A saddle for femininity—September fairs—Three kinds of
hostelries—A night at the street door—_Buñolitos_—Mosquitoes
and holy water—All the fun of the fair—The etiquette of
mendicancy—A Spanish circus—A cinematograph—Drunk but still
courteous—The diligence.
There are three perfect months for exploring the mountains and visiting
remote hills, valleys, and villages in the leisurely way only to be done
on horse, mule, or donkey back. One is April, but then one ought to
be in Seville for the most typical fair in Western Europe; another is
May, but then one must be in Granada for the nightingales and the roses
which make the Alhambra a dream of delight; the third is September, when
grapes, peaches, and melons are in their prime, when the weather though
brilliantly sunny is no longer oppressively hot, and the high roads
are gay with swarming herds of creatures moving from fair to fair, and
forming with their owners a series of living pictures which make the
longest journey enjoyable.
For a woman no longer young, a donkey with _jamugas_ and a pack mule is
the ideal mode of transit over the mountains. If you possess your own
_jamugas_, as I do, with the leathern straps that support them on three
sides fitted to your measure, there is no more comfortable riding seat.
But perhaps I ought to explain what the _jamugas_ consist of, for they
are rarely seen nowadays except in mountain towns, and unless seen are
not easily imagined.
According to the dictionary of the Spanish Academy the word is derived
from the Basque _zamucac_, “a seat intended for femininity to mount
on any kind of beast of burden.” But although the name may have been
originally Basque, the apparatus is Oriental, for one sees just the same
sort of thing in Morocco and in the East, only there it is hooded to hide
all the femininity from curious eyes.
The basis is simply a folding trestle, like that for a table, with
cross-straps to prevent the trestle from opening too wide. This is placed
on the _aparejo_ of the beast of burden, the _aparejo_ being a stout pad
of straw used to prevent the _jamugas_ or the panniers, as the case may
be, from galling the animal’s back. It is fixed firmly with innumerable
twists and turns of tightly knotted cord, and a folded blanket is laid
across the donkey’s back to make your seat soft. As a matter of fact you
generally feel the cord through the blanket, but to obviate this you can
use a pillow, which is supplied if desired with the donkey, pillow-case
and all. For the information of my fellow-femininity I may add that I
personally take a cushion of my own to sit upon, and have the pillow
tied to the strap which forms the back of the _jamugas_, and thus save
myself from jolts and jars on rough ground, no small advantage on a long
journey. Between the blanket and the cushion a gaily coloured cotton
cloth covers the _aparejo_ and most of the donkey, and streams out
behind and around when you meet the wind. The oldest and most delicate
femininity can ride in this arm-chair, for it amounts to that, and I have
travelled all day long on my _jamugas_ up hill and down dale, and my
sure-footed little donkey has never tripped or turned a hair.
It is slow progress, certainly, but what of that, when at every fresh
step fresh beauty is revealed, and all your way your guide, as he leads
the sumpter mule with your inappropriate modern “grip” or suit-case in
its panniers, entertains you with his discourse, or wakes the echoes with
his song, for he sings most of the way, “to bring good luck.”
The worst of it is that nowadays one has to go a long way by rail and
road before one reaches country remote enough for _jamugas_: one is lucky
if half a charming tour can be covered on a donkey. Such was my fortune
one sunny September, and I never felt more sorry than when I had to come
back to the railway after a fortnight spent on the hills. But the first
part of the journey was not without incident, as I will now relate.
I left the train at Jerez, the sherry city with its huge bodegas full of
valuable wine, its cosmopolitan hotel, and its numerous millionaires.
From there to Arcos, thirty kilometres distant along a mountain road
continually increasing in beauty, a motor bus takes one in about two
hours. Arcos is a town of 20,000 inhabitants, perched on the steepest of
hills, with a Tartessian-Roman-Arabic castle on the very top, altered and
restored like many others in this country by the great Dukes of Arcos,
who in the fifteenth century were the rivals in wealth and political
power of the Medina Sidonia family.
