Working-people come to be idle, and idle people come to have something
to do. There is much eating and little drinking. The milk-stalls are
busier than the wine-shops. The people are gay and jolly, but very
decent and clean and orderly. To the east of the Hermitage, over and
beyond the green cool valley, the city rises on its rocky hills, its
spires shining in the cloudless blue. Below on the emerald meadows there
are the tents and wagons of those who have come from a distance to the
Romeria. The sound of guitars and the drone of peasant songs come up the
hill, and groups of men are leaping in the wild barbaric dances of
Iberia. The scene is of another day and time. The Celt is here, lord of
the land. You can see these same faces at Donnybrook Fair. These
large-mouthed, short-nosed, rosy-cheeked peasant-girls are called
Dolores and Catalina, but they might be called Bridget and Kathleen.
These strapping fellows, with long simian upper lips, with brown
leggings and patched, mud-colored overcoats, who are leaping and
swinging their cudgels in that Pyrrhic round are as good Tipperary boys
as ever mobbed an agent or pounded, twenty to one, a landlord to death.
The same unquestioning, fervent faith, the same superficial good-nature,
the same facility to be amused, and at bottom the same cowardly and
cruel blood-thirst. What is this mysterious law of race which is
stronger than time, or varying climates, or changing institutions? Which
is cause, and which is effect, race or religion?
The great Church holiday of the year is Corpus Christi.
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