CHAPTERV.THE DANCE.Edere lascivos ad Bætica crusmata gestus,Ex Gaditanis ludere docta modis.—Martial.Fourteen days at Seville sparkled through their course, but I neither counted hours nor felt fatigue. Time seemed to stand still, though the greater and lesser lights rose and set. In constant haste, yet in unbroken abstraction, the diversity of objects seemed to create fresh senses, and to feed exhausted strength. I knew no sleep, but was in a dream that never broke while I sojourned in this city—no, not city—this sea-shore—this forest of cedars—Alhambra—Island of the Cyclades—Vale of Tempe,—for such sort of habitation is fitted for such golden memories.Its marvels were many; its mysteries were one, and that the dance. It was not the bolero of the streets, or the ballet of the boards, but a dance of reserve and tradition. I had not heard of it, and went not in search of it;—it broke upon me, and in a series of surprises.“Would you like to see the Sevillian dances?” was asked me in a whisper, and, assenting, I found that it was no public performance to which I was recommended or invited, but a representation, in private, of dancers who did not appear on the stage. My natural question was, “Are these dances indecent?” The reply was,“No.” “Why, then, are they not performed in public?” and the answer, “The people would go mad.” I was told that they might be seen but could not be described, and a dancing-master would get the dancers and invite some friends.At the time appointed, I was conducted up a crazy flight of stairs to a low-roofed room, some fifteen feet by thirty, paved with square, coarse, and ill-laid tiles; lighted with three or four common lamps, stuck in the plastered walls. There was a narrow bench all round, on which were seated men, women, and children of homely appearance. Though called a ball, none were to take part but the attired dancers—four girls, one of them a child—all bespangled and bedizened in white and pink, in satins and flowers. In Spain no preparation has to be made for music: the Greeks danceμετὰ στόμα, “with the mouth;” the Spaniards dance with mouth and palm, or castanet, which, if not in the dancer’s hand, vibrates in those of the spectators: they beat time with their hands and sing the choruses. Our music consisted of a single guitar. I was not without suspicions and misgivings respecting the nature of the performance; but although there was in the decked girls that conscious slouching gait of a wild animal that has a nature of its own, the gloom of the place, the meanness of the apartment, and the ungainly aspect of the morose assembly, discouraged the expectations that had been raised, and I would gladly have retreated.The twang of the guitar was heard, the space cleared, and two of the dancers were balancing their bodies and wreathing their arms, and retreat was impossible. But it only was the fandango—no dexterity to astonish, no excesses to shock, no blandishments to seduce.The fandango done, amesclosucceeded—a sort of olla podrida or ballet, composed of gallegada, back to back, the Hola Aragonese, the seguadilla marchega with its strathspey time and step; the couples setting to each other, and the Highland snap and shout. This, too, was decorous, and I began to wonder what all the mystery had been about, and when would arise the madness we were to witness, and perchance to share.The assembly had gradually fired—that fluid power which matter will, by motion, engender: the dancers gathered and discharged, and shock by shock the spectators vibrated to their motion, and trembled with their pulse. As speech is not teeth or tongue, but all the features; so is the dance not legs, but all the figure. We indeed look out on it by the eyes alone, and are pleased to be surprised with an effort, charmed with an attitude, enchanted by a form. There is here nothing of the sort, nor is it an “epic.” There is no “poem:” there may be a story; there is poetry; but it is neither our pantomime nor our ballet, any more than it is our zephyr groups orposes. These constitute our dancing, and if I were conveying my impressions by word of mouth, I would pause here, nor proceed until we had got at all the sources of gratification, which we either experience from dancing, or conceive to belong to it. Then I could show that the dance in Spain calls into play another set of nerves. Its fascination may be exerted without beauty, agility, or grace. Now I knew that ours was only prose, for I had learned metre.With us the limbs move hither or thither, lifting the body about; the triumph of art is to veil the mechanism. The limbs are indeed exposed in their outline, but our ideal would be achieved if the body were to appear to rise and descend without their aid. The Spanish dance is an inward action; the limbs only manifest it. It is deep as a fountain—now sealed, and still now bubbling up with tremulous motion; now overflowing in devious courses, now bursting forth in wild contortions, then arrested, and returning to its source. Gesture is its voice, movement its sound: it fills the air, settles on the beholder: it is felt not seen, and