From an Arabic loggia, here called _mirador_, which means literally
“view place,” we obtain a marvellous panorama of the mountains, with a
bird’s-eye view of a fertile valley in the foreground, encircled by the
winding Guadalete. It is truly a bird’s-eye view, for the _vega_, as
the cultivated valley is called, lies fully five hundred feet below the
sheer cliff on which the castle stands, and people walking on it look
about six inches high. The cliff is so steep that in many places even the
ubiquitous cactus cannot take hold, and here vultures and eagles build
their nests in security, for no little boy can throw stones anywhere
near them. Even the goats can only clamber up a little way at the base,
where the detritus of ages has formed a sharply sloping rise extending
fifty or sixty feet up from the river and the new high road which leads
from Arcos to El Bosque. That view alone is worth a stop at Arcos, but it
is by no means the only “sight,” for the ancient town is full of Roman,
Arabic, and Renaissance remains, and the fourteenth-century mother church
contains a wonderful gold chalice given by one of the ducal family when
the church was built—a relic which no one interested in goldsmith’s
work should miss. This church, which the people call their cathedral,
overlooks a square at the foot of the castle, and that square in May is a
mass of golden mimosa. I have never seen such a glow of colour or smelt
such overpowering sweetness from trees of that kind.
Part of the castle was granted to the Town Council for their hall in
the sixteenth century, and in one of the rooms, which was the chapel
of the Dukes of Arcos, are preserved no less than eleven grants to the
city bearing the signature of Alfonso the Learned, who won it from the
Almohad Moors in 1284 with the help of his ally Al Ahmar, the Arab king
of Granada.
The Dukes of Arcos held sway here for over two hundred years, until all
memory of the friendship of Alfonso and his father St. Ferdinand with the
Moslems of Granada was forgotten in the ambition of the “Catholic Kings,”
Ferdinand and Isabella, to make a united kingdom of Spain. Then, when
Andalucia was all a-fire with ruthless war, Arcos fell on evil days, for
lying as she does on the frontier of the kingdom of Granada (hence her
full name, which is Arcos de la Frontera), the Moslems naturally seized
the opportunity to try again and again to recover this strong outpost of
their former dominion. Until nearly the end of the war the castle held
out, but in 1484 the Moslems possessed themselves of the city, and the
Duchess, who was defending the castle, was so hard pressed that surrender
seemed inevitable. The Duke was away besieging Alhama by the Queen’s
orders, and although the Duchess contrived to send a message to her
husband telling him of her straits, Isabella could not spare him and his
troops even to rescue his wife.
The only knight who could help was the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was
known to be somewhere in the district, on his way from Seville with
reinforcements for the Queen. But Medina Sidonia and Arcos had been at
daggers-drawn for generations. It was almost as bitter and prolonged
a feud as that of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and none of the Arcos
faction dreamed of appealing to Medina Sidonia for help.
Medina Sidonia, however, was a very chivalrous gentleman. The tidings
of the lady’s plight reached him as he lay before Setenil (so called,
according to local etymology, because the Romans besieged it seven
times—_septem_ = _sete_—and took nothing—_nil_!) some twenty miles from
Arcos. He turned back at once with half of his troops, drove the Moslems
out of the town, left a strong guard with the rescued lady, and then
returned to continue the siege of the still stronger fortress of Setenil,
and to play his part in the taking of Alhama.
If Medina Sidonia had not brought the feud between the two families
thus dramatically to an end Arcos would have had to capitulate, as its
neighbour Zahara had already done, and once the Moslems had recovered the
four strategic points, Arcos, Zahara, Setenil, and Ronda, the war against
Granada might have had a different ending.
We do not find this story in the published histories of Ferdinand and
Isabella, but it is written in the archives of the city of Arcos and in
those of the Arcos family, now, alas! mouldering in a locked room in one
of the great towers of the castle, which is falling to ruin because its
owners cannot afford to keep it up.
