Music and the people—Arabic instruments—Thesaetasof Andalucia—The tango in the theatre—A working-class wedding—A drama in a dance—The alarmed widow lady—The Jota of Aragón—Our Lady of the Pillar—Spaniards in Morocco—Moors, savage and civilised—The Sultan and his prisoners—The tragedy of the Wolf’s Gorge—After the retreat—The salvation of a regiment—The power of the guitar.
Music and the people—Arabic instruments—Thesaetasof Andalucia—The tango in the theatre—A working-class wedding—A drama in a dance—The alarmed widow lady—The Jota of Aragón—Our Lady of the Pillar—Spaniards in Morocco—Moors, savage and civilised—The Sultan and his prisoners—The tragedy of the Wolf’s Gorge—After the retreat—The salvation of a regiment—The power of the guitar.
The influence of the traditional popular music on the life of the people is perhaps in some ways more marked here than in any other country. It may seem strange to us that this should be the case, for Western ears find it difficult to catch the tuneless songs, with their curious intervals and lack of tonality and rhythm, which are another of Spain’s legacies from the time when her arts and sciences were all Oriental. But the strange and to us pointless cadences of the Guajiras, Malagueñas, Granadinas, Sevillanas, and the rest offer no difficulties to the Andalucian, though even cultivated foreign musicians find them almost impossible of reproduction.
During the time of the Moslem rule in Spain, Seville was noted for its devotion to music; so much so that in the palmy days of the Khalifate, when for nearly a century Seville and Cordova were on good terms with each other, it was usual, whena rich man died in Cordova, to send his musical instruments to Seville for sale. But during the Moslem period music was cultivated everywhere in Spain, as is shown by treatises on the art existing in the library of the Escorial, and by the long list of instruments in use among the Arabs, some of which, or their counterparts, exist to-day, although others are now unknown. Among these were flutes made of bone and elegantly decorated with carved designs, an almost perfect specimen of which was found in a tomb at Malaga, besides fragments of two others in an excavation at Seville. Possibly the skill of the Andalucian on the military bugle is a legacy from those times, as also his fondness for drum and fife bands. The drum or tambor is of Oriental origin, and I have already described a variety of it known as thezambomba.
It is only to be expected that Arabic music should persist in the repertoire of the people of Andalucia, as indeed it does. But the most curious survival is not in the music of the theatre or the home, but in improvised hymns sung in the streets by fervent devotees when the images of Our Lord and His Mother are carried in procession during great religious festivals, such as those of Holy Week, Corpus Christi, or the patron saint of the locality.
The curious fact about these hymns is that while the music is Oriental, the name,saeta, is not. It means “an arrow” (Lat.sagitta), and the Spanish dictionary gives the other meaning, “a short hymn to excite devotion,” without explanation. I thinkmyself it must date from early Christian times, before the Arab conquest, for one can hardly suppose that the name was applied to these erotic outbursts or the hymns themselves composed after the reconquest of Seville. One has only to compare the hymns sung elsewhere at that period with thesaetas, to see how widely they differ in feeling. Here are two lines from a thirteenth-century hymn by “Brother Henry of Pisa”:—
“Christ divine, Christ of mine,Christ the Lord and King of all.”
“Christ divine, Christ of mine,Christ the Lord and King of all.”
“Christ divine, Christ of mine,
Christ the Lord and King of all.”
And here are two lines from asaetato Our Lady, of the traditional style improvised anew every year all over Andalucia when the people turn out to see a religious procession:—
“Thou art the passion flowerThat opens for thy Son.”
“Thou art the passion flowerThat opens for thy Son.”
“Thou art the passion flower
That opens for thy Son.”
Even more exotic than the words is the ecstasy thrown into them by the singer. Suddenly in the midst of the reverential silence which falls on the laughing, chattering throng as theSantosare carried past, rises the pathetic minor cadence with which everysaetais prefaced, and as long as the hymn lasts those around stand still and listen. When it is over (it never extends beyond four or five lines) the singer is vigorously applauded, and the crowd again becomes mundane. The singer, who for a brief moment seemed absolutely lost to the things of earth, uplifted into unconsciousness of everything save the object of his adoration, hishead thrown back, his eyes fixed on the image, and his whole body tense with pious emotion, comes straight down to earth again, and smilingly accepts the compliments of his friends.
