailing charm.
Especially is that charm felt in the hour when men’s cigarettes begin to
glow and dot the streets with tiny fire-flies, distinct as the white
flowers worn by the women in their hair. The deep-red carnations and
dark violets of the open flower-stalls fade into shadow; the light
greens, lilacs, yellows, browns, and blues of the houses take a greyer
tinge. The last sunshine throws its thinner radiance along the white
lines of flat roofs that stand out in many levels and angles on the blue
or blue-and-white sky, and the effect is of pearls and opals, not the
flash of polished opals, but, as it were, blue veins of opal in white
chalk. The west is filled with a level radiance of pure gold, and
presently the eastern sky also changes from blue to a faint golden grey.
One by one the hanging street lamps begin to shed their soft glow of
white light, and overhead the first stars shine faintly and vanish and
reappear. The bells of goats and the mellower note of cowbells are heard
as they go their evening round to be milked, driven by a boy astride his
donkey, or by an old man with faded-pink umbrella; or a donkey passes
laden with oranges, the fruit’s gold gleaming through the twilight
afterglow from between the netting of the panniers. A breath of country
air invades the city; the day’s work is ended, and perhaps from some
church or convent you may hear “a distant bell that seems to mourn the
dying of the day”:
“Squilla di lontano
Che paia ’l giorno pianger che si muore.”
The swift Southern twilight soon dies, but this short hour more than any
other embodies the magic of a Seville spring. For Seville at other times
is “a city full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city.” It wakes to
a discordant music of many street cries. All kinds of wares are hawked
shrilly, with loud shouts, or slow, dirge-like chants. Later in the day
come the more melodious cries of “Oranges! Water! Violets!
Carnations!--_¡Qué buenas naranjas! Agua, quien quiere agua! Violetas!
Claveles!_” But to the flat brick-paved housetops, surrounded with walls
of different height, from three to twenty feet, all whitewashed to their
level tops, these sounds of the street come faintly. The rattle of
wheels over the cobbles is deadened, the bells of slowly driven cows and
goats chime distantly; sometimes one hears the intricate whistle of the
knife-grinder, or a barrel-organ plays an interminable dance to the
clacking of castañets, that fascinates by its ceaseless repetition. But
the sounds are vague and muffled, without harshness or stridency, and
here reigns more uninterrupted quiet than in the cool marble _patios_
below, with the frequent goings out and in through the door’s iron
_reja_. On the walls or in the line of shade beneath them stand rows of
plants--roses, geraniums, heliotrope, and especially carnations. From
here the street sellers fill their open stalls and baskets with the huge
carnations of spring, the smaller early carnations coming chiefly from
Málaga. And the carnations never look more beautiful than seen, dark red
or pink or yellow, against these walls of glistening white; one is fain
to call them by their German or “soft Spanish name”--_Nelken, claveles_.
The sun rising lights up the housetops so that they gleam like snow
between the dark spaces of bronze or green or blue glazed tiles,
slender-springing towers, and infrequent roofs, covered thickly in
spring with grass, like small fields. Or on a night of moon the city has
a phantom look of whited sepulchres, and if no moon looks round her
with delight when the heavens are bare, there is an uninterrupted view
of stars in the whole sky, as from a ship’s deck. At midday, when the
sun is all fire and narrows the lines of shadow to mere rims of black,
one may not look for more than an instant across the glaring radiance of
white. In the morning there is an exquisite freshness. Little smoke
rises from the houses--only an occasional tiny wraith of grey--but,
beyond, a dense line goes up from the Cartuja factory of _azulejos_, and
hangs black-purple on the blue sky--the morning sky streaked with waving
outdrawn wisps of white mist-like cloud. There is a flapping of pigeons’
wings as they flutter from wall to wall, and the twittering of
innumerable sparrows. The hours are marked by the crystal striking of
many clocks that are heard only dim and intermittently from below in the
street traffic. But it is at evening that the housetop has an almost
magical charm, when the sun has set in a sky of delicate gold, and in
the east long thin lines of white and faint purple cloud lie across a
sky of lightest blue. Then the flowers along the wall give out all their
scent. Swallows whirl and swerve far overhead or lightly skim the
hundred levels of whitewashed turret and wall. The _claveles_ fade
slowly in the growing dusk; the wide, uneven plain of glowing walls
gradually becomes indistinct and blurred; finally the sky, too, is
moulded to a perfect symmetry of grey, and perhaps an immense
orange-coloured moon climbs slowly above the city. Seville is lovely in
winter, when the sky is a cold, serene blue, and night by night the
stars glint and glitter; lovely in spring, when everywhere, in roof and
_patio_ and garden, is a triumph of green, when the oranges still hang
on the orange-trees in flower--like yellow crocuses peering from the
snow--and the corn is already high in the olives beyond the river;
lovely in summer, when the greens are parched and shrivelled, and a hot
wind blows heavily across the fainting housetops, or in nights of sultry
stillness the intense glow from many a lighted _patio_ falls across the
velvet darkness of the narrow streets. Lovely at all times, but never
more lovely than in the temperate days of spring, when a hundred bells
are ringing for the Feast of Resurrection, and the flowers from
countless roofs are gathered for the _fête_; when, in scenes of fairy
magic, the slow _pasos_ move with their myriad candles burning through
the twilight, along the crowded streets and _plazas_ to the Cathedral,
while still peacefully above its Court of Oranges the tall Giralda looks
across the city that hems it in, to the wide _dehesas_ of Andalucía, to
the green fields and olive-covered hills beyond the gently flowing
Guadalquivir, and to the distant line of the Sierra Morena.
