THE SIBYL’S CAVE.
I have spoken of the grandame who was my mother’s only relative. I have
a sort of fierce pride in this old woman, and love to trace the Rommany
blood that burns in my own heart, back to that weird source; for in her
withered veins it grew, like old wine, strong with age and bitter with
the hate which our people bore to the Gentiles.
Learned men still cavil about our origin. They gather up scraps of our
language, they ferret out our habits, and torture our tradition to
establish the various theories, which, after all, must remain theories;
for ours is a poverty-stricken people. We have no possession, not even
a history. They call us a nation of thieves, and say that even our
traditions are stolen. Be it so! at least we are faithful to each other,
a boast which the brotherhood of civilization cannot honestly make.
But though wise men have traced us back to Judea, and made us
worshippers of idols, we who worship nothing in heaven or on earth, know
by the secret sympathies that link us together—sympathies which no
Gentile can comprehend—that the blood within our hearts is of another
source than the idolaters of Judea.
They say that our traditions are stolen from your Bible; that from the
solemn prophecies written there, we have gathered up a belief in our
Egyptian origin. But my great grandmother never looked into your Bible.
She would have trampled the falsehood under her feet and spit upon it,
had any one hinted that in the Gentile language, lay the great secret of
her race.
But her faith in the Egyptian descent of our people was like a religion.
How it came to her, whether from tradition, fable, fact, or those
sorcerers’ arts that made her famous among all our nation, I do not
know. Save in those wild sympathies that knit our tribe together, as
with bonds of iron, all over the earth, our people have no history. They
came like a cloud of locusts sweeping down from the East. It may be one
of the curses sent forth to infest the earth after ravaging Egypt. It
may be a fragment of the lost tribes. It may be even, as some of our
traditions say, that we were sent forth as a punishment for
inhospitality to the mother of God and her holy child. There is a wide
field for conjecture. Let your wise men guess on. With us, our Egyptian
descent is a faith—all the religion that we have!
I know many languages, am learned in historic lore—learned in the great
foundation of all history, the Bible. Of that which pertains to my
people I have studied long and deeply; yet as my great grandmother, the
Gitana, believed, so do I. To her occult wisdom, her subtle sympathies,
I have brought all the knowledge to be gathered from the literature of
other races.
I have searched your sacred book till my soul has been stirred to its
depths with the dark prophecies that foreshadow the scattering of our
tribes over the face of the earth. I find the destiny that is now upon
us written out in that great book, certain, unmistakable as the
thunder-cloud that heralds in a tempest. There is wisdom in that book.
Our people should know it better, for much of its grandeur came from
Egypt, as we did—Egypt the great mother of learning—the land which gave
its wisdom to Moses, and taught the irresolute how to think, act, and
suffer.
And we too are of Egypt. Does the Gentile want proof? Let him search for
it in the prophecies that he holds sacred. Let him read it in the
voluptuous character of our dances, in the unwritten poetry, unwritten
because it grows tame and mean in any language but the Rommany. The
Gitanos speak their poetry as it swells warm from the heart, for it
would grow cold in the writing. Let him search for it where he pleases.
We require no proof, better than the mysterious spirit within us. Our
hearts turn back to the old land, and we know that it once belonged to
us.
My great grandame was no common Gitana. Her husband had been a chief, or
count, among the gipsies, during his entire manhood. This was no common
dignity, for our people choose their own leaders, and it is seldom that
one man’s popularity lasts during a life-time. The Gitano chooses his
wife for her talent, her art, her powers of deception; in short, for
what you would call her keen wickedness. These are the endowments that
recommend the Gitana bride to her lord. It was for these qualities,
joined to talents that would have given her a position in any nation,
that my ancestor married his wife.
This great grandame of mine was bravely descended, and richly endowed.
Talent descends most frequently from the mother, and through the female
line she could trace her blood back to that arch sorceress, who wound
herself around Maria de Padilla, during her heroic life, and in the end
betrayed that noble woman to death, when she fled from Toledo with her
son.
