676 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



player tunes his instrument, and soon there skip onto the boards four, 

 six, or eight girls, wearing a flower in their hair. They dance to- 

 gether, striking their heels strongly and in time to the music on the 

 boards of la tarima. One of the men begins a song, a kind of chant, 

 or each improvises and sings his own verse, always to the same tune 

 and with the drawling tone which is heard everywhere in warm 

 climates. These verses do not demand great efforts of the imagina- 

 tion, as may be judged from the following lines. One of the singers 

 says, for example : 



Ma novia, in the midst of these girls, 



Appears to me like a star, a flower, a jewel, 



But how sad she is on this beautiful summer night. 



Her heart is warm, her eyes are the sun. 



And one of the bystanders responds : 

 My two horses are sick to-day, 

 But the tobacco produces fine crops ; 

 My friend Jose drinks all of the brandy ; 

 It is indeed not very kind of him. 



And so together, the bystanders repeat the last verse, and another 

 singer begins again. No need of rhyme nor of assonance ; the time 

 suffices and that is required to be only approximately exact. The 

 bystanders applaud the best dancers and the most amusing singers ; 

 if anyone wishes to let one of the girls know that she pleases him 

 while she dances, he takes off his hat and puts it on her head. Often 

 a dancer thus balances a whole pyramid of sombreros to the great 

 vexation of her less popular companions. 



The Zapateo ended, she returns them to their respective owners 

 and receives a piece of money or some trinket. Certain dancers dance 

 the Zapateo in time to the music at the same time untying with the 

 points of their shoes the knots in a scarf placed on the ground. The 

 dance is called the Rebozo. The feat is difficult but if the dancer 

 succeeds, she is enthusiastically applauded. 



When the people from the coast (Jarrochos) joined with the In- 

 dian singers, their verses were full of obscenities and words of 

 double meaning. In the warm region, however, they are very free 

 with words, and without the women being in the least offended, enor- 

 mities may be said before them. 



I have tried to retrace as accurately as possible the ancient balls 

 and the present dances of Mexico. I believe that it will be interest- 

 ing to go more deeply into the subject; at first by reconstituting 

 these ancient dances in Mexico itself, amidst characteristic land- 

 scapes, with the people of the country who have preserved the type of 

 their ancestors. This applies to that which relates to the past. As 

 for the modern dances, it may be said that there are about as many 

 of them as there are provinces, not geographic, but climatic, in the 



