A REST AT THE FORD.
CHAPTER XVII
Music and the people—Arabic instruments—The saetas of Andalucia—The tango in the theatre—A working-class wedding—A drama in a dance—The alarmed widow lady—The Jota of Aragón—Our Lady of the Pillar—Spaniards in Morocco—Moors, savage and civilised—The Sultan and his prisoners—The tragedy of the Wolf’s Gorge—After the retreat—The salvation of a regiment—The power of the guitar.
The influence of the traditional popular music on the life of the people is perhaps in some ways more marked here than in any other country. It may seem strange to us that this should be the case, for Western ears find it difficult to catch the tuneless songs, with their curious intervals and lack of tonality and rhythm, which are another of Spain’s legacies from the time when her arts and sciences were all Oriental. But the strange and to us pointless cadences of the Guajiras, Malagueñas, Granadinas, Sevillanas, and the rest offer no difficulties to the Andalucian, though even cultivated foreign musicians find them almost impossible of reproduction.
During the time of the Moslem rule in Spain, Seville was noted for its devotion to music; so much so that in the palmy days of the Khalifate, when for nearly a century Seville and Cordova were on good terms with each other, it was usual, when a rich man died in Cordova, to send his musical instruments to Seville for sale. But during the Moslem period music was cultivated everywhere in Spain, as is shown by treatises on the art existing in the library of the Escorial, and by the long list of instruments in use among the Arabs, some of which, or their counterparts, exist to-day, although others are now unknown. Among these were flutes made of bone and elegantly decorated with carved designs, an almost perfect specimen of which was found in a tomb at Malaga, besides fragments of two others in an excavation at Seville. Possibly the skill of the Andalucian on the military bugle is a legacy from those times, as also his fondness for drum and fife bands. The drum or tambor is of Oriental origin, and I have already described a variety of it known as the zambomba.
It is only to be expected that Arabic music should persist in the repertoire of the people of Andalucia, as indeed it does. But the most curious survival is not in the music of the theatre or the home, but in improvised hymns sung in the streets by fervent devotees when the images of Our Lord and His Mother are carried in procession during great religious festivals, such as those of Holy Week, Corpus Christi, or the patron saint of the locality.
The curious fact about these hymns is that while the music is Oriental, the name, saeta, is not. It means “an arrow” (Lat. sagitta), and the Spanish dictionary gives the other meaning, “a short hymn to excite devotion,” without explanation. I think myself it must date from early Christian times, before the Arab conquest, for one can hardly suppose that the name was applied to these erotic outbursts or the hymns themselves composed after the reconquest of Seville. One has only to compare the hymns sung elsewhere at that period with the saetas, to see how widely they differ in feeling. Here are two lines from a thirteenth-century hymn by “Brother Henry of Pisa”:—