And this, too, is Spanish. Cervantes is as true a facet of many-sided Spain as Calderon, and Velázquez as Murillo. With all the national propensity to emotion and exaggeration, Spaniards are a truth-seeing people. The popular _coplas_ are more often satiric than sentimental. They like to bite through to the kernel of fact, even when it is bitter. Velázquez, with his rich and noble realism, is of legitimate descent.
"Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness." --SHAKESPEARE: _Hamlet_.
On one of my last afternoons in Madrid, I visited again my early haunts in the _Buen Retiro_, for a farewell sight of the children there at play. After all, it is one of the prettiest things to be seen in Spain, these graceful, passionate, dramatic little creatures dancing in tireless circles, and piping those songs that every _niña_ knows, without being able to tell when or where or from whom she learned them. Only very small boys, as a rule, join the girls in these fairy rings, though occasionally I found a troop of urchins marching to a lusty chorus of their own. One, which I heard in Madrid, but whose parrots are more suggestive of Seville, runs something like this:--
"In the street they call Toledo Is a famous school for boys, Chundarata, chundarata, Chundarata, chún-chún; Where all we lads are going With a most heroic noise, Chundarata, chundarata, Chundarata, chún-chún.
"And the parrots on their perches, They mock us as we go, Chundarata, chundarata, Chundarata, chún-chún. 'I hate my school,' whines Polly, 'For my master beats me so,' Chundarata, chundarata, Chundarata, chún-chún."
Another, which came to me in fragments, is sung in playing soldier.
"The Catalans are coming, Marching two by two. All who hear the drumming Tiptoe for a view. Ay, ay! Tiptoe for a view. Red and yellow banners, Pennies very few. Ay, ay! Pennies very few.
"Red and yellow banners! The Moon comes out to see. If moons had better manners, She'd take me on her knee. Ay, ay! Take me on her knee. She peeps through purple shutters, Would I were tall as she! Ay, ay! Would I were tall as she!
"Soldiers need not learn letters, Nor any schooly thing, But unless they mind their betters, In golden chains they'll swing. Ay, ay! In golden chains they'll swing. Or sit in silver fetters, Presents from the King. Ay, ay! Presents from the King."