Chapter 3

'The sunny flats under the old Moorish walls, which extend between the gates of _Carmona_ and _La Carne_, are the haunts of idlers and of gamesters. The lower classes of Spaniards are constantly gambling at cards: groups are to be seen playing all day long for wine, love, or coppers, in the sun, or under their vine-trellises. There is generally some well-known cock of the walk, a bully, or _guapo_, who will come up and lay his hands on the cards, and say, 'No one shall play here but with mine'--_aqui no se juega sino con mis barajas_. If the gamblers are cowed, they give him _dos cuartos_, a halfpenny each. If, however, one of the challenged be a spirited fellow, he defies him. _Aqui no se cobra el barato sino con un punal de Albacete_--'You get no change here except out of an Albacete knife.' If the defiance be accepted, _vamos alla_ is the answer--'Let's go to it.' There's an end then of the cards, all flock to the more interesting _ecarte_; instances have occurred, where Greek meets Greek, of their tying the two advanced feet together, and yet remaining fencing with knife and cloak for a quarter of an hour before the blow be dealt. The knife is held firmly, the thumb is pressed straight on the blade, and calculated either for the cut or thrust, to chip bread and kill men.'

Apropos of Seville. It is sometimes called we believe La Capital de Majeza; the proper translation of which we conceive to be the Head Quarters of Foolery, for nothing more absurd and contemptible than this Majeza ever came within the sphere of our contemplation. Nevertheless it constitutes the chief glory of the Sevillians. Every Sevillian, male or female, rich or poor, handsome or ugly, aspires at a certain period of life to the character of the majo or maja. We are not going to waste either space or time by entering into any lengthened detail of this ridiculous nonsense: indeed, it is quite unnecessary; almost every one of the books published on Spain, and their name at present is legion, being crammed with details of this same Majeza--a happy combination of insolence, ignorance, frippery, and folly. The majo or Tomfool struts about the streets dressed something like a merry Andrew with jerkin and tight hose, a faja or girdle of crimson silk round his waist, in which is sometimes stuck a dagger, his neck exposed, and a queer kind of half-peaked hat on his head. He smokes continually, thinks there is no place like Seville, and that he is the prettiest fellow in Seville. His favourite word is 'Carajo!' The maja or she-simpleton, wears a fan and mantilla, exhibits a swimming and affected gait, thinks that there's no place like Seville, that she is the flower of Seville--Carai! is her favourite exclamation. But enough of these poor ridiculous creatures. Yet, ridiculous in every respect as they are, these majos and majas find imitators and admirers in people who might be expected to look down with contempt upon them and their follies; we have seen, and we tell it with shame, we have seen Englishmen dressed in Tomfool's livery lounging about Seville breathing out smoke and affecting the airs of hijos de Sevilla; and what was yet worse, fair blooming Englishwomen, forgetful of their rank as daughters of England, appearing a la maja on the banks of the Guadalquivir, with fan and mantilla, carai and caramba. We wish sincerely that our countrymen and women whilst travelling abroad would always bear in mind that they can only be respected or respectable so long as they maintain their proper character--that of Englishmen and Englishwomen;--but in attempting to appear French, Italians, and Spaniards, they only make themselves supremely ridiculous. As the tree falls, so must it lie. They are children of England; they cannot alter that fact, therefore let them make the most of it, and after all it is no bad thing to be a child of England. But what a poor feeble mind must be his who would deny his country under any circumstances! Therefore, gentle English travellers, when you go to Seville, amongst other places, appear there as English, though not obtrusively, and do not disgrace your country by imitating the airs and graces of creatures whom the other Spaniards, namely, Castilians, Manchegans, Aragonese, &c., pronounce to be fools.

THE NORMANS IN SPAIN.

'In the ninth century, the Normans or Northmen made piratical excursions on the W. coast of Spain. They passed, in 843, from Lisbon up to the straits and everywhere, as in France, overcame the unprepared natives, plundering, burning, and destroying. They captured even Seville itself, September 30, 844, but were met by the Cordovese Kalif, beaten, and expelled. They were called by the Moors _Majus_, _Madjous_, _Magioges_ (Conde, i. 282), and by the early Spanish annalists _Almajuzes_. The root has been erroneously derived from [Greek text], Magus, magicians or supernatural beings, as they were almost held to be. The term _Madjous_ was, strictly speaking, applied by the Moors to those Berbers and Africans who were Pagans or Muwallads, _i.e._ not believers in the Khoran. The true etymology is that of the Gog and Magog so frequently mentioned by Ezekiel (xxxviii. and xxxix.) and in the Revelations (xx. 8) as ravagers of the earth and nations, May-Gogg, "he that dissolveth,"--the fierce Normans appeared, coming no one knew from whence, just when the minds of men were trembling at the approach of the millennium, and thus were held to be the forerunners of the destroyers of the world. This name of indefinite gigantic power survived in the _Mogigangas_, or terrific images, which the Spaniards used to parade in their religious festivals, like the Gogs and Magogs of our civic wise men of the East. Thus Andalucia being the half-way point between the N. and S.E., became the meeting-place of the two great ravaging swarms which have desolated Europe: here the stalwart children of frozen Norway, the worshippers of Odin, clashed against the Saracens from torrid Arabia, the followers of Mahomet. Nor can a greater proof be adduced of the power and relative superiority of the Cordovese Moors over the other nations of Europe, than this, their successful resistance to those fierce invaders, who overran without difficulty the coasts of England, France, Apulia, and Sicily: conquerors everywhere else, here they were driven back in disgrace. Hence the bitter hatred of the Normans against the Spanish Moors, hence their alliances with the Catalans, where a Norman impression yet remains in architecture; but, as in Sicily, these barbarians, unrecruited from the North, soon died away, or were assimilated as usual with the more polished people, whom they had subdued by mere superiority of brute force.'