might be perceived with the eyes shut, if you could but close them. The ecstacies it produces, and which astound the stranger by their vehemence and delicacy—by a frenzy that has rules, and a passion that glows but does not burn, arises from this, that the performance is not witnessed but shared. Compared to our dancing, it is as expression to grimace—the living countenance to a pasteboard mask. The Spanish—no, the Iberian—the Phrygian—dancer before me sought not to float in air: she belonged to earth, and envied neither the bird his wing, nor the cloud its texture. She could pause, stand, stamp, plant herself—then defy. This is no part pantomime, but all dance: the earth, not the air, was her element: it was to her what it is to the wrestler, to the statue, to the antelope, to the tree.But I anticipate.—What I have said was suggested by two dances which were reserved—theoleand thebeto, and which are no more to be conceived by the fandango, than that is by apas de fascinationin a ballet. Borrowing a hat—the Spanish broad-brimmed, high-peaked, festooned hat—the dancer places it on her head, tosses and shifts it; beats with her foot, toe, heel; squares her arms: as a snake’s, her body undulates: she looks round, watches, tosses her head again, snorts, sniffs the air. Is it instinct—is it passion—is it a foe—is it a rival? will she fly—will she charge—are they weapons she prepares, or charms?That figure, which at the distance of the remote seats of a theatre, would have appeared motionless and, by its grotesque attire, might have awakened merriment—has now riveted every glance. The guitar’s tones partake of the disorder, and give forth—so to speak—a sympathetic provocation. She starts, wavers, selects, and springs upon her foe. It is the bull in the arena! One by one, she runs at Picador and Chulo, falters, swerves, and runs upon another. Peals of merriment follow each feint. When her choice is fixed, the contortions, as she approaches, subside, the limbs are subdued, defiance changes to fascination, and the bull becomes the woman. A handkerchief is spread on the ground as she advances: she places her foot on it; stooping, the knee is bent; she pauses, then slightly raising the heel, moves it to and fro, while pinching, with forefinger and thumb, the bosquina at the knee, and lifting it twice or thrice. Heads and shoulders press forward to witness this ceremony, and as she bounds away, hats and jackets are cast upon the ground, amidst a burst of intoxication, and a chorus of “Salero! Salero!” whilst the happy swain, the object of these attentions, gathers up the handkerchief, on which her foot has been placed, and treasures its dust in his bosom.Here is a history—here are rites and rules, mysteries to me and to themselves. It was the bull, but it was something more too. Is it the horned Isis or the Minotaur? But theludusdid not end here. After skipping around and between, and avoiding or sparing thesombreros(hats),[340]she suddenly rushed at one of them, and,—what shall I say?—gored it;—she sprang upon, and pounded it with her feet—left it—returned to it again, to toss the prostrate foe: approaching its owner, her victim, as the bull,—as the woman, taking from her head the hat which she had worn, and crowning him with it—“King of the lists.” This was thedénouementof the dance—or game, or ceremony, or orgy, or myth, or combat—call it which you will.“Salero” thrilled through me. The interpretation was unknown. It is inexplicable, and like the “hugmeneh” of the Highlands—the Phrygian cry of which I had found in Barbary the interpretation—of what could “salero”[341]remind one, if not theSalii?That the motions of animals should have suggested primitive dances is but natural; and what animal could more entrance the Spanish spirit than the bull? It is not a passion of yesterday: we have the bullring on early Etruscan vases. I have since found a confirmation of this idea in the dances of New Holland so striking, that I subjoin a description from an eye-witness.[342]In contrasting Spanish and European dancing, I have put gesture aside, as no part of the former; but, in fact, we have no gesture. There is more in the turn of a gipsy’s head, and the wave of her arm, than in all the practising of the ballerinas.The Andalusians have a peculiar manner of rendering “the body’s gait.” They say, “Aire e meneo;” the nearest approach to which is, “air and mien:” but the nearer the words the farther the sense;—meneo (frommeneh, the Sabæan festival,) is not our processional gait, but the cadenced flow of the long and graceful line as it undulated over strewed flowers, between lifted palms and burning censers.The Reformation is attributed to the study of the classics. The classics themselves must have been still more rational. How, then, did the old worship stand so long, shamed by the life of the Christian, and stained by the blood of the martyr? The world then was neither devout nor ignorant: the sceptic taught in the schools, the scoffer entered the sanctuary. The phenomenon was now explained, or rather—comprehending somewhat of the spell which bound the senses of