LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

CHRISTMAS IN SPAIN.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")

" Estd noche es Noche-Bnena.

Y no es noche de dorsiir."

SIR,—S0 runs a favourite Spanish couplet, in every one's mouth at this season, on the subject of Christmas Eve. The lines, literally translated, simply mean, "This night is the Good-Night, and the Good-Night is not the night for sleep." The Noche-Buena, or to speak in language more orthodox, La Noche de Navidad, of the Spaniards, is our Christmas Eve.

Many who read these pages will be interested to know how the Noche-Buena is observed in the interior of Spain, with the feast- days that follow in its wake, —the Pascua, or Christmas Day ; the Feast of San Esteban, or St. Stephen's Day ; that of San Juan, or St. John's Day ; and that of Los In nocentes, our Innocents' Day.

On the evening before Christmas Eve I was journeying down the wild and lonely line of railway from Cordoba to the wilds of the interior. Cordoba certainly needed no Christmas decorations. Nature had bestowed them upon her with no grudging hand, in the spacious patio (or quadrangle) of her magnificent mosque, in the gardens of her ancient houses, in her cemeteries, and peeping above her old Moorish city-walls the orange-trees were to be seen, simply laden with fruit, the dark green foliage present- ing a strange contrast to the clusters of rich yellow fruit. How beautiful are her old grey towers, and seminaries, and con- vents ! How striking is the contrast between their crumbling walls, and the dark leaf and golden clustering fruit of the orange- trees that grow under their shade. But how different from an English Christmas landscape, I mean, of a typical Christmas, when the leafless trees are white with the hoar-frost, and the moon shines clear and cold overhead, and even the grass is crisp under the traveller's hasty homeward feet.

A few miles from Cordoba the orange-trees are gone, and nothing is seen for miles and miles but undulating hills, to all appearance barren and certainly treeless. These plains and slopes are now, owing to the lack of rain this season, as hard and dry and full of cracks as in the heat of summer ; but they are covered with the growth of a peculiar weed, something like a dry thistle, so dry that the spark from a cigar will kindle half an acre into a blaze. Wild and desolate, indeed, are these undulating steppes, and one can hardly believe that crops of wheat have ever been garnered in from them ; at present 1 can compare them to nothing but the skeleton of a wheat-field, while standing up out of these tall thistles every now and then you come upon ten or twelve low, clumsy, shapeless pillars of stone, each about eight feet high, planted in an oval shape. For what purpose they were originally used I know not, but they lend a strange picturesqueness to the wildness of the scene.

Here are one or two Christmas landscapes. As we pass along on one side, purple and hazy in the dim distance stretches the wild range of the Sierra Morena ; all around you are slopes upon slopes, naked, save for the spectral thistles that clothe their aides. The winter sun is just sinking, with a red, defiant glare, behind yon thistled hill ; one or two stars are just showing in the cold blue, steely, cloudless sky ; just at your feet, abutting on the railway, are the crumbling ruins of some old Moorish building, the Past and the Present blended in a grotesque union ; along the one winding path across the brow of the hill a goatherd is leading his flock of kids and goats ; his wife, in bright yellow (Judas colour 1) dress of flannel, is riding on her ass a few paces behind. It is Christmas, yet their forms are half lost in a cloud of dust. The air is dry, steely, and cold, and they are anxious to get to their little home beneath the old Moorish tower of El Carpio.

By moonlight, aeon from the railway, the town of El Carpio is exceedingly picturesque. I saw it once, a dull group of stone houses, clustering around its huge, quaint Moorish tower, the crescent moon just rising behind the barren hill on whose summit it stands. For miles and miles around are undulating hills, covered with dusky olivd groves. Those who expect great beauty in the olive

groves will be woefully disappointed ; there is nothing to see in the grey-leaved, the nutritious olive, but long regular rows of runty trees, something like the pollard willows of English home scenery, standing in plains of red sand, scantily covered with withered grass.