If the Moors called the Norsemen Al Madjus, which according to our author signifies Gog and Magog, the Norsemen retorted by a far more definite and expressive nickname; this was Blue-skins or Bluemen, doubtless in allusion to the livid countenances of the Moors. The battles between the Moors and the Northmen are frequently mentioned in the Sagas, none of which, however, are of higher antiquity than the eleventh century. In none of these chronicles do we find any account of this raid upon Seville in 844; it was probably a very inconsiderable affair magnified by the Moors and their historians. Snorre speaks of the terrible attack of Sigurd, surnamed the Jorsal wanderer, or Jerusalem pilgrim, upon Lisbon and Cintra, both of which places he took, destroying the Moors by hundreds. He subsequently 'harried' the southern coasts of Spain on his voyage to Constantinople. But this occurred some two hundred years after the affair of Seville mentioned in the Handbook. It does not appear that the Norse ever made any serious attempt to establish their power in Spain; had they done so we have no doubt that they would have succeeded. We entertain all due respect for the courage and chivalry of the Moors, especially those of Cordova, but we would have backed the Norse, especially the pagan Norse, against the best of them. The Biarkemal would soon have drowned the Moorish 'Lelhies.'

'Thou Har, who grip'st thy foeman Right hard, and Rolf the bowman, And many, many others, The forky lightning's brothers, Wake--not for banquet table, Wake--not with maids to gabble, But wake for rougher sporting, For Hildur's bloody courting.'

Under the head of La Mancha our author has much to say on the subject of Don Quixote; and to the greater part of what he says we yield our respectful assent. His observations upon the two principal characters in that remarkable work display much sound as well as original criticism. We cannot however agree with him in preferring the second part, which we think a considerable falling off from the first. We should scarcely believe the two parts were written by the same hand. We have read through both various times, but we have always sighed on coming to the conclusion of the first. It was formerly our custom to read the Don 'pervasively' once every three years; we still keep up that custom _in part_, and hope to do so whilst life remains. We say _in part_, because we now conclude with the first part going no farther. We have little sympathy with the pranks played off upon Sancho and his master by the Duke and Duchess, to the description of which so much space is devoted; and as for the affair of Sancho's government at Barataria, it appears to us full of inconsistency and absurdity. Barataria, we are told, was a place upon the Duke's estate, consisting of two or three thousand inhabitants; and of such a place it was very possible for a nobleman to have made the poor squire governor; but we no sooner get to Barataria than we find ourselves not in a townlet, but in a _capital_ in Madrid. The governor at night makes his rounds, attended by 'an immense watch;' he wanders from one street to another for hours; he encounters all kinds of adventures, not mock but real adventures, and all kinds of characters, not mock but real characters; there is talk of bull-circuses, theatres, gambling-houses, and such like; and all this in a place of two or three thousand inhabitants, in which, by the way, nothing but a cat is ever heard stirring after eight o'clock; this we consider to be carrying the joke rather too far; and it is not Sancho but the reader who is joked with. But the first part is a widely different affair: all the scenes are admirable. Should we live a thousand years, we should never forget the impression made upon us by the adventure of the corpse, where the Don falls upon the priests who are escorting the bier by torch light, and by the sequel thereto, his midnight adventures in the Brown Mountain. We can only speak of these scenes as astonishing--they have never been equalled in their line. There is another wonderful book which describes what we may call the city life of Spain, as the other describes the vida del campo--we allude of course to Le Sage's novel, which as a whole we prefer to Don Quixote, the characters introduced being certainly more true to nature than those which appear in the other great work. Shame to Spain that she has not long since erected a statue to Le Sage, who has done so much to illustrate her; but miserable envy and jealousy have been at the bottom of the feeling ever manifested in Spain towards that illustrious name. There are some few stains in the grand work of Le Sage. He has imitated without acknowledgment three or four passages contained in the life of Obregon, a curious work, of which we have already spoken, and to which on some future occasion we may perhaps revert.

But the Hand-book? We take leave of it with the highest respect and admiration for the author; and recommend it not only to travellers in Spain, but to the public in general, as a work of a very high order, written _con amore_ by a man who has devoted his whole time, talents, and all the various treasures of an extensive learning to its execution. We repeat that we were totally unprepared for such a literary treat as he has here placed before us. It is our sincere wish that at his full convenience he will favour us with something which may claim consanguinity with the present work. It hardly becomes us to point out to an author subjects on which to exercise his powers. We shall, however, take the liberty of hinting that a good history of Spain does not exist, at least in English--and that not even Shelton produced a satisfactory translation of the great gem of Spanish literature, 'The Life and Adventures of Don Quixote.'

* * * * *

LONDON: Printed for THOMAS J. WISE, Hampstead, N.W. _Edition limited to Thirty Copies_

Footnote:

{13} Relaciones de la vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon.