BULL DANCE IN GUATEMALA
By ALDOUS HUXLEY
THE Bull Dance is celebrated round about Christmas time ; but already, though we were only in Lent, the Indians had started their preparations for it. News came that a rehearsal was to be held at a rancho some- where in the hilly country to the west of the town. The chance was too good to miss and we set out to see the fun.
• Against -all the laws of Central American meteorology, it was raining ; but Diego, who was our guide, assured us that the rancho was only half a league away. " Media legua," he kept repeating, " media legua." Another Indian, who had attached himself to our party, wouldn't hear of this media legua ; it was a league he insisted, a full league. They fell into a long argument which Diego brought to a conclusion by saying : " Well, it may be a league to you ; but for me it's only half a league." It was peace with honour ; both sides had won. . The rain came down harder and harder ; but like the Light Brigade, we kept indomitably going. Half a league, half a league . . . And at last, after an. hour and three-quarters of hard walking, we reached the appointed place. We had covered at least a league and a half.
The rancho was built round three sides of a square and about fifty Indians were assembled in the patio. Under the porch a large marimba was being played by three performers, and indoors was a second smaller instrument discoursing an entirely different music. The noise was • astonishing. Ignored by all the Indians we sat down on a bench near the larger marimba and almost immediately another 'movement of the dance began. The performers were divided - into two groups. Shaking rattles and occasionally letting out a yell, they came dancing up towards one another, then retreated,. then advanced again. One was reminded of all the children's parties one had ever attended. " Here we come gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May." But the toddlers of those far-off Christmases had • turned into full-grown copper-coloured savages; shaking rattles and uttering bud whoops. It was curious and faintly disquieting.- TWo or three minutes paised, and then Nuts in May turned into the Grand Chain -of the 'Lancers. The two opposed groups merged into a single serpentine procession. Slowly it circled the patio, slowly, while. the couples who composed this creeping chain hopped round- one another in narrow -epicycles of swift and violent movement.
The dancing. came to an end, and it was the turn of the stage manager to teach the perforMers their parts. Yes, their parts ; for the Bull Dance is a drama in good- ness knows how many dozens of rhymed Spanish couplets. The plot I never fathomed ; all that I could make out was that it. had something to do with a. bailiff who entrusts the master's bulls to some herdsrrien. The dancers came up one by one ; the. stage manager read-out the words and they repeated them after him, making at the same time—some easily and with conviction, some in -an agony of clumsy shyness—the traditional gestures with 'which the recitation was supposed to be accompanied.
The lesson was over at last. The rattling wooden music of the marimba broke out anew. The dancers fell into opposing lines and it was, " Here we go gathering nuts in May " all over again. .
There seemed no reason why such a performance should ever come to a stop. But we were not to be given the opportunity of matching our endurance against that of the Indians. After the third or fourth bout of dancing, the proprietor of the rancho came up to us and firmly, but still, though he was manifestly drunk, politely, asked us to go away. You wouldn't like us to come and look on while you were busy with your costumbres," he said.
The argument was unanswerable. I can imagine few 'things that would embarrass me more than to have a party of Quiches looking on in observant silence, while I went through the curious old custom, say, of taking tea in Bloomsbury. MoreoVer; the man had had more agunr- diente than was good for him, and a drunken Indian is apt to become' unpleasantly violent. -With as much dignity as we could muster, we retreated. Diego came running after us. The owner of the house, he explained apolo- getically, had been selling liquor without a licence. Our race allied us to the authorities ; in this country a white skin is almost an official uniform. Nobody likes to break the laws in the presence of policemen; and so long as we were there, the owner of the rancho had been unable to dispose of his liquor. No wonder if • he resented' Our inquisitive prying into his people's costumbres !
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