Gatherings from Spain

by Richard Ford

Origin of the Bull-fight or Festival, and its Religious Character—Fiestas Reales—Royal Feasts—Charles I. at one—Discontinuance of the Old System—Sham Bull-fights—Plaza de Toros—Slang Language—Spanish Bulls—Breeds—The Going to a Bull-fight.

OUR honest John Bulls have long been more partial to their Spanish namesakes, than even to those perpetrated by the Pope, or made in the Emerald Isle; to see a bull-fight has been the emphatic object of enlightened curiosity, since Peninsular sketches have been taken and published by our travellers. No sooner had Charles the First, when prince, lost his heart at Madrid, than his royal father-in-law-that-was-to-be, regaled him and the fair inspirer of his tender passion, with one of these charming spectacles; an event which, as many men and animals were butchered, was thought by the historiographers of the day to be one that posterity would not willingly let die; their contemporary accounts will ever form the gems of every tauromachian library that aspires to be complete.

BULL FESTIVALS.

These sports, which recall the bloody games of the Roman amphitheatre, are now only to be seen in Spain, where the present clashes with the past, where at every moment we stumble on some bone and relic of Biblical and Roman antiquity; the close parallels, nay the identities, which are observable between these combats and those of classical ages, both as regards the spectators and actors, are omitted, as being more interesting to the scholar than to the general reader; they were pointed out by us some years ago in the Quarterly Review, No. cxxiv. And as human nature changes not, men when placed in given and similar circumstances, will without any previous knowledge or intercommunication arrive at nearly similar results; the gentle pastime of spearing and killing bulls in public and single-handed was probably devised by the Moors, or rather by the Spanish Moors, for nothing of the kind has ever obtained in Africa either now or heretofore. The Moslem Arab, when transplanted into a Christian and European land, modified himself in many respects to the ways and usages of the people among whom he settled, just as his Oriental element was widely introduced among his Gotho-Hispano neighbours. Moorish Andalucia is still the head-quarters of the tauromachian art, and those who wish carefully to master this, the science of Spain par excellence, should commence their studies in the school of Ronda, and proceed thence to take the highest honours in the University of Seville, the Bullford of the Peninsula.

FIESTAS REALES.

By the way, our boxing, baiting term bull-fight is a very lay and low translation of the time-honoured Castilian title, Fiestas de Toros, the feasts, festivals of bulls. The gods and goddesses of antiquity were conciliated by the sacrifice of hecatombs; the lowing tickled their divine ears, and the purple blood fed their eyes, no less than the roasted sirloins fattened the priests, while the grand spectacle and death delighted their dinnerless congregations. In Spain, the Church of Rome, never indifferent to its interests, instantly marshalled into its own service a ceremonial at once profitable and popular;[13] it consecrated butchery by wedding it to the altar, availing itself of this gentle handmaid, to obtain funds in order to raise convents; even in the last century Papal bulls were granted to mendicant orders, authorising them to celebrate a certain number of Fiestas de Toros, on condition of devoting the profit to finishing their church; and in order to swell the receipts at the doors, spiritual indulgences and soul releases from purgatory, the number of years being apportioned to the relative prices of the seats, were added as a bonus to all paid for places at a spectacle hallowed by a pious object. So at the taurobolia of antiquity, those who were sprinkled with bull blood were absolved from sin. Protestant ministers, who very properly fear and distrust papal bulls, replace them by bazaars and fancy fairs, whenever a fashionable chapel requires a new blue slate roofing. Again, when not devoted to religious purposes, every bull-fight aids the cause of charity; the profits form the chief income of the public hospitals, and thus furnish both funds and patients, as the venous circulation of the mob thirsting for gore, rises to blood heat under a sun of fire, and the subsequent mingling of sexes, opening of bottles and knives, occasion more deaths among the lords and ladies of the Spanish creation, than among the horned and hoofed victims of the amphitheatre.

It is a common but very great mistake, to suppose that bull-fights are as numerous in Spain as bandits; it is just the contrary, for this may there be considered the tip-top æsthetic treat, as the Italian Opera is in England, and both are rather expensive amusements; true it is that with us, only the salt of the earth patronises the performers of the Haymarket, while high and low, vulgar and exquisite, alike delight in those of the Spanish fields. Each bull-fight costs from 200l. to 300l., and even more when got up out of Andalucia or Madrid, which alone can afford to support a standing company; in other cities the actors and animals have to be sent for express, and from great distances. Hence the representations occur like angels’ visits, few and far between; they are reserved for the chief festivals of the church and crown, for the unfeigned devotion of the faithful on the holy days of local saints, and the Virgin; they are also given at the marriages and coronations of the sovereign, and thence are called Fiestas reales, Royal festivals—the ceremonial being then deprived of its religious character, although it is much increased in worldly and imposing importance. The sight is indeed one of surpassing pomp, etiquette, and magnificence, and has succeeded to the Auto de Fé, in offering to the most Catholic Queen and her subjects the greatest possible means of tasting rapture, that the limited powers of mortal enjoyment can experience in this world of shadows and sorrows.

AN INVOLUNTARY CHAMPION.

They are only given at Madrid, and then are conducted entirely after the ancient Spanish and Moorish customs, of which such splendid descriptions remain in the ballad romances. They take place in the great square of the capital, which is then converted into an arena. The windows of the quaint and lofty houses are arranged as boxes, and hung with velvets and silks. The royal family is seated under a canopy of state in the balcony of the central mansion. There we beheld Ferdinand VII. presiding at the solemn swearing of allegiance to his daughter. He was then seated where Charles I. had sat two centuries before; he was guarded by the unchanged halberdiers, and was witnessing the unchanged spectacle. On these royal occasions the bulls are assailed by gentlemen, dressed and armed as in good old Spanish times, before the fatal Bourbon accession obliterated Castilian costume, customs, and nationality. The champions, clad in the fashions of the Philips, and mounted on beauteous barbs, the minions of their race, attack the fierce animal with only a short spear, the immemorial weapon of the Iberian. The combatants must be hidalgos by birth, and have each for a padrino, or god-father, a first-rate grandee of Spain, who passes before royalty in a splendid equipage and six, and is attended by bands of running footmen, who are arrayed either as Greeks, Romans, Moors, or fancy characters. It is not easy to obtain these caballeros en plaza, or poor knights, who are willing to expose their lives to the imminent dangers, albeit during the fight they have the benefit of experienced toreros to advise their actions and cover their retreats.

In 1833 a gentle dame, without the privity of her lord and husband, inscribed his name as one of the champion volunteers. In procuring him this agreeable surprise, she, so it was said in Madrid, argued thus: “Either mi marido will be killed—in that case I shall get a new husband; or he will survive, in which event he will get a pension.” She failed in both of these admirable calculations—such is the uncertainty of human events. The terror of this poor héros malgré lui, on whom chivalry had been thrust, was absolutely ludicrous when exposed by his well-intentioned better-half, to the horns of this dilemma and bull. Any other horns, my dearest, but these! He was wounded at the first rush, did survive, and did not get a pension; for Ferdinand died soon after, and few pensions have been paid in the Peninsula, since the land has been blessed with a charte, constitution, liberty, and a representative government.