Songs similar to those quoted are usually delivered by negroes and mulattoes at their tertulias or evening gatherings, where, seated on leather-bottomed chairs, or squatting at the portals of their doors, they entertain their black and brown divinities. One of the party accompanies himself upon a guitar, or a primitive instrument formed out of a square box upon which are arranged slips of flexible iron of different lengths and tones. Another has a strangely-fashioned harp, made from a bent bamboo, to which a solitary string is attached. The guitar player is, however, in greater demand than the rest, and is perhaps asked to favour the company with a sentimental song, such, for example, as the popular ditty called La Bayamesa, which commences:—
¿No te acuerdes, gentil Bayamesa,
Que tu fuistes el amor de Fulgencio,
Cuando alegre en tu candida frente,
Beso ardiente imprimí, con pasion?—
that is, a certain 'gentle Bayamese' is reminded that she was the loved one of Fulgencio, who, invited by the lady's open countenance impressed upon it a passionate kiss.
This being unanimously approved of by the company, the dark-complexioned troubadour will probably be called upon for another song, and the following mournful ballad will perhaps be chanted:—
Yo nací solo para padecer;
¡No te acuerdes mas de mí!
No tengo ningun placer,
Desgraciada y sin salud;
Yo nací solo para padecer.
Mira, ¡ay! la virtud
No se consigue así, &c.
I was born a child of tears!
Think thou then no more of me.
Life brings only grief and fears
To one worn and pale with care.
I was born a child of tears!
Ah! can virtue linger where
Dwelleth only misery?
CHAPTER XIV.
MASQUERADING IN CUBA.
Deserted!—'Los Mamarrachos'—A French-Creole Ball—Street Masquers—Negro Amateurs—Masks and Dominoes—The Plaza de Armas—Victims of the Carnival—A Cuban Café in Holiday Time—'Comparsas'—White and Black Balls—A Moral.
It is the twenty-eighth of December, and the thermometer stands at eighty-five in the shade. I rise with the 'ganza grulla'—our bird chronometer—that wonderful creature of the crane species, with a yard of neck, and two-feet-six of legs. Every morning at six of the clock precisely, our grulla awakens us by half-a-dozen gurgling and metallic shrieks, in a tone loud enough to be heard by his Excellency the Governor, who is a sound sleeper, and lives in a big palace half a league from our studio. I descend from my Indian grass hammock, and don a suit of the flimsiest cashmere, in compliment to the winter month, and because there is still a taste of night air in the early morning. I have to manufacture my own café noir to-day, for my companion is absent, and our servants—a stalwart Ethiop and a youthful mulatto—are both abroad, and will not return for the next three days. It is a fiesta and Friday. To-morrow is 'la ñapa,' or day of grace, 'thrown in' to the holiday-makers, to enable them to recruit their exhausted frames, which they do by repeating the pleasurable excitement of the previous day. Then comes Sunday, another fiesta, which, in most foreign climes, is another word for day, not of rest, but of restlessness.
The leading characteristics of a Cuban carnival are the street 'comparsas,' or companies of masqueraders—'mamarrachos' as they are called in the creole vernacular—and the masked balls. Here you have a comparsa comprised of pure Africans; though you wouldn't believe it, for their flat-nosed faces are illumined by a coat of light flesh-colour, and their woolly heads are dyed a blazing crimson. The males have also assumed female attire, though their better halves have not returned the compliment. Here is another and a better comparsa, of mulattoes, with cheeks of flaming vermilion, wigs of yellow tow, and false beards. Their everyday apparel is worn reversed, and the visible lining is embellished with tinsel, paint, and ribbons. They are preceded by a band of music: a big drum, hand tambours, basket rattles, conch shells, and a nutmeg-grater. The members of this goodly company dance and sing as they pass rapidly along the streets, occasionally halting in their career to serenade a friend. Now, they pause before a cottage, at the door of which is a group of 'mulaticas francesas,' or French mulatto girls. The maskers salute them in falsetto voices, and address them by their Christian names as a guarantee of their acquaintanceship. The girls try hard to recognise the disfigured faces of their visitors. At last:—