Sunday morning was as calm and beautiful as could be desired by visitors with only a few days in which to explore an island.
With quite unwonted energy we rose before seven o'clock, and after dressing and taking a cup of tea in our own little sitting-room, went out to the Alameda to see the countryfolk coming in to Mass or market.
On the ships in the harbour flags were flying. Everybody was in gala dress. The very air felt gay. And as we sat on one of the stone seats in the leafy Alameda and watched the people streaming into town from the broad white roads that lead to San Antonio, Santa Eulalia and other villages, we chirruped with irrepressible delight, so unexpectedly and deliciously quaint were the figures that passed before us.
Some of the women rode mules, and sat perched high on a pile of sheepskins, their multi-coloured petticoats billowing about their neat ankles. Others were packed closely into open carts that had cushions placed low on either side of their sagging floor-matting. Many walked, accompanied by vigilant elderly relatives. And oh! how demure and decorous they all looked, with their dark hair parted in the middle and severely plastered down the sides of their rosy young faces.
An object of fervent admiration in my childhood was a pincushion made of a little china doll, whose placid head and insignificant body appeared from a widely distended skirt. And on this brilliant Sunday morning the Ivizan women and girls in their exaggerated skirts seemed to me like a procession of walking dolls.
The dresses appeared to be fashioned from any material that boasted a pattern, for the Ivizan detests a plain material. Even the velvet or plush used in the men's clothes was in many instances flowered or striped. The short broad aprons were of bright-coloured silk elaborately tucked above the hem. Their deeply fringed shawls and head wraps were bordered with wreaths of gaily tinted flowers. The chains of big oblong gold beads and elaborate gold pendants in the form of crosses and crowns gave a blatant and contradictory note to the staid costume, while the gaudy hue of the ribbon that tied the end of the pigtail and fell in long ends nearly to the hem of the skirt suggested a hint of the original Eve lurking behind all this apparent demureness. Gold buttons closely set ran from the wrist of the long sleeve, which was often of green, to the elbow. And the white sandalled shoes, whose toes were caught up by a cord bound round the ankles, had a suggestion of sabots that added a Dutch touch to the picture.
Sometimes a mother in sober garments or a smiling father in a wide hat marched past in proud chaperonage of a diffident young daughter rigged out in all the family jewellery. One girl, who enjoyed the personal care of her mother, wore a gown of old rose-spotted brocade looped up in pannier form to show a pink petticoat.
To our thinking the extreme of quaintness was reached in the person of a little maid of seven or eight, whose dress was a travesty of that of her widowed mother; with the sole difference that, while the mother's mourning garb was of unrelieved black, the kerchief and tiny shawl of the child had bordering wreaths of white flowers. As she walked slowly by, a tiny entity in over-voluminous garments, the Man declared that, despite her superhuman sobriety, and the "papa, prunes, prisms" expression of her infant lips, he felt convinced that it was with difficulty she resisted a desire to skip!
They say there are ten men for every woman on the island, and our experience of that Sunday morning inclined us to believe it. From every direction came fine strapping lads moving in droves. A distinct resemblance in the dress, taken in combination with the rakish dare-devil air with which these young bloods set their wide hats to one side and swaggered along, vividly suggested the Mexican cowboy.