EASTER IN SPAIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 April 1931, Page 8

EASTER IN SPAIN

A MEDIEVAL SETTING Ih these days of universal travel, when the tour in Spain is part of the programme of every globe-trotter, and when the Easter Fair at Seville is the favourite spring expedition, there seems need to apologise for the hackneyed title of this article. But perhaps the tourist may be allowed to have an uncomfortable feeling that the religious processions, the gorgeqns ceremonies, and the gipsy rejoicings in the sunny streets of Seville, though not originated for his benefit, are at any rate stimulated and maintained with one eye on the thronging crowds of English, Americans, and Germans, and that the expensive ‘spectators’ grandstands along the routes cannot fail to affect the unselfconsciousness of the performers (writes Gladys Owen in the Sydney “Morning Herald”). ' Three years ago however, I spent my Holy Week in that little-known and dream city of northern Spain, Segovia, and there at any rate, there were only five foreigners in the town —ourselves and the Muirhead Bones, he the worldfamous etcher and draughtsman who has spent his last four years studying and drawing Spain and its people. Here, indeed, Holy Week was the concern of Church’ and people alone, with no considerations of gate money to mar it. And what a setting for a medieval ceremony! Take the Rock of Gibraltar and set it down in a wide undulating valley. Build on its summit a city of golden stone with russet roofs, and pile it up until it reaches its pinnacle in a soaring cathedral tower. At the prow of the rock build the real fairy castle of our childhood’s books, golden stone, battlements, turrets, drawbridge, and loopholes, and from its walls behold a sheer precipitous drop of hundreds of feet to a rapid-flowing stony river, its banks bordered with leafless poplars and peach and cherry trees, one smear of pink and white blossom. Arrange for backcloth a complete circle of mountains whose snow caps are still creeping far down their rough blue flanks.

If all this were not enough, divide your rock and its city with a great cleft, making it like the two humps on the dromedary, and bridge that valley with a two-hundred-feet-high Roman aqueduct striding across the town and marching to the mountains from whence the city’s water has come since Augustus (perhaps) built and Trajan repaired “Los puentes.”

FEET-W ASHING CEREMONY Our Holy Week # proper began bn Maundy Thursday, though Palm Sunday with its blessing of the palms had been no mean ceremony. However, the washing of the beggars’ feet on Holy Thursday is the great ceremony of Spain, carried but in the Royal palace by the King, while the Queen tends twelve poor women. In the cathedral at Segovia the beggars Were men only, twelve of them, ■seated on a high platform before the high altar, dressed in long black cloaks, their white shirts fastened with purple ribbons, their huge black hats beside them, bound likewise with purple ribbons, and their honoured feet shifting somewhat nervously in clean white woollen socks. After much music and an eloquent but rather terrifying sermon from an intensely dramatic Franciscan friar (he us with Satan, who stood even then listening to us and plotting evil!) the bishop and his ant canons assumed fine linen and lace aprons and proceeded to wash the right foot of each beggar, the canon pouring out water into a golden basin, in which each foot was dipped and wiped with a linen cloth by the bishop, who kissed the naked extended foot and gently returned it to the rather embarrassed owner. More music followed, curiously impressive with the hard nasal voices of the boys and the very harsh and almost primitive" voices of the men, accompanied only by ’cellos and double basses, and singing from the huge illuminated sixteenth century choir books. Then as the afternoon drew on, we left the cathedral as fts ceremonies ended, and went to take oui’ places with the crowds of peasants in the narrow medieval streets for the great procession.

