The Bull-Fight

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 19, 19 July 1906, Page 10

The Bull-Fight

Young Queen Victoria's worth was warrant for the noble welcome given her V>y the most exquisitely Mannered people upon our planet. And the ancient land of chivalry was qvick to seize and grow enthusiastic over the romantic love-match which leplaces the customary dull routine of political matrimonial arrangements for the ruling heads of royal houses. England, too, smiled its appreciation at the union of hearts. The London 1 Tablet ' looks to the Anglo-Spanish wedding for a strengthening of the affinities that have been growing up between the two nations. It says :—: — ' If stately Spanish manners have the effect of raising the gradually debased standard of our own, perhaps we in turn may moderate the extremities of Spanish itunofil-iio. " Have patience, little Saint !)l may yet become the salutation given by the refuser to the beggar in Piccadilly (the police permitting;) ; and the consi derateness towards animals which is one of the unwaning glories of England is sure to carry itsi ameliorations on to the hillsides and into the circuses of Spain. Bullfighting may not be more cruel than sports that Englishmen are loath to relinquish. But into this mortal comfbat between m«n and beast may yet'be introduced on the word of an English-born Queen. Should Ihat be so, a woman will prevail where Sovereign Pontiffs have beon foiled. For in the matter of Bulls, it is the Pap ai Bull that has gene by the board'; the sound thereof has been drowned in the clamor that greets the bull in the ring.' The bull-ring has, indeed, its spectacles of cruelty— especially to the wretched aad used-up nags that bear the picadores (spearmen), and have to meet the first

onset of the infuriated brutes from the meadows of Andalusia. But we have somewhere read that, in deference to the new Queen's l feelings, horse as well as padded rider were to~fcave been suitably protected against the long, sharp, upturned horns that usually stain the yellow sand of the plaza de toros or great tftill-circus with the life-blood of sundry doomed and limping Rosinantes. * Habit and temperament account for much. To the average Spaniard, the matador who neatly slays a furious, charging bull, is a first-class hero. Spaniards generally view with undisguised repugnance prize-fights, rough-and-tumible games of football, and the deadly risks run by parachutists, and by ' demon ' riders and others who nightly risk their necks in English, French, and American circuses for tb.3 purpose of giving blase patrons a new sensation. Within living memory bull-bait-ing was a popular sport in Great Britain. It was made illegal »in 1835. And as late as March, 1870, fights with imported Spanish bulls we c carried on at the Agricultural Hall, London— till stopped by the police. In his ' Contarini Fleming,' Disraeli (an eye-witness) describes the buUt-fights of Seville as ' on the whole ' ' a magnificent but barbarous spectacle. And he adds: 'However disgusting the principal object, the accessories of the entertainment are so brilliant and interesting, that, whatever may he their abstract disapprobation, those who have, witnessed a Spanish bull-fight wilL not be surprised at the passionate attachment of the Spanish people to their national' pafitime.' We were told in Spain that English-speaking foreigners usually take kindly to the spectacle of the ' corrida de toros ' or bull-flght. But, speaking generally, we think that visitors from abroad are, as a rule, keenly alive to what is objectionable in the Spanish national sport. We have, however, little patience with a writer in a Canterbury paper who imagines (as many like him do) that the Catholic Church is, somehow, responsible for bull-fight-ing because it takes place in Spain. For the benefit of our Catholic readers, we give the following extract from a delightful volume of travels by an- American Protestant lady of Puritan stock, Miriam Colea -Harris. .The book is entitled- A Corner of Spain,' and was piublished in 1898. 'The Catholic Church,' says Miss Harris, ' docs all it can to suppress the bull-ring ; it has a distinct quarrel with it. Any priest in Spain attending a bull-fight does it under penalty of excommunication. He is wilfully committing a mortal sin. The best and most devout of the Catholic laity absolutely refuse to assist at these brutal scenes. But the multitude — the careless, the go-as-near-to-perdition-as-you-can-and-be-saved multitude go, and will go till Spain ceases to be Spain and the world is mad/c over. The Church knows this, and might as well istsue an edict against earthquakes as against bull-lights. But she yearns over these poor, small-souled children of hers, and with a motherly care provides for "them what she can of eternal safety. There shall always be a priest in attendance bchnd the scene at every bull-fight, to absolve the dying, to administer the last rites, to say a word of hope, to hear a word of repentance. Gne remembers the hopeful epitaph on the tomb of the foxhunting stfuire cut ofi in hs sins :— " Between the stirr-up and the ground He mercy sought and mercy found." I suppose the same charita/jle hope may cover the Andalusian as the Anglo-Saxon pleasurc-aceker.'