phrases is familiar to philologists, who know that an essential part
often is taken for the whole. For example, a hat, in common Spanish
parlance, is equivalent to a grandee, as with us the woolsack is to a
Lord Chancellor. It is natural that unscholastic soldiers, when dealing
with languages which they do not understand, should fix on their
enemies, as a term of reproach, those words which, from hearing used the
most often, they imagine must constitute the foundation of the hostile
grammar. Thus our troops called the Spaniards _los Carajos_, from their
terrible oaths and terrible runnings away. So the clever French
designated as _les godams_, those “stupid” fellows in red jackets who
never could be made to know when they were beaten, but continued to make
use of that significant phrase in reference to their victors, until they
politely showed them the shortest way home over the Pyrenees.
[Sidenote: THE BEARD.]
The real Spanish mustachio, as worn by the real Don Whiskerandoses, men
with shorter cloaks and purses than beards and rapiers, have long been
cut off, like the pig-tails of our monarchs and cabinet ministers. Yet
their merits are embalmed in metaphors more enduring than that
masterpiece in bronze with which Mr. Wyatt, full of Phidias, has adorned
King George’s back and Charing Cross. Thus _hombre de mucho bigote_, a
man of much moustache, means, in Spanish, a personage of considerable
pretension, a fine, liberal fellow, and anything, in short, but a bigot
in wine, women, or theology. The Spanish original realities, like the
pig-tails of Great Britain, have also been immortalised by fine art, and
inimitably painted by Velazquez. Under his life-conferring brush they
required no twisting with hot irons. Curling from very ire and martial
instinct, they were called _bigotes á la Fernandina_, and their rapid
growth was attributed to the eternal cannon smoke of the enemy, into
which nothing could prevent their valorous wearers from poking their
faces. This luxuriance has diminished in these degenerate times, unless
Napier’s ‘History of the Peninsular War’ be, as the Spaniards say,
written in a spirit of envy and jealousy against their heroic armies,
which alone trampled on the invincible eagles of Austerlitz.
As among the Egyptian gods and priests, rank was indicated by the cut of
the beard, so in Spain the military civil and clerical shapes were
carefully defined. The Charley, or Imperial, as we term the little tuft
in the middle of the under lip, a word by the way which is derivable
either from our Charles or from his namesake emperor, was called in
Spain _El perrillo_, “the little dog,” the terminating tail being
omitted, which however becoming in the animal and bronzes, shocked
Castilian euphuism.
[Sidenote: THE BIGOTE.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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