Thesaetais always a solo: not necessarily because it is improvised, for there are a few traditional couplets that everybody knows, but because no one attempts to sing asaetaunless and until the spirit moves him. And, the effusion being so short, it is all over before his hearers could catch and join in the air, even if they wished to do so.
It is not the least curious feature of thesesaetas, considering how infectious religious emotion has always been, that they are never turned into choruses by the crowd. Perhaps this is due to the Arabic strain in the people, for there seems to be nothing to indicate that the Moslem musicians combined their instruments to produce orchestral effects, and at the present time there is singularly little feeling for concerted music of any kind in Spain compared with other European countries. But the sympathy of the crowd with the singer, and still more with the subject of his song, is shown by the breathless hush with which they follow every trill and shake of the interminable recitative, so harsh and unmusical to our ears, but so beautiful to theirs.
To turn to another branch of Spanish popular music. The so-called Argentine tango is of course perfectly familiar here, and the echoes which have reached Spain of the animated discussion in the English press as to its morality or the reverse havecaused a good deal of amusement; for as every one here knows, the propriety or otherwise of the tango—whether “Argentine” or Andalucian—depends entirely on the performer. It can be a graceful and inoffensive drawing-room dance, or it can be made an exhibition indecent enough to put a Solomon islander to the blush.
Of its Oriental origin there can, of course, be no doubt whatever, apart from the references in Spanish or Spanish-Arabic history to its parent thezambra, against which the Church more than once fulminated, apparently with very little effect. As for the improvised verses which in Andalucia accompany the tango, they are as changeable as are the movements of the dancer; but among the numerous printed couplets in my possession there is not a word which could offend the most squeamish.
I first saw the tango danced by a handsome gipsy at a public performance, and I am bound to say I never witnessed anything less graceful or more disgusting. That was in the early days of our residence in Spain, and we had stopped to see the end of the entertainment, unaware that everything that might offend the proprieties is always reserved to the last, and that the offence is likely to be considerable in the final scenes of a late function.
It is easy to avoid these when one knows the ropes, for theatrical shows are generally of the “triple bill” variety, and ladies may attend the pieces put on before eleven o’clock quite comfortably. Popular comediettas, musical or otherwise, are given from night to night at different hours, and variedto suit all tastes, being carefully Bowdlerised for the earlier audiences. A play calledLas Bribonas(The Impostors—female) had an immense success one winter, and I went with a party to a performance which began at ten. It was amusing and well acted, but there was one scene which was decidedly vulgar, although not actually indecent. I happened to speak of it afterwards to two English friends who had seen it on different occasions. One, who went to an eight o’clock performance, found it food for babes; the other unfortunate lady, who in her ignorance had gone to the latest one, was almost too shocked to talk about it. The tango, it is hardly necessary to say, was one of the chief features in the doubtful scene inLas Bribonas.
The most amusing tango I ever saw was danced at the wedding of a servant of ours, who had politely fixed the day to suit the convenience of her Señores, so anxious was she to have the great event graced by our presence.
The mother was a well-to-do laundress who rented the whole of the ground floor of a small tenement house, and the guests overflowed from the patio into the bridalsalaandalcoba. Thealcobaor alcove is a recess curtained off from the sitting-room and furnished with a bed, which, in the homes of the poor, generally completely fills it. The same arrangement also obtains in the houses of the rich, and here it is usual for the mistress’s bedroom to open out of the drawing-room, with the doors between thrown back and the curtains drawn aside to display the elegant appointments of the maritalchamber. Although the other bedrooms are often lacking in what we should call common necessaries, this one is always furnished at least as handsomely as its correspondingsala, forming a striking contrast to the rest of the private rooms. The explanation is that, when a child is born, the mother receives her whole family, her husband’s relatives, and all her intimate friends in her bedroom when the infant is twenty-four hours old; thus this room has to be at least as well furnished as the drawing-room; and the same custom prevails in all classes of society. It never seems to occur to the doctors or any one else that these social celebrations have anything to do with the excessive mortality among young wives and their babies, and I have often been pressed to go and sit with some unfortunate acquaintance, seriously ill after a bad confinement, when I have called to inquire for her and her child, on the ground that she had had only a few callers that day and as she was very weak my company would cheer her up.
