Читать книгу Gatherings from Spain - Richard Ford - Страница 14

Table of Contents

Spanish Horses—Mules—Asses—Muleteers—Maragatos.

WE now proceed to Spanish quadrupeds, having placed the wheel-carriages before the horses. That of Andalucia takes precedence of all; he fetches the highest price, and the Spaniards in general value no other breed; they consider his configuration and qualities as perfect, and in some respects they are right, for no horse is more elegant or more easy in his motions, none are more gentle or docile, none are more quick in acquiring showy accomplishments, or in performing feats of Astleyan agility; he has very little in common with the English blood-horse; his mane is soft and silky, and is frequently plaited with gay ribbons; his tail is of great length, and left in all the proportions of nature, not cropped and docked, by which Voltaire was so much offended:—

“Fiers et bizarres Anglais, qui des mêmes ciseaux

Coupez la tête aux rois, et la queue aux chevaux.”

OTHER SPANISH HORSES.

It often trails to the very ground, while the animal has perfect command over it, lashing it on every side as a gentleman switches his cane; therefore, when on a journey, it is usual to double and tie it up, after the fashion of the ancient pig-tails of our sailors. The Andalucian horse is round in his quarters, though inclined to be small in the barrel; he is broad-chested, and always carries his head high, especially when going a good pace; his length of leg adds to his height, which sometimes reaches to sixteen hands; he never, however, stretches out with the long graceful sweep of the English thorough-bred; his action is apt to be loose and shambling, and he is given to dishing with the feet. The pace is, notwithstanding, perfectly delightful. From being very long in the pastern, the motion is broken as it were by the springs of a carriage; their pace is the peculiar “paso Castellano,” which is something more than a walk, and less than a trot, and it is truly sedate and sedan-chair-like, and suits a grave Don, who is given, like a Turk, to tobacco and contemplation. Those Andalucian horses which fall when young into the hands of the officers at Gibraltar acquire a very different action, and lay themselves better down to their work, and gain much more in speed from the English system of training than they would have done had they been managed by Spaniards. Taught or untaught, this pace is most gentlemanlike, and well did Beaumont and Fletcher

“Think it noble, as Spaniards do in riding,

In managing a great horse, which is princely;”

and as has been said, is the only attitude in which the kings of the Spains, true Φιλιπποι, ought ever to be painted, witching the world with noble horsemanship.

Many other provinces possess breeds which are more useful, though far less showy, than the Andalucian. The horse of Castile is a strong, hardy animal, and the best which Spain produces for mounting heavy cavalry. The ponies of Gallicia, although ugly and uncouth, are admirably suited to the wild hilly country and laborious population; they require very little care or grooming, and are satisfied with coarse food and Indian corn. The horses of Navarre, once so celebrated, are still esteemed for their hardy strength; they have, from neglect, degenerated into ponies, which, however, are beautiful in form, hardy, docile, sure-footed, and excellent trotters. In most of the large towns of Spain there is a sort of market, where horses are publicly sold; but Ronda fair, in May, is the great Howden and Horncastle of the four provinces of Seville, Cordova, Jaen, and Granada, and the resort of all the picturesque-looking rogues of the south. The reader of Don Quixote need not be told that the race of Gines Passamonte is not extinct; the Spanish Chalanes, or horse-dealers, have considerable talents; but the cleverest is but a mere child when compared to the perfection of rascality to which a real English professor has attained in the mysteries of lying, chaunting, and making up a horse.

MULES.

The breeding of horses was carefully attended to by the Spanish government previously to the invasion of the French, by whom the entire horses and brood-mares were either killed or stolen, and the buildings and stables burnt.

The saddles used commonly in Spain are Moorish; they are made with high peak and croup behind; the stirrup-irons are large triangularly-shaped boxes. The food is equally Oriental, and consists of “barley and straw,” as mentioned in the Bible. We well remember the horror of our Andalucian groom, on our first reaching Gallicia, when he rushed in, exclaiming that the beasts would perish, as nothing was to be had there but oats and hay. After some difficulty he was persuaded to see if they would eat it, which to his surprise they actually did; such, however, is habit, that they soon fell out of condition, and did not recover until the damp mountains were quitted for the arid plains of Castile.

ASSES.

Spaniards in general prefer mules and asses to the horse, which is more delicate, requires greater attention, and is less sure-footed over broken and precipitous ground. The mule performs in Spain the functions of the camel in the East, and has something in his morale (besides his physical suitableness to the country) which is congenial to the character of his masters; he has the same self-willed obstinacy, the same resignation under burdens, the same singular capability of endurance of labour, fatigue, and privation. The mule has always been much used in Spain, and the demand for them very great; yet, from some mistaken crotchet of Spanish political economy (which is very Spanish), the breeding of the mule has long been attempted to be prevented, in order to encourage that of the horse. One of the reasons alleged was, that the mule was a non-reproductive animal; an argument which might or ought to apply equally to the monk; a breed for which Spain could have shown for the first prize, both as to number and size, against any other country in all Christendom. This attempt to force the production of an animal far less suited to the wants and habits of the people has failed, as might be expected. The difficulties thrown in the way have only tended to raise the prices of mules, which are, and always were, very dear; a good mule will fetch from 25l. to 50l., while a horse of relative goodness may be purchased for from 20l. to 40l. Mules were always very dear; thus Martial, like a true Andalucian Spaniard, talks of one which cost more than a house. The most esteemed are those bred from the mare and the ass, or "garañon"[5] some of which are of extraordinary size; and one which Don Carlos had in his stud-house at Aranjuez in 1832 exceeded fifteen hands in height. This colossal ass and a Spanish infante were worthy of each other.

