The Fortunate Isles: Life and Travel in Majorca, Minorca and Iviza

Should future generations of Majorcans grow up in the quite erroneous belief that the British serve rich black plum-pudding hot at all meals, I'm afraid the blame must rest with us.

Palma is always bright, but at Christmas-tide an increase of liveliness seemed to pervade the town. The shop windows displayed new wares, and the streets were full of country folk pricing, bargaining, and purchasing. The confectioners' windows were full of large round cardboard boxes, each containing a sugar travesty of a serpent, a weird reptile, reposing on a bed of sweets.

The market square at night, when it is usually deserted, displayed a new and popular species of merchandise. Its outer sides were lined with rows of stalls laden with slabs of native sweetmeats all made in long blocks, and piles of tempting crystallized fruits. Other stalls held nothing but the curious little figures of native ware – men, women, animals, poultry, all very small – that the Majorcan children use when, with the aid of cork, they build little models of the Nativity in imitation of those seen at Christmastide in the churches.

During the days preceding Christmas Day great preparations for the feast were made. In the market the price of choice fruits and vegetables rose a little. And the wide open space just without the gate of San Antonio – the patron saint of swine – became a busy fair devoted to the sale of pigs, turkeys, sheep and fowls.

The part whose colour and movement rejoiced the artistic soul of the Man was that given over to the display of turkeys. The portion whose comic element delighted the Boy and me was that devoted to the wards of San Antonio, who, to judge by the shrillness and insistence of their cries, was proving himself but an irresponsible and callous guardian.

The peasant-women, neat in the native costume, gaily coloured kerchiefs over their heads, their hair in pigtails, armed with long rods, stood beside their flocks of turkeys. At intervals they scattered handfuls of grain amongst them; but to do the birds justice, they showed little inclination to stray.

On one side a long wall was formed of hooded carts filled with turkeys. And round each brood was a little group of townsfolk, making critical survey of the birds and, after a good deal of wordy chaffering, purchasing. The other side was occupied by a long row of fowl-sellers, who treated their wares with less respect; for splendid cocks, their burnished plumage gleaming with a thousand prismatic hues, lay helpless, their feet tied together, their bills in the dust.

Sucking-pig being the favourite Christmas dinner in this land of sunshine, by far the larger space was allotted to the swine. And swine there were to satisfy all demands, from litters of tiny sucking-pigs surrounding their mothers to pigs of quite considerable bulk. As the pigs were sold by weight, it is safe to say that there wasn't a thirsty pig in the market that day. And while we saw few pigs being fed, we saw many being encouraged to drink. Some of the salesmen stood by their laden carts ready, on the approach of a likely customer, to thrust a hand into the mass of swart animalism and extract a protesting squeaker. Others sat lazily on chairs by their flocks, content to wait to be approached. While some of the older herdsmen wore slung over the shoulders the distinctive goatskin of their calling, most of the younger were attired in suits of corduroy, sun-faded into glorious harmonies of golds and browns and blues. We noticed that whilst certain of the men dealt in turkeys, none of the women sold pigs.

And out of the city streamed the townsfolk, money in hand for the purchase of their Christmas dinner. Ladies in mantillas, attended by neat maids, bought turkeys; prosperous-looking tradesmen, accompanied by pinafored shop-lads provided with bits of rope, walked about pricing pigs; and lean operatives, with a hungry eye for the yearly tit-bit.

It was after a pig had changed owners that the fun began. The market being held outside the city walls, the purchase had first to be taken to the consumos shed to be weighed and have the duty paid on it. And the pigs, although comparatively placid while yet in company with their old comrades, when severed from them protested with full strength of lung and limb. Then woe betide the luckless being whose task it was to carry the agitator home. One man only did we see who had had the forethought to bring a sack in which to carry home his rebellious purchase.

Everybody appeared to have evolved a different method of conveyance. Some men wore them as a collar round the neck, grasping the fore feet in one hand, the hind in the other. Some tried to lead them, with dire results. One flustered woman we saw had a child in her arms and was dragging at the end of a string a plump young porker that refused to walk. The majority, relinquishing any attempt at suasion, simply clutched the furiously objecting quadrupeds desperately in their arms and made the best of their way through the streets.