Thealcobaof Carolina, the laundress’ daughter, just held the bedstead and a table with herSantos—a chromo-lithograph of a Murillo Virgin, flanked by a St. Anthony of Padua and a “San Juan de Dios,” before which were placed vases of artificial flowers and, on this great occasion, a couple of lighted candles. All the rest of the bedroom furniture was in thesala. Here we were invited by the bride to drink Manzanilla, and as the guests of honour we (more fortunate than at Carmencita’s wedding) each had a glass to ourselves. It wasall clean and bright and gay, and when we went out into the patio Carolina’s girl friends began dancingseguidillas.
It was a pretty sight to see them dancing under the February sky, with a brilliant moon irradiating the old courtyard and blending its beams with those of an electric bulb hanging from the crazy balcony, which was all the light a generous landlord provided for his twenty or thirty tenants. The thrumming of the single guitar was completely drowned by the hand-clapping and foot-stamping with which the spectators accompanied the dancers, but we did not miss it. Indeed, it would be a powerful instrument that could have made itself heard above all that rhythmical clatter. Personally I find thepalmas, as this hand-clapping is called, very trying, for the noise is overwhelming; but that is because I have no Eastern blood in my veins. To Andalucians of whatever class, noise of any kind seems to be sheer delight.
Things gradually grew more lively as the slight restraint caused by our arrival wore off, although the guests were always perfectly well-mannered and decorous; and presently Carolina came to tell me that Juanillo Carrera, a famous singer and dancer, would perform the tango in her mother’s kitchen, if the Señores would care to see him.
“Why would he not dance in the patio?” I asked, for I was enjoying the picture made by the moonlight.
“Oh, that would not suit the girls, who wanted to go on dancing themselves. But if we would stepinto the kitchen and would kindly not mind standing for a few minutes, Juanillo would dance on the table, so that theseñora viuda(the widow lady) who came with the Señora, and so much likes Andalucian dancing, would see him to the best advantage.”
Juanillo was a thin pock-marked man of forty or so, without a redeeming feature in his face save a pair of brilliant deep-set black eyes. He wore a striped cotton blouse and trousers with a black sash wound many times round his waist, and bright yellow boots with long pointed toes. I thought he looked an unfortunate specimen of the Andalucian dancer, but I soon found that appearances were deceptive in this as in so many other cases.
The widow lady, although no longer in her first youth, was tall, handsome, and very well dressed. She had been for days past expressing her desire to see this tango of which she had heard so much before she came to Spain, and I am afraid she rather hoped to be shocked by it. I saw the moment she came in that Juanillo admired her, and heard him remark to Carolina that she wasguapisima, meaning extremely attractive. Carolina rapped him over the knuckles, unaware that I was watching, and told him to behave himself and remember that the tango was to be performed for distinguished ladies and must have nothing of thecorral(low-class tenement house) about it; but I rather wondered what was going to happen.
He sprang on to the table with the graceful agility of a cat, and began the tapping with onefoot which prefaces all these dances, his eyes meanwhile fixed on the widow, who as yet had not realised that she was his objective. Then suddenly, regardless of the din of voices,palmas, and stamping in the patio, he burst into song.
I could not catch all the words, but I heard enough to grasp their tenor. The rascal was addressing a passionate declaration of love to the American widow; and now his cavernous eyes began to light up, and even she, unconscious as she was of the meaning of his song, realised that he was looking very hard at her. And when he began the dance not only she but every one else in the room was made fully aware that the entire performance was wholly and solely addressed to her. I never saw a cleverer pantomime of devotion, jealousy, scorn, pride, humility, and final despair than the impudent scamp contrived to act by his movements in this tango. And all without moving from the middle of the kitchen-table on which he danced—indeed, if he had not kept to the dead centre of it he would inevitably have come down with a crash, for it did not measure over three feet any way. The whole thing was dramatic to a degree: one’s attention was caught at the outset by the expression of his eyes, and he never allowed his hold on us to relax for an instant. His ugly face, shabby dress, and hideous yellow boots all fell into the picture, which was none the less effective because the only light was a flaring petroleum lamp held up by the bridegroom, whose delight in his friend’s performance caused him to wave it about dangerouslyin his efforts to keep it, like the lime-light at a theatre, always on the dancer’s face.
