Some of the Galician peasant women have a strange way of dressing their hair. This consists of plaiting a length of material of exactly the same colour as the hair into the pig-tail or tails to give the finished article a more generous and impressive appearance. At first sight the custom strikes one as tending to vanity; yet it is as nothing, if men are to believe all they read, compared with one's own countrywomen's practice of enriching their own locks by adding to them, not a piece of stuff or ribbon, but other people's shorn tresses.
Women do most things—nearly, it seems, all things—in this corner of Spain, but in no respect are they more in evidence than in connection with washing. Laundry work in England is synonymous with everything that is hard and sordid, but in Galicia it reaches something approaching a fine art. Washing seems to be the national recreation of Galicia. All day long and every day the womenfolk are on the banks of streams and rivers, standing, bending, or kneeling at their work, or in public washhouses, such as Corunna possesses, just below the place where Sir John Moore is buried, or in some open ground in towns. At Ferrol there is a huge trough around which the women stand to their work. This is in the open air. Vigo has a covered building near the bay for laundry operations, but by far the greater part of the work is done in sunshine, near the running water by the side of glorious fields or at the edges of green woods, and though the task may be laborious the conditions of the toil are perfect.
There is incessant talk and laughter—one of the brightest and most hilarious groups of women that I saw in Galicia was at Ferrol, round the public wash-tub. There were a score or so of them, busy at work, but not too busy to turn and laugh at the stranger; merry, but not so merry that they could not find energy to break into joyful screams at some playful jest from a passer-by. The spectacle was one on which Samuel Pepys would have dwelt with rapture, and the joke would have been recorded with minute precision in his diary. There are many odd things in Galicia which savour of the England of the Restoration.
The washing is a simple task. The clothes are taken to the water's edge, mostly in flat baskets, such as those which are used for fish. The women kneel over the running water, thoroughly soaking and soaping the garments, which are then placed on stones to be rubbed. After the rubbing there is a careful rinsing and wringing. The articles are then spread on the nearest hedges or grass or stones to dry. A mother may bring her baby with her, and leave the little creature sitting or sleeping in the basket near her; the young boys and girls will give a hand with the work; and if it is after dinner an old woman may come up with her tin and earthenware utensils and wash them in the running water, which carries all impurities towards the sea.
There is in most of us that faculty for enjoyment which comes from watching, at our ease, fellow-creatures toiling, and I will confess to the keen satisfaction I felt at the quaint bridge of Marin, a pleasant little run from Pontevedra, as I leaned over the parapet smoking and watching the washers in the stream below. The sun was shining hotly, the sky was a clear blue, the little white houses dotted the yellow sands, and the brown nets hung to dry from the fishing-boats and fences. The women sang at their labour, and the children sang as they frolicked or helped their elders. It seemed like a universal washing-day. Yet even washing in Galicia is a romantic and picturesque performance, completely free from the steamy, squalid smells of laundry days in British homes and institutions.
CARRYING WATER
A WOMAN THRESHING BEANS
At Marin I leaned over the bridge and gazed long at the workers by the stream, then turned towards Pontevedra, walking up the road in the hot sunshine. Ahead the road was filled with people, moving slowly, and in their midst a banner and some trappings flashed in the strong bright light, and there came the strains of solemn music and the wails of grief, for this was a Galician funeral. The coffin was borne shoulder-high, with several priests near it, and with them a man, like a peasant in his Sunday clothes, playing a bassoon, on which he accompanied some of the responses to the priests' prayers. Women, mostly in black, of the poorest class, with shawls on their heads, followed the coffin closely. There were but few men present. A halt was made for a few moments to rest and change the bearers, and a peasant woman hurried from her cottage with a small table on which they could rest their burden. All the time there were the prayers and the responses, mingled with the strangely sweet and solemn music of the great reed instrument, until the procession reached a spot at which a branch of the road led to a little church on the shore, whose bell was tolling and in whose ground the burial was to take place. It was a simple ceremony, shorn of pomp and circumstance, and in perfect keeping with the wondrous peace and beauty of the sun-bathed hills and water.