With regret I tore myself away from the castle, whose once warlike keep
is now a garden of roses, orange trees, jessamine, and geraniums grown
into bushes with age. But I had to get on to Bornos and Villamartín on
the way to Algodonales, where I was to change the diligence for the
donkey.
Of that stage of the road the less said the better. Much of it was
dull, all of it was dusty, and the diligence was packed to its utmost
capacity, for it was the eve of the Villamartín September Fair, and the
rattling old shandridan, built to carry eight or ten passengers in all,
had five horses instead of three, and no less than twenty-seven people
were stowed inside, on the box, and on the roof. Every one declared that
it was excessively dangerous, and made a great joke of the fact; and as
Spanish drivers make a point of whipping up their horses when they near
the bottom of a hill, in order to take the next rise on the run, and the
over-loaded machine rocked like a ship in a storm on every such occasion,
it was little short of a miracle that we arrived at Villamartín alive.
Arrive we did, however, and at once found ourselves in all the fun of the
fair.
The only _fonda_ in the place looked out on the main square. The polite
name for _fonda_ (the Arabic _fondak_) in English is hotel, and the
_fonda_ professes to provide food and beds for its customers; unlike the
_parador_ (stopping-place), which only gives beds to travellers providing
their own food, and the _posada_ (rest-house), which is really little
more than a stable for animals with some sort of shelter attached for the
people who belong to them. Our Villamartín “hotel” only had three or four
bedrooms and no sitting-room at all, the food being served in a passage
through which one passed from the street to the staircase, or one might
rather say step-ladder, leading up to an open gallery containing one of
the convenient and comfortable folding bedsteads called _catres_, minus a
mattress; one broken-backed chair, and nothing else. From this a narrow
door led into a tiny bedroom which just held a bed and a washstand.
We had no choice but to stay here. The humble Spanish friends with whom
I was travelling to their home at Algodonales—a mother and son—insisted
on my taking the bedroom, although they gladly accepted my invitation to
share the washstand. The mother said she could sleep on the _catre_ with
a pillow from my bed, and the boy on the floor alongside, with his head
on my travelling-bag. Every other corner in the house was full for the
fair, and even this modest accommodation could only be had for one night.
Poor as it was, the bedding and the linen were clean, and we thought
ourselves lucky to get a room at all.
But we rashly arranged a pillow and rug for Rosario on the _catre_
before going out to see the town, and when we got back, the _catre_,
the pillow, and even the broken-backed chair had been carried off for
another customer, and my poor friends had just to sit downstairs at the
street door and amuse themselves as best they could till it was time
to start. This, however, was not quite the hardship it sounds, for all
Spaniards love to turn night into day; and their main concern was lest I
should be uncomfortable.
We were to start by diligence for Algodonales, our final destination,
at 3 a.m., and pretty Rosario had agreed to let me sleep till two—if I
could, which seemed doubtful in view of the incessant noise in the main
street on which my tiny window looked. I did sleep, notwithstanding the
noise, and woke to find the sun streaming in, and the town alive with
goatherds and their flocks, donkeys loaded with fruit and vegetables,
women with baskets of eggs and live fowls tied together by the legs and
distressfully clucking, and a continual stream of ponies, mules, cows,
calves, pigs, sheep, and oxen coming in from the country to the fair;
while all along the footwalks little canvas-covered sweet-stalls had
sprung up like mushrooms in the night. I had slept through all the riot
of the small hours, and the diligence had either not gone at 3 a.m. or
had gone without me.
I sprang up and opened my door, wondering if Rosario had also overslept
the appointed hour. There she was with a cup of coffee for me, smiling as
brightly as ever, but her curly hair was ruffled and she had a generally
dishevelled appearance. The diligence had not gone. Something was wrong
with the wheels, or the harness, or the horses, or the driver, no one
knew exactly what; but Rosario thought that the truth was probably that
the driver wanted to do some business in the fair. Anyhow the diligence
did not start, and Rosario and her boy had sat all night long in their
chairs, with various other visitors to the town, who like themselves
could get no beds.
