“You would be shocked if you could hear what we say to the Virgin in our houses and when we see her in the streets. But it is not irreverence or disrespect, as you would consider it. It is that we feel towards her as one of the family and talk to her as we should to one of ourselves.”
The return of certain confraternities after carrying their images through the streets in Holy Week presents an extraordinary spectacle. This is especially the case with images belonging to the poorer quarters. In one town the procession of one of these images returns early on the morning of Easter Eve, after moving slowly through the streets, from its church to the distant cathedral and back, all through the night. The bearers of the platform, which is a great weight, the members of the confraternity, the soldiers—for the Army always has a place in these functions—and the band in attendance, are all worn out with fatigue, but when they reach the threshold of the church they revive, the band strikes up an animated march, and the whole crowd assembled to do honour to “Our Lady” seem to go crazy with joy at having brought her safely back to her “home” (á su casa). The richly dressed life-sized image is lifted down from the platform by many eager hands, and swayed to and fro in time to the music almost as if dancing, and the whole atmosphere of the scene is that of a rejoicing welcome to a beloved being who has returned to her family after a long absence fraught with danger. Nothing brings home to the observer the intense reality of the people’s feeling for their santos like such a scene as this. It is, however, seldom witnessed by foreigners or even by the well-to-do of their own nation. It is so much a matter of course in Spain that no one goes out of his way to see it, and I was present on such an occasion only by the merest chance.
A bright, clever woman of the working classes, with a strong sense of humour, told me that she could only pray to a certain Christ. “All the others are only sticks (palos) to me. I can never pass our Lord of Pity without kneeling down, and I know by the look in his eyes if he is going to grant my prayer, but I cannot pray to any of the others.”
“Then when you pray to that image of Our Lord, it really is the Christ to you?”
“No; the Christ is in heaven with His Mother, but I pray to our Lord of Pity, and he always answers me. No other is the same. When I pass Our Lord of the Miracles, for instance, in the Church of San José, I have to say: ‘Excuse me, Lord, but you are only a stick to me, and I cannot pray to you. I do not know why this should be so, Lord, but that is how I find it.’” All this was said quite gravely, and the prayer addressed to “Our Lord of Pity” was recited with sincere piety.
A good old widow of my acquaintance finds St. Anthony of Padua particularly sympathetic, and feels constrained to pray for the soul of her husband at 7 a.m. on All Souls’ Day before one particular St. Anthony in one particular chapel at a quite inconvenient distance from her home. On any other occasion the first St. Anthony of Padua she comes across serves her purpose, and I once saw her stop short and break into a fervent prayer under her breath at the sight of an abominable penny chromo of the saint which suddenly attracted her attention in a shop window.
MORALITY AND CEREMONIAL
NEWSPAPER SELLERS IN MADRID.