Here is another scene that shall bring me to my subject, for it was the first little herald of Christmas drawing near. At a small station, not far from Pedro Abad, a grey-haired mother came with her son—" her boy," she called him, though he was a manly- looking young giant of five or six-and-twenty summers—who was going to pass (so she said) his first Christmas away from home : " We shall miss you, dear boy, on Noche-Buena, but we shall pray for you on that sacred night in church." She clasped " her boy " in her arms, ere he got into the carriage, and mother and son had a last kiss ! It was a touching sight, this ; her pale, careworn face, set in rich iron-gray hair ; her glistening eye, and her last words, " Mind you write to papa, every week at least by post ; he will look for a letter so anxiously. Con Dios!" It brought back to my own mind the memory of other days, and of a mother's tenderness and anxious care and parting words, when she, too—I mean, my own mother—had brought her boy to the station, and given much the same parting instructions, and the self-same blessing,—" Con Dios! God be with thee, my son !" After that, into our carriage jumped a family of the lower class, a father and mother and three children, going to spend their Pascua with friends at a distance. Each child had a little tambour, like our ' tambourine,' with tinkling bells, and the noise they made was most discordant; for twenty miles they never ceased; we could not hear the sound of our own voices. Here was Christmas on the horizon with a vengeance. Then came in a young artisan, off to spend his Pascua at his own home, his pockets, as he said, "full of money." He was overflowing with good-humour, and jumped out at every station

" to buy a fresh bottle of white agaardiente, which is a kind of brandy and aniseed. It is the spirit chiefly drunk by the middle and lower classes in Spain, and is, when good, a capital cordial. Fishermen, and miners, and other labourers like to have a glass of this, which is so cheap as to be within the reach of all, before commencing work in the morning.

This young fellow walked round and round the carriage, getting over the partitions, and insisted on every one single person drink- ing out of his bottle. He always gave me the first sip, because, as he said, "You are a stranger." When are the Spanish poor ever anything but courteous? Again and again I begged off, but no, drink I must. " Come, Senor, Senor, just a drop more ; Christmas is coming, and it only comes once a year." I did not like it, but I liked still less the thought of offending my good-natured friend, so 1 took a pull at each of the five fresh bottles, each, as he said, with a shout of triumph, " better than the last." I thought differently, and could only think of Mr. Layard's adventure re- counted in his interesting work on Monasteries, when the prior pressed him to eat some particularly-delicious soup. Mr. Layard tasted one mouthful—it was nauseous in the extreme—and then pro- fessed he could not think of depriving his host of such a treat, it was so good." " For that very reason I insist upon your eating every morsel, adorable friend. I will even stand by and see you eat it to the last drop." My own case, I thought, was a similar one. On the morning of Noche-Buena I awoke, despite the aguar- diente, in a little township of the interior, ready to to see and observe all that was to be seen and observed. It is a busy little town, this whence I write ; and the streets and plaza were crowded with buyers and sellers ; the boot-shops were crammed, as also were the linen-drapers' stores and the sweetmeat and grocery- shops ; from all the country round the poor had come to buy their clothes, and boots, and Christmas dinner. Truly it was a moat pic- turesque and motley crowd, through which I had to thread my way. All down the streets, squatting on the narrow strips of pavement, where there was any pavement, were the beggars ; most of them wrapped in their huge woollen mantas, or rugs, with a coloured handkerchief pinned over their heads,— a very dirty one, in most cases. One showed the half-raw stump of an amputated leg ; another, a scalded arm ; a third was blind. From one and all arose the same cry, " Give me, Sir, for the love of God, a trifle, and may He grant you for ever good health. I haven't got a cuarto (-farthing) for my Christmas dinner." Giving to beggars in Spain is more desirable than giving in England, I always have considered, for, in the first place, they have not always the chance of a meal and shelter in the workhouse (such as it is) of their district ; and in the second, they are recognised as an institution. Time was when "begging- tickets were given, although that system has been since dis- continued. I make it a rule to give sometimes, and ask in return that they will remember me in their prayers ; and perhaps they do. At any rate, I often feel that other hands are paddling my little canoe when I am too weak to paddle it for myself. Perhaps the poor Spanish beggars' prayers are offered, and prevail. Who knows ?

