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