Greek and Roman—I perceived the problem by the solution. Seeing what dancing could be, even as divested of all pomp, circumstance, and honour, I could imagine what in all its branches must have been that religion of art, that “worship of the beautiful,” which we hold at once to be the glory and the shame of Greece.We only understand vice as the antagonist of Christianity: assailed by vice, it was itself the assailant of “art;”—thus did Mars and Jupiter reign long as statues, if not as gods.But an esthetic life of sentiment was not alone engendered. These excellences were part of the institutions of the land. The songs of Tyrtæus had their chorus; from the games of Elis the Greeks repaired to Marathon, nor had they lost the Pyrrhic phalanx, had they saved the Pyrrhic dance. The interval is not great with the patriarchs and worthies of Israel. What would sound more Pagan, if we listened for the sense, than David dancing before the ark? We read it with an awkward feeling—half ridicule, half reproach.[343]It is we who have reduced the dance to an amusement, or an exhibition; we have chased away every thought not trivial or mercenary; we have left to it no occasion to be grave, and suffer it in no ceremony that is solemn. Nowhere, but here, is there a rent in that heavy veil, which has for nearly two thousand years shrouded the memory of that wonderful union of the harmonies of sound and gesture, which was the charm of the ancient world.The descriptions of mythological ceremonies, the investigation of ancient history, the turning over the pages of poets for seductive images, the pacing of galleries for noble forms, the indulging in the reveries of the sea-shore, or the mountain-side—all these could not furnish what that Sevillian room, floored with brick, supplied.Seville preserves the Hebrew ceremony as well as the Pagan orgy. On the Saturday evening before Easter, and during the following se’nnight, a dance is performed in front of the high altar, by youths in the old Spanish dress, sky-blue satin and white muslin, high-crowned hat of blue, with a white and flowing plume. The music of the cathedral is replaced by an orchestra, by the rails of the altar. The dancers are seated facing each other, on each side the altar. The music of the cathedral ceases. After a pause, the band of worldly instruments strikes up a valtz or a cachouca; presently the voices of the boys join; then they start to their legs. The song is a lyric composition: they sing and dance together, moving solemnly through a variety of figures. The music is in two or three metres, like the Greek chorusses. The first act completed, they return to their seats. The second is more animated, for by word of command they place their hats on their heads, and then the rattling of the castanets, which hitherto have been silent and concealed in their hands, is heard through the aisles, and this terminates a performance solemn and impressive to the Andalusian, which to our ideas would be nothing short of sacrilege or insanity.In the midst of another scene—a bull-fight—the dance is thus described by M. Quinet:—“Scarcely had the mules dragged out the carcasses, when the sound of castanets was heard; the barrier was opened again, and a long train of dancers entered, divided into groups according to the provinces of Spain: each wore the costume of their own province: the Basque with long flowing hair upon their shoulders; the Valencians (half Arabs) with a plaid; the Catalonians with their large embroidered belt; the Aragonese with their dark mantles; but the most brilliant and gorgeous are the Andalous, with their large hats and light jackets, embroidered in a thousand colours, and with intermingled points of steel. The troop pass along with pomp; the people gaze on them with pride; and on the still warm and bloody earth the dance commences. The fandango and bolero balance each other with a characteristic monotony, recalling the noble simplicity of the ancient vases. From carelessness to gravity; from gravity to languor; from languor to intoxication and the exhaustion of passion. There is the moment at which the whole assembly is struck. Each Andalous dancer stoops to the earth, as if to gather flowers for the head of his partner, and immediately after he leans his head upon his hand, his elbow on the shoulder of the Andalusian—and he remains immoveable. I know not if this is one of the ordinary features of the dance, or if it was a sudden thought; but this single movement seized instantaneously the ten thousand spectators: they rose at once, and a burst of enthusiasm came forth such as I have never before heard. There was not one man of the people who did not feel to the bottom of his soul this poetry without words; and all the provinces of Old Spain were again confounded together in that instant. The crowd disappeared and I remained alone in the vast amphitheatre, fixed to my seat. This mixture of murder and of grace—of enchantment, of carnage, and of dance, have left me overwhelmed with stupor: I still see this blood, these smiles, these horrible gashes and odious agonies, the thrill of the fandango, and that Andalusian that stops to dream.”Of what other country of Europe could such things be written? To admire or to comprehend is quite enough at one time; and it is seldom that we can at once enjoy both these gratifications. Let those who can admire Spain be content, nor spoil that pleasure by the hopeless attempt to comprehend her.