XV
FEBRUARY IN ANDALUCÍA
Not one perhaps in a hundred of those who visit Seville and Granada sees
more than a glimpse of the beautiful country and curious villages of
Andalucía; yet there is much pleasure and interest to be had from a
journey through all this region. In February an early start with the sun
will enable the traveller on horseback or on foot to accomplish a fair
day’s journey, since the sun has not yet begun to burn and force him to
rest for some six central hours of the day, as later in the year. And
the outlines on every side are exquisitely clear, the sky usually
cloudless, and streams flow where later there will be but dry channels.
In parts the fields and roadside spaces are blue and purple with
dwarf-irises (the peasants call them simply _lirios_, lilies), and the
almond-trees are in flower; and at no time of the year is there a
greater and more delightful contrast between spring in the valley and
winter on the hills. Near Seville the immense plains stretch
interminably to the faint mountains, brown and dull-green pastures of
heather and dwarf-palm, flecked with silver-white streaks of water;
herds of cattle, glossy black with white horns, pigs, horses, and great
flocks of sheep graze there. Or the country is gently undulating like
Sussex downs, but with softlier-moulded outlines and a horizon of faint
blue mountains, in February exquisitely distinct in faintness. A village
often entirely covers one of the small hills, not a house venturing
forward to form an outskirt, but all clustered and compact. Steep,
perfectly straight streets of sharp narrow cobbles, without side
pavements, run up to the church at the top through rows of low,
whitewashed houses, of a single storey and of a dazzling whiteness. At
evening the labourers come in from the far distant fields in a
continuous line, on foot or on mules and donkeys, and children go out to
meet them and are given a ride back into the village. Sometimes their
return is of several kilomètres, over deep earthy or stony paths, and,
with their gleaming mattocks (_pioches_, _azadones_) over their
shoulders, they are now to be seen clearly outlined on the evening sky,
and now are lost from view in one of the many hollows of the hills. Far
and near there is no tree, “neither bush nor shrub to bear off any
weather at all,” and the winds seem to have sifted and moulded the hills
into softly folding mounds and hollows. In February the winds still blow
occasionally with icy breath, and you will meet men on crimson and
magenta-tasselled mules and donkeys, closely wrapped in old-fashioned
_capas_ of brown, only their eyes visible. On the road there are few
travellers--charcoal-burners coming down with troops of laden donkeys
from the hills, or a slow cart drawn by a string of mules, the driver
lazily asleep, and the reins appearing from between the soles of his
sandals,[92] or a troop of gipsies, or orange sellers with the panniers
of their mules brimmed with oranges, now selling at six _reales_, a
little over a shilling, the hundred. Sometimes the country is all
grey-pinched and icy, and but a little further (as near snow-white Arcos
de la Frontera) are great hedges of shrubs and aloes and brambles and
cactus, with a sound of bees, and hovering white and yellow butterflies,
and wide spaces of tall branched flowers of asphodel and grey scented
rosemary. Or in a corner of windswept hills you may find a sheltered
_huerta_ with thick hedge of tall black cypresses; the oranges crowd the
trees with gold, and the almond-trees shed across the dusty road a thick
carpet of broken flowers, pink and white. To Grazalema leads only a
steep and narrow foot-path after one has left the road not far from
Algodonales (pronounced by the peasants in a torrent of vowels Aooae)
and crossed the river Guadalete. In the valley the oranges gleam in
myriads, and the hills immediately above are coloured with a continuous
spray of almond-trees in flower, entirely covering their sides, and
sometimes crowning them in triumph. And far above, over woods of cork
and evergreen oak from which rise frail blue lines of smoke from
charcoal-burners’ fires, appear two or three peaks of snow clear against
a pale blue sky. The path goes up along hedges of brambles through
asphodels and hundreds of trailing periwinkles, with stepping-stones and
flowing streams; here and there a snow-white olive-oil mill with
sentinel cypresses. And, below, the pale snow-fed Guadalete flows
swiftly over white stones through groves of oranges. From a distance
Grazalema gives the fanciful idea of broken shells on a stony shore,
with its houses of white and pink and brown, many of them overhanging
and seeming to grow out of steep rocks. From the village a path leads
through corkwoods, the stripped trunks of the trees a deep maroon
colour, to Ronda on its sheer hill. From Antequera to Málaga by road is
some fifty kilomètres, and here, too, are wonderful contrasts and sudden
change from winter to summer. In the unsheltered plains round Bobadilla
the almond-trees show no sign of flower, and the grey mountains above
the stern frowning towers of Antequera are ice-bound. Turning the pass,
appears a magnificent view of six or seven serrated hill-ranges to the
line of sea beyond hidden Málaga--on the left a fantastically jagged