Just as we were leaving the market we encountered a trio of elderly ladies, attended by a demure little maid in pigtail and rebozillo, whom we had noticed making a careful scrutiny before deciding. Their choice seemed at last to have been made, for the young servant carried in her arms, as tenderly as though it were a baby, a tiny sucking-pig. So far it had uttered no complaint, but just as the group turned into the street it awoke to the knowledge that something untoward was happening, and with the energy of one thrice its fighting weight, began squealing and squirming. In a moment consternation fell upon the sedately pacing quartette. When we last saw them a man had been hired to carry home the pigling, whose lamentations still rent the air.

During the day or two that would elapse before the creatures were sacrificed for consumption they appeared to reside in the bosom of the family circles and to be treated as honoured guests. The fact that a home was in a flat three floors up did not deter its occupants from housing a four-footed edible guest. Turkeys strutted in doorways and upon high balconies. Proud children escorted pigs out for an airing.

Two days before the feast we noticed on a piece of waste ground just inside the gate of Santa Catalina an enclosure roughly constructed of planks and sacking. From a post fluttered a banner of brown paper inscribed with the legend, Se matan lechonas (Little pigs kill themselves). And thither, the right moment having arrived, people brought their pets. Within the enclosure, but in full view of the public, the piglings were killed, soused with the boiling water that was kept bubbling over a fire, scraped and made ready for the pot in the twinkling of an eye.

On Christmas Eve we attended the midnight service in the Cathedral. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the streets of Palma were unusually busy. Groups of people, the women and children all carrying folding stools, or in some cases rush-seated chairs, were walking sedately in the direction of the churches.

In the silver light there was something mysterious about the succession of black-robed figures – the women's heads muffled in black mantillas or black silk kerchiefs – that moved steadfastly along the narrow mediæval streets.

When we reached the Cathedral many people had already gathered. When we would have taken our usual seats under the organ, one of the canons in a robe of lace and rose-coloured silk approached and whispered to me in French that that portion of the church was reserved for men, but that I was free to take any place I liked on the opposite side. Crossing the foot-high wooden barrier that had been erected down the centre of the nave, under his escort, I set up the sketching stool I had brought at the base of one of the great pillars, and watched the edifice gradually fill with a reverent throng of worshippers.

And now the necessity for the folding stools became evident, for while the portion of the building allotted to men was well provided with seats, only a great square of matting covered that half of the floor-space that had been set apart for the women.

The Cathedral was brilliantly lit with electricity; and although there was something inexpressibly affecting in the sight of the kneeling multitude, to us the Cathedral lost much of the sombre magnificence it had in the daytime, when, except for the candles burning on the altar, the only light was that which stole in through the stained-glass windows, and the greater part of the grand temple was rendered impressive by obscurity.

Later, when we spoke of this to our friend the padre he agreed with us. But, as he said in his irreproachable English, "What can we do? The Cathedral is very large, and the people are not all good."

There was no respect of persons. Wrinkled old peasant-women and lovely young members of the ancient Majorcan nobility knelt side by side. The pew my men-folk occupied was shared by a gentleman in a fur-lined coat, and two little ragamuffins who, oblivious of their sacred surroundings, slumbered peacefully throughout the proceedings, curled up snugly together like a pair of monkeys nesting in a tree-top.

At a pause in the service a white-robed youth, supposed to represent the Angel Gabriel, who was attended by two others carrying lighted candles, appeared in a pulpit. He wore a scarlet cap and bore a naked sword, and in a melodious voice chanted in Spanish Sibila– a hymn that foretells the varied fates awaiting the evil and the good at the end of the world.

At one o'clock, when we slipped out of the Cathedral, leaving the multitude still at worship, and walked homewards through the brilliant moonlight, all was hushed and peaceful. The signs of carnage had vanished. The banner with the suicidal legend, Se matan lechonas, no longer fluttered by the gate of Santa Catalina; and only a few vagrant turkey feathers, blown about the roads, remained to tell of the innocents who had been butchered to make a Christian holiday.