The mules in Spain, as in the East, have their coats closely shorn or clipped; part of the hair is usually left on in stripes like the zebra, or cut into fanciful patterns, like the tattooings of a New Zealand chief. This process of shearing is found to keep the beast cooler and freer from cutaneous disorders. The operation is performed in the southern provinces by gipsies, who are the same tinkers, horse-dealers, and vagrants in Spain as elsewhere. Their clipping recalls the “mulo curto,” on which Horace could amble even to Brundusium. The operators rival in talent those worthy Frenchmen who cut the hair of poodles on the Pont Neuf, in the heart and brain of European civilization. Their Spanish colleagues may be known by the shears, formidable and classical-shaped as those of Lachesis and her sisters, which they carry in their sashes. They are very particular in clipping the heels and pasterns, which they say ought to be as free from superfluous hair as the palm of a lady’s hand.

Spanish asses have been immortalised by Cervantes; they are endeared to us by Sancho’s love and talent of imitation; he brayed so well, be it remembered, that all the long-eared chorus joined a performer who, in his own modest phrase, only wanted a tail to be a perfect donkey. Spanish mayors, according to Don Quixote, have a natural talent for this braying; but, save and except in the west of England, their right worshipfuls may be matched elsewhere.

ASSES OF LA MANCHA.

THE MULETEER.

The humble ass, “burro,” “borrico,” is the rule, the as in præsenti, and part and parcel of every Spanish scene: he forms the appropriate foreground in streets or roads. Wherever two or three Spaniards are collected together in market, junta, or “congregation,” there is quite sure to be an ass among them; he is the hardworked companion of the lower orders, to whom to work is the greatest misfortune; sufferance is indeed the common virtue of both tribes. They may, perhaps, both wince a little when a new burden or a new tax is laid on them by Señor Mon, but they soon, when they see that there is no remedy, bear on and endure: from this fellow-feeling, master and animal cherish each other at heart, though, from the blows and imprecations bestowed openly, the former may be thought by hasty observers to be ashamed of confessing these predilections in public. Some under-current, no doubt, remains of the ancient prejudices of chivalry; but Cervantes, who thoroughly understood human nature in general, and Spanish nature in particular, has most justly dwelt on the dear love which Sancho Panza felt for his “Rucio,” and marked the reciprocity of the brute, affectionate as intelligent. In fact, in the Sagra district, near Toledo, he is called El vecino, one of the householders; and none can look a Spanish ass in the face without remarking a peculiar expression, which indicates that the hairy fool considers himself, like the pig in a cabin of the “first gem of the sea,” to be one of the family, de la familia, or de nosotros. La Mancha is the paradise of mules and asses; many a Sancho at this moment is there fondling and embracing his ass, his “chato chatito,” “romo,” or other complimentary variations of Snub, with which, when not abusing him, he delights to nickname his helpmate. In Spain, as Sappho says, Love is γλυκυπικρον, an alternation of the agro-dolce; nor is there any Prevention of Cruelty Society towards animals; every Spaniard has the same right in law and equity to kick and beat his own ass to his own liking, as a philanthropical Yankee has to wallop his own niggar; no one ever thinks of interposing on these occasions, any more than they would in a quarrel between a man and his wife. The words are, at all events, on one side. It is, however, recorded in piam memoriam, of certain Roman Catholic asses of Spain, that they tried to throw off one Tomas Trebiño and some other heretics, when on the way to be burnt, being horror-struck at bearing such monsters. Every Spanish peasant is heart-broken when injury is done to his ass, as well he may be, for it is the means by which he lives; nor has he much chance, if he loses him, of finding a crown when hunting for him, as was once done, or even a government like Sancho. Sterne would have done better to have laid the venue of his sentimentalities over a dead ass in Spain, rather than in France, where the quadruped species is much rarer. In Spain, where small carts and wheel-barrows are almost unknown, and the drawing them is considered as beneath the dignity of the Spanish man, the substitute, an ass, is in constant employ; sometimes it is laden with sacks of corn, with wine-skins, with water-jars, with dung, or with dead robbers, slung like sacks over the back, their arms and legs tied under the animal’s belly. Asses’ milk, “leche de burra,” is in much request during the spring season. The brown sex drink it in order to fine their complexions and cool their blood, “refrescar la sangre;” the clergy and men in office, “los empleados,” to whom it is mother’s milk, swallow it in order that it may give tone to their gastric juices. Riding on assback was accounted a disgrace and a degradation to the Gothic hidalgo, and the Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, mounted unrepining cuckolds, “los cornudos pacientes,” on asses. Now-a-days, in spite of all these unpleasant associations, the grandees and their wives, and even grave ambassadors from foreign parts, during the royal residence at Aranjuez, much delight in elevating themselves on this beast of ill omen, and “borricadas” or donkey parties are all the fashion.