JIJONA--THE GOATHERDS
Murcia could be counted as unmusical, in Verdolay one heard either a
gramophone of the little Señor, or the piano banged by the girls who
lived in the topmost house of the village. In Jijona, on the contrary,
almost every evening could be heard the sound of the guitar or of that
strange Eastern singing of Spain. Young men sat on the edge of the cliff
below the Saracen castle and thumped two or three chords from a guitar
for half the night long. It had a delight, analogous to that which the
tom-tom gives, a delight drawn from the hypnotism of inexorable rhythm.
But save for the commandant of the municipal officers, who was a
stranger, we had made the acquaintance of none of the musicians until
one afternoon the goatherds perched themselves in the shadow beneath our
walls.
We were taking a siesta when the sound of thrumming roused us from the
half sleep which the afternoon gives. Jan exclaimed:
"That music sounds quite near."
He jumped up and looked out of the window. On a narrow ledge of flat
rock at the foot of the wall three men were sitting in the shadow of the
house. Two had guitars, and all along the wall of the garden a number of
goats were lying down or were browsing on the small weeds which sprouted
between the rocks. On the hill-side the kids were engaging one another
in mock battle, rearing up in feint, with the most dainty of gestures,
or interlocking their infantile horns.
We slipped on our clothes, and crawling out by the garden door, the
opening of which was only about four feet high, we joined the goatherds
in their patch of shadow.
"Buenos dias," said Jan. "I, too, love the guitar."
"Si, Señor," answered one of the herds, "through the windows we have
heard you playing."
[Illustration]
One of the men was thin but wore an enormous pagoda-like sombrero of
straw, one was a boy of eighteen with a huge moustache, the third was an
old man with a large nose, the wrinkles on his face drawn more deeply
than any we have before seen. Their guitars were poor instruments and
the strings were broken and knotted together, in consequence of which
little bits of stick were tied across the arm of the instrument in order
to clamp the strings down to the fingerboard below the knotted parts. As
the strings break and are repaired, this stick is moved up the
fingerboard until the strings are too short to play upon. Jan crawled
through the small door and brought out the big white guitar. The thin
man handled it with reverence.
"I know the instrument," he said. "It is El Señor's. It is a good
instrument, but he has a better. A big brown one which is a marvel. He
must be very rich. They say he gave more than two hundred pesetas for
it."
He played on it for a moment, but soon handed it back to Jan.
"I'd rather play on my old one," he said. "I'm not afraid of it, and I
can knock it about as I like."
All three were dressed in cotton shirts and pants, tied at the ankle
with tape, over these they wore cotton coats and trousers; when the
weather was very hot they dispensed with the trousers. Their feet were
bare of stocking, but their shoes were heavy; woven by themselves out of
esparto grass, very Oriental in shape with turned-up, pointed toes. On
their backs were sacks containing esparto grass and half-fashioned
sandals. Each possessed a long, heavy, crook'd stick shod with an iron
point.
All too soon they said that they must be moving on. "But come down to
the street of the soap house, top side, this evening, and we'll have a
dance and singing."
I had sketched in this street. It was on the steepest part of the hill
and ran almost horizontally across, so that the front door of the upper
houses were on a level with the roofs of the lower ones. The roadway was
divided along the centre, one-half being some twenty feet above the
other; a low parapet protected the drop. It was lucky that the dwellers
in the upper part of the street were sober Spaniards.
[Illustration: GIRL SINGING A MALAGUEÑA
This type song is in 3/4-time, and is as a rule very melancholy. It is
very popular in the south of Spain.]
We found, as usual, the party seated on chairs in the middle of the
street, near a small electric light; some of the men were sitting along
the parapet. We were greeted by an old, but very large woman who groaned
all the evening with rheumatism. The girls were in their best dresses of
pale coloured skirt and embroidered paisley patterned shawls. A long
silence followed our arrival. We were waiting for a player who was the
best in the village. He could not come, but sent his brother instead,
who played well, but was left-handed. Three guitars and a guitarron
formed the orchestra.
Thrum, thrum, thrum, went the guitars, while across the deeper chords
the little guitarron, with its strange tuning, threaded a shrill pattern
of monotonous arpeggios. The music of Spain has something fundamental
about it. It has a hint of the heart-beat of the universe. The rich,
pulsating rhythm of it seems to set the air flowing in waves like those
in a disturbed pool. It seems to speak of something ideally simple, to
create an harmonious forgetfulness. A girl sitting amongst us threw back
her head and sang. Her voice carried the sad minor cadences of the
eternal East; it was pitched queerly in the throat and wailed across the
still night like the voice of a passionate soul.
"When I am dead a hundred years,
And when the worms have eaten me,
The signs you find in my dead bones,
Will show that I have worshipped thee.
When I am dead a hundred years."
The song began with a long-drawn-out aie-e-e, which ran a gamut of
strange, almost creepy modulations, the guitars slowed down their tempo,
but when the last echo of the song had died amongst the hills, the
instruments took up once more the remorseless beat of the malagueña.
Again she sang:
"New pain drives out old pain,
New grief drives out old grief,
One nail drives out another nail,
But love to love gives no relief.
New pain drives out old pain,
Aie-e-e...."
Once more she sang:
"Your eyes like double evils are,
Black as is the dark of Hades,
And you have to cover them
The ebon thickets of your lashes.
Your eyes like double evils are."
The guitars beat up the rhythm once more and then a man began to sing:
"In your eyes there is a sky,
Your mouth with heaven itself can vie,
A garden blooms whene'er you smile,
But in your breast's a crocodile.[25]
In your eyes there is a sky."