Christmas, we had been warned, would be a quiet day in Palma: a day of family greetings, of indoor festivities, when the streets would be deserted. Any feasts we might have shared were far away in fog-bound Britain, and neither turkey nor sucking-pig graced the larder of the Casa Tranquila. The weather was idyllic, like the most perfect of perfect summer days at home – even after more than two months' experience of Balearic Island weather we had not ceased to be surprised by its consistent beauty. So we decided to have a picnic.

We had heard vaguely of a famous cave in the country behind our own district of Son Españolet – a cave important enough to afford shelter to the people of Palma who, in thousands, had fled thither to escape from a plague of cholera that sixty or seventy years before had devastated the town. But while everybody seemed to know of the existence of the cave, no amount of inquiry elicited information as to its exact whereabouts. So on this lovely Christmas morning we resolved to take luncheon with us and spend the day hunting for it.

I think it was the Rudder Grangers who wished to live in the last house of a village, as by doing so they could be in touch with humanity on the one side and with Nature on the other. Our own road, the Calle de Mas, came very near answering these requirements, for, being the last road in the little suburb, it met both town and country. By walking to the end of the houses, over whose garden walls oranges gleamed golden, and turning to the left by the brand-new Villa Dolores, and past the old farm-house that stood hedged in with tall cactus by the wayside, we were at once on the verge of the beautiful rural scenery.

Our informant had been right. The street was empty. As we passed along, a smell as of roast sucking-pig greeted us; but everybody was indoors behind their closely shuttered windows.

The road that leads through the undulating almond and olive groves towards Son Puigdorfila and the hills had never been so deserted. And never had the air been softer or the mountains more mistily blue. The leaves of the gnarled olives shone silver-grey beside the dark, rich foliage of the carob-trees, and the white blossoms of a honey-scented weed thickly flecked the green of the six-inch high grain.

The village of Son Rapiña, perched on its eminence, gleamed like a jewel in the strong sunlight; but the path leading towards it showed not a single traveller. For once, farm-work had ceased; the only sound that reached us was a far-off musical tinkle from the bells of a flock of goats as they moved about, seeking for fallen pods under the great algarroba-trees.

The cave, we had gathered, was somewhere near Son Puigdorfila, but when we had passed that country-house, and had wandered down the valley towards the empty bed of the torrente, we found nothing that in the most remote way suggested the presence of a cave.

We had almost abandoned the quest when a sound of bells warned us of the approach of a herd of plump brindled asses, which appeared under the guidance of an old man.

In his suit of faded blue cotton, with a goatskin slung over his shoulders and a gaily striped kerchief bound round his brow and knotted at the back, the long ends falling beneath his wide-brimmed hat, and a tall staff in his wrinkled brown hands, he was a fine specimen of the hale Majorcan peasant whose declining years hold no greater physical discomfort than a gradual lessening of the full strength of manhood.

He knew of the cave —Cueva Fuente Santa he called it. Nay more, he knew its history from the making to the present day. And while the brindled asses browsed around us he told us the story of the Cave of the Holy Well.

The Conquistador, it appeared, on setting out on his perilous mission, had vowed to the Virgin that if through her aid he succeeded in ousting the heathen from Majorca, he would signalize his victory by building a noble Cathedral in her honour; and it was in quarrying the stone from the steep ground by the side of the torrente that the great cave had been formed. He told us of the refugees who, fleeing before the cholera, had camped there in safety; and brought the record up to date by mentioning that to the present day on the Sunday after Easter great crowds of the townsfolk made a little pilgrimage to the Holy Well, to drink its waters and to eat their empanadas– pies made specially of lamb for the occasion.

The cave was near – only a little way, he added, as he hurried to overtake his now straying herd. If we would proceed farther down the side of the torrente we would discover it, close by the old well.

So in the sunshine, which was warm without a trace of oppression, for the sea air agreeably tempered the heat, we wandered on until, in the side of a fir-topped bank, we found the cave.