Every cathedral in Spain possesses its life-sized wooden figures, grouped in dramatic representation of the events of the Passion, and carved, as a rule, by one of the great sculptors of the Renaissance. These “tableaux” (the Agony in the Garden, the Scourging, the Bearing of the Cross, and so on), are mounted on platforms some six feet square, and when the procession forms they are carried on the shoulders of the stalwarts. of each parish in the city. Frequent delays are necessary, so that the whole manhood of the parish guild is mobilised, and marches as escort to its own tableau, dressed in long robes or dominoes either of purple or black, with high peaked fools’ caps of the same, completely covering the face with the

exception of the eyeholes. Very often the men carry on their shoulders heavy wooden crosses, and all bear lighted torches. Keeping the line on either side, march the choir boys in purple surplices, each with lighted candle and chanting penitential psalms. ,As each holy tableau passes through the dense crowd the women kneel, the men stand with heads downcast, and the soldiers (Segovia is a military academy) stand at the salute. At the windows or on the balconies overlooking the street stand the better class of women, each with black mantilla and high comb, for national dress, now being abandoned in general, must be worn on the Jueves Santo. Finally in the procession comes the bishop and all his clergy, likewise chanting, and carrying their lighted torches. Dusk is falling and the line of torches and the dark figures wind through the streets and pass like a trail of fireflies through the jet black arches of the Roman aqueduct and between old palaces. LOCAL VERSIFIERS

At times a cry is heard in the crowd and the procession stops, its chanting silent, and then some peasant, often quite a child, will break into a Saeta, a poem to our Lord or to the Virgin, composed by himself and sung to traditional wailing melodies. The procession listens in silence ■ and then passes on again. These Saetas are peculiar to some parts of Spain, and there is tremendous interest and competition amongst the peasants, and even in the gaols (for the procession, like our Lord “visits the spirits in prison”), for the poet who shall compose the most impressive verse. Slowly the chanting line passes through the crowds, and is lost to sight at last within the great doors of the cathedral from whence it emerged two hours before.

Next morning, Good Friday, we were up betimes, watching the neverending stream of black-clad Women winding their way from station io station of the Calvary on tho little hill outside the walls, women weeping and praying, to whom the Passion was a real personal tragedy and no mere history. At 10 o’clock we were already in the cathedral, as near to the high altar as might be, awaiting the entry of the clergy and notables of the city. The great doors were flung open, and on the lintel stood the town trumpeter and the town drummer, dressed in long green overcoats with scarlet facings. A fanfare and a roll of drums (or of the drum), and they advanced ten paces. Then came the beadle, in purple brocade gown, white ruff, and long white powdered wig, his three-cornered hat hung on a cord from his neck, and holding a silver staff, with which he struck the ground and regulated the pace of. the procession. Behind him came his satelites, two grim-fa Ced, grey-haired sacristans. Black brocade jackets, small ruffs, full knee-breeches tied with ribbon's, and silver-buckled shoes—in fact, the dress of Velasques’s Spanish grandees. Behind theta came a somewhat incongruous group of silk-hatted and frockcoated citizens, the Mayor and aidermen and the notables of the city, lightened by many uniforms and medals, the officers from the garrison, and followed finally by the bishop and his clergy in all their splendour, looking like ships in full sail, in purple and crimson robes.

The service was curiously impressive and beautiful, more especially the demeanour of the audience, who were there for no show or idle ceremony, the day of lament for the Church was their own personal sorrow and the most vital of events in their own lives.

Other processions and. ceremonies there were all through the remaining days, but these two- remain clearest in mind, and are unforgettable. May I just add that we may be fortunate to see many of them ere long in the book of Spanish drawings to be published by Muirhead Bone, but not many of us will know how the drawings were made. Mr. Bone has spent his last four years in Spain, dressing as far as possible like a moderately prosperous- retired tradesman or shopkeeper, black overcoat and enormous black felt hat, whereby hangs my tale. During the great Church ceremonies I would see him bareheaded, the hat clasped to his breast, and his eyes downcast, the picture of reverence. Out in the Plaza Caffe a little later the hat would be laid on the table, and from its depths would come twenty to thirty sketches of the bishop and clergy, the preacher, the town notables, the peasants who knelt around him, the choir as it sang. No conjuror ever produced more marvels from his hat, to be sorted and composed at leisure into a considered drawing or etching, making part of the great series of the ceremonies Of Spain. .