While called a melancholy people, amusement appeared at times to be the life of the nation. Royalty and religion at rest, peace here and hereafter secured, there was nothing more of life than to enjoy it. To labor when one might repose; to sigh when one might sing; to undergo the pains of culture when sweet pleasure temptingly proposed a holiday—ah no! Fools attempt to better their condition and make it worse. Let those who need improving scour themselves; we know enough.
So lazily lapped in stupidity, beside their feast-days and bull-fights, their passions and passion-plays, they lolled upon the greensward and danced to tambourine and castanets, and wrestled, and ran races; they fenced, fought, played cards, shook dice, and enlivened home monotony by all sorts of games and gymnastic exercises. Dancing was carried to such excess as to lead to dissoluteness and occasional death, even as it does to-day. The dances of the peasantry in many instances bear a striking resemblance to those of the native races of America. In Asturias, men, and sometimes men and women, form a circle joining hands by the little finger. A leader sings in plaintive monotone a description of some Spanish feat of arms prior to the eleventh century, or of a tournament of later days, or of some unhappy love adventure, or of a thrilling incident in the conquest of America. At the end of every strophe, all sing in chorus the refrain which sometimes terminates in an invocation, as for example, May Saint Peter be with me! May the Magdalen protect us! The dance is a long step forward, and two short steps backward and laterally to the right, so that the circle keeps constantly moving in that direction, meanwhile keeping time to the music with arms as well as feet. These dances take place on Sunday afternoons, and on feast-days, and when the priest is present men and women are separated in the dance. The _fandango_, danced by two persons with castanets to the music of the guitar, is peculiar to the south of Spain.
Between the eras proper of tournaments and bull-fights, a species of tilting called _correr la sortija_ was greatly in vogue. A gold finger-ring was suspended by a thread from the top of a pole, and at it charged the cavalier with lance in rest and horse at full speed. The smallness of the object, its constant motion, and its proximity to the pole rendered it an exceedingly difficult feat to accomplish.