Feelings far removed from those of devotion prevail in the
celebration of the Baptist’s festival. Whether it is the inviting
temperature of a midsummer night, or some ancient custom connected
with the present evening, “Saint John,” says the Spanish proverb,
“sets every girl a gadding.” The public walks are crowded after
sunset, and the exclusive amusement of this night, flirtation, or in
the Andalusian phrase, _pelar la Pava_, (plucking the hen-turkey)
begins as soon as the star-light of a summer sky, unbroken by the
partial glare of lamps, enables the different groups to mix with a
liberty approaching that enjoyed in a masquerade. Nothing in this
kind of amusement possesses more zest than the chat through the
iron bars of the lower windows, which begins about midnight. Young
ladies, who can compose their mamas to sleep at a convenient hour,
glide unperceived to the lower part of the house, and sitting on
the window-sill, behind the latticework, which is used in this
country instead of blinds, wait, in the true spirit of adventure,
(if not pre-engaged to a dull, common-place matrimonial prelude,)
for the chance sparks, who, mostly in disguise, walk the streets
from twelve till dawn. Such, however, as the mere love of mirth
induces to pass the night at the windows, generally engage another
female companion, a sister, a friend, and often a favourite maid, to
take a share in the conversation, and by a change of characters to
puzzle their out-of-doors visitors. These, too, when not _seriously_
engaged, walk about in parties, each assuming such a character as
they consider themselves most able to support. One pretends to be a
farmer just arrived from the country, another a poor mechanic, this a
foreigner speaking broken Spanish, that a _Gallego_, making love in
the still less intelligible dialect of his province. The gentlemen
must come provided with no less a stock of sweetmeats (which from
the circumstance of being folded each separately in a piece of
paper, are called _Papelillos_) than of lively small talk and wit.
A deficiency in the latter is unpardonable; so that a _bore_, or
_Majadero_,[44] if not ready to quit the post when bidden, is soon
left to contemplate the out-side of the window-shutters. The habitual
distance at which the lower classes are kept from those above them,
prevents any disagreeable meddling on their part; and the ladies who
indulge in these frolics, feel perfectly safe from intrusion and
impertinence.
[44] A word derived from the verb _Majar_, to beat in a mortar.
The sauntering about the fields, practised by the populace of
Madrid, on the same night, is there called “_Cogér la Verbena_,”
gathering Vervain; an appellation evidently derived from an ancient
superstition which attributed preternatural powers to that plant when
gathered at twelve o’clock on St. John’s Eve. The nocturnal rambles
of the present times, much as they might alarm the guardians of
public morals, if such an office existed among us, need not give any
uneasiness on the score of witchcraft to the Reverend Inquisitors.