"New pain drives out old pain,
New grief drives out old grief,
One nail drives out another nail,
But love to love gives no relief.
New pain drives out old pain,
Aie-e-e...."
Once more she sang:
"Your eyes like double evils are,
Black as is the dark of Hades,
And you have to cover them
The ebon thickets of your lashes.
Your eyes like double evils are."
The guitars beat up the rhythm once more and then a man began to sing:
"In your eyes there is a sky,
Your mouth with heaven itself can vie,
A garden blooms whene'er you smile,
But in your breast's a crocodile.[25]
In your eyes there is a sky."
Again he sang:
"The only love which I discovered,
Like black gunpowder reacted;
Fire, explosion, light; then after ...
Followed ashes, silence, darkness.
The only love which I discovered."
By this time a large number of men and of girls had gathered.
"Vamos!" they cried. "Let's have a jota. Come on, Perico, play something that we can dance to."
The guitar-players changed their tempo, the little guitarron beat out with a more insistent though more flexible rhythm. The jota has a beat which is partly the beat of the bar, partly that of the phrase. This is common in Spanish music and has points of resemblance with early European music generally.