The Folklore Society has some interesting information to give about the innumerable rhymed games which Spanish children, like our own, are so fond of playing, many of them having an origin lost in prehistoric times.  One finds, also, from some of the old stories, that the devils are much hurt in their feelings by having tails and horns ascribed to them.  As a matter of fact, they have neither, and cannot understand where mortals picked up the idea!  The question is an interesting one.  Where did we obtain this notion?

CHAPTER XVII

THE FUTURE OF SPAIN

An Englishman who, from over thirty years’ residence in Spain and close connection with the country, numbered among her people some of his most valued friends, thus speaks of the national characteristics: 

“The Spanish and English characters are, indeed, in many points strangely alike.  Spain ranks as one of the Latin nations, and the Republican orators of Spain are content to look to France for light and leading in all their political combinations; but a large mass of the nation, the bone and sinew of the country, the silent, toiling tillers of the soil, are not of this way of thinking....  There is a sturdy independence in the Spanish character, and an impatience of dictation that harmonises more nearly with the English character than with that of her Latin neighbours....  There is a gravity and reticence also in the Spaniard that is absent from his mercurial neighbour, and which is, indeed, much more akin to our cast of temper.

“True it is that our insular manners form at first a bar to our intercourse with the Spaniard, who has been brought up in a school of deliberate and stately courtesy somewhat foreign to our business turn of mind; but how superficial this difference is may be seen by the strong attachment Englishmen form to the country and her people, when once the strangeness of first acquaintance has worn off; and those of us who know the country best will tell you that they have no truer or more faithful friends than those they have amongst her people.”

Speaking of her labouring classes, and as a very large employer of labour in every part of the Peninsula he had the best possible means of judging, this writer says: 

“The Spanish working man is really a most sober, hard-working being, not much given to dancing, and not at all to drinking.  They are exceptionally clever and sharp, and learn any new trade with great facility.  They are, as a rule, exceedingly honest—­perfect gentlemen in their manners, and the lowest labourer has an aplomb and ease of manner which many a person in a much higher rank in this country might envy.  When in masses they are the quietest and most tractable workmen it is possible to have to deal with.  The peasant and working man, the real bone and sinew of the country, are as fine a race as one might wish to meet with—­not free from defects—­what race is?—­but possessed of excellent sterling qualities, which only require knowing to be appreciated.  I cannot say as much for the Government employees and politicians.  Connection with politics seems to have a corrupt and debasing effect, which, although perhaps exaggerated in Spain, is, unfortunately, not by any means confined to that country only."[3]