Castles in Spain (continued)

WHEN-I-WAS-A-BOY I once climbed over a fence into a field, and before I knew it a bull was dashing toward me. I barelyhad time to scramble back over the fence again—a narrow escape; I didn’t see any fun in it at all. But in Spain on Sundays and holidays great crowds of people go to an outdoor theater called the bull-ring to see men fightbulls.

The people sit on seats outside a fence that shuts in a sandy field, and from that safe place they watch the bull-fights.A gate is opened into the field and a big, wild bull rushes in. A man called a bull-fighter goes to meet him with a red cloak in his hand and waves it in the face of the bull. This makes the bull mad, so with lowered hornshe charges the red cloak. The bull-fighter jumps to one side just as the bull reaches him, and the angry bull, unable to turn quickly, passes him by. The bull-fighter teases the bull in this way again and again. After worryinghim in various ways, as a cat plays with a mouse, the bull-fighter kills the bull with a thrust of a long sword. It seems to us very cruel, but in Spain they say we kill bulls for meat and do not give any one the fun of seeingthem killed.

A bull-fighter has to be very brave and very skilful, and his foot must not slip on the sandy ground, or he cannotdodge the bull and he will be killed. Almost every city and town in Spain has a bull-ring, as almost every city in the United States has a baseball field or a stadium, for bull-fighting is a national sport, as baseball orfootball is our national sport. Even boys play bull-fighting, one making believe he is the bull and the other the bull-fighter.

Every country seems to have certain games they like to play best. In Spain the girls do not jump rope, but they danceinstead, and keep time by clicking little clappers on their fingers, often singing as they do so. The clappers look like big chestnuts and so are called castanets, which means chestnuts. They dance in twos and fours on thesidewalk, in the parks and squares, wherever our children would jump rope or play hop-scotch. Even in the great Cathedral of Seville the choir boys dance with castanets in front of the altar at certain church festivals. Itis the only place in the World where any one dances in church.