[340]A Matadore is in like manner complimented, by hats being thrown into the arena.[341]When I asked the meaning of it, all they could say, was, that it meant “salt.” Mr. A. Dumas, who has given, if not an accurate description of the dance, at least a vivid delineation of his own sensations, has, from thinking salero to be nonsense, writtensalado, and makes the performers be gratified by being called “très salées.” He is the only writer who has published this mystery.[342]“After rest and refreshment, they began another dance, in which a portion of them, taking tufts of grass in their mouths, imitated the actions of the kangaroo. After quietly feeding and hopping about for a while like the kangaroos, they were followed by the rest of the party, who in their real characters began to creep after the kangaroos to surprise them. The ludicrous bounds and manœuvres of pursuit and escape were quite astonishing, and the act ended by the pretence of putting one of the representatives of the captured kangaroos on the fire to be roasted. This they called the kangaroo dance: they then gave us the emu dance, in which—with one arm raised to form the neck of the bird, the hand twisted to represent the head—with the body stooped, they went through all the actions of this bird, and with the most amazing effect.”“I asked the king what this dance meant, and he pointed to the moon then full above our head, and said, ‘good to black fellow.’ No doubt he would have proceeded to acknowledge that the ceremony was in honour of the moon, had not one of the others who had stood his grog better than king Caboa, stepped up and said, ‘New Zealandman’s dance.’ He meant the name to mislead, for they are very secret in all their religious ceremonies.”[343]In the synagogues of Morocco, the congregation, when the name of God occurs, spring up and down on their toes in token of rejoicing. The first time I saw this I was utterly confounded.
Edere lascivos ad Bætica crusmata gestus,Ex Gaditanis ludere docta modis.—Martial.
Edere lascivos ad Bætica crusmata gestus,Ex Gaditanis ludere docta modis.—Martial.
Edere lascivos ad Bætica crusmata gestus,
Ex Gaditanis ludere docta modis.—Martial.
Fourteen days at Seville sparkled through their course, but I neither counted hours nor felt fatigue. Time seemed to stand still, though the greater and lesser lights rose and set. In constant haste, yet in unbroken abstraction, the diversity of objects seemed to create fresh senses, and to feed exhausted strength. I knew no sleep, but was in a dream that never broke while I sojourned in this city—no, not city—this sea-shore—this forest of cedars—Alhambra—Island of the Cyclades—Vale of Tempe,—for such sort of habitation is fitted for such golden memories.
Its marvels were many; its mysteries were one, and that the dance. It was not the bolero of the streets, or the ballet of the boards, but a dance of reserve and tradition. I had not heard of it, and went not in search of it;—it broke upon me, and in a series of surprises.
“Would you like to see the Sevillian dances?” was asked me in a whisper, and, assenting, I found that it was no public performance to which I was recommended or invited, but a representation, in private, of dancers who did not appear on the stage. My natural question was, “Are these dances indecent?” The reply was,“No.” “Why, then, are they not performed in public?” and the answer, “The people would go mad.” I was told that they might be seen but could not be described, and a dancing-master would get the dancers and invite some friends.
At the time appointed, I was conducted up a crazy flight of stairs to a low-roofed room, some fifteen feet by thirty, paved with square, coarse, and ill-laid tiles; lighted with three or four common lamps, stuck in the plastered walls. There was a narrow bench all round, on which were seated men, women, and children of homely appearance. Though called a ball, none were to take part but the attired dancers—four girls, one of them a child—all bespangled and bedizened in white and pink, in satins and flowers. In Spain no preparation has to be made for music: the Greeks danceμετὰ στόμα, “with the mouth;” the Spaniards dance with mouth and palm, or castanet, which, if not in the dancer’s hand, vibrates in those of the spectators: they beat time with their hands and sing the choruses. Our music consisted of a single guitar. I was not without suspicions and misgivings respecting the nature of the performance; but although there was in the decked girls that conscious slouching gait of a wild animal that has a nature of its own, the gloom of the place, the meanness of the apartment, and the ungainly aspect of the morose assembly, discouraged the expectations that had been raised, and I would gladly have retreated.
