Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

A Seville Street

But during the early days of the Romeria, which begins on May 15, all the throbbing tide of life pours toward the southwest, for the goal of the pilgrimage, the Hermitage of San Isidro, built over one of his miraculous wells by the empress of Charles I, in gratitude for a cure experienced by her august husband after drinking of the waters, stands on the farther bank of the Manzanares. The trams, literally heaped with clinging humanity, pass out by the Calle Mayor and cross the Plaza Mayor. The innumerable 'buses and cabs make a shorter cut, but all varieties of vehicle are soon wedged together in the broad thoroughfare of Toledo. Here we pass the big granite church of San Isidro el Real, once in possession of the Jesuits, but on their expulsion from Spain, in 1767, consecrated to the Santo Labrador. His body was borne thither, with all solemn ceremonial, from the chapel in St. Andrew's; and his poor wife, who had also been sainted, by a courteous Spanish afterthought, under the attractive title of Maria de la Cabeza, Mary of the Head, was allowed to lay her celebrated skull beneath the same roof,—a greater liberty than he had permitted her during the latter half of their earthly lives. The Madrid Cathedral, hard by the royal palace, is still in slow process of building, the work being hampered and delayed for lack of funds, although her Majesty sets a devout example by contributing $300 a month. Meanwhile, San Isidro el Real serves as the cathedral church of the diocese.

This Calle de Toledo, where Isidro dug several of his medicinal wells, is always gay with arcades and booths and drapers' shops; but now, during the Romeria, it is a veritable curbstone market, where oranges, sashes, brooms, mantles, picture frames, saucepans, fiddles, mantillas, china, jackets, umbrellas, fans, dolls, bird-cages, paintings of saints, and photographs of ballet dancers are all cried and exhibited, hawked and held under nose, in one continuous tumult.

As we approach the bare mass of masonry known as the Gate of Toledo, we cast, for all our festival mood, a clouded glance in the direction of the barbarous slaughter-houses of Madrid. Here the stronger beasts are blinded by the thrust of darts, and also hamstrung, to render them helpless under the deliberate butchery of their tormentors, who often amuse themselves by a little bull-fight practice with the agonized creatures before striking the final blow—a place of such atrocious cruelties that even the seasoned nerves of an Austrian surgeon recently visiting it gave way, and he fainted as he looked. There is work for San Isidro here.

The jam of equipages on the Bridge of Toledo gives us abundant time to observe the statue of the Holy Peasant, in a stone niche, lifting his baby from the well, and the companion statue of Mary of the Skull. And there is the Manzanares to look at, that sandy channel along which dribble a few threads of water—threads that the washerwomen of Madrid seek after like veins of silver. Small boys are wading from one bank to the other, hardly troubling themselves to roll up their trousers. It is said that Philip IV, surveying his pompous bridge across the Manzanares, was wickedly advised by one of his courtiers to sell the bridge or else buy a river. It is a curious bit of irony to hold the festival of the Water Saint beside a river bed almost as dry as his bones.

But the crowd has now become so mad and merry that it distracts attention alike from architecture and physical geography. Will all the dexterity of foot-police and mounted guards ever succeed in disentangling this snarl of equipages? Who cares? Everybody is laughing. Everybody, too, is helping, so far as lungs can help. A daring Aragonese, with a blue and white checked handkerchief knotted about his head and a scarlet blanket over his shoulders, tries to dash across the bridge and rejoin his screaming children. He stumbles before a jovial omnibus, whose four horses, adorned with beribboned straw hats, gaze coyly out from under the torn brims like so many metamorphosed Maud Mullers. A distant guard roars a warning. The crowd bellows in sympathy. A liveried coachman rears his spirited pair of bays. A cock-hatted gypsy, with half his tribe packed into his cart, tries to follow suit, and tugs savagely at the stubborn mouths of mules whose heads are liberally festooned with red and green tassels. In front of these safely passes the Aragonese, only to bring up against the great wheel of a picnic wagon, whose occupants, mostly señoritas in the sunrise Philippine shawls, thrust out their pretty heads, all crowned with flowers instead of hats, and rain down saucy salutations. The crowd chimes in with every variety of voluble impudence. He catches at the long gold fringe of the nearest shawl, saves himself from falling at the price of a shriek of wrath from the señorita, plunges desperately on, is struck by a cab horse, the poor beast being half blinded by the tickling plumes that droop over eyes and nose, and amid volleys of ridicule and encouragement reels to the shelter of the sidewalk. But a very precarious shelter it is, so narrow that the lads are positively obliged to fling their arms about the lasses to hold the fluttering skirts back from peril of wheels and hoofs. Everywhere what audacity, what fun, what color, and what noise! Troops on troops of foot travellers, usually in family groups, and often stained with the dust of an all-day tramp! The wives generally carry the hampers, and the husbands sometimes shoulder the babies. Squads of young fellows frolic along, each with his supply of provisions tied up in a gaudy handkerchief. The closer the nudging the better they like it; a slap from a girlish hand is almost as good as a kiss. Isidro knew all about it in his day. But this clownish jollity grows rougher and rougher, and the crack and sting from a coachman's whip tempt a reply with the pilgrim's staff. The guards, hoarse and purple, wipe their dripping brows. It is early afternoon yet, too, and the larking and license are as nothing to what may be expected before midnight.

It is a little better when, at last, the bridge is left behind. Turning to the northwest, the dusty road runs on beside the river and beneath the bluffs lined with rowdyish folk, who shout down greetings to their acquaintances and compliments to the ladies, toward the ermita. A certain Juan de Vargas, riding over this same route one day, lifted his eyes to the uplands to see how his farm-hand, Isidro, was getting on with the ploughing. Blessed Isidro! Before and after went two stalwart young angels, still in shining white, each driving a celestial yoke of oxen.

Times have changed. The sight that greets our eyes is emphatically human—a great country fair, a pandemonium of rude, good-natured revelry. The beggars who have been chasing the carriage, the cripples outstripping the rest, thrust withered arms, ulcerous legs, and all manner of profitable deformities into our very faces as we alight, even clutching at the coins with which we pay the coachman. We make our way, as best we can in the rough press, between two rows of booths toward the church. There is the usual Spanish variety of penny toys on sale—balls, baskets, whips, kites, jumping-jacks, balloons, and every other conceivable trifle admitting of the colors red and yellow. But the great traffic is in those articles especially consecrate to San Isidro—frosted cakes, probably made after the recipe of Maria de la Cabeza, clay vessels of every shape and size for carrying away the healing waters, and, first and foremost, pitos, or whistles. The priests would have us believe that San Isidro was forever droning psalms, but ploughmen know a ploughman's music, and the sacred whistles lead the sales in the Romeria. It is impiety not to purchase at least one of these, and the more devout you are, the more pitos will you buy. The Infanta Isabel, aunt of his Little Majesty, fills her emblazoned coach every year with these shrill pipes in all their variety of queer disguises—fans, birds, puffing grotesques, and, above all, paper flowers. He is no lover worth the having who does not bring his sweetheart a San Isidro rose with a pito for a stem. The ear-torture of an immense fair-ground delighting in an infinity of whistles may be left to the sympathetic imagination. We cling to the memory of Burns, and bear for his bonny sake what we could hardly endure for any such sham laborer as Isidro.