Of José Zorilla as a poet there is little need to speak. His countrymen read his voluminous works, but they are not of any real value. Campoamor describes his Dorloras as "poetic compositions combining lightness, sentiment, and brevity with philosophic importance." His earlier works were studied from Shakespeare and from Byron, who was the star of the age when Campoamor began to write. His most ambitious work, the Universal Drama, is "after Dante and Milton." He is a great favourite with his fellow-countrymen, both as poet and companion. He is a member of the Academy and a Senator.
It is impossible, however, to do more than indicate a few of the writers who are leaders in the literature of Spain to-day. There has, in fact, been an immense impulse in the production of books of all classes within the last twenty or thirty years. In fiction, Spain once more aspires to have a characteristic literature of her own, in place of relying on translations from the French, as was the case for a brief time before her political renaissance began.
A notable departure has been the foundation of the Folklore Society, and the publication up to the present time of eleven volumes under the name of Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares Españolas, under the direction of Señor Don Antonio Machado y Alvarez. In the introduction to the first volume, the Director tells us that, with the help of the editor of El Folklore Andaluz and his friends, D. Alejandro Guichot y Sierra and D. Luis Montolo y Raustentrauch, he has undertaken this great work, which arose out of the Bases del Folklore Español, published in 1881, and the two societies established in 1882, the Folklore Andaluz and Folklore Extremeño. These societies have for object the gathering together, copying, and publishing of the popular beliefs, proverbs, songs, stories, poems, the old customs and superstitions of all parts of the Peninsula, including Portugal, as indispensable materials for the knowledge and scientific reconstruction of Spanish culture. In this patriotic and historical work many writers have joined, each bringing his quota of garnered treasure-trove, presenting thus, in a series of handy little volumes, a most interesting collection of the ancient customs, beliefs, and, in fact, the folklore of a country exceptionally rich in widely differing nationalities.
Many of the tales, which it would seem even at the present time, especially in Portugal and Galicia, are told in the evening, and have rarely found their way into print, have the strong stamp of the legitimate Eastern fable, and bear a great family resemblance to those of the Arabian Nights. As, in fact, the Thousand and One Nights was very early published in Spanish, it is probable that its marvellous histories were known verbally to the people of the Iberian continent for many centuries, and have coloured much of its folklore. The Ingenious Student is certainly one of these. Barbers also play an important part in many of these tales. It is quite common for the Court barber to marry the King's daughter, and to succeed him as ruler; but the barber was, of course, surgeon or blood-letter as well as the principal news-agent—the forerunner of the daily newspaper of our times. The transmutation of human beings into mules, and vice versa, is a common fable, and we meet with wolf-children and the curious superstition that unbaptised people can penetrate into the domains of the enchanted Moors, and that these have no power to injure them. The story of the Black Slave, who eventually married the King's daughter and had a white mule for his Prime Minister, is very Eastern in character. "From so wise a King and so good a Queen the people derived great benefit; disputes never went beyond the ears of the Chief Minister, and, in the words of the immortal barber and poet of the city, 'the kingdom flourished under the guidance of a mule: which proves that there are qualities in the irrational beings which even wisest ministers would do well to imitate.'" The Watchful Servant is, however, purely Spanish in character, and it closes with the proverb that "a jealous man on horseback is first cousin to a flash of lightning." King Robin, the story of how the beasts and birds revenged themselves on Sigli and his father, the chief of a band of robbers, recalls "Uncle Remus" and his animal tales; for the monkeys, at the suggestion of the fox, and with the delighted consent of the birds and the bees, made a figure wholly of birdlime to represent a sleeping beggar, being quite certain that Sigli would kick it the moment that he saw the intruder from the windows of his father's castle. In effect both father and son became fast to the birdlime figure, when they were stung to death by ten thousand bees. Then King Robin ordered the wolves to dig the grave, into which the monkeys rolled the man and the boy and the birdlime figure, and, after covering it up, all the beasts and birds and insects took possession of the robbers' castle, and lived there under the beneficent rule of King Robin.
Silver Bells is, again, a story of a wholly different type, and charmingly pretty it is, with its new development of the wicked step-mother—in this case a mother who had married again and hated her little girl by the first husband. Elvira, the Sainted Princess tells how the daughter of King Wamba, who had become a Christian unknown to her father, by her prayers and tears caused his staff to blossom in one night, after he had determined that unless this miracle were worked by the God of the Christians she and her lover should be burned.
One fault is to be found with these old stories as remembered and told by Mr. Sellers; that is, the introduction of modern ideas into the Old-World fables of a primitive race. Hits at the Jesuits, the Inquisition, and the government of recent kings take away much of the glamour of what is undoubtedly folklore. The story of the Black Hand seems to have many varieties. It is somewhat like our stories of Jack and the Bean Stalk and Bluebeard, but differs, to the advantage of the Spanish ideal, in that the enchanted prince who is forced to play the part of the terrible Bluebeard during the day voluntarily enters upon a second term of a hundred years' enchantment, so as to free the wife whom he loves, and who goes off safely with her two sisters and numerous other decapitated beauties, restored to life by the self-immolation of the prince. The White Dove is another curious and pretty fable which has many variations in different provinces—a story in which the King's promise cannot be broken, though it ties him to the hateful negress who has transformed his promised wife into a dove, and has usurped her place. Eventually, of course, the pet dove changes into a lovely girl again, when the King finds and draws out the pins which the negress has stuck into her head, and the usurper is "burnt" as punishment—an ending which savours of the Quemadero.
The making of folklore is not, however, extinct in Spain, a country where poetry seems to be an inherent faculty. One is constantly reminded of the Spanish proverb, De poetas y de locos, todos tenémos un poco (We have each of us somewhat of the poet and somewhat of the fool). No one can tell whence the rhymed jeux d'esprit come; they seem to spring spontaneously from the heart and lips of the people. Children are constantly heard singing coplas which are evidently of recent production, since they speak of recent events, and yet which have the air of old folklore ballads, of concentrated bits of history.
Rey inocente—a weak king,
Reina traidora—treacherous queen,
Pueblo cobarde—a coward people,