SPANISH COURTSHIP.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7986, 15 March 1906, Page 3

SPANISH COURTSHIP.

It must be considered rather fortunate for King Alfonso and Princess Ena that the King had not to do his courting according to the Spanish custom. In Spain, so one gathers from an article iu the Daily Express, the methods of courtship are quite different from those which prevail iu England. In England the introduction is often very difficult; in Spain it is the easiest step. The lady (who never goes out alone) sits on her balcony; waiting for a lover, and any passing young man who is .FASCINATED BY HER BEAUTY only to lift his hat, and, should Tig/be encouraged, plunge into con- *~ versation. Should he meet the lady takisig the air with the customary duenna, and his advances be received with a smile, he follows her to her house, takes a note of it, and waits under the balccny till she appears. With ua he would BE CALLED A CAD; in Spain he is simply following the usual etiquette. There are three stages in a Spanish love affair, and only iu the last is the youug mau permitted to outer th« house. At first when they are supposed to be estimating each other's goud qualities, the mau and the maid are known as "preteudienfces"; in a few months they advance a stage, and become "uonos"; and Anally they become "com proraeditos." When «|ie has reached this last stage the ijyouug man may go indoors, but B% may not see his fiancee alone. At the most he can sit at one end of a sofa, with his beloved at the other end, and her father or mother in between, and "talk conversational nothings about THE OUTRAGEOUS PRICE OP VINEGAR." Shortly after this they aro married. We are asked to revise current ideas df Spanish beauty and the romance of Stanish courtship. The beauty of Spanish women is greatly exaggerated, because it is half hidden. "When people in England think of a Spanish oourtship they fondly imagine to themselves gome dark-eyed ruby-lipped, blaokhaired beauty, leaning languorously from her bedroom casement, and gazing in sleepy admiration at her swarthy, bandsone lover, below, his features so well SET OFF BY FEROCIOUS MOUSV TACHES 'land a wide, flapping sombrero. Often, too, they endow him with the brilliant vests, rainbow sashes, and marvelluus kneebreechbS of the bull-rine. Between the pauses of the conversation, carried on in the beautiful musical undertones of the Spanish tongu9 he reaches for his ever ready guitar." If there be such scenes iu Spain, they are on the stage. The appearance of the average Spaniard is prosaic in the extreme, mainly because of his poverty, the beautiful Spanish tongue is generally marred by ugly local dialeotß, and the guitar is seldom carried.