Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

Even the babies have been brought to the fair, and lie, contentedly sucking their rosy thumbs, in the doorways of the casetas. The lords of these doll-houses are enjoying peaceful smokes together in the background of the open parlors, which are furnished with as many chairs as possible, a piano, and a central stand of flowers; while semicircles of silent ladies, languidly waving the most exquisite of fans, sit nearer the front, watching the ceaseless stream of pedestrians, and beyond these the double procession of carriages, which keep close rank as they advance on one side of the avenue and return on the other. It is bad form not to go to the Feria once at least in a carriage. Large families of limited means hire spacious vehicles resembling omnibuses, and, squeezed together in two opposite rows, drive up and down the three chief streets for hours.

There are crested landaus, with handsome horses, gay donkey-carts, decked out with wreaths and tassels, shabby cabs, sporting red and yellow ribbons on their whips, tooting coaches—every sort and kind of contrivance for relieving humanity of its own weight. There are mounted cavaliers in plenty, and occasionally, under due masculine escort, a fair-haired English girl rides by, or a group of Spanish señoras, who have come into Seville on horseback from their country homes. But all this movement is slow and dreamy, the play of the children being as gentle as the waving of the fans.

Even Gypsy Lane shares in the tranquillity of the drowsy afternoon. We were captured there almost without violence, and, while we trifled with the slightest refreshment we could find, a juvenile entertainment beguiled us of our coppers with pleasurable ease. A coquettish midget of four summers innocently danced for us the dances that are not innocent, and a wee goblin of seven, who could not be induced to perform without a cap, that he might pull it down over his bashful eyes, stamped and kicked, made stealthy approaches and fierce starts of attack through the savage hunting jigs inherited from the ancient life of the wilderness. The women swung their arms and shrilled wild tunes to urge the children on, but a second youngster who attempted one of these barbaric dances for us broke down in mid career, and, amid a chorus of screaming laughter, buried his blushes in his mother's lap. The tent had become crowded with stalwart, black gitanos, but they were in a domestic mood, smiled on the children's antics, and eyed us with grim amusement as the women caught up from rough cradles and thrust into our arms those elfish babies of theirs. Even the infant of five days winked at us with trickery in its jet beads of vision. But so inert was gypsy enterprise that we were suffered to depart with a few pesetas yet in our possession.

In the evening, from eight till one, the Feria is perfect Fairyland. Under the light of those clustered gas globes and butterfly-colored lanterns pass and repass the loveliest women of the world. Beautifully clad as the señoritas have been during morning and afternoon, their evening toilets excel and crown the rest. White-robed, white-sandalled, their brown, bewitching faces peeping out from the lace folds of white mantillas, with white shawls, embroidered in glowing hues, folded over the arm, and delicate white fans in hand, they look the very poetry of maidenhood. Months of saving, weeks of stitching, these costumes may have cost, but the Feria is, above all, a marriage mart, and the Andalusian girl, usually so strictly guarded, so jealously secluded, never allowed to walk or shop alone, is now on exhibition. As these radiant forms glide along the avenues, the men who meet them coolly bend and look full into their faces, scanning line and feature with the critical air of connoisseurs. But well these cavaliers illustrate the Andalusian catch:—

"Because I look thee in the face,

Set not for this thy hopes too high,

For many go to the market-place

To see and not to buy."

The girl's opportunity is in her dancing. Every Andalusian woman, high or low, knows the Sevillana. Some have been trained in it by accredited teachers of the art, but the most learn the dance in childhood, as naturally as they learn to speak and sing. They are never weary of dancing it, morning, noon, and night, two girls together, or a girl and a lad, but such dancing is confined to the Moorish privacy of the Spanish home—except in Fair time. Then the whole world may stand before the casetas and see the choicest daughters of Seville dancing the dance that is very coquetry in motion. Rows of girls awaiting their turn, and of matrons who are chaperoning the spectacle, sit about the three sides of the mimic drawing-room. A dense crowd of men, crying "Ole! Ole!" and commenting as freely on the figures and postures of the dancers as if they were ballet artistes in a café chantant, is gathered close in front. For their view these rhythmic maidens dance on, hour after hour, until their great, dusky eyes are dim with sleep. The tassels of curly ribbon, tinted to match the dainty touches of color in their costumes, seem to droop in exhaustion from the tossing castanets. What matter? For a Spanish girl to reach her twenty-fifth birthday without a novio is a tragedy of failure, and these tired dancers are well aware that caballeros are making the rounds from caseta to caseta, on purpose to select a wife.

In Gypsy Lane there is no sugar coating. The Flamenco dances are directly seductive. The life of the forest animal seems reproduced in the fierceness, the fitfulness, the abandon, of each strange series of abrupt gesticulations. Yet these gypsy women, boldly as they play on the passions of the spectators, care only for Gentile money, and fling off with fiery scorn the addresses that their songs and dances court. Many a flouted gallant could tell the tale of one who