Señor Don Eugenio de Olavarria-y Huarte, in citing this copla (Folklore de Madrid), points out that it contains the very essence of folklore, since it gives a perfectly true account of the battle of Alcoléa. Although Prim was not present, he was the liberator, and without him the battle would never have been fought, nor the joy of liberty have been sung in the streets of the capital. There is seldom, if ever, any grossness in these spontaneous songs of the people—never indecency or double meaning. No sooner has an event happened than it finds its history recorded in some of these popular coplas, and sung by the children at their play.
The Folklore Society has some interesting information to give about the innumerable rhymed games which Spanish children, like our own, are so fond of playing, many of them having an origin lost in prehistoric times. One finds, also, from some of the old stories, that the devils are much hurt in their feelings by having tails and horns ascribed to them. As a matter of fact, they have neither, and cannot understand where mortals picked up the idea! The question is an interesting one. Where did we obtain this notion?
CHAPTER XVII
THE FUTURE OF SPAIN
An Englishman who, from over thirty years' residence in Spain and close connection with the country, numbered among her people some of his most valued friends, thus speaks of the national characteristics:
"The Spanish and English characters are, indeed, in many points strangely alike. Spain ranks as one of the Latin nations, and the Republican orators of Spain are content to look to France for light and leading in all their political combinations; but a large mass of the nation, the bone and sinew of the country, the silent, toiling tillers of the soil, are not of this way of thinking.... There is a sturdy independence in the Spanish character, and an impatience of dictation that harmonises more nearly with the English character than with that of her Latin neighbours.... There is a gravity and reticence also in the Spaniard that is absent from his mercurial neighbour, and which is, indeed, much more akin to our cast of temper.