range, sprinkled in parts with snow; on the right a long line of
snow-mountains that ends in a bare range rising purple from the sea. And
the ice soon grows thin and vanishes, giving place to irises, tiny
jonquils, and periwinkles, and descending half-way down the mountain
side, to Villanueva, the almond-trees have already lost half their
blossoms, grass and white dusty road and dark new-ploughed soil are
thickly strewn with their petals, and the fields of broad beans are in
scented black and white flower. Along the coast full summer reigns, the
balconies are heavy with trailing flowers, the sea is deepest blue, and
the wind blows half-sultrily across the fields of beans and the
faded-green leaves of sugar-cane, with their scent of hay. Sometimes the
road is lined with poplars, and ox-carts go laden with grass and trefoil
and leaves from the sugar-canes. Elsewhere the road winds inland through
grey rocky hills and woods of strong-scented pines, with glimpses of
blue sea; or passes high above cliffs, the sea swelling dull green
immediately below or foaming round dark rocks. From Motril or some other
point one may go up to Granada, the Sierra Nevada appearing and altering
continually; and thoughts of the Alhambra and other names of magic
shorten the road, though it has many a beautiful view and village, such
as Pino to the left on the mountain side, with its white houses and deep
red-brown roofs. But of the many fair districts of Andalucía perhaps the
most delightful in scenery is that lying between the Guadalquivir and La
Mancha, a region of brushwood and mountain. The road from Marmolejo runs
up through hills covered with shrubs of every shade of green, from
grey-blue to shrill yellow, many of them scented, lentiscus, escalonia,
_adelfa_, cistus, rosemary, and a hundred more; even in February the
mid-day sun scents the whole air with them. Near the village of
Cardeña, some thirty miles from Marmolejo, a ruin is supposed to be that
of the inn where many scenes of “Don Quixote” occurred, but only a few
stones remain. Leaving the village in early morning in frost and ice in
order to go down to Montoro on the Guadalquivir, the road at first is
wild, bordered by oak-trees, with flocks of sheep, a few patches of
corn, many magpies, the plaining of birds and the occasional whirr of a
partridge. Yet even here in a few hollows are vines and almond-trees,
and spaces of scented plants and wild yellow jonquils, with white or
brown or yellow butterflies, a humming of bees and rustling of lizards.
The road now cuts through hills of scented shrubs, so various and
ordered with such careful harmony as could be rivalled by no garden
planted by man. On either side are range and range of hills
shrub-covered, dull green, brown and blue, brown where the shrubs have
been cut for firing. To the right is a wide deep gorge with tiny river
far below, and glimpses of blue distances and valleys of more hills. To
the left more hills, and across a blue distance of hill valleys the
Sierra de Jaen with its beautiful pyramid-shaped peak of deepest snow,
and far to the right of it the two more pointed peaks of Granada’s
Sierra Nevada, marvellously clear in distance. Between them and the
Sierra de Jaen runs the snow-sprinkled range above the village of Los
Villares de Jaen. In the transparent might of even a February noon the
more distant and the higher of the near hills are purple, and the great
snow-mountains below the snow-line grow faint and grey. Montoro is a
beautiful quaint town rising above the Guadalquivir in seven or eight
storeys of houses of red stone and whitewash. The tall church-tower,
also of red stone, stands massively above the town, and precipitously
steep and cobbled streets lead up to it. Houses look sheer down from
windows, balconies, and gardens to the river far below, which flows over
a weir above and below the town, so that there is a perpetual sound of
rushing water. From Montoro one may follow the Guadalquivir, now a
majestic river, through its olive groves to the famous bridge of
Alcolea, and the low white line beneath bare hills and wooded mountains
which is Córdoba, seen from the East. Everywhere on the roads and in the
inns of Andalucía the peasants are courteous, pleasant, intelligent,
picturesque; always ready to give any service in their power, often
immensely ignorant. They will ask if “Ingalaterra” is not Spain’s
border-country and confuse it with Gibraltar, or if the Queen was a
Christian before her marriage. For the most part they cannot read or
write;[93] yet they converse willingly on the most various subjects,
especially on politics and religion, the mayor and the priest. Here a
woman complains: “Nine children I had, and the nine are dead; it’s
better so in these times of misery”; there a peasant describes the snowy
Sierra in the month of August, how it glows whiter than lilies across
the plain--_más blanca, que una azucena_; or tells how beautiful is the
country in later spring when the quinces, apples, and pomegranates are
in flower, _que es un paraiso_--a very paradise. As they sit round the
_candela_, in the cold evenings of early spring, talk flows on into the
night, always pleasant and courteous, as of one _gran señor_ to
another.
XVI
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF SPANISH LITERATURE