“I never saw anything so horrible in my life,” murmured the widow in my ear when the tango came to an end. “Do let us go; I am quite frightened! The man looks as if he could commit a murder. No more tangos for me, thank you! I felt as if he might stick a knife into me at any moment.”
She was really frightened, and, humour not being her strong point, I felt that it would be useless to try to make her see the joke of it. Dramatic expression comes naturally to the Andalucian, and I knew that Juanillo had taken her as the heroine of his pantomime simply because she was the most noticeable member of our party, expecting her to be as gratified as a Spanish Señorita would have been at the compliment. During the remainder of her stay the lady ceased from troubling me with demands to be taken to see the local dances; but when her nerves had recovered from the shock it became evident that not the least pleasing of her recollections of Spain would be the little comedy of admiration played by Juanillo. In that version of the tango there was nothing to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty, but I imagine that it is not quite what is danced in London or Paris.
Another dance with its accompanying song, which is known, at any rate by repute, outside Spain, is the Jota of Aragón, the music of which does not seem to be of Oriental origin. No oneattempts to decide when it first came into being, but the probability is that, like the “war dance” of the Basques, it dates from prehistoric times, when women were won not by favour but by force. Be this as it may, the Jota now is the hymn of Aragón as well as her national dance, and has the same extraordinary religious influence over the Aragonese as thesaetahas over the Andalucians. Fully to appreciate its swing and dash one must hear it sung by a native of the province, but wherever and by whomsoever performed it sets the blood dancing when the refrain bursts out—
“À la jota, jota,Que viva AragónY la PilarícaDe mi corazón.”(Sing to the jota,Long live AragónAnd the PilaricaOf my heart.)
“À la jota, jota,Que viva AragónY la PilarícaDe mi corazón.”(Sing to the jota,Long live AragónAnd the PilaricaOf my heart.)
“À la jota, jota,Que viva AragónY la PilarícaDe mi corazón.”
“À la jota, jota,
Que viva Aragón
Y la Pilaríca
De mi corazón.”
(Sing to the jota,Long live AragónAnd the PilaricaOf my heart.)
(Sing to the jota,
Long live Aragón
And the Pilarica
Of my heart.)
The patron saint of Zaragoza, the capital of Aragón, is Our Lady of the Pillar (Nuestra Señora del Pilár), who is said to have come down from heaven when St. James was converting Spain, to encourage him in his holy labours. She sat, so the story goes, on a pillar while he said Mass before her, and he, as a good saint should, founded the Cathedral of Zaragoza on that spot, with the pillar of Our Lady as its shrine.
Zaragoza has two Cathedrals, one dedicated to N. S. del Pilár, and the other to Our Lord of the Seo (Aragonese for a cathedral church). The people will assure you that that of the Pilár is much the older of the two, regardless of their architectural styles, and it is quite possible that the black imageof Our Lady is older than anything in the Seo, although when it comes to relics of the Mozarabic Church in Spain it is never wise to dogmatise about dates. Indeed, there are cases in which popular tradition has received material confirmation from unexpected sources long after it had been pronounced mere fantasy by the learned. The Cathedral of the Pilár, or as her adoring Aragonese love to call her, the Pilarica, is quite modern, whereas parts of the Seo date from before the twelfth century. But the actual image of Our Lady of the Pillar, with the column on which it stands, are of immemorial antiquity. The column had been so worn away by the kisses of the faithful that it is now protected by a case of silver and crystal. One may imagine the many centuries of devotion which must have gone by ere a stone could be thus impressed by the touch of human lips alone.
A singular performance takes place in Zaragoza every year on the 12th of October, the festival of the Pilarica, in which certain strange figures calledgigantes y cabezudostake a prominent part. The giants represent a man, a woman, and a negro (not a Moor), while the big-heads (cabezudos), worn by men of ordinary height, seem to have no special meaning. I have tried in vain to discover the origin of this festival. It must date from before the reconquest of Zaragoza (which took place about 1120), for the negro would certainly have been a Moor had it been introduced after Zaragoza was incorporated with the dominions of the King of Aragón, but no convincing record exists. A replica of the Pilaricais borne through the streets, and the gorgeous procession of the Cathedral Chapter, the military, civil, and municipal authorities, all in their gala dress, the town band, and the devout of both sexes, carrying candles, is wound up by these singular survivals of some forgotten and probably pagan festivity. One of the fascinations of Spain is this intimate connection between the present and the past, with its picturesque and quite unintelligible jumble of the sacred and profane.