Relieved of their anxiety lest I should be vexed at the delay, the mother
and son quickly brightened up, and we agreed that as we had to stay there
all day we would get all the fun we could out of it. Rosario after a wash
and a brush in my room looked as fresh as if she had slept in her own
comfortable bed, and as for the boy, he was at an age to enjoy anything.
The innkeeper flatly declined to provide us with coffee or anything else
for breakfast, so we went out and ate _buñolitos_, a peculiar dainty
largely in evidence at these country fairs, where booths are set up
entirely for their sale. My friends took me to the largest and gayest
of the two tents already opened, which had white muslin curtains tied
together in the middle with streamers of red and yellow calico, just like
the sweet-stalls in Syria. An overpowering smell of boiling oil greeted
our nostrils as we approached, and such was the frizzling and the smoke
that we could hardly see the _buñolera_, a stout lady in a brown skirt,
white apron, and blue cross-over, with a red handkerchief picturesquely
knotted round her head. She saw us, however, and promptly turned to serve
us with the odd product of her cooking—a mixture of flour and water
squeezed through a funnel into a vast frying-pan and coiled round and
round as it fried, until the whole was deftly thrown out unbroken on the
dish. _Buñolitos_ are crisp and tempting and really delicious to eat,
provided only that the oil be good and of last year’s milling; for the
new oil has an abominable smell and taste which only a native can endure.
This was good oil, and the _buñolera_ was an artist. We ate all we
could, and be it observed that I fell little short of my companions in
the quantity consumed. We paid a penny a piece for our breakfast, and
then strolled up the hill to the Parish Church, for it was Sunday and a
festival Mass was in progress.
Very few people were present. A couple of nuns, a few ladies shrouded in
black gauze veils falling over their shoulders and down to their knees,—a
graceful Oriental survival which lends dignity to the stoutest old
dowager,—two or three peasants with handkerchiefs on their heads, and the
usual group of beggars about the door.
I got past these last without trouble by using the accepted formulas,
“Pardon me, brother, for God’s sake,” or “May God support you”; both of
which mean that one consigns them to the mercy of Providence because
one has no mercy of one’s own for them. And if this seems rather
hard-hearted, let me point out that in remote places, where foreigners
are never seen from one year’s end to another, the gift of a penny to
a single beggar will be a sowing of the dragon’s teeth to raise up
as by magic a swarm of from twenty to fifty more, who pursue one with
pitiful appeals that change to imprecations and even stone-throwing,
unless one proceeds to dole out pennies all round. One may therefore
be thankful that the ceremonious response above quoted seldom fails of
its effect, it being a matter of etiquette in Spanish mendicant circles
politely to accept the time-worn courtesy in lieu of coin of the realm.
It has often acted like a charm in my own experience, and I can call
to mind brutal-looking men with some affliction or other which by no
means hampered their physical power for violence, who stopped short and
turned away with a gentle “Go with God” instead of a rude retort, when I
answered their petitions with _Perdóneme, hermano_.
The Mass ended a few minutes after we went in, and as I stood by the main
door studying the not very interesting architecture of the church, I
suddenly felt a wet finger on my forehead. It was one of the nuns, who,
noticing that I had failed to cross myself with holy water, was doing it
for me. I appreciated her good intention, but did not appreciate that
particular holy water, for the marble vessel was alive with mosquito
grubs, whose progenitors swarmed round us where we stood. I knew the holy
water was seldom changed in these country churches, but never had I seen
any quite so dirty as that.
A clamour of brass instruments drew us out. It was the town band making a
round of the chief streets to announce that the fair had begun. It was
a much better band than we should find in many English country towns of
a similar size, and indeed the level of the brass bands is rather high
here—a fact I cannot explain, for among amateurs one practically never
hears any concerted music at all, and even when two performers sing
together on the stage in the minor theatres, it is as often as not in
unison. This band had already woke the town on its first round at 6 a.m.,
when the church bells were ringing for early Mass, and now as soon as its
performance came to an end, a sort of blaring roar from a merry-go-round
began and continued at intervals throughout the rest of the day. I had
never imagined, far less heard, anything like the noise of that fair in
the daytime; but worse was reserved for the night.