Maria de Padilla had offended our ancestress, and she was true to her
hate. My great grand-dame wore a pair of ear-rings, massive gold
circlets set with great rubies. In her poverty—for in the end she became
very poor—these antique ornaments were always about her person. No
amount of suffering, no temptation could win them from her, even for a
moment. These antique rings had been wrested from the heroine of Toledo,
on the night when she _disappeared_ with her Gitana attendant. There was
a tradition, that the precious stones with which they were beset, had
once been white, but that after the murder, had changed to the blood-red
hue which they ever after maintained. I know not how this superstition
took birth; but the craft of our Gitana ancestress seemed to descend
with the rings, as they came down from that wonderful creature, always
through the females, to the old Sibyl who was the grandame of my mother.
I know that the Gitanos are considered as impostors; that they are
supposed to practise their arts for coarse gain, and for that only; but
this is not always true. No devotee ever put more faith in her saint
than the gipsy, who has long exercised her powers of divination, places
in the truth of her mysterious art.
It was late in the evening, and old Papita—for thus my ancestress was
named—sat in her cave-home waiting the return of her grand-daughter from
the Alhambra. Perhaps upon the whole earth there is nothing more
repulsive than a very old woman in any portion of southern Europe. The
voluptuous atmosphere, the warm sunshine that matures female life so
early, seems to mock its own precocious work, by proving how hideous
time can render it. But if age makes itself so repulsive among the
luxurious women of Spain, those who scarcely draw a breath of that
delicious atmosphere which is not heavy with fragrance, how much more
hideous must be the old age of a Gitana hid away in the dark hollows of
the earth, with rude and insufficient food, clothed in rags, uncared
for, held in no higher repute than the foxes who burrow in the earth
like themselves, and are scarcely held apart from civilization more than
they are?
There was something witch-like in the appearance of my great grandame as
she sat alone in her cave that night. A meagre candle shed its light in
sickly flickers around a rude niche scooped in the rock, from whence the
entire dwelling was cut. The body of this light fell upon the old
woman’s head, kindling up a scarlet kerchief that she wore, somewhat in
the fashion of a Moorish turban, into vivid brilliancy; but casting the
rough features into blacker shadow, till they seemed meagre, dark, and
almost as withered as those of an Egyptian mummy. Her claw-like hands
were folded over her bosom, and a ring set with some deep green stone
cut with Egyptian characters, caught the light like a star; for the
setting was of rough massive gold, that seemed heavy enough to break the
withered finger, that it covered from joint to joint. A few embers lay
upon the stone floor at her feet, the remnants of a fire that had burned
low, leaving a thin cloud of smoke still floating in the vaulted roof of
the cave.
A low chair of heavy carved wood, the antique plunder of some religious
house, served the old woman for a seat; and before her, upon the embers,
stood a small bronze vessel, which gave forth a soft odor as its
contents simmered sleepily in the dying heat.
Besides these objects, there was little of interest in the dwelling. The
cave was scooped from the soft sandstone cliff that forms one side of a
ravine, through which the Darro passes before making its graceful sweep
around the Alhambra. The walls and ceiling were blended together in a
thousand irregular curves and angles, roughly chiselled, and blackened
over with smoke. It had no particular form; but sunk into recesses; was
cut up into hollows; bulged out in places that should have been corners,
and had a dozen angles that promised some definite form, but failed in
the performance.
In size it might have covered eighteen or twenty square feet. The floors
were of stone, like the walls, for all was cut from one rock; but smoke
and long use had so disguised the native material, that it could hardly
be guessed at. A few dried herbs were hung in one hollow of the wall; an
earthen pot, full of fresh flowers, stood in another; some specimens of
coarse pottery occupied a shelf opposite the door, and cooking utensils
of heavy iron were huddled in a corner, making the shadows in that
portion of the cave still more dense.
The old Sibyl arose, took down the candle, and holding it over the
bronze vessel peered into it, muttering to herself. Now the dark
mummy-like aspect of her features changed; the eyes, black, firm and
large, for age had no power to quench their lightning, illuminated those
withered features and gave expression to every wrinkle. Her thin lips
parted, and through a weird smile, that made them writhe like disturbed
serpents, shot the gleam of her sharp, long teeth, white as ivory, and
strong as those of a tiger.
