BURLESQUE BULLFIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 5 (Supplement)

BURLESQUE BULLFIGHT.

POPULAR IN PORTUGAL. SMALL BULLS USED. LIVELY AND DIVERTING SPECTACLES. Speaking of them in general, there is nothing very humorous about a bullfight. However, at Alges. just outside Lisbon, there is a large bull ring which compares favourably with the great Campo Pequeno, and where really comic bull-fights are held. Instead of the large bulls which are used all over Spain and Portugal, the promoters choose small steers with short horns. They are wild, however, and in their own manner are just as savage as the great animals which come snorting out of the gate at the big bull-fights. There are many "acts" to the comic bull-fight. Sometimes a butcher shop is constructed of light wood, in the middle of the bull ring and filled with imitation sausages, hams and slaDs 01 beef. The butcher, his helpers and the customers are all bull-fighters, but they wear costumes appropriate to the characters they represent. They are doing their shopping in a quite lively manner, when one an.d sometimes two of the little bulls are let into the ring. When the bull spies the butcher shop in his way many things happen in a short space of time. The "women" shoppers try to run away, the butcher is trampled, the customers try to distract his attention with baskets instead of the great, red, silk scarves usually used, the sausages become tangled around necks, and the bull makes the butcher shop a mass of tangled hams,, sausages, wood, vines and blood. Finally the bull is "conquered" and ridden out of the ring by one of the survivors of the "catastrophe." Another act is the cabaret show. The platform is erected in the ring and the performers are having a gay time when the bull is let in. Another act is an imitation street car. The "cavalheiros," or men on horseback, are put inside a sort of hobbyhorse. With these imitation horses,. covered with bloody "scars" of combat, the bull-fighters prance around the bull until the bull makes a plunge at them. Then, they simply pull their head "into" , their horse and'let the bull do what he pleases. The whole show is given two or three times a year and is well patronised, especially by the younger generation.. The comic fights are excellent practice for, the amateur matadors and banda-' rilleros. ...