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all mirrors were shrouded. Salt in the mouth of a new-born baby made it lucky; salt in its ears made it hear well. Cutting its nails made it grow up a thief, and so the mother bit her child's nails until it was a year old.

The annual feast-day in each village was the day of its patron saint. In Albuquerque the day of San Felipe de Neri is still celebrated. In more primitive communities the celebration has probably been pretty much the same for two hundred years. Old morality plays are still given, and traditional games and sports take place. Always in the early morning mass was said in the church. Then came a procession around the plaza with the image of the saint carried reverently. Altars prepared in front of certain houses, and there the saint and his bearers rested while prayers were said for the family. Later in the day, religious demands having been satisfied, there was every sort of sport.

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One of the favorite games was gallo, which is more fun for everybody than for the rooster who gives it his name. He, poor fowl, is buried in sand to his neck. The contestants then race past him on horses, swooping low from the saddle to pull him out by the head. It takes It takes skill, but eventually some boy gets the bird and is off at a run, swinging his trophy around his head and whooping like a savage. The rest of the field are hot after him, for the game is not over until the final and ultimate end of that rooster. The theory is that the man who finally has the rooster is the winner. The fact is that the end is usually a ground littered with bloody feathers

and various bits of dismembered rooster flourishing in various grimy hands. A great game for everybody except the rooster.

At any time of day or night might be heard the invitation to the dance, a seductive tune played by violin, guitar, and accordion. The orchestra, playing as it marched into town or around the plaza, meant a baile somewhere; probably in some adobe hall lighted by candles in tin sconces or kerosene-lamps. Everybody attended the bailes, from the infant in arms who must occasionally be soothed at the breast to the oldest grandam in the village. Women sat at one end of the hall, men at the other. No introductions were necessary, and the proceedings were orderly to the point of deadliness, or, in occasional flare-ups, violent to the point of killings. But the dance was the thing. A couple might dance together all evening and never speak, though what speaking eyes might do is another matter. Dances were Mexican quadrilles and polkas and languorous waltzes. The orchestra sat on a platform at one end of the hall. With them was the singer, a man or woman skilled in making impromptu rimes. He sang or chanted verses as the dancers passed, making flowery compliments or witty hits. Like the court jester of old, the singer had absolute license, and some of the gibes were remembered for many years. The singers themselves are only a memory

now.

Besides dancing and feasting, an important annual affair was the communal hunt, which took place in the fall after the crops were in. The hunters, armed with lances

and guns, were mounted on wiry little ponies, especially trained to hunt buffalo. Younger and less skilful men drove the wagons which were to bring back the hides and meat. Buffalo roamed the Staked Plains, those arid stretches in eastern New Mexico, Texas, and even western Kansas, and were hunted by both Indians and Mexicans. Naturally the Indians, who had hunted buffalo since time began, resented the invasion of the whites. So the hunt had the added spice of constant danger of Indian interruption. Nevertheless the hunts were regular affairs.

When the cavalcade had located the herd the fun began. The men started the herd moving, and the best of them were detailed to pick off the animals they wanted. The hunter rode at a run, his long lance poised in the hollow of his bridlearm. Choosing his moment, he hurled the lance, aiming it to pierce the only vulnerable point just behind the shoulder. The lance was fastened to a long thong of buffalo-hide, and the pony must be very skilful indeed to save himself and his rider when the great beast turned and plunged. If all went well and there was a dead buffalo instead of a dead pony or caballero, the hunter cut the animal's throat and went on. A good hunter might kill as many as a dozen animals in a day and tell about it by the camp-fire at night.

were tanned for trade in Mexico or "back in the States."

After the hunt came Christmas with its gaieties, ending with Mardi gras. During Lent all the world went black. Food was cut to a minimum, masses were said daily in all the churches and chapels, and entertaining was banned. About all a man could do was to organize a trip into Mexico or the States for trade. During Holy Week Lenten denial culminated in the penitential offices of the Brothers of Light, that mysterious brotherhood whose flagellations may still be seen in some regions. At Easter joy again reigned, and planting and cultivating began once more the simple cycle of the year.

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It was a life such as has been seen nowhere else in the United States. And it is gone. Broken bits are left here and there-stately courtesy in the remote villages, remnants of old morality plays, soft-toned Spanish speech-but these too will soon pass. What happened to it all? The blast of a steam-whistle.

For years before it came the railroad was the burning topic of conversation. Newspapers printed in Spanish and English discussed in both languages whether the railroad A would be good or bad. One editor, in English, wrote, "The railroad will make a sleepy village spring from silence and plodding soberness into the full life and activity of a modern city." In the same year a Spanish don of one of the great old families was a candidate for Congress on a platform which pointed out that a railroad would do away with all freighting by wagons, and

The followers did the butchering. Only the meat of the head and the hump were valued. For immediate use the choice bits were barbecued in great pits. The rest was jerked and dried hanging in strings around the wagons. The skins of course

as thousands made a living that way, he was opposed to railroads.

Progress went on, however, with the inexorable rudeness of progress, and in 1880 the first train steamed into Albuquerque. With supreme disregard of the town, the tracks were a mile east of the plaza. So the population, interested and a bit alarmed, made its way across the muddy and sandy flats to where the modern town was destined to be and watched that first train jerk its way

down the tracks. Horses shied and reared, children cried, speeches in both English and Spanish rent the air. One Mexican initiate to the age of steam was so startled by the snorting monster that he fell over backward from the adobe wall on which he sat; an amusing and halfsad symbol of the end of his times and ways.

