The names
of Dolores, Mercedes, Milagros, recall Our Lady of the Sorrows, of the
Gifts, of the Miracles. I knew a hoydenish little gypsy who bore the
tearful name of Lagrimas. The most appropriate name I heard for these
large-eyed, soft-voiced beauties was Peligros, Our Lady of Dangers. Who
could resist the comforting assurance of "Consuelo"? "Blessed," says my
Lord Lytton, "is woman who consoles." What an image of maiden purity
goes with the name of Nieves, the Virgin of the Snows! From a single
cotillon of Castilian girls you can construct the whole history of Our
Lady; Conception, Annunciation, Sorrows, Solitude, Assumption. As young
ladies are never called by their family names, but always by their
baptismal appellations, you cannot pass an evening in a Spanish
_tertulia_ without being reminded of every stage in the life of the
Immaculate Mother, from Bethlehem to Calvary and beyond.
The common use of sacred words is universal in Catholic countries, but
nowhere so striking as in Spain. There is a little solemnity in the
French adieu. But the Spaniard says adios instead of "good-morning." No
letter closes without the prayer, "God guard your Grace many years!"
They say a judge announces to a murderer his sentence of death with the
sacramental wish of length of days. There is something a little shocking
to a Yankee mind in the label of Lachryma Christi; but in La Mancha they
call fritters the Grace of God.
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