Here was a Valencian peasant, in his canvas suit, with his wife, in flaring yellow dress, buying boots for their young ones ; here, in the sweetmeat-shop, were mothers and nurses buying rich lamps of "turron " for their pets at home ; here, in the grocery-shop, was a swarm of working-men buying goat's-milk cheese. Donkeys, laden with panniers full of gaudy clothes and flannels, or with pitchers of water, or oil, or vinegar, or with baskets of fruit; or cheese, or " turron," all were standing about the street. The whole scene may best be described thus : clouds of dust blowing, hundreds of women in dresses of the coarsest, but most gaudy—bright yellow and red predominated—in colour, all shout- ing and screaming to get their needs supplied at the lowest price ; heaps of fruit, chestnuts, walnuts, pomegranate; potatoes, sweet batatas of Malaga, lying at every street-corner ; a blazing hot sun, but bitter searching east wind ; men in every variety of un- couth dress, all, without exception, smoking and shouting ; this, with numbers of children sucking " turron " and sugar-plums, and playing upon their " tambores " and zambombas, was the sight that greeted my eyes on the morning of Christmas Eve. Every woman had a red or yellow kerchief as head-dress, every child a " tambor " or zambomba " in its hands ; all were laughing, screaming, elbowing, bargaining, or smoking ; such a gaudy, busy, animated scene I never before have witnessed.

/ The " turron "and " zambomba " are characteristic of a Spanish Christmas, and must have a few lines devoted to them in this place. " Turron " is much the same as the Turkish sweetmeat called " hulvah." It is a kind of white rock, made of pressed almonds, sugar, and meal, and is the great Spanish sweetmeat ; in all the sweetmeat-shops you can buy it by the ounce or pound at C hrietmas- time ; sometimes it is flavoured with one thing, sometimes with another ; it is always a most luscious mouthful, but too cloying for an English palate. The beet is the turron de Alicante, but the kind bought by the lower orders is made in a homely way of honey, barley-meal, and whole almonds stuck in it. The love of sugar-plums, and all sorts of sweetmeats, is quite a pas- sion with Spanish ladies. They eat a great deal of sweet things, and drink a great deal of water, and, as a rule, when they get to about forty they become very stout ; the sweetmeats are fattening, I suppose. As to the " zambomba " — one is now lying on my table—it is the most primitive musical instrument you ever saw. It is an earthen pot, something like a flower-pot, varying in size from very small to very large and. unwieldy ; one end of this little earthen vessel is open to the air, over the other end is stretched a piece of parchment ; a hole is cut in the parchment, and a reed—that is, about six or eight inches of the stem of a strong reed—is inserted into the hole, and hermetically sealed. You carry the zambomba by the reed, which sticks out. All you have to do to play this instrument is to wet your fingers and rub them up and down the protruding stem of the reed ; a hollow, rumbling, hideous noise, called in Spain "rom, rom, rom," is pro- duced. So popular is this instrument, that as you pass up and down a Spanish street you hear in almost every home the " rom, rom, rom " of the zambombas. These can be bought at any little stall in the market, and they only coat from twopence to two shillings. The noise of the zambombas, the wild Andalacian ditties, the laughter and shouts from every house, as you pass up a Spanish street after nightfall, on Christmas Eve, are most striking.

In the plaza, or market square, the stalls of fruit, toys, and sweetmeats are all decked out with gay ribands and artificial flowers ; the piles of pomegranates show a little more than formerly of their russet hue, the piles of melons are supplanted by chestnuts and batatas, but of fruit there is still no lack. But the buying and selling of the little sucking-kids is a noticeable feature- " cabritas " they are called—and here is a drove of the pretty little animals, being handled, petted, weighed, bargained for, and then driven or carried home. This is the Spanish poor man's Christmas dinner, with herbs and good cooking a savoury morsel. One of these can be bought for about three pesetas and a half, i.e., about three English shillings. Let me mention two more Christmas dishes in Spain,—the " pavo trufado " or truffled turkey, and the heaps of almond and cocoa-nut bisenits ; these luscious comestibles are, from their rich, oily nature, to the Spaniard, in his dry, sunny, but cold winter, what the rich blubber is to the Esquimaux in the far and frozen North. Nature (dux optima !) teaches both these unlettered

folk what the special need of their bodies is, at each special season of the year.