It is only natural that the love of the Pilarica, which is so bound up with the religion of the Aragonese, should colour every action of their daily life; and an incident that took place during the war in Morocco in 1909 is a good illustration of this.
The Aragonese are good fighting men, and make excellent soldiers, although it is true that the same may be said of all the Spaniards. But there are times in every war when the martial spirit droops before human pain and the sorrow of seeing comrades cut down in the flower of their youth. Such a day came to the Spanish troops at Melilla when the fatal attack upon the mountain of Gurugú was made, to which I have already referred in connection with mourning customs.
So little was heard about it in England at the time, owing to the rigorous censorship, that I may be excused for briefly relating what I heard from one of those engaged in it, who was himself severely wounded.
When the trouble with Morocco began, the Spanish Government made the common mistake ofunderestimating the strength of the enemy. They had to deal with scattered tribes, some of them barbarians of the most savage description, others gentle, comparatively civilised, and quite ready to take advantage of the commercial and educational facilities afforded by contact with European nations.
Although they have no connection with the Pilarica and the Jota of Aragón, it may be of interest to tell two little stories which illustrate the wide difference between these two classes of Moors, for the facts speak for themselves.
In the summer of 1913 a Spanish gun-boat, theGeneral Concha, went ashore in a fog on the Moorish coast, and a hostile tribe attacked the wreck. They shot down some of the sailors who tried to swim ashore, and after a plucky defence led by a junior officer, the captain and the senior lieutenant having been killed by the first volley, they got on board, looted the vessel, and took the survivors prisoners. To make matters worse, they had begun by pretending that they belonged to a friendly tribe, and thus had managed to get within close range of the boat without opposition, opened fire from the cliffs above, and shot down the two officers and several men before the crew could get the guns to work.
Naturally the gravest fears were entertained for the fate of the prisoners, but two or three weeks later it became known that through the influence of a friendly chief they had been taken to the house of one of his friends, where they were well treated and eventually aided to escape to a small boat hidden on the beach a few miles from their prison. Thefriendly Moors, besides guiding them to the boat, helped to row them out to a Spanish man-of-war which had been sent to bombard the coast villages. Not only had they been provided with the necessaries of life as long as they remained with the friendly Moors, but the women had done their best to cure the wounded, and thanks to them, only one—a case for amputation—failed to recover. And the Moors carried those who were unable to walk some twelve miles across the enemy’s country to the boat, although they well knew that there would be short shrift for them and for the prisoners were the flight discovered.
So much for the “civilised” Moors. Now for the reverse of the medal.
A Spanish officer told me that he had himself seen the following incident, which was only one out of many that occurred during the eight years that he was quartered at Ceuta, whence in times of peace his work took him to various parts of the country.
The father of the present Sultan, who was opposed to any sort of change in his methods of government, used to make an annual “royal progress” from Fez to Morocco, and picked troops went before him to remove any possible source of danger to the monarch. He paid these men a dollar for a live prisoner and two for a dead one, so, said my friend, “you may imagine that more were brought in dead than alive.” Any one who could be even remotely suspected of disaffection was promptly beheaded and his property confiscated. In a word, the “royal progress” was in fact a murderous raid,the loot of which paid for the upkeep of the troops and saved some collecting of extra taxes.
On one occasion my friend, in his official capacity, met the Sultan at a place where two hundred prisoners were marshalled in a row, each with a wooden collar round his neck, tied with a rope to that of the next man. As the Sultan rode up a poor woman flung herself on the ground before him, and clasped his horse’s knees with such force that it could not move, crying that her son who was among the prisoners was innocent, and imploring that the collar be taken off his neck. The Sultan turned to the two negro executioners who accompanied him everywhere.
“Take off her son’s collar,” he said, “and his head with it, and give them to the woman.”