The twang of the guitar was heard, the space cleared, and two of the dancers were balancing their bodies and wreathing their arms, and retreat was impossible. But it only was the fandango—no dexterity to astonish, no excesses to shock, no blandishments to seduce.
The fandango done, amesclosucceeded—a sort of olla podrida or ballet, composed of gallegada, back to back, the Hola Aragonese, the seguadilla marchega with its strathspey time and step; the couples setting to each other, and the Highland snap and shout. This, too, was decorous, and I began to wonder what all the mystery had been about, and when would arise the madness we were to witness, and perchance to share.
The assembly had gradually fired—that fluid power which matter will, by motion, engender: the dancers gathered and discharged, and shock by shock the spectators vibrated to their motion, and trembled with their pulse. As speech is not teeth or tongue, but all the features; so is the dance not legs, but all the figure. We indeed look out on it by the eyes alone, and are pleased to be surprised with an effort, charmed with an attitude, enchanted by a form. There is here nothing of the sort, nor is it an “epic.” There is no “poem:” there may be a story; there is poetry; but it is neither our pantomime nor our ballet, any more than it is our zephyr groups orposes. These constitute our dancing, and if I were conveying my impressions by word of mouth, I would pause here, nor proceed until we had got at all the sources of gratification, which we either experience from dancing, or conceive to belong to it. Then I could show that the dance in Spain calls into play another set of nerves. Its fascination may be exerted without beauty, agility, or grace. Now I knew that ours was only prose, for I had learned metre.
With us the limbs move hither or thither, lifting the body about; the triumph of art is to veil the mechanism. The limbs are indeed exposed in their outline, but our ideal would be achieved if the body were to appear to rise and descend without their aid. The Spanish dance is an inward action; the limbs only manifest it. It is deep as a fountain—now sealed, and still now bubbling up with tremulous motion; now overflowing in devious courses, now bursting forth in wild contortions, then arrested, and returning to its source. Gesture is its voice, movement its sound: it fills the air, settles on the beholder: it is felt not seen, and might be perceived with the eyes shut, if you could but close them. The ecstacies it produces, and which astound the stranger by their vehemence and delicacy—by a frenzy that has rules, and a passion that glows but does not burn, arises from this, that the performance is not witnessed but shared. Compared to our dancing, it is as expression to grimace—the living countenance to a pasteboard mask. The Spanish—no, the Iberian—the Phrygian—dancer before me sought not to float in air: she belonged to earth, and envied neither the bird his wing, nor the cloud its texture. She could pause, stand, stamp, plant herself—then defy. This is no part pantomime, but all dance: the earth, not the air, was her element: it was to her what it is to the wrestler, to the statue, to the antelope, to the tree.
But I anticipate.—What I have said was suggested by two dances which were reserved—theoleand thebeto, and which are no more to be conceived by the fandango, than that is by apas de fascinationin a ballet. Borrowing a hat—the Spanish broad-brimmed, high-peaked, festooned hat—the dancer places it on her head, tosses and shifts it; beats with her foot, toe, heel; squares her arms: as a snake’s, her body undulates: she looks round, watches, tosses her head again, snorts, sniffs the air. Is it instinct—is it passion—is it a foe—is it a rival? will she fly—will she charge—are they weapons she prepares, or charms?
That figure, which at the distance of the remote seats of a theatre, would have appeared motionless and, by its grotesque attire, might have awakened merriment—has now riveted every glance. The guitar’s tones partake of the disorder, and give forth—so to speak—a sympathetic provocation. She starts, wavers, selects, and springs upon her foe. It is the bull in the arena! One by one, she runs at Picador and Chulo, falters, swerves, and runs upon another. Peals of merriment follow each feint. When her choice is fixed, the contortions, as she approaches, subside, the limbs are subdued, defiance changes to fascination, and the bull becomes the woman. A handkerchief is spread on the ground as she advances: she places her foot on it; stooping, the knee is bent; she pauses, then slightly raising the heel, moves it to and fro, while pinching, with forefinger and thumb, the bosquina at the knee, and lifting it twice or thrice. Heads and shoulders press forward to witness this ceremony, and as she bounds away, hats and jackets are cast upon the ground, amidst a burst of intoxication, and a chorus of “Salero! Salero!” whilst the happy swain, the object of these attentions, gathers up the handkerchief, on which her foot has been placed, and treasures its dust in his bosom.