Again he sang:
"The only love which I discovered,
Like black gunpowder reacted;
Fire, explosion, light; then after ...
Followed ashes, silence, darkness.
The only love which I discovered."
By this time a large number of men and of girls had gathered.
"Vamos!" they cried. "Let's have a jota. Come on, Perico, play something
that we can dance to."
The guitar-players changed their tempo, the little guitarron beat out
with a more insistent though more flexible rhythm. The jota has a beat
which is partly the beat of the bar, partly that of the phrase. This is
common in Spanish music and has points of resemblance with early
European music generally.
Three girls and three of the youths lined up face to face, and soon the
dancers were swinging to and fro over the uneven roadway. There is an
agile grace in the jota. We watched it with delighted eyes. But the old
rheumatic woman did not look pleased.
[Illustration: THE VALENCIAN JOTA DANCED BY THREE COUPLES]
"That girl," she muttered to me, nodding her head at one of the dancers,
"she has no right to dance. She is apunto. You know," she went on,
noting my perplexed expression, "she is expecting a baby soon. It is
very wrong of her to dance."
The dancers moved with flexible rhythm, snapping their fingers with the
music, and their shadows, flung on the wall by the dim electric light,
caricatured their movements. The guitars beat on, creating an atmosphere
of careless joy which seemed to bring us into more sensitive contact
with the Spaniards than ever we had been before. We wonder if
civilization has anything to give to these people. They live simple,
straightforward and pleasant lives, tempered, it is true, by sickness
and pain and sometimes by privation; but it would be a rash man who
would promise to give them greater store of valuable things than they
already have. The fact that most cannot read does not hamper them very
much. They have wisdom stored up in a thousand witty proverbs, and for
their leisure they have the guitar and their songs.
What a wonderful instrument the guitar is! The simplest of all
instruments for the learner, a few days' practice makes him so that he
can play as do the generality of these herdsmen. Then one can hypnotize
oneself with the sonorous rhythm of repeated chords. But if one wishes
to go further, the range and variety of the guitar is inexhaustible. It
has as many moods as nature and is as difficult to conquer. Sarasate,
they say, gave up the guitar because it was so difficult. But the guitar
in the hands of the master is the finest of all instruments. Of single
portable instruments it alone is complete; it alone is fully satisfying.
We English do not know the guitar. Outside of Spain it has never been
played. And the Spanish music made for the guitar ... like life itself
with its interwoven themes of sadness and of joy; with mournful melody
accompanied by strange gay accompaniment, the words often in strange
contrast with the melodic theme. There is no native music in Europe
which has the range, the variety, and the depth of feeling possessed by
that of Spain.
We tore ourselves away while yet they were dancing; for we remembered
that 5.30 was our rising time. The thin goatherd, who wore the enormous
hat in the daytime, took us into his house and gave us a drink. The baby
was in its cradle, its face carefully tucked under the sheet. The
aguadiente which he poured out for us was strong and harsh to the taste;
and one was grateful for the glass of water which it is customary to
drink afterwards.
As we were getting ready for bed, we could still hear the sounds of the
guitars and the cries of the dancers on the calm air of the night.
The goatherds used to come almost every afternoon to the foot of our
castle, and we gave up the siesta habit in their favour.
I made the acquaintance of one other goatherd in Jijona. I was painting
in a street near the Garcias' shop. When the picture was nearly
complete, I wished for a figure and asked an old man to pose for me. He
was nearing eighty, and his face was a map of wrinkles, with a mountain
of nose and chin and a valley of toothless mouth. His clothes were a
patchwork of different materials. The study which I made of him
delighted him so much that he begged for it. He would pay me, he said.
"The price does not matter," he exclaimed, "if only La Doña will put in
a goat also." For he owned the flock which he led every day into the
mountains.
I made him a copy of it, and all the other goatherds trooped up to the
castle to see Tio Pepe's portrait.
"Ay, there's Pepe," they cried, slapping their thighs; "there he is with
his patches, and his crook'd stick, and his sandals and his old nose and
all. Tod', Tod'."
It was near the time of our departure from Jijona. Tio Pepe in vain
tried to press on me a few pesetas for the portrait. He searched his old
mind for a means of showing his gratitude; and just as we were leaving
he found a solution. At five o'clock in the morning, as our trunk was
leaving the house on the shoulders of Tia Roger's strong young son, up
ran Uncle Pepe with a large can of goat's milk, all of which we had to
drink on the spot; or he would never have forgiven us.
The night before our departure we had packed, for we had to start early
to catch the motor-bus. Then we had gone to bed. We had just snuggled
down beneath the blankets, for the nights were getting quite fresh, when
I heard the sounds of a guitar. The sounds drew closer. They were coming
up the hill. A suspicion grew to a certainty.
"Jan," I cried, "those goatherds are giving us a farewell serenade."
We hurried into our clothes. The goatherds had sat themselves down on
the stone bench at the front door and were singing lustily at the moon.
I don't know what the Spanish etiquette in such matters is, but we went
out and took part in our own serenade. It was a lengthy affair. The time
crept on, and we, shivering somewhat, for the night grew quite cold, sat
ungratefully thinking of the sleep we were missing, and wondering how we
were to awaken ourselves at four o'clock. At two o'clock they went away,
and we rushed back to bed to seize the two hours of sleep which remained
for us.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 25: Crocodile is Spanish slang for a false lover.]