The tentadero at the present day brings together aristocratic gatherings that recall the tauromachian tournaments of old. Skill in handling the garrocha and the ability to turn-over a running bull are accomplishments held in high esteem among Spanish youth. Even the Infantas of Spain have entered into the spirit of the sport, and have been known themselves to wield a dexterous lance.
At length, however, the years spent in luxurious idleness on the silent plain must come to an end. One summer morning the brave herd find grazing in their midst sundry strangers which make themselves extremely agreeable to the lordly champions, now in the zenith of magnificent strength and beauty. These strangers are the cabrestos (or cabestros, in correct Castilian), decoy-oxen sent out to fraternise for a few days with the fighting race preparatory to the Encierro, or operation of convoying the latter to the city whereat the corrida is to take place. Each cabresto has a cattle-bell suspended round its neck in order to accustom the wild herd to follow the lead of these base betrayers of the brave. Thus the noble bulls are lured from their native plains through country tracks and bye-ways to the entrance of the fatal toril.
An animated spectacle it is on the eve of the corrida when, amidst clouds of dust and clang of bells, the tame oxen and wild bulls are driven forward by galloping horsemen and levelled garrochas. The excited populace, already intoxicated with bull-fever and the anticipation of the coming corridas, line the way to the Plaza, careless if in the enthusiasm for the morrow they risk some awkward rips to-day.
Once inside the lofty walls of the toril it is easy to withdraw the treacherous cabestros, and one by one to tempt the bulls each into a small separate cell, the chiquero, the door of which will to-morrow fall before his eyes. Then, rushing upon the arena, he finds himself confronted and encircled by surging tiers of yelling humanity, while the crash of trumpets and glare of moving colours madden his brain. Then the gaudy horsemen, with menacing lances, recall his day of trial on the distant plain—horsemen now doubly hateful in their brilliant glittering tinsel.
What a spectacle is presented by the Plaza at this moment!—one without parallel in the modern world. The vast amphitheatre, crowded to the last seat in every row and tier, is held for some seconds in breathless suspense; above, the glorious azure canopy of an Andalucian summer sky; below, on the yellow arena, rushes forth the bull, fresh from his distant prairie, amazed yet undaunted by the unwonted sight and bewildering blaze of colour which surrounds him. For one brief moment the vast mass of excited humanity sits spell-bound; the clamour of myriads is stilled. Then the pent-up cry bursts forth in frantic volume, for the gleaning horns have done their work, and Buen toro! buen toro! rings from twice ten thousand throats.
We have traced in brief outline the life-history of our gallant bull; we have brought him face to face with the matador and his Toledan blade—there we must leave him.[33] In concluding this chapter, may we beg the generous reader, should he ever enter the historic precincts of the Plaza, to go there with an open mind, to form his own opinion without prejudice or bias. Let him remember that to untrained eyes there must ever fall unseen many of the finer “passes,” much of the skilled technique and science of tauromachian art. The casual spectator necessarily loses that; he perceives no more difficulty in the perilous suerte de vol-á-pié than in the simpler but more attractive suerte de recibir, and a hundred similar details. Finally, before crystallising a judgment, critics should endeavour to see a few second-or third-rate corridas. It is at these that the relative values of the forces opposed—brute strength and human skill—are displayed in truer and more speaking contrast. At set bull-fights of the first-class, the latter quality is often so marked as partly to obscure the difficulties and dangers it surmounts. Watch toréros of finished skill and the game seems easy—as when some phenomenal batsman, well set, knocks the best bowling in England all over the field. Yet that bowling, the expert knows, is not easy. Nor are the bulls. At second-rate fights the forces placed face to face are more evenly balanced; and there it is often the bull that scores.
The Miura Question
A raging controversy, illuminative of Tauromachia, has recently split into two camps the bull-fighting world and agitated one-half of Spain. The breeding of the fighting-bull is in this country a semi-æsthetic pursuit, analogous to that of short-horns or racehorses in England, and the possession of a notable herd the ambition of many of the grandees and big landowners of Spain.
Among the various crack herds that of Don Eduardo Miura of Sevilla had always occupied a prominent rank; while during recent years the power and dashing prowess of the Miureno bulls had raised that breed almost to a level apart, invested with a halo of semi-mysterious quality. Captures occurred at every corrida; man after man had gone down before these redoubted champions, and the minds of surviving matadors—saturated one and all with gipsy-sprung superstition—began to attribute secret or supernatural powers to the dreaded herd. Not a swordsman but felt unwonted qualm when meeting a Miureno on the sanded arena. Showy players with the capa and the banderillos proved capable of giving attractive exhibitions, but it was another matter when the matador stood alone, face to face with his foe. Even second-class toréros can, with almost any bull, show off their accomplishments in these lighter séances; but in the supreme rôle—that of killing the bull as art demands—there is no room for half-measures or deceptions. To valour, ability must be united. When those two qualities are not both coupled and balanced, then one of two things happens: Either the scene becomes a dull one, a mixture of funk and feebleness made patent all round; or disaster is at hand. This one hears forecast in the strange cries of this meridional people—from all sides come the shouts of “Hule! Hule!” Now Hule is the name of the material with which the stretchers for the killed and wounded are covered!