Many hours were yet to pass, however, before night fell, and I must say
they did not hang heavily, for the people and their animals formed a
series of moving pictures which it would need the brush of a Sorolla or a
Zuloaga to do justice to. One especially took my fancy. Two pretty girls
(and the mountain people are as a rule remarkably handsome), dressed in
beautifully laundered print gowns with flowers in their sleek black hair,
rode together on a white horse covered with the brilliantly embroidered
trappings familiar to us in pictures of the last century and still in
common use in the Sierras. One girl sat facing one way and the other
the other, with their arms round each other’s waists, and a slim lad in
a round Cordovese hat, a brown velvet jacket, and richly embroidered
leather overalls,[5] led the horse by a purple-and-white halter made of
twisted aloe fibre. On a donkey alongside were slung the girls’ worldly
goods, consisting of a box almost as large as the donkey, brilliantly
yellow with new paint that gleamed golden in the morning sun, balanced
by a large bundle tied up in a crimson wrapper, and topped by a sheaf of
pale maize stalks, which would be the donkey’s provender during the fair.
It was a riot of youth and beauty and colour and gaiety which would have
been the chance of a lifetime for a painter, but sad to say no painter
was there to immortalise the scene.
In the afternoon we went to see a circus in the Bull Ring, and in company
with the rank and fashion of the town we paid one peseta apiece for what
was described on the programme as a “stall.” The “stalls” were honest
reed-seated chairs, such as are sold new for two pesetas, but were
borrowed on this occasion from the kindly neighbours and brought in by
half-dozens at a time, as the aristocratic part of the audience increased.
The show was advertised for five o’clock, but did not begin till about
six, by which time the shady side of the ring was crowded, and the
stalls had almost surrounded the very small circle railed in and sanded
for the performers. We first had a tumbler with a week’s beard, dressed
in crimson satin and red cotton stockings, who usually came to grief
in his feats, but never failed to draw applause. Followed a highly
coloured young lady whom we had seen at the door taking tickets, and who
now juggled with knives and cubes of wood, which invariably landed on
the ground instead of on the table; a clown, in the same crimson satin
and red cotton stockings, who played the fiddle quite nicely, but was
interrupted by another clown with a feather brush, who always stopped the
music by tickling the violinist’s nose at the third or fourth bar, to the
intense delight of the audience; and then another highly rouged lady,
past her first youth, who exhibited three rather sad little performing
dogs.
An acrobat, again in the crimson satin and red cotton stockings, now came
on, after great preparations and testing of wires, to perform a trapeze
act. There seemed to be some sort of hitch about starting, which was
explained when the acrobat with a sweet smile indicated that we had been
seated by the attendants immediately under his taking-off platform, as
indeed we were, unknown to ourselves. So we and our immediate neighbours
picked up our chairs and retired, while the acrobat did some rather
pretty swinging.
The unshaven tumbler then reappeared, now dressed in a pilot coat and
brown trousers, but still unshaven, and we discovered that what the
advertisements called an “automovil race” was about to take place. It was
in fact a terribly gimcrack “loop-the-loop” affair, and the performer
looked haggard with nervousness as he examined his wires and pulleys.
In retiring from the trapeze we had unconsciously planted ourselves just
where the “automovil” must inevitably smash into us all; no attempt
having been made to indicate a danger zone. No one waited to be asked
to retire this time. As soon as we saw the bold chauffeur climb his
scaffold and realised what was going to happen, we just got up and bolted
like rabbits, all quite as frightened as the chauffeur looked. We did
not, however, omit to carry our chairs with us. The band struck up an
inappropriate gipsy dance, the performer whirled down, and we settled
into our seats with a sigh of relief that he and we had escaped with our
lives.