Here is a history—here are rites and rules, mysteries to me and to themselves. It was the bull, but it was something more too. Is it the horned Isis or the Minotaur? But theludusdid not end here. After skipping around and between, and avoiding or sparing thesombreros(hats),[340]she suddenly rushed at one of them, and,—what shall I say?—gored it;—she sprang upon, and pounded it with her feet—left it—returned to it again, to toss the prostrate foe: approaching its owner, her victim, as the bull,—as the woman, taking from her head the hat which she had worn, and crowning him with it—“King of the lists.” This was thedénouementof the dance—or game, or ceremony, or orgy, or myth, or combat—call it which you will.
“Salero” thrilled through me. The interpretation was unknown. It is inexplicable, and like the “hugmeneh” of the Highlands—the Phrygian cry of which I had found in Barbary the interpretation—of what could “salero”[341]remind one, if not theSalii?
That the motions of animals should have suggested primitive dances is but natural; and what animal could more entrance the Spanish spirit than the bull? It is not a passion of yesterday: we have the bullring on early Etruscan vases. I have since found a confirmation of this idea in the dances of New Holland so striking, that I subjoin a description from an eye-witness.[342]
In contrasting Spanish and European dancing, I have put gesture aside, as no part of the former; but, in fact, we have no gesture. There is more in the turn of a gipsy’s head, and the wave of her arm, than in all the practising of the ballerinas.
The Andalusians have a peculiar manner of rendering “the body’s gait.” They say, “Aire e meneo;” the nearest approach to which is, “air and mien:” but the nearer the words the farther the sense;—meneo (frommeneh, the Sabæan festival,) is not our processional gait, but the cadenced flow of the long and graceful line as it undulated over strewed flowers, between lifted palms and burning censers.
The Reformation is attributed to the study of the classics. The classics themselves must have been still more rational. How, then, did the old worship stand so long, shamed by the life of the Christian, and stained by the blood of the martyr? The world then was neither devout nor ignorant: the sceptic taught in the schools, the scoffer entered the sanctuary. The phenomenon was now explained, or rather—comprehending somewhat of the spell which bound the senses of Greek and Roman—I perceived the problem by the solution. Seeing what dancing could be, even as divested of all pomp, circumstance, and honour, I could imagine what in all its branches must have been that religion of art, that “worship of the beautiful,” which we hold at once to be the glory and the shame of Greece.
We only understand vice as the antagonist of Christianity: assailed by vice, it was itself the assailant of “art;”—thus did Mars and Jupiter reign long as statues, if not as gods.
But an esthetic life of sentiment was not alone engendered. These excellences were part of the institutions of the land. The songs of Tyrtæus had their chorus; from the games of Elis the Greeks repaired to Marathon, nor had they lost the Pyrrhic phalanx, had they saved the Pyrrhic dance. The interval is not great with the patriarchs and worthies of Israel. What would sound more Pagan, if we listened for the sense, than David dancing before the ark? We read it with an awkward feeling—half ridicule, half reproach.[343]It is we who have reduced the dance to an amusement, or an exhibition; we have chased away every thought not trivial or mercenary; we have left to it no occasion to be grave, and suffer it in no ceremony that is solemn. Nowhere, but here, is there a rent in that heavy veil, which has for nearly two thousand years shrouded the memory of that wonderful union of the harmonies of sound and gesture, which was the charm of the ancient world.
The descriptions of mythological ceremonies, the investigation of ancient history, the turning over the pages of poets for seductive images, the pacing of galleries for noble forms, the indulging in the reveries of the sea-shore, or the mountain-side—all these could not furnish what that Sevillian room, floored with brick, supplied.
