The humour of Spain.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. All other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
HUMOUR SERIES
Edited by W. H. DIRCKS
THE HUMOUR OF SPAIN
ALREADY ISSUED
“WHILE YOUR DAUGHTER WALKS OUT WITH HER BLACK EYES.”—P. 318.
THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C. CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 1909.
A certain mysterious charm clings to the Spanish people, by reason of the long domain of more than seven hundred years of the Moors over the Peninsula, and consequent intermingling, to some degree, of race, and considerable Oriental influence on the national life and characteristics. The chief sport of the Spaniards, the bull-fight, is of Moorish origin; their popular dances and songs raise recollections of Indian Nautch-girls and the choruses in Moroccan coffee-houses; their predominant sentiment, the jealousy over their women, points back to the strict seclusion of the harem. To divert to another paramount influence, Spain, to this day the most Catholic country in the world, is in history of awful interest as the country in which the dread Inquisition took root most firmly: here alone 32,000 persons were condemned to the auto-da-fe ! Gloominess, pride, and reserve have for centuries been the reputed qualities of the Spaniards. Oriental races are not mirthful; it is difficult to make the dignified Moor smile, much less laugh: the influence of the Moor, therefore, and the absolute power of the Church as little, could scarcely be conducive to merriment. And yet Spanish literature is illumined throughout with bright flashes of humour, like the silver lining to the dark cloud of the history of the people—a humour which shows itself in almost every phase of the national literature, from the twelfth to the nineteenth century: from incidents in the “Poema del Cid” which tickled the rough sense of humour of the warriors of the Middle Ages, to the delicate and subtle irony of Valera in “Pepita Jimenez”—quaint and naïve in the ballads and collections of tales, sprightly in the drama, boisterous in the “Novela Picaresca,” inimitable in “Don Quixote.” A humour, moreover, not laboured, not purely literary (though the latter kind is not lacking), but spontaneous, and embodying the salient features of the national life and characteristics.