But even this was not the last time we were moved on, for the finale was
a play in pantomime, in which the middle-aged lady played the heroine,
in a long train which she carefully held up all the time; the other lady
played the young lover in yellow tights and a red cloak; the tumbler, the
clowns, and the manager, all wearing Russian caps and blouses trimmed
with rabbit-skin over their workaday trousers, interfered each after
his manner with the course of true love; and the stout acrobat with a
scarlet-horned hood over the inevitable crimson satin and red stockings,
appeared as a friendly devil and made all the stage furniture dance to
distract the attention of the rest of the company from the antics of
the lovers. The devil ended by letting off a lot of fireworks right in
front of the “stalls,” and this time we got up and ran, regardless of our
chairs. It was not as dangerous as it looked, however, for the fireworks
promptly fizzled out, and I for one was so weak with laughter by then
that I could not even start when a cracker went off under my nose.
The whole centre of the ring had been invaded by a swarm of young men and
lads of the peasant class, who obviously had not paid a peseta for the
privilege. The manager, wearing a monstrous Emperor William moustache
fiercely curling up to his eyebrows, had at intervals blandly requested
them to retire and not incommode the ladies. They always retired with
perfect politeness, to return again the moment his back was turned. When
the circus was over this portion of the audience at once blocked the
only exit, and gave us time to observe the back of the scenery of the
pantomime, which was remarkable. A sheet of painted canvas stood on end,
held in place by some mysterious law of cohesion, for visible supports
it had none; and how the red devil, who must have weighed a good fifteen
stone, contrived to jump in and out of the window without bringing the
whole thing down will always be for me an insoluble mystery.
The _fonda_ was less of an hotel than ever this evening, and we were
warned that we must, willy-nilly, leave by the night diligence, because
a _viajante_ (commis-voyageur) had engaged my room and would want to go
to bed when the Fair meeting of the Commercial Club closed about 2 a.m.
But the fun of the Fair was not yet over for us, and the little window
overlooking the main square now became for me a kind of Royal Box at the
opera, music and all.
At nine o’clock the band took up its position under my window, and the
fireworks began. Another point I have never quite understood is why
Spanish fireworks even in remote little towns like Villamartín are always
good; and how it is that every remote little town manages to keep its own
firework-maker. But the profusion of devices in interlacing circles of
arabesques leads me to suspect an Arabic origin for this as for so many
other popular junkets in Spain.
The Villamartín fireworks were beautiful, differing from those of the big
towns only in quantity, not at all in quality, and the set pieces were
quite the most attractive to the crowd, whose inherited instincts are all
for the arabesque in art.
After the fireworks came a cinematograph, still accompanied by the
band, whose repertoire consisted of six pieces, very well played, which
they had been repeating at intervals all day. The people grew wildly
enthusiastic over the moving pictures, and shouted and laughed and
clapped like children, at the runaway who upsets every one he meets
as he evades his pursuers, at the illicit lover who hides under the
dinner-table and turns it over so as to spill the soup into the lady’s
lap, and at all the other stale old jokes which seemed to be brand-new to
these unsophisticated southerners. There was no risk at all of our going
to sleep and forgetting our diligence now. No one but a deaf mute could
have closed an eye in the main square of Villamartín that night.
After midnight, when the cinematograph closed, I laid me down fondly
imagining I might get a little sleep; but the clamour of the voices in no
way diminished. On the contrary, as the night wore on it began to rise
louder and louder, until it became a perfect roar. Now and then it would
die down for a few minutes, until a boyish voice shouted something that I
could not catch, when it began again worse than ever, still good-natured,
but sounding ever more impatient, as if the self-restraint of the crowd
were rapidly becoming exhausted.
At last, about half-past one, a distant noise like thunder made itself
heard above all the human din, and then the crowd seemed to go perfectly
mad, yelling and shouting like Bedlam let loose. It was time to get ready
to leave anyhow, so I rose from my sleepless bed and went to the window.