Seville preserves the Hebrew ceremony as well as the Pagan orgy. On the Saturday evening before Easter, and during the following se’nnight, a dance is performed in front of the high altar, by youths in the old Spanish dress, sky-blue satin and white muslin, high-crowned hat of blue, with a white and flowing plume. The music of the cathedral is replaced by an orchestra, by the rails of the altar. The dancers are seated facing each other, on each side the altar. The music of the cathedral ceases. After a pause, the band of worldly instruments strikes up a valtz or a cachouca; presently the voices of the boys join; then they start to their legs. The song is a lyric composition: they sing and dance together, moving solemnly through a variety of figures. The music is in two or three metres, like the Greek chorusses. The first act completed, they return to their seats. The second is more animated, for by word of command they place their hats on their heads, and then the rattling of the castanets, which hitherto have been silent and concealed in their hands, is heard through the aisles, and this terminates a performance solemn and impressive to the Andalusian, which to our ideas would be nothing short of sacrilege or insanity.
In the midst of another scene—a bull-fight—the dance is thus described by M. Quinet:—“Scarcely had the mules dragged out the carcasses, when the sound of castanets was heard; the barrier was opened again, and a long train of dancers entered, divided into groups according to the provinces of Spain: each wore the costume of their own province: the Basque with long flowing hair upon their shoulders; the Valencians (half Arabs) with a plaid; the Catalonians with their large embroidered belt; the Aragonese with their dark mantles; but the most brilliant and gorgeous are the Andalous, with their large hats and light jackets, embroidered in a thousand colours, and with intermingled points of steel. The troop pass along with pomp; the people gaze on them with pride; and on the still warm and bloody earth the dance commences. The fandango and bolero balance each other with a characteristic monotony, recalling the noble simplicity of the ancient vases. From carelessness to gravity; from gravity to languor; from languor to intoxication and the exhaustion of passion. There is the moment at which the whole assembly is struck. Each Andalous dancer stoops to the earth, as if to gather flowers for the head of his partner, and immediately after he leans his head upon his hand, his elbow on the shoulder of the Andalusian—and he remains immoveable. I know not if this is one of the ordinary features of the dance, or if it was a sudden thought; but this single movement seized instantaneously the ten thousand spectators: they rose at once, and a burst of enthusiasm came forth such as I have never before heard. There was not one man of the people who did not feel to the bottom of his soul this poetry without words; and all the provinces of Old Spain were again confounded together in that instant. The crowd disappeared and I remained alone in the vast amphitheatre, fixed to my seat. This mixture of murder and of grace—of enchantment, of carnage, and of dance, have left me overwhelmed with stupor: I still see this blood, these smiles, these horrible gashes and odious agonies, the thrill of the fandango, and that Andalusian that stops to dream.”
Of what other country of Europe could such things be written? To admire or to comprehend is quite enough at one time; and it is seldom that we can at once enjoy both these gratifications. Let those who can admire Spain be content, nor spoil that pleasure by the hopeless attempt to comprehend her.
[340]A Matadore is in like manner complimented, by hats being thrown into the arena.
[341]When I asked the meaning of it, all they could say, was, that it meant “salt.” Mr. A. Dumas, who has given, if not an accurate description of the dance, at least a vivid delineation of his own sensations, has, from thinking salero to be nonsense, writtensalado, and makes the performers be gratified by being called “très salées.” He is the only writer who has published this mystery.
[342]“After rest and refreshment, they began another dance, in which a portion of them, taking tufts of grass in their mouths, imitated the actions of the kangaroo. After quietly feeding and hopping about for a while like the kangaroos, they were followed by the rest of the party, who in their real characters began to creep after the kangaroos to surprise them. The ludicrous bounds and manœuvres of pursuit and escape were quite astonishing, and the act ended by the pretence of putting one of the representatives of the captured kangaroos on the fire to be roasted. This they called the kangaroo dance: they then gave us the emu dance, in which—with one arm raised to form the neck of the bird, the hand twisted to represent the head—with the body stooped, they went through all the actions of this bird, and with the most amazing effect.”
“I asked the king what this dance meant, and he pointed to the moon then full above our head, and said, ‘good to black fellow.’ No doubt he would have proceeded to acknowledge that the ceremony was in honour of the moon, had not one of the others who had stood his grog better than king Caboa, stepped up and said, ‘New Zealandman’s dance.’ He meant the name to mislead, for they are very secret in all their religious ceremonies.”
[343]In the synagogues of Morocco, the congregation, when the name of God occurs, spring up and down on their toes in token of rejoicing. The first time I saw this I was utterly confounded.