Few who love Don Quixote, will deem any notice on the Peninsular surgeon
complete in which the barber is not mentioned, even be it in a
postscript. Although the names of both these learned professors have
long been nearly synonymous in Spain, the barber is much to be
preferred, inasmuch as his cuts are less dangerous, and his conversation
is more agreeable. He with the curate formed the quiet society of the
Knight of La Mancha, as the apothecary and vicar used to make that of
most of our country squires of England. Let, therefore, every Adonis of
France, now bearded as a pard although young, nay, let each and all of
our fair readers, albeit equally exempt from the pains and penalties of
daily shaving, make instantly, on reaching sunny Seville, a pilgrimage
to the shrine of San Figaro. His shop--apocryphal it is to be feared as
other legendary localities--lies near the cathedral, and is a no less
established lion than the house of Dulcinea is at Toboso, or the prison
tower of Gil Blas is at Segovia. Such is the magic power of genius.
Cervantes and Le Sage have given form, fixture, and local habitation to
the airy nothings of their fancy’s creations, while Mozart and Rossini,
by filling the world with melody, have bidden the banks of the
Guadalquivir re-echo to their sweet inventions.
[Sidenote: SPANISH MUSTACHIOS.]
To those even who have no music in their souls, the movement from
doctors to barbers is harmonious in a land where beards were long
honoured as the type of valour and chivalry, and where shaving took the
precedence of surgery; and even to this day, _la tienda de barbero_, the
shop of the man of the razor, is better supplied than many a Spanish
hospital both with patients and cutting instruments. One word first on
the black whiskers of tawny Spain. These _patillas_, as they are now
termed, must be distinguished from the ancient mustachio, the
_mostacho_, a very classical but almost obsolete word, which the
scholars of Salamanca have derived from μυστἁξ, the upper lip.
Their present and usual name is _Bigote_, which is also of foreign
etymology, being the Spanish corruption of the German oath _bey gott_,
and formed under the following circumstances: for nicknames, which stick
like burrs, often survive the history of their origin. The free-riding
followers of Charles V., who wore these tremendous appendages of
manhood, swore like troopers, and gave themselves infinite airs, to the
more infinite disgust of their Spanish comrades, who have a tolerable
good opinion of themselves, and a first-rate hatred of all their foreign
allies. These strange mustachios caught their eyes, as the stranger
sounds which proceeded from beneath them did their ears. Having a quick
sense of the ridiculous, and a most Oriental and schoolboy knack at a
nickname, they thereupon gave the sound to the substance, and called the
redoubtable garnish of hair, _bigotes_. This process in the formation of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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