Meanwhile the public, angry and disappointed, saddened by a quarrel over what they held sacred, and terrified lest the divine wrath should descend upon the city because the feast-day was not being honoured according to the ritual of their forefathers, collected in the Plaza de San Francisco, and clamoured for the procession to start, while the gentler and more timorous spirits knelt down all along the streets and prayed to God to remove the difficulties which had so suddenly and unexpectedly arisen.
At long last the Archbishop withdrew, his place being taken by a lesser dignitary, and the procession came out of the Cathedral with the Dancers in their usual places, followed by the Brotherhood of the Tailors (of whom more anon), the Capuchins, Mercenaries, Augustines, and Carmelite friars, the Tribunal of the Inquisition, the canons, and the Asistente, who could not dissimulate his indignation at the defeat of himself and the Archbishop, over which the whole town was rejoicing all along the route.
Don Jaime de Palafox then appealed to the King and the Pope, but all he got was an order that women should be excluded from the Dances and that no masks or other disguises should be worn by the Dancers in the Cathedral, no attempt being made to put a stop to the dances themselves, because “this kind of festival had always continued in Seville.” The Archbishop was charged neither to impede nor to embarrass the entry of the Dancers into the Cathedral, and he got a rap over the knuckles from the King for having tried “to introduce novelties.”
Don Jaime de Palafox was not the man to own himself beaten, and ten years later came the turn of the Seises. On June 18th of the year 1700 he got an order from the Pope to the Chapter to “suppress the abuse of the dances of the Seises,” apparently thinking he would thereby put an end to that traditional performance. The Dean, however, was as stout a fighter as Don Jaime himself. He represented to the Holy Father that the Hymn and the Dance of the Seises could not be fairly judged of by hearsay but must be seen to be understood, and he reminded the Pope that the first principle of the Council of Trent was that no judgment should be given in any dispute until both sides of the case had been heard. He stuck to his point until he obtained permission to take the Seises, costumes, castanets, and all, to Rome to dance before the Pope, and the final result was that the dance remained a recognised part of the ritual of the Cathedral of Seville, and has been performed at its appointed seasons without intermission ever since.
Thus it survives to-day, to the pious delight of all good Sevillians. But, as said the chronicler of the attempt to suppress it, “Only he who sees it can comprehend it, and it is worth seeing. For it is performed with the greatest seriousness and composure, with the result that it is one of the most remarkable things in this Holy Church, very far removed from irreverence, but rather an example of an especial respect to the Lord.”
About a week before Noche Buena—the Good Night—which is Christmas Eve, the grocers’ shops in Seville blossom out into still-life pictures, generally with a huge ship of wicker-work as the centre, having oars of Bologna sausages, a great ham as a sail, and a cargo of gold in the shape of oranges. Silver is represented by Tangerine oranges wrapped in lead paper, and vacant corners are filled up with a variety of sweetmeats, while the rigging consists of tinsel streamers. A banner of the national colours, of more or less expensive silk, flies of course over the whole, and this “flagship” is flanked by a squadron of lesser fry in every shape and form, but always of wicker-work. The whole fleet and its constituent parts are offered for sale at exaggerated prices, and the crew in every case consists of one or more bottles of wine.
These baskets of provender are bought for Christmas gifts, and if we may judge from the absence of any special attractions in other shops, they are the most popular kind of present, except marzapan cakes. Of these the confectioners offer a considerable variety, the majority in the form of bulls or dragons, but some representing the beloved ham, which is so favourite an article of food, while some, but these are the minority, are made in pretty and artistic rounds, diamonds, or floral forms. All consist of the same rich almond paste, and all are adorned with preserved fruits and bonbons. Several varieties of a kind of nougat called turrón also appear at Christmas and on two or three other great festivals, and some of them are delicious.
The marzapan cakes, like the turrón and the baskets of groceries, are all very expensive, which is not surprising in a country where even the locally made beetroot sugar is so heavily taxed that the consumer has to pay 70 centimes a pound for it. Thus the above dainties are only for the rich. The Christmas cake of the poor is called polvorón, and consists of a curious dry substance like extra short short-cake, made chiefly of almond flour, sugar, and white of egg. The Christmas polvorón is a large round cake, about half an inch thick, and it generally has a preserved orange in the middle, into which an artificial flower is stuck. It is always sold on a cardboard tray, because its consistency is such that it would otherwise fall to pieces of its own weight. Although it costs a mere trifle compared to the marzapan and turrón eaten in well-to-do houses, it is nevertheless of excellent flavour.
Indeed I doubt whether the workers do not prefer their polvorón to marzapan, if only because they get so much more of it for their money. It is customary to give a cake to your servants for Christmas, and I recollect that on one occasion, when talking over a projected kitchen-party with my cook, she politely gave me to understand that much as they had enjoyed the beautiful marzapan dragon of the previous Christmas, they would really prefer a polvorón this time, as the same expenditure on that class of cake would allow all their friends to cut and come again, instead of being limited to a mere mouthful, as had been the case with the five-dollar dragon of last year.