My great grandame in her youth was of middle size; but age had
contracted her muscles and warped her sinews, leaving her limbs spare
and lean till she was scarcely larger than a child of twelve years. Her
head was singularly large, the forehead heavy, the eyes under it burning
like coals of living fire; and this disproportion was exaggerated by the
heavy red kerchief that I have already spoken of.
As the old woman lifted her person from its stooping position and rose
upright, you wondered that she had power in those withered limbs to
stand so erect, or carry the weight of that heavy blue saya, with its
succession of crimson flounces all edged with golden lace, from which
the brightness had departed years ago. You wondered, too, at the
picturesque and singular arrangement of colors in her dress. It is true
the old velvet jacket had lost all traces of its original lustre. The
colors of the saya were dimmed and worn away; but the vestige of former
dignity was there, and no age could injure that mystic seal, or the
massive ruby rings that bent her thin ears with their weight, and
flashed like great drops of blood falling from beneath her kerchief.
Two or three times the grandame waved her light over the bronze vessel,
then thrusting the candle back into its niche, with an air of discontent
she walked to the door of her cave, flung it open and looked out.
At first she held one hand over her eyes as we do when the sun strikes
us suddenly, and no wonder, for what a contrast was that beautiful night
with the black hole she had left!
I have seen the Alhambra by moonlight, from the very point of view which
the old Sibyl commanded, and it is one of the memories which one would
give up years of life rather than surrender. Down from the soft purple
of that glorious sky fell the moonlight, pouring its rich luminous
floods over the snows that lie forever upon the noble mountain ranges of
the Alpujarras. It cast a silvery halo around each snowy peak, making
the whiteness lustrous as noonday, then came quivering down their sides,
and fell in a silvery torrent among the groves that girdle the Alhambra.
There, subdued and softened by the masses of foliage, it divided a sweet
empire with the night, leaving half those dim old towers to the shadows,
and pouring its whole refulgence upon the rest, throwing a glory over
some broken arch, and abandoning its neighbor to obscurity.
Ah me, there is nothing on earth so beautiful as the moonlight shining
amid a grim old ruin like that. It is the present smiling away the gloom
of the past.
Broken up, as it were, by those naked old towers, the light fell among
the groves, throwing the trees out in masses that took a greenish hue
almost as if it had been day; then the foliage became dense, and long
shadows cast themselves like a dewy vapor down the hill, admitting soft
gleams to flicker in here and there, like a network of pearls
embroidering the darkness. Then, as if some undercurrent of light had
been all the while flowing on beneath the trees, out rushed the
moonbeams breaking away from the shadows, and pouring down upon the
bosom of the Darro, smiling, sparkling, kindling up every drop of water
as it flowed by, till you would have thought some hidden vein in the
mountains had broken free, and a torrent of diamonds were sweeping
between Granada and its Moorish fortress.
It is possible that the old gipsy saw nothing of this. I am inclined to
think that she did not, for the scene had become familiar to her, and
that night she was ill at ease. Instead of turning her gaze as you would
have done upon the Alhambra and the snow ridges beyond, she threw her
head back, and began peering among the stars, muttering to herself in
some strange tongue, and holding up her mystic ring as if to catch
direct fire from the particular star to which her eyes were uplifted.
“Not now,” she said fiercely; for the least untoward thing awoke the old
woman’s wrath; and even then she longed to gather all that beautiful
moonlight up, and cast it into some dark void, because its refulgence
dimmed the stars which she wished to read. “Not now,” she muttered,
locking her sharp teeth together, and turning her fierce eyes upon the
sky with a gleam of hate—“not while the moon is wading through the snows
up yonder, and putting out the bright, beautiful stars till the heavens
all run together like the printed pages of a book which one has not the
art to read. Not yet, not yet. I must wait till the skies are purple
again, and the stars come out with fire in them. The moon, the moon, it
is the friend of the Busne, never of the Gitana. Accursed be its path in
the sky. May the stars, that have a language for the Egyptian, grow
powerful, and smite it down from its high place.”
After uttering this weird curse, the Sibyl closed the door and slunk
back into her cave, pacing to and fro, and crooning over a wild snatch
of song that seemed to excite rather than soothe the fierce mood she was
in.