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Among the Christians who were taken in the fort was one named Don Pedro de Aguilar, a native of some place, I know not what, in Andalusia, who had been ensign in the fort, a soldier of great repute and rare intelligence, who had in particular a special gift for what they call poetry.
According to his account, Tarik landed on a Saturday, in the month of Shaban, of the year 92, and the vessels that brought him and his men on shore were immediately sent back to Africa, and never ceased going backward and forward until the whole of the army was safely landed on the shores of Andalusia.
The second act is the play of the banderilleros, the flag-men. They are beautifully dressed and superbly built fellows, principally from Andalusia, got up precisely like Figaro in the opera. Theirs is the most delicate and graceful operation of the bull-fight. They take a pair of barbed darts, with little banners fluttering at their ends, and provoke the bull to rush at them.
"He brought these from Andalusia," said Padraig, showing seven small eggs mottled with crimson and black in a medicine box. Gregory touched one very gingerly. They were in fact waxen shells filled with volatile liquids, and Padraig had spent most of the night preparing them.
To help to provide for the support of the students the Irish merchants, who carried on a brisk trade with Seville and Cadiz at this period, bound themselves to bestow on the college a certain percentage on every cask of wine they shipped, while Paul V. granted permission to the fishermen of the province of Andalusia to fish on six Sundays or holidays on condition that they devoted the results of their labours to the support of the Irish College.
I think it is Lamartine who has said that truly immortal benefactors have seldom been able to accomplish their mission without the encouragement of either saints or women. This is emphatically true in the case of Columbus. The door to success was at last opened to him by a friendly and sympathetic friar of a Franciscan convent near the little port of Palos, in Andalusia.
The people of the place anticipated with eagerness the rich spoils of Andalusia soon to crowd their gates; throughout the day the city resounded with the noise of kettle-drum and trumpet; the high-mettled steeds stamped and neighed in their stalls as if they shared the impatience for the foray; while the Christian captives sighed as the varied din of preparation reached their rocky dungeons, denoting a fresh expedition against their countrymen.
The ponderous three-deckers of Biscay were notoriously the dullest sailers ever known, nor were the fettered slaves who rowed the great galleys of Portugal or of Andalusia very brisk in their movements; and yet the King might have found time to marshal his ideas and his squadrons, and the Armada had leisure to circumnavigate the globe and invade England afterwards, if a succession of John Rogerses could have entertained his Highness with compliments while the preparations were making.
The farmers and shepherds, who inhabited the beautiful valley of the Ebro and the luxuriantly fertile Andalusia as well as the rough intervening highland region traversed by numerous wooded mountain ranges, could easily be assembled in arms as a general levy; but it was difficult to lead them against the enemy or even to keep them together at all.
As the figures pass beneath balconies crowded with watchers, a singer will suddenly break into a spontaneous, unaccompanied song, called a "saeta," to salute the saint being carried by. The saeta is the same sort of song the Moors used to sing when they lived in Seville and other cities in Andalusia, and today it is usually sung by gypsies, thousands of whom live here.
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