I do not know that I yearn to repeat the experiment, but it was worth while for once. The discomfort was atoned for by the picturesqueness of the stable through which I had to pass to get in and out of my room, with the animals and their owners dimly outlined in the light of two or three ancient olive-oil lamps hung here and there on the walls. A Madonna-like young mother with a baby at her breast, resting against a pair of panniers which her husband had backed up with a load of straw and covered with a gay striped rug, formed a pretty contrast to a grey-haired old man who was cooking his supper on a blackened brick stove in a corner near by. And the people of the house, fat and comely and pleasant-looking, sat on a queer little landing half-way upstairs, sewing and chatting under a two-candle-power electric bulb hanging from a wire so thick with flies that it looked like a hempen rope. They seemed quite indifferent to those around, but I saw that they were keeping a watchful eye on the comings and goings below, ready to secure their money at any moment from the customer whose movements indicated an early departure with his donkey. The gallery gave on to a tiny kitchen, where they cooked their own meals, although declining, as the law permits, to cook mine. It was hung with brightly polished brass utensils, and a few bits of coarse pottery adorned the chimney shelf. Among these was a curious old plate of local manufacture, which they sold to me for a few pence when I took my leave in the morning.
And so ended that trip in the Sierra. A chill in the air told me that winter was approaching as I rode down to the station, escorted to the very carriage door by the faithful José; and with a sigh of regret I saw my jamugas consigned to the luggage van, knowing that they would now have to lie idle at home for many weeks to come.
A FUNERAL VESTMENT OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER X
Mourning customs—“Keening” the dead—The night before the funeral—Sympathetic friends—“Accompanying” the mourners—A verbal error—Black masks at a dance—A black-draped house—The locked piano—Three years’ seclusion—The mourning of the poor—Black shirts but laughing faces—“Killed in action”—The heroism of Rosa—“My Papa”—Why Paz will be an old maid.
Mourning in Spain is a serious feature of family and social life. Even in the larger towns one sees but a slight tendency to move with the times, and away from Madrid, Seville, or Barcelona the rigid observance of ancient customs is, like the customs themselves, quite Oriental.
I remember being kept awake almost all one night in a large town by an extraordinary concert of lamentable sounds which issued from a tenement house next door. First came a long tenor wail, rising and falling in a minor key, then a precisely similar wail in a deep contralto, and then in a shrill treble, evidently from a child. I learnt next morning that an infant had died in the house in question, and that the father, the mother, and a small brother had been “keening” the dead all night long. This demonstration of grief is not so common now as it was a few years ago, even among the least educated classes, but other peculiarities hardly more in accordance with modern ideas are to be observed among mourners of all ranks.