And it was quite unlike anything we had imagined. To enter by the wide square portal was to find oneself in a vast, many-chambered hall. In quarrying out the interior the long-forgotten workmen had left at intervals great rudely sculptured blocks that served as supporting pillars to the roof. Four square holes, open to the sky, afforded ventilation. Round the walls, and about the bases of the pillars, had been hewn ledges which might have served for seats or for beds.

At one point the roof had been blackened by smoke from the fugitives' fires. But the whole interior was dry and airy. There was not a trace of damp anywhere, and the sandy floor was one that could easily have been kept clean and wholesome. It would have been hard to imagine a more secure or a more sanitary place of refuge.

Down below, nearer the river-bed, was the quaint Moorish well – square in form, with a domed roof. And looking down the valley of the torrente from the brow of the hill in front of the cave where the fig-trees grew, we had a grand prospect of Palma Cathedral, that from each variant point of view seems to gain a new beauty.

An unwonted silence lay over the sunlit land. For once there was no sound of human voice uplifted in song, and that aided the sense of peace. The Balearic islander is the most skilful market-gardener in the world. He makes roads that enable one to drive up one side of a mountain and down the other with perfect ease. He builds walls that look as though they would last throughout the ages and successfully resist a shock of earthquake at the end of time. But as a vocalist he is not attractive.

I must write this heresy in a whisper, for the information would surprise him. He is unconscious of his lack of melody, and rather fancies himself as a songster. The merry Majorcan plough-boy does not "whistle o'er the lea." He sings, or rather chants, in a loud, discordant voice, an artless recitative, apparently improvising both words and music and weaving the little incidents of the day, the trivial happenings of his surroundings, into his interminable lay.

When the Boy was painting in the beautiful undulating country that lay between Son Españolet and the mountains, he sometimes discovered a reference to himself in the pastorale.

"It is the painter English. He is making a picture. He has put Gabriel into it. Perhaps he will put me also, And my fine pigs."

But though the voice of the herdsman might be unmelodious, it mingled harmoniously with the jangle of bells as his flock of pigs, goats, sheep, or asses moved slowly over the uplands under the fragrant almond-trees.

The air was sweet with perfume of the wild lavender that grew in profusion about the entrance to the caves. Not a soul was in sight. It was with a quiet scorn of flesh-pots – even of those that contained sucking-pig – that, sitting in the sunshine, we lunched frugally off sandwiches, claret, and big yellow Muscat grapes.

We had left the Casa Tranquila with the understanding that the day was to be observed as a complete holiday. Yet when the cave revealed picturesque possibilities it would have surprised one unaccustomed to the devious ways of the Man and the Boy to have seen how well provided they chanced to be with working materials.

Leaving them busily sketching, I wandered about gathering the heads of sweet lavender. I had a newly born ambition to fill a cushion with the dried blossoms – an ambition that in England would have been extravagant, but one that in this gracious land was to be gained by a little charming labour. So with that feeling of absolute mental content and of physical well-being that seemed to characterize our Balearic days, I picked and picked and picked until the luncheon-basket was full to overflowing with the purple-grey flowers, and the subtle odour of sweet lavender encompassed me with a cloud of fragrance.

Even in these days of late December I had never taken a country walk without finding a fresh wild flower. To-day it was a rose-coloured cornflower, cyanus; and in addition, growing close to the caves, I came upon a fruit, or vegetable, that was quite new to me. The latter was splendidly decorative. Imagine a giant tomato plant erect and armed with aggressive prickles, that bore a profusion of apples whose colour varied from green mottled with white in the unripe, to brilliant yellow in the mature. I found afterwards that it is known as the "Devil's tomato." Tufts of the pale pink heath flourished under the pines, and on the slopes about the fig-trees my favourite Japanese-like dwarf asphodel, whose white, starry blossoms were striped with chocolate, were out in profusion.

The far-off tinkle of bells that, to our now accustomed ears, ranked almost as a necessary accompaniment to the scenery, had gradually been drawing nearer; and soon the troop of donkeys again appeared, followed by their patient, kindly-faced herd. They were the only living things in sight, and as they moved slowly along they harmonized delightfully with the rustic surroundings.

