Part 7 (1/2)
With very early morning begins the deep clank of bells, under the chins of a.s.ses that go the rounds to deliver domestic milk from their own udders. There is no end of noise. Even in the elegant dining-room where we ate, lottery-dealers would howl at us through the barred windows, or a donkey outside would rasp our ears with his intolerable braying. Then the street cries are incessant. At night the crowds chafe and jabber till the latest hours, and after eleven the watchmen begin their drawl of unearthly sadness, alternating with the occult and remorseless industry of the mosquito; until, somewhere about dawn, you drop perspiring into an oppressively tropical dream-land, with the _sereno's_ last cry ringing in your ears: ”Hail, Mary, most pure! Three o'clock has struck.”
This is the weird tune to which he chants it:
[Ill.u.s.tration: Musical notation: _A--ve Ma--ri--a pur--is--si--ma! Las tre--es han toc--ca--do._]
II.
An English lady, conversing with a Sevillan gentleman who had been making some rather tall statements, asked him: ”Are you telling me the truth?”
”Madam,” he replied, gravely, but with a twinkle in his eye, ”I am an Andalusian!” At which the surrounding listeners, his fellow-countrymen, broke into an appreciative laugh.
So proverbial is the want of veracity, or, to put it more genially, the imagination, of these Southerners. Their imagination will explain also the vogue of their brief, sometimes pathetic, yet never more than half-expressed, sc.r.a.ps of song, which are sung with so much feeling throughout the kingdom to crude barbaric airs, and loved alike by gentle and simple. I mean the _Peteneras_ and _Malaguenas_. There are others of the same general kind, sung to a variety of dances; but the ruling tunes are alike--usually pitched in a minor key, and interspersed with pa.s.sionate trills, long quavers, unexpected ups and downs, which it requires no little skill to render. I have seen gypsy singers grow apoplectic with the long breath and volume of sound which they threw into these eccentric melodies amid thunders of applause. It is not a high nor a cultivated order of music, but there lurks in it something consonant with the broad, stimulating s.h.i.+ne of the sun, the deep red earth, the thick, strange-flavored wine of the Peninsula; its constellated nights, and clear daylight gleamed with flying gold from the winnowing-field. The quirks of the melody are not unlike those of very old English ballads, and some native composer with originality should be able to expand their deep, bold, primitive ululations into richer, lasting forms. The fantastic picking of the _mandurra_ accompaniment reminds me of Chinese music with which I have been familiar. Endless preludes and interminable windings-up enclose the minute kernel of actual song; but to both words and music is lent a repressed touching power and suggestiveness by repeating, as is always done, the opening bars and first words at the end, and then breaking off in mid-strain. For instance:
”All the day I am happy, But at evening orison Like a millstone grows my heart.
All the day I am happy.” [_Limitless Guitar Solo._]
It is like the never-ended strain of Schumann's ”Warum?” The words are always simple and few--often bald. One of the most popular pieces amounts simply to this:
”Both Lagartijo and Frascuelo Swordsmen are of quality, Since when they the bulls are slaying-- O damsel of my heart!
They do it with serenity.
Both Lagartijo and Frascuelo Swordsmen are of quality.”
But such evident ardor of feeling and such wealth of voice are breathed into these fragments that they become sufficient. The people supply from their imagination what is barely hinted in the lines. Under their impa.s.sive exteriors they preserve memories, a.s.sociations, emotions of burning intensity, which throng to aid their enjoyment, as soon as the m.u.f.fled strings begin to vibrate and syllables of love or sorrow are chanted. I recalled to a young and pretty Spanish lady one line,
”Pajarito, tu que vuelas.”
She flushed, fire came to her eyes, and with clasped hands she murmured, ”Oh, what a beautiful song it is!” Yet it contains only four lines. Here is a translation:
”Bird, little bird that wheelest Through G.o.d's fair worlds in the sky,
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”ALL THE DAY I AM HAPPY.”]
Say if thou anywhere seest A being more sad than I.
Bird, little bird that wheelest.”
Some of these little compositions are roughly humorous, and others very grotesque, appearing to foreigners empty and ridiculous.
The following one has something of the odd imagery and clever inconsequence of our negro improvisations:
”As I was gathering pine-cones In the sweet pine woods of love, My heart was cracked by a splinter That flew from the tree above.
I'm dead: pray for me, sweethearts!”
There was one evening in Granada when we sat in a company of some two dozen people, and one after another of the ladies took her turn in singing to the guitar of a little girl, a musical prodigy. But they were all outdone by Candida, the brisk, nave, handsome serving-girl, who was invited in, but preferred to stand outside the grated window, near the lemon-trees and pomegranates, looking in, with a flower in her hair, and pouring into the room her warm contralto--that voice so common among Spanish peasant-women--which seemed to have absorbed the clear dark of Andalusian nights when the stars glitter like lance-points aimed at the earth. Through the tw.a.n.ging of the strings we could hear the rush of water that gurgles all about the Alhambra; and, just above the trees that stirred in the perfumed air without, we knew the unsentinelled walls of the ancient fortress were frowning. The most elaborate piece was one meant to accompany a dance called the _Zapateado_, or ”kick-dance.” It begins:
”Tie me, with my fiery charger, To your window's iron lattice.
Though _he_ break loose, my fiery charger, Me he cannot tear away;”
and then pa.s.ses into rhyme:
”Much I ask of San Francisco, Much St. Thomas I implore; But of thee, my little brown girl, Ah, of thee I ask much more!”