And this was done on the spot.
“You will understand,” said the officer who told me the story, “why we who have seen such things feel that we cannot abandon our civilising mission in Morocco, although it may be years before we get any material return for the blood and money it is costing us now. But,” he went on to say, “every year we are making more friends among the tribes, and since 1909 we have been getting on very hopefully with our Spanish-Arabic schools and hospitals and colleges of agriculture and commerce, while our native troops are already the pride of our army in Morocco.”
But to return to the Jota, after this long digression. In the summer of 1909 things were going very badly indeed, and the Government, true to thetime-honoured Spanish rule of directing a distant war from the arm-chairs of Ministerial offices in Madrid, ordered the General in command to make a frontal attack on the Gurugú, the peak which towers over Melilla. This was intended partly to dislodge, once for all, the hornet’s nest of sharp-shooters who were worrying the Spanish garrison, but mainly to silence by a brilliant victory the growing murmurs of the nation against a campaign which popular orators declared to have been begun in the interest of a few wealthy capitalists owning valuable mines in the immediate neighbourhood of Melilla.
The General, Marina, a good officer and able strategist, protested in vain. The orders were explicit. Public opinion was dangerously excited, and a brilliant and decisive action had to be fought at once. The attack was accordingly attempted, with the result that one of the infantry regiments was caught in an ambush, and a whole battalion of the Cazadores de las Navas was practically wiped out. Considerably over a thousand officers and men of that and other regiments fell in the Wolf’s Gorge of the Gurugú, and so complete was the defeat that for three months the bodies of those martyrs to duty and a preposterous governmental system could not be recovered.
On the night of the catastrophe the Colonel of the Cazadores went to offer what cheer he could to the few survivors of his ill-fated regiment. Heart-broken himself, he found no words to say to the heart-broken men who hardly had spirit enough tostand up and salute him—half their comrades dead, their soldierly pride humbled, their demoralisation seemingly beyond repair. But as he stood among them, silent and grief-stricken as themselves, he saw that one of the men, hardly conscious what he was doing, had picked up his guitar and was lightly touching the strings. It must here be explained that although the Cazadores de las Navas is a Catalan regiment, it is mostly recruited in Aragón.
“A gleam of hope entered my heart,” said the Colonel, when many days after he related what had taken place. “If only he would play loud enough to be heard he would save us; I know what their music means to the men of Aragón. I dared not speak, I was so afraid of putting him off, for if he had known I was there he would have dropped the guitar to stand at attention. But he went on, a little louder and a little louder, and another man took up the air, and then another, until at last all the regiment—all that was left of it—followed suit, and all began singing—
“‘La Virgen del Pilár diceQue no quiere moros ni moras,Que quiere ser capitanaDe la tropa aragonesa.’[8]
“‘La Virgen del Pilár diceQue no quiere moros ni moras,Que quiere ser capitanaDe la tropa aragonesa.’[8]
“‘La Virgen del Pilár dice
Que no quiere moros ni moras,
Que quiere ser capitana
De la tropa aragonesa.’[8]
“Very softly they sang at first, as if it were a dirge for their dead friends, but when they came tothe chorus their voices rang out as bravely and gaily as if all were well with us—
“‘À la jota, jota,Que viva Aragón,Y la PilarícaDe mi corazón.’
“‘À la jota, jota,Que viva Aragón,Y la PilarícaDe mi corazón.’
“‘À la jota, jota,
Que viva Aragón,
Y la Pilaríca
De mi corazón.’
“Then,” said the Colonel, “I quietly slipped away. They no longer needed consolation from me, for they remembered that, whatever they had lost, they still had the Pilarica, the beloved of all hearts.”
When the Gurugú was finally taken, an English newspaper correspondent commented on the extraordinary lightness of heart and irresponsible gaiety of these Spanish soldiers, saying that he had actually seen one of them carrying a guitar under his arm as he scrambled up the precipitous slopes that had been the scene of disaster three months earlier. The newspaper man jumped too hastily to his conclusion, for which, however, he may be forgiven, for he could hardly know what the Jota, played on the guitar, may mean to the men of Aragón.
THE COLUMBUS MONUMENT.
THE COLUMBUS MONUMENT.