Approaching nightfall drove us homewards, reluctant to end a day that had been full of intangible charm. The record of its doings, baldly set forth on paper, reveals a total lack of incident. The preceding Christmas Day, spent at a seaside hotel in laboriously enjoying the festivities of the season, we had almost forgotten. These placid hours passed quietly in this country of sweet smells, of gentle noises, of pure, soft air, we would always remember.

As we strolled towards Son Españolet the setting sun seemed determined, in honour of the day, to give an extra glorious display of fireworks. And when the glow had faded from the mountains, leaving them purple velvet, a vivid rose flush that melted into the blue haze of the distance lingered long in the eastern sky. And just above was the nearly full moon, a globe of shining silver. There was no actual dusk, hardly any gloaming; for before the sun had sunk to rest the moon, her lamp brilliantly burning, was ready to do duty.

XIII

THE FEAST OF THE CONQUISTADOR

It was the 31st of December, and the day was one of a long succession of calm summer-like days. The sky was a cloudless blue, and the air so warm that in the plantations beyond Son Españolet sundry over-zealous almond-trees, deceived by the brilliance of the weather, were already bursting into premature bloom.

It was too fine to waste indoors the remaining hours of the year, and the gay little town was always interesting. So we walked towards Palma, and, after strolling down the mole and revelling in the colour and movement of the harbour, we ascended the long flight of steps leading to the ramparts, and, passing the Almudaina, reached the Cathedral, whose grandeur and sacred beauty ever held a fresh fascination for us.

Entering by a side door, we judged from the presence of certain extra decorative trappings in front of the high altar that some special service was in prospect. People were already seated in the pews that filled the front portion of the nave. Finding places at a side, we waited, listening to the joyous strains of the grand organ.

Just before eleven o'clock the great doors of the Cathedral were thrown open, and the warm sunlight streamed into the sombre interior. Then, through the hush of expectancy that had fallen over the congregation, we heard the far-off beating of drums. Something was, looked for – was even now on its way – we knew not what; but we also waited, expectant.

Nearer the sound came, and nearer. From our side seats we could see the guard in front of the Almudaina saluting, then from the brilliant sunlight into the mysterious half-gloom of the Cathedral there passed a quaint little procession, led by a drum-major gorgeous in scarlet and gold. Behind him, three and three, came the drummers, still – even within the sacred walls of the Cathedral – keeping up the rat-a-plan with a vigour that seemed almost profane.

Half-way up the nave they turned aside and stood, rapidly plying their drum-sticks; while, preceded by two mace-bearers in robes of scarlet, their symbols of office over their shoulders, came in evening dress the Civil Governor and the Alcalde, followed by members of the Council. Behind, in uniform, came the Chiefs of Police.

When they were seated – the Civil Governor, as representing the King, being placed in a chair under an embroidered canopy, the others in a specially draped pew alongside – the service began. At one portion of the ceremony a priest with attendants mounted the pulpit, and in an eloquent address related the whole story of the conquest of Majorca by Jaime, the young King of Aragon, who on that very day six hundred and eighty years before had entered the city.

In picturesque language and in fine declamatory style he told how for many hundreds of years the lovely island had suffered under the oppression of the wicked and tyrannical Moors. How prosperity had rendered them only the more piratical and cruel, so that no Christian ship was safe from their assaults. How, rendered yet bolder by success, they even raided the Catalan coast, sacking Barcelona, and killing its Count. How at length the indignation of the Spaniards roused them to take action; and the heads of the ecclesiastical, the military, and the royal sections meeting together, resolved to fit out a fleet, and to dispatch an expedition to wrest the island from the heathen. Under the handsome and daring young King of Aragon the fleet of over a hundred and forty vessels, containing an army thirty thousand strong, set sail. They left the Spanish coast on the 1st of September, 1229, but the Moors made so determined a resistance that it was the last day of the year before the hosts of King Jaime succeeded in entering the town.