The street life of the city is full of interest. The bare-footed,
ungainly fishwives, dressed in black and bearing flat trays of fish on
their heads; the Galician water-carriers, with their casks; the
bakers, bending beneath a hundredweight of bread slung in a huge
basket from their shoulders; the countrymen, with their sombreros,
sashes and hardwood quarter-staves, give colour and animation to their
surroundings; while the bag-pipes played by peasants from the north,
the whistles of the knife-grinders, and the distinctive calls of the
vendors of fruit, lottery tickets, or oil and vinegar, contribute a
babel of sound. For church festivals and holidays the country-folk
come to town, the women riding on pillions behind the men, adorned in
shawls, aprons and handkerchiefs of scarlet or other vivid hues, and
wearing the strings of coins and ornaments of exquisite gold and
silver filigree which represent their savings or dowries. The costumes
and manners of all classes may be seen at their best in the great
bull-ring of Campo Pequeno, a Mauresque building which holds many
thousands of spectators. A Lisbon bullfight is a really brilliant
exhibition of athletic skill and horsemanship, in which amateurs often
take part, and neither horses nor bulls are killed. There is a
Tauromachic Club solely for amateurs.
_History._--The name Lisbon is a modification of the ancient name
_Olisipo_, also written _Ulyssippo_ under the influence of a mythical
story of a city founded by Odysseus (Ulysses) in Iberia, which, however,
according to Strabo, was placed by ancient tradition rather in the
mountains of Turdetania (the extreme south of Spain). Under the Romans
Olisipo became a _municipium_ with the epithet of _Felicitas Julia_, but
was inferior in importance to the less ancient _Emerita Augusta_
(Mérida). From 407 to 585 it was occupied by Alaric, and thenceforward
by the Visigoths until 711, when it was taken by the Moors. Under the
Moors the town bore in Arabic the name of _Al Oshbuna_ or _Lashbuna_. It
was the first point of Moslem Spain attacked by the Normans in 844. When
Alphonso I. of Portugal took advantage of the decline and fall of the
Almoravid dynasty to incorporate the provinces of Estremadura and
Alemtejo in his new kingdom, Lisbon was the last city of Portugal to
fall into his hands, and yielded only after a siege of several months
(21st October 1147), in which he was aided by English and Flemish
crusaders on their way to Syria. In 1184 the city was again attacked by
the Moslems under the powerful caliph Abu Yakub, but the enterprise
failed. In the reign of Ferdinand I., the greater part of the town was
burned by the Castilian army under Henry II. (1373), and in 1384 the
Castilians again besieged Lisbon, but without success. Lisbon became the
seat of an archbishop in 1390, the seat of government in 1422. During
the 16th century it gained much in wealth and splendour from the
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