[389] Great splendor was used, from the earliest times down to the present century, in the processions of the Corpus Christi throughout Spain; as may be judged from the accounts of them in Valencia, Seville, and Toledo, in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1839, p. 167; 1840, p. 187; and 1841, p. 177. In those of Toledo, there is an intimation that Lope de Rueda was employed in the dramatic entertainments connected with them in 1561; and that Alonso Cisneros, Cristóbal Navarro, and other known writers for the rude popular stage of that time, were his successors;--all serving to introduce Lope and Calderon. Yet to our apprehensions, notwithstanding their religious claims, they seem almost wholly gross and irreverent. Indeed, the very circumstances under which they were represented would seem to prove that they were not regarded as really solemn. A sort of rude mumming, which certainly had nothing grave about it, preceded them, as they advanced through the thronged streets, where the windows and balconies of all the better sort of houses were hung with silks and tapestries to do honor to the occasion. First in this extraordinary procession came the figure of a misshapen marine monster, called the _Tarasca_, half serpent in form, borne by men concealed in its cumbrous bulk, and surmounted by another figure representing the Woman of Babylon,--the whole so managed as to fill with wonder and terror the poor country people that crowded round it, some of whose hats and caps were generally snatched away by the grinning beast, and regarded as the lawful plunder of his conductors.[390] [390] Pellicer, notes, D. Quixote, Tom. IV. pp. 105, 106, and Covarrubias, _ut supra_, ad verb. _Tarasca_. The populace at Toledo called the woman on the Tarasca, Anne Boleyn. Sem. Pint., 1841, p. 177. Then followed a company of fair children, with garlands on their heads, singing hymns and litanies of the Church; and sometimes companies of men and women with castanets, dancing the national dances. Two or more huge Moorish or negro giants, commonly called the _Gigantones_, made of pasteboard, came next, jumping about grotesquely, to the great alarm of some of the less experienced part of the crowd, and to the great amusement of the rest. Then, with much pomp and fine music, appeared the priests, bearing the Host under a splendid canopy; and after them a long and devout procession, where was seen, in Madrid, the king, with a taper in his hand, like the meanest of his subjects, together with the great officers of state and foreign ambassadors, who all crowded in to swell the splendor of the scene.[391] Last of all came showy cars, filled with actors from the public theatres, who were to figure on the occasion, and add to its attractions, if not to its solemnity;--personages who constituted so important a part of the day’s festivity, that the whole was often called, in popular phrase, The Festival of the Cars,--“La Fiesta de los Carros.”[392]