The folk-poet in Spain reaps the advantage of a recognised freedom of versification; with the great stress laid upon the vowels, a consonant more or less counts for nothing:
A dormir va la rosa De los rosales; A dormir va mi niña Porque ya es tarde.
All folk-poets, and notably the English, have recourse to an occasional assonant, but the Spaniard can trust altogether to such. Verse-making is thus made easy, provided ideas do not fail, and up to to-day, they have not failed the Spanish peasant. He has not, like the Italian, begun to leave off composing songs. My correspondent at Malaga writes that at that place improvisation seems innate in the people: they go before a house and sing the commonest thing they wish to express. Love and hate they also turn into songs, to be rehearsed under the window of the individual loved or hated. There is even an old woman now living in Malaga who rhymes in Latin with extraordinary facility. To the present section falls one other lullaby--coo-aby, perhaps I ought to say, since the Spanish _arrullo_ means the cooing of doves as well as the lulling of children. It is quoted by Count Gubernatis:
Isabellita, do not pine Because the flowers fade away; If flowers hasten to decay Weep not, Isabellita mine.
Little one, now close thine eyes, Hark, the footsteps of the Moor! And she asks from door to door, Who may be the child who cries?
When I was as small as thou And within my cradle lying, Angels came about me flying And they kissed me on my brow.
Sleep, then, little baby, sleep: Sleep, nor cry again to-night, Lest the angels take to flight So as not to see thee weep.
"The Moor" is in this instance a benignant kind of bogey, not far removed from harmless "wee Willie Winkie" who runs upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown:
Tapping at the window, Crying at the lock, "Are the babes in their beds? For it's now ten o'clock."
These myths have some analogy with a being known as "La Dormette" who frequents the neighbourhood of Poitou. She is a good old woman who throws sand and sleep on children's eyes, and is hailed with the words:
Passez la Dormette, Passez par chez nous! Endormir gars et fillettes La nuit et le jou.
Now and then we hear of an angel who passes by at nightfall; it is not clear what may be his mission, but he is plainly too much occupied to linger with his fellow seraphs, who have nothing to do but to kiss the babe in its sleep. A little French song speaks of this journeying angel: