A Moorish gate of Ronda
My night's halt was beneath swaying palm-trees.
Down through a ravine beside the track were scattered a few rambling houses, in one of which I found accommodations. Its owner was a peasant, battered with years, who sat before his dwelling smoking in the cool of evening with his three sons. One of these was a guardia civil who had seen all the provinces of Spain, and whose language in consequence was Spanish. His brothers, on the other hand, spoke the crabbed dialect of Andalusia. I caught the sense of most of their remarks only at the third or forth repetition, to their ever-increasing astonishment.
A gitana of Granada. In the district of the Alhambra.
"Hermano," interrupted the guardia once, "you know you do not speak Spanish?"
The speaker fell silent and listened for some time open-mouthed to his brother in uniform.
"Caracoles!" he cried suddenly. "I speak no other tongue than you, brother, except for the fine words you have picked up at las Cortes!"
Which was exactly the difficulty. The "fine" words were of pure Castilian, for which the rural andaluz substitutes terms left behind by the Moor. Furthermore his speech is guttural, explosive, slovenly, more redolent of Arabic than of Spanish. He is particularly prone to slight the S. His version of "estes señores" is "ete señore." Which is comprehensible; but how shall the stranger guess that "cotóa e' l' jutí'a" is meant to convey the information that "la justicia es costosa?"