Then I saw what it all meant. It was the _encierro_, the bringing in of
the bulls for the bull-fight next day. In this case they were not full
grown bulls; only year-old bullocks, and of these there were but two, the
rest of the future victims being heifers. For fighting bulls cost a good
deal of money, and Villamartín is a small town and not particularly rich:
so the sportsmen of the ring here have to content themselves with the
inexpensive heifer and “yarlin’,” as they say in Devon.
To hear the yells of delight raised when they came in sight, one would
have thought that all Villamartín was out to receive the bullocks and
their decoy: but as a matter of fact all Villamartín except the dregs
had long gone home to bed, and the howling mob consisted entirely of a
few men of mature years, financially interested in the bull-ring, and a
crowd of boys and lads, the rag-tag and bobtail of the working classes,
for the respectable working men and their families do not approve of
the “sport.” These two elements in the Spanish social system nowadays
form the immense majority of those who still support what is called
“the national sport.” Yet tourists seem to imagine that they represent
the nation! So well is it recognised by the governing classes that the
bull-fight has ceased to appeal to any save the riff-raff and those
to whom, in one capacity or another, it is a source of income, that
legislative attempts have been made to forbid the bull-fights on Sunday,
because if they only took place on week-days the aforesaid dregs of the
working classes would find it difficult to attend at the cost of a day’s
wages, and the whole brutal concern would soon come to an end. But the
vested interests are tremendously strong, and capital has great power
in Spain; so the bull-fight still goes on, and the tourists go to see
it, and Spanish social reformers shrug their shoulders when they are
told by foreigners that the first step to social reform in Spain must be
the suppression of the bull-ring, which the foreigners’ entrance money
largely helps to keep going, and of which their mere presence is supposed
by amateurs to express approval.
But this is another of the tragedies of Spain, and Rosario and her boy,
who hate the very name of bull-fight, though they are mere peasants and
never heard of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
did not talk about it that night with me as we watched the tumultuous
passage of a particularly lively heifer across the square under my
window. Setting aside humanitarian considerations, it was a picturesque
sight enough, for the victims of the morrow, surrounded and steered by
half a dozen stolid old cows with bells on their necks, were preceded and
followed by the _garrochistas_, those herders of the wild cattle, with
the high-peaked saddles and great square stirrups and long poles with
iron points, which form so effective a group on post-cards purporting to
represent the everyday life of Spain. Some of the rabble had gone out to
meet the procession with torches, and these still flared as the crowd
surged by, making curious yellow cross-lights when they fell on the glare
of the arc lights of the town.
I have been told that it was once proposed to start a branch of the
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at Madrid, and that in
order to obtain funds a great bull-fight was organised. I do not know
whether Ben Trovato is responsible for this story, but I have myself met
a member of that Society, an English lady of mature years, who refused to
subscribe to an entertainment in Spain because it was to take place on a
Sunday, and then quarrelled violently with her husband because he refused
to take tickets for her for the bull-fight on Easter Day! This is a true
story, though the well-known Italian raconteur might be proud to father
it. I remember also a British curate of extreme evangelical opinions,
who gave at a luncheon party a full, true, and particular account, with
realistic details, of the disembowelling of a horse and the wounding of
a _torero_ that he had witnessed, embellished with the usual expressions
of horror at the innate degradation of a nation which supported such
barbarities. Some unkind person present remarked that it was believed
that the Bishop of Gibraltar objected to his chaplains attending the
bull-fight; to which the ingenuous curate replied: “Ah, but you see I
went in without my clerical collar”—the fatuous immorality of which
remark closed the conversation.
I was not altogether sorry when the time came to start for Algodonales.
I had never heard such prolonged and uncontrolled noise made by human
beings before, and much though the whole thing had amused me I do not
care if I never hear such a noise again. When we made our way out into
the brilliantly lighted square most of the crowd appeared to be drunk,
but riff-raff though they might be, they were civil to the last, and
good-naturedly lurched aside in a bunch to make room for us to pass into
the comparative darkness of the street where the diligence awaited us,
we, needless to say, being the only passengers who wished to leave the
town just then.
[Illustration: A PREHISTORIC WEIR.]