“They still make the azulejos, and the pottery in Seville, as they did in the days of the Moors—how do I know? In the days of the Romans! Remember, when you come to build your house, that the tiles of Triano are the best, cheapest, and handsomest in the world; that Seville is a port; and that they can be shipped to you at a fair price. Shall we stop at the factory and see them? The place supplies the whole of Spain with crockery. Patsy would fall in love with the big garden pots, and the pretty jugs.”
The most interesting thing we saw in the factory was the potter himself. Behind the splendid showrooms, where the fine majolicas and the common wares of the common people are displayed, in a dark, dank little corner, sat a man, half his body out of sight, working the potter’s wheel. He sat on the edge of a square hole in the floor; his legs were hidden, but his feet were busy turning, turning the wheel. He was old and poor. His red hands had been in the wet clay who knows how many hours—how many days? He was spiritless and sad in face and bearing, but oh! the skill of those poor red hands! The shapeless lump of soft wet clay was thumped first upon the revolving stand, then as if by magic, though we saw it with our eyes, it took shape, grew lovely and alive under those hands that looked so sodden, and yet could turn that gray mud into shapes of beauty. A cup for a dying man’s broth, a vase for a bride’s rose, a basin to bathe a new-born child: as each was finished he held it up for a moment for us to see, then laid it down beside him with the others. I put a coin in the red, clayey hand. He gave a little mechanical nod, a word of thanks, and went back to his work. He earns less than an unskilled child would earn at home. It is doubtful if he can read or write. He works from dawn to dark—the sight of him gave me great pangs of homesickness! Pemberton could tell me of no movement to help this man to a freer life, to a day whose working hours do not absorb every heartbeat of power. There is only charity! Bread for the hungry, salve for the sick, almshouse for the worked-out human beast of burden. Oh! that I could help him to pass through the Gate of Hope into the Hospitable Land, where every one has his chance, where the ranks are always open.
Triano was already behind us, and we were out upon the Aracena road that runs to the north. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the sound of marching men came towards us out of a cloud of dust. A little farther on we passed a regiment of small brown soldiers; mere boys, most of them. They all wore sandals; some had stockings, some were without. They must have been on fatiguing work, they looked so tired and footsore. In the fields, a band of peasants were cutting the ruby alfalfa; the air was fragrant with the honey-sweet smell of it. The harsh whetting of scythes, the soft swish of sickles through the clover, the song of the leader of the mowers, an oldish man with a red handkerchief tied round his head, marked the time for the march of those weary soldiers,
| Adiós padre, y adiós madre, adiós iglesia del pueblo, que voy á servir al rey los ochos años que lo debo. | Goodbye father and mother; Goodbye church of the village. I must go and serve the king For the eight years that I owe him. |
One of the last of the soldiers, a superb blond man towering above the others, repeated the refrain of the mower’s song:
“I must go and serve the king for the eight years that I owe him!”
“Nothing has changed since Strabo praised this pleasant valley,” said Pemberton. “We still use sickles, and we still take the young men from the work of the fields, and turn them into soldiers, food for gunpowder.”
Coming mysteriously towards us, down the straight white road, were half a dozen little moving heaps of newly cut clover. We could not see, until they were upon us, the legs of the tiny donkey trotting along under each fragrant load.
“In Greece,” said Pemberton, “when they want to say a man is a clever, long-headed chap, they call him an ass. Of all asses, the Spanish is the wisest. The peasants work them hard, abuse them a little, but they love them and treat them like members of the family; that is why they are so intelligent.”
We were passing through gray olive groves, between fields of emerald wheat: golden butterflies hovered about the wild lavender growing by the wayside. Here and there, peeping from orchard and ploughed field, were bits of ruins, all that is left of the once splendid forum, the temples and palaces of the old Roman city of Italica. At the guardian’s hut, where we stopped to inquire the way to the circus, we saw a few poor antiquities, some Roman lamps and fragments of sculpture. The guardian was absent, and we looked in vain for a trace of the fine Roman mosaic pavement discovered a hundred years ago, of which we had heard.