Following the Camino del Sacro Monte, marked by many crosses, our attention was more and more withdrawn from the majestic views spread out before us to the gypsies, whose cave dwellings lined the way. Burrowing into the earth, from the midst of thickets of prickly pear, are these strange abodes, whose chimneys rise abruptly out of the green surface of the hillside. Dens as they are, the best of them possess some decencies. Flaps of cloth serve them for doors, their peering fronts are whitewashed, they are furnished with a stool or two, a box of tools or clothing, a few water-jars, a guitar, and, in the farther end of the lair, a family bedstead, or more often a heap of dirty sheepskins. Cooking tins, bottles, saddles, and coils of rope hang on the rough walls; there may be a shelf of amulets and toys for sale, and the indispensable pot of puchero simmers over a handful of fire.
Out from these savage homes swarmed a whining, coaxing, importunate horde of sly-eyed women and an impish rabble of children. Young and old clutched at us with unclean hands, clung to us with sinewy brown arms, begged, flattered, demanded, and dragged us bodily into their hill. We felt as if we had gone back to German fairy tales and had fallen into the evil grip of the gnomes. Hardly could escort, carriage, and a reckless rain of coppers break the spell. We were forced to taste their repulsive messes, to cross witch palms with silver, to buy even the roadside weeds the urchins gathered before our eyes. We were birds for the plucking, sheep for the shearing. Only when we had turned our pockets inside out to show that we had not a "little dog" left, were we suffered to go free, followed, doubtless, by the curses of Egypt, because we had yielded such poor picking.
In Seville, too, the gypsies have their own quarter, but in proportion as Seville is a gentler city than Granada, so are the looks and manners of her gypsy population more attractive. Crossing the yellow Guadalquivír by the bridge of Isabel Segunda, we come immediately on the picturesque, dark-visaged figures, with their uneffaced suggestion of wildness, of freedom, of traditions apart from the common humdrum of humanity. The boy, clad in one fluttering garment, who is perilously balancing his slender brown body on the iron rail; the bright-kerchiefed young mother, thrusting her tiny black bantling into our faces; the silent, swarthy men who lean along the bridge side, lithe even in their lounging;—all have a latent fierceness in their look. Their eyes are keen as knives—strange eyes, whose glitter masks the depth. But as we go on into the potter's suburb of Triana, into the thick of the gypsy life, we are not more seriously molested than by the continual begging, nor is this the rough, imperious begging of Granada; a flavor of Sevillian grace and fun has passed upon it. Offer this bush-headed lad, pleading starvation, the orange he has just tossed away, and he will double up over the joke and take to his little bare heels. Give to the fawning sibyl who insists on telling your fortune a red rose for her hair, and the chances are that she will rest content. But the time to see the gypsies in their glory is during the three days and nights of the Feria.
On the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth of April Seville annually keeps, on the Prado de San Sebastian, where the Inquisition used to light its fires, the blithest of spring festivals. The Feria is a fair, but much more than a fair. There are droves upon droves of horses, donkeys, cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs. There are rows upon rows of booths with toys, booths with nuts and candies, booths with the gay-handled Albacete knives and daggers. There are baskets upon baskets of rainbow fans, mimic fighting cocks, oranges, and other cheap Sevillian specialties. Cooling drinks are on sale at every turn, but there is no drunkenness. There are thousands and tens of thousands of people in motion, but there is no bustling, no elbowing, no rudeness of pressure. Dainty little children wander alone in that tremendous throng. The order and tranquillity that prevail by day and night in this multitude of merrymakers render it possible for the Feria to be what it is. For during these enchanted April hours even the noblest families of Seville come forth from the proud seclusion of their patios and live in casetas, little rustic houses that are scarcely more than open tents, exposed to the gaze of every passer-by.
A lofty bridge, crossed by two broad flights of stairs and tapering to a tower, stands at the intersection of the three chief Feria avenues. The bridge is brilliantly illuminated by night, and close-set globes of gas, looped on running tubes along both sides of these three festal streets, pour floods of light into the casetas. Chinese lanterns in red and yellow abound, and lines of banner-staffs flaunt the Spanish colors. The casetas are usually constructed of white canvas on a framework of light-brown fretwood, though the materials are sometimes more durable.
Clubhouses are large and elaborate, and individual taste varies the aspect of the private tents. The more important families of Seville own their casetas, but in general these airy abodes are rented from year to year, the price for the three days of the Feria ranging from twenty-five dollars on the central avenue to five dollars for the more remote houselets on the two streets that branch off at right angles. The numerous byways are occupied by cafés, booths, penny shows, and the like, the gypsies having one side of a lane to themselves. The other side is given over to circus-rings, merry-go-rounds, cradle-swings marked "For Havana," "For Manila," "For Madrid," dancing dwarfs, braying bands, caged bulls, and tents provided with peepholes through which one may see "The Glorious Victory of the Spanish Troops at Santiago," and other surprising panoramas of the recent war. These are in high favor with soldiers and small boys, whose black heads bump together at every aperture.
Such attractions are especially potent over the country folk, who come jogging into Seville during fair time, mounted two or three together on jaded horses, sorry mules, and even on indignant little donkeys. Their peasant costumes add richly to the charm of the spectacle, and their simplicity makes them an easy spoil for the canny folk of Egypt. You see them especially in the cool of the early morning, when trade in cattle is at its liveliest. Ten to one they have been fleeced already by the gitanos, who, out in the great meadow where the live-stock is exposed for sale, have their own corner for "dead donkeys," as the Sevillians term the decrepit old beasts that have been magically spruced up for the occasion. Cervantes has his jest at "a gypsy's ass, with quicksilver in its ears."
Then comes the turn of the gitanas, looking their prettiest, with roses in hair, and over the shoulders those captivating black silk shawls embroidered in many-colored patterns of birds and flowers. The younger enchantresses keep watch, each in front of her family tent, before whose parted curtains the more ill-favored women of the household are busy frying the crisp brown buñuelos, a species of doughnut dear to the Spanish tooth.
As you loiter down the lane, be you wide-eyed shepherd from the provinces, or elegant grandee from Madrid, or haughty foreigner from London or Vienna, the sturdy sirens rush upon you, seize you by arm or neck, and by main force tug you into their tented prisons, from which you must gnaw your way out through a heap of hot buñuelos. Or you may compromise on a cup of Spanish chocolate, flavored with cinnamon and thick as flannel, or perhaps win your liberty by gulping down a cupful of warm goat's milk. The prices shock the portliest purses, but at your first faint sign of protest a gathering mob of gypsies presses close with jeers and hisses, and even the frying-pan sputters contempt.
The Feria presents its most quiet aspect during the afternoon. Some twenty or thirty thousand of the promenaders have been drawn off by the superior attraction of the bull-fight, and others have retired for their siestas. Yet there are thousands left. This is a grand time for the children, who disport themselves in the avenues with whistles, swords, balls, kites, and other trophies from the toy booths. These little people are exquisitely dressed, often in the old Andalusian costumes, and tiny lad and tiny lass, of aristocratic look and bearing, may be seen tripping together through one of the graceful national dances in the midst of a sidewalk throng. The toddlers, too, are out, under charge of happy nursemaids.