Evening drew on, and about four o'clock some of the shops began to close ; the streets gradually grew quieter and quieter ; women were walking slowly home, basket on arm, laden with fruit, meat, and boots ; at the top of each basket lay what appeared to be a white stocking stuffed full of something ; this is the little Christmas pre- sent laid upon the child's pillow at early morning, and when the little thing's waking eyes first open upon its treasure, it looks up and says, " Thanks to Father Christmas for that." Boots, biscuits, and ripe apples were the contents of one which I opened. But every foot was homeward turned, to eat the Christmas-Eve weal, before going to the midnight misa at the churches. As a rule, the Spaniard does not drink heavily at these seasons, but eats his meal peacefully with his wife and children, and spends the evening with them over the glowing embers of the brasero until his church-bell at midnight summons him to prayers. At half-past ten, after smoking a peaceful pipe with a friend, I walked up the deserted and dark, but far from silent streets. The night was pitch-dark, the east wind blowing bitterly ; the tiny oil tamps, stack here and there, were showing their sickly light ; from -every house came gay, wild ditties, the scraping "rom, rom, rom" of the zambombas, and the tinkle of guitars or the rattle of the tam- bours, half drowned in shouts of joyous laughter ; one or two noisy wen were quarrelling at the door of a wine-shop, whom I avoided with hasty steps ; services were being held in the churches. There is one feature I will notice before passing on to the mid- night misa of the Church. In the interior, many of the people set apart one window, generally a small bow-window fronting the street, to the " cult() religioso,"—that is, they pat in it the image of some saint who is their patron, or from whom they have received a benefit, and on every night of a saint's day, and sometimes in the day-time, •two or four candles burn at the side of the image ; the passer-by can either doff his hat, cross himself, or take no 'heed. This shows that the house is the home of a religious Catholic. Need I say that on Christmas Eve these little glass temples were all lighted up ?

I could not attend the midnight service, so I asked a friend who dwelt hard by the church to go for me. He went at a little before twelve. The church was full, the service orderly, the people of all classes ; there were muleteers wrapped in their blue-and-white-check rags ; here, Spanish gentlemen enveloped in their graceful capas or capes, the universal " great-coat " of the interior,—a long cape, reaching to the ancles, lined with rich fur or velvet, wrapped and buckled round the body, and then with a- 'twist thrown over the shoulder ; here, again, were crowds of the commonest people, miners, fruit-sellers, servants, and the like, the women kneeling on the rush-matting of the dimly-lit church, the men standing in dark masses behind, or clustering in groups round every pillar ; each one as he entered dipped his hand into the little vessel at the door, and reverently crossed himself with holyz-water.

The most noticeable features were, the several altars in a blaze of lights ; the rich or at least gaudy dresses of the officiating priests; and the whirr—I can call., it nothing else—of hundreds of nimble fingers as of one crossing the forehead at every most solemn part of the service.

At last, from under the altar, the senior priest (I take it to have bedn the senior) took out the image of the Babe new-born, reverently and slowly, and held it up in his hands for adoration. Instantly, every ode crossed himself, and fell on his knees in silent worship ; a'few moments were allowed for silent prayer. Of music there was little. The priest, kneeling at the altar, offered aloud his supplications for all ; and Noche-Buena was over. Slowly and in groups -of three and four the worshippers left the church, and picked their dark road home.

Life's cheerful halting-places at best are few and of short dura- tion. Noche-Buena had soon fled by, and on Christmas Day I strolled out once more. The market-place was more busy than ever, every shop was loud with traffic ; but the bells were clang- ing still, and I joined the throng that pressed toward the principal church. It was dark, but its altars were lit ; its aisles and nave were about half fall; there were the same dark kneeling forms of women in front, the same motley crowd of men, who came and went at pleasure, behind ; suddenly a little bell rang—I know not for what—and the whirr and rustle of hundreds of crossing hands was like the sound of a flight of doves, when one scares them at night from the bare trees of the wintry wood. All through Christmas Day the shops were crowded with buyers. All through Christmas Day the streets rang with wild music. At night, I said to an old Spanish peasant, " Haven't you had enough holiday ?" " No, Seitor," said he, " there are other Saints' days coming, and when you think that at this time God himself came down to give us liberty, you will not think it too much."

Farewell, " Vaya usted con Dios" is my New Year's wish for you, gentle reader, whoever you are.—I am, Sir, &a., R.