One blast of a steam-whistlethe end of Mexico in the United States.

(In December "From Rodeo to Rotary")

IOWA

BENJAMIN Rosenbaum

If Yeats, remembering the swans in Irish
Twilight, came now, would these grass-hills exhilarate
His soul; would Bridges, with his treasured thoughts
Of Oxford and the Berkshire Downs, be fired,
Here by the maize and elms, propitiously;

Or Hardy, sitting by this wired fence,

Hearing a neighing horse or barking dog—
Would he forget a Cornish tale or Wessex girl,
A single day, enamoured of a rough

But pleasant land? . . .

Recalling now a night of wind and stars.

When two black figures, like some etcher's work,
Were moving down a road; recalling peace-

Quiet of open spaces, and muffled laughter

In Iowa, I fancy Kipling, were

He here, could come delighted with a song.
With many songs!

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YE ANCIENT GAME OF FOOTE BALL

As It Was Played in the Time of Henry VIII

WILLIAM NORWOOD BRIGANCE

|wo men were strolling in the royal gardens of the court. "What think ye, Exeter," the younger inquired, "of the strange antics of the Welsh attendant?"

"That they will last no longer than the news reaches the ears of Henry," replied the elder, the Marquis of Exeter.

The younger man, Sir George Sandys, made a grimace. "Henry will fly into another of his rages."

"Aye, and with reason enough this time," was the reply. "Have ye seen him—the Welshman? He's always doing it-booting the silly ball. He's even got a servant now to chase it for him, an old fellow with too much sense to boot it back, but, like a faithful dog, chases off after it and carries it back to his master. "Tis damned impertinent too, I call it! I care naught if he is a knight out in Wales and an attendant here to Henry's courte. By law he's only a yeoman in England, and 'tis law throughout the land that yeoman shall practise naught but archery."

"Aye, a wise law that," answered the marquis. "Had England used the longbow under Surrey as she did at Crécy and Poitiers, Henry would be king of France to-day.'

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"True indeed, and such reflection won't soften his temper at learning

of the Welshman's attention to his childish game. "Twould be wise, methinks, should I find business at Devonshire for the next few weeks. What think ye? Will Henry banish the fool or "

"Tis ever the same of late!" retorted the marquis. "Ye executioner is kept well practised. Even Wolsey would have felt the bladeedge had not death cheated the king."

Sir George flushed hotly at this reference to his kinsman. ""Twas the work of Anne Boleyn! Her coming boded no good. I care naught if she is now queen-"

"Silence, ye fool," thundered the old Earl of Oxford, who had appeared just in time to hear the rash words, "or your head too will be displaced! The king's temper is not counted upon to improve during the day. His councilors fear to wait longer. They are to lay the Welshman's case before him. Ye know well what that

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different. But the childish booting of a queer ball—”

"Aye, 'tis not a game," agreed the holder of the king's stirrup. "And methinks 'twill last no longer than ye outrageous news is borne to his Majesty's ears."

"Outside, ye chattering idiots!" roared the king's hostler. "The king draws nigh!"

The babble ceased. Pompously the two attendants stood in waiting, the one to grasp the bridle and the other to hold the stirrup and both to await the pleasure of their king's dismounting.

The party of his Majesty Henry VIII swung into the court amid a cloud of dust. Even before he reached a halt the holders of stirrup and bridle sprang forward to seize their respective accoutrements. His Majesty's dismounting was attended by more caution than ceremony. One would not have recognized in his portly frame that of the greatest athlete in all England but a decade ago. Imperial cares, divorce and marriages, and an able chef had left their traces.

Safely upon the ground, however, his Majesty recovered his dignity in full measure. With a stern gaze he swept the holders of stirrup and bridle from boots to helmet. Finding nothing wrong, he gave a curt order to the chief hostler for the caring of his mount and, turning upon heel, strode to the palace gardens.

Small events sometimes change the course of history. In proof of this some philosopher once observed that "if Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch shorter eighteen hundred years of history would have been different." So now, had Henry VIII

of England, in this year 1533, chanced to have gone to the palace where his councilors awaited him with their case against the Welshman instead of to his gardens, football might never have been given to the modern world. Colleges and universities might still have been strangers to sport writers; students might never have felt the surging thrill of rasping their vocal cords in unison to the antics of besweatered and bemegaphoned cheer-leaders; gridiron "mentors" might have been born and died, never learning of their hidden genius nor suspecting their true worth to modern education; higher institutions of education might have become, in fact as well as in fiction, centers of learning instead of sobriquets of physical contests! But by inexorable irony of fate the whim of a king in the sixteenth century so influenced sport history in the twentieth. His Majesty went to the royal gardens upon this fateful morning instead of to the palace!

As he approached the gardens a dull thud echoed from over the wall, and a queer-shaped oval spiraled skyward. Henry looked startled.

"By the stars of heaven, what's that?" he cried.

His attendants hesitated.

"Are ye dumb? Speak up! What is it?" he thundered.

""Tis-'tis the Welshman, your Highness," one of them managed to

stammer.

"Welshman! Welshman! Forsooth, Thomas, age enfeebles your sight. Not even a Welshman has so light a head"-pointing to the now descending queer-shaped oval. "Besides, where's his body? Speak up, I say; what is it?"

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