At about this time of year the girls have many superstitions about marriage. They throw thistles on the large bonfires which are lighted, thinking meanwhile of some lover. These thistles are left out of doors during the night and the following day, and if they remain green, they believe they will be fortunate in their love affairs, but if black and burnt, oh sorrow! no love is to be expected from the one thought of. It is to be feared that under these circumstances there must be many disappointments, unless, indeed, a little mild cheating be resorted to. There is also an old custom of gathering rushes on St. John’s Eve. Lovers each cut a rush of equal length, and if in the morning one is found to be longer than the other, the love of the person who cut it is supposed to be the more true and lasting.
Certain plants and flowers are looked on as being lucky, and special virtue is supposed to attach to them if picked on the morning of St. John the Baptist’s Day. In many parts there are legends of beautiful enchanted Moorish maidens, who are doomed to live in deep wells, but are allowed to appear early on that morning, and ask of those who come to draw water some boon which may break the spell that binds them.
St. Anthony is supposed to be the match-maker among the saints. In the church dedicated to him in Lisbon there is a letter-box where young people post letters, asking the Saint to find them sweethearts, and if their love affairs prosper, they sometimes post cheques and other thank-offerings to him in the same little box in church. The priests read the letters, and also stand proxy for St. Anthony in the matter of pocketing the money.
It is not only the children who make merry on the eves of these three saints’ days. In Lisbon the common people spend the night at the Praça da Figueira—the market-place—which is beautifully decorated with flowers and fruit, some hanging in bunches on sticks. Men and women buy pots of “Majarico”—a sweet-smelling plant, in the middle of which is stuck a large paper pink with some sweet love-verse, and these pinks are presented and accepted with pleasure by both men and women. Farther north, and especially at Coimbra and Figueira, these festivals are most remarkable. There are bonfires and music; the men and women dress in the picturesque costumes of the country, the women wearing, as on all festive occasions, a great deal of very handsome gold jewellery, for they spend most of their earnings on these quaint ornaments, and are very proud of them. There is much guitar-playing by the men, and all join in the popular Portuguese dances, “Ver-de-Gaio” and others, and sing the most lovely romantic songs.
[ CHAPTER VI
] COUNTRY DANCES, SONGS, AND LEGENDS
The peasants are very fond of dance and song, particularly in Northern Portugal. At harvest-time, and in the month of May, they delight in gatherings where old-fashioned Oriental-looking dances take place. They are slow and sedate, consisting quite as much of movements of the body, arms, and hands, as of the feet, and must have been taken from the Moors. You seldom hear any laughter at these danças, though in the ordinary way the northern Portuguese are cheery and light-hearted enough.
The music which accompanies them is also usually of a weird Oriental nature, in a minor key, like many of the national airs and ballads, but each district has its own peculiar songs, and these have often a great charm and sweetness about them, more especially in the mountainous districts, where the Moors never penetrated, and where the peasants retain more of their ancient Roman and Gothic origin.
“When the Portuguese labourer has done his long day’s work, he does not lean against a post and smoke a pipe, nor does he linger in the wine-shop; but if it be a holiday or a Sunday, and in a rural district, he puts on a clean shirt, with a large gold or silver stud as a neck fastening, and his newest hat, varying in shape according to locality, but always of black felt, and of the kind one sees in pictures of Spanish life. He throws over his shoulder a black cloth cloak with a real gold or silver clasp. He takes his favourite ox-goad in his hand, as tall as himself, straight as an arrow, well-rounded, and polished, and bound with brass. He slings his mandolin round his neck, and makes his way to the nearest fashionable threshing-floor—the peasant’s drawing-room. As he passes along, strumming careless chords and humming snatches of strange airs, the girls and lads stop their labour and accompany him, lovers will interrupt their love-making to follow too, or continue their courting to the rhythmic tinkling of the mandolin. When the music and its following arrives at the dancing place, and the partners are all ranged in a circle, the dance will begin, with the strangest, slowest, most old-fashioned steps, the like whereof has not been danced under a civilized roof for centuries. The musician, or the three or four of them whose mandolins make the orchestra, dance in the round with the others, and, when the time arrives, turn and set to their partners like the other dancers.”