So, whether the day has been dark and cheerless, or whether the kind autumn sunshine has been there to brighten up all anew into a beauty more beautiful than summer-time, the women have been at work in the woods, and now the recreation hour has come. Within cottages great fires are lit upon hearths that are in the chamber’s midst, and the pot is put on to boil; rough wooden benches are drawn around, and men and women meet after their labour to commemorate, with fun and jollity, the first of the chestnuts. Upon each successive evening they meet in different cottages according to the help they have lent to one another during the day; land is not rented in the Apennines, neither do the people labour for pay, but each has his small homestead according to his wealth, and cultivates the ground himself, men and women helping their neighbours during every pressing season, as they themselves expect to be helped in turn.
When the ‘minestra’ has been eaten, or the ‘polenta’ then the pot is taken off, with the great chain from whence it hung, and the ‘padella’ is brought forth, upon which chestnuts are to be roasted. The red wood fire flares and flickers upon the hearth amid its heap of embers, throwing fitful dashes of light upon faces around—copper vessels and platters make sudden gleam upon dingy walls. Again the bold flames die away, and there is only a lurid mass of cinders, and then the women toss chestnuts in the pan and the men slit the brown hide of other chestnuts that are yet unroasted, and they all chatter and gesticulate the while in a fashion so quick and eager and with voices so high and thrilling, that foreign ears, to whom the shrill dialect is unknown, might fairly hear therein the words of an angry quarrel.
And sometimes there are quarrels even at these scenes of merriment. Italian natures are hot, and Italian women are jealous, besides being coquettes too, in their way, with often prudent or mercenary considerations, so that wrangles come and altercations; but they make it up again most times, and do not seem to break their hearts.
The women are not, as a rule, beautiful hereabouts. They are superbly built and powerful, with graceful movements, but their faces belong to a heavy-featured type that lacks much in delicacy of form, even though the ruddy pallor of colouring might atone for many deficiencies. The splendour of dark eyes can sometimes scarcely kindle them into real brilliancy, nevertheless these women have their lives to live and their wars to wage, and they bear the tokens, in themselves beautiful, of toil and the labour of living.
The chestnut harvest lasts some three weeks or more, and, when the fruit is all gathered in, it is spread above the open rafters that form the roof of every kitchen in these Italian cottages—there to be dried during winter by the fire’s heat from below. And when the chestnuts are dried, and the outer skin has been cracked off by the heat, then they are ground in a mill, so that the flour goes to make bread and cakes and porridge during the barren season, when there is little fresh food to be got by the poor. The dried chestnuts are boiled whole likewise, and in one form or another the common production of the woods provides nourishment, during this time, for all the peasants throughout the land.
Under the Cherry Trees. The Bridal.
Summer sunshine lies gladly upon the green hill-sides of la Valle Calda. It moves in broken light over the warm green of broad-leaved chestnut trees that daintily sweep the turf with their branches, it quivers across the stream’s passing wave, or rests in a sheet of silver upon the still pools of the slowly flowing river. Flowers bloom gayer and breathe forth a stronger scent for its goodly radiance, summer fruits ripen the sooner. For these are June days, that I call to mind, as I think of la Valle Calda, that fairest of North Apennine valleys, and the wild cherries are ripe upon the land, the lads and the maidens are merry, for to-morrow is the Feast of St. John and the bridal day of Caterina Ponte.
In the hamlets around, excitement has waxed high these many days past. St. John is the patron saint of this little church that stands so simply beside the green background of the richly-wooded mountain, with belfry tower whose top seems almost to lie against the far horizon clouds. St. John is the saint to whom most honour is due from the dwellers in this particular parish. There will be a procession to-morrow, and that would be grave enough matter, even without the wedding of the prettiest girl in our village.
Down by the river’s brink, where the tall cherry trees grow whose large black fruit will not be ripe yet awhile, the morrow’s bride has had her home these twenty years long. Her cottage roof is thatched and moss-grown, as the roofs of all the other cottages that are here gathered together into a hamlet—one of the many hamlets that go to make up the parish.
The father’s homestead, where Caterina has lived away her life till to-day, is nothing but a low, one-storeyed house, that has no chimney to its roof and no glass to its windows, blackened around where the smoke has made its way; there are rough wooden shutters to keep out the night air and the coldest of winter blasts, but, in these happy dog-days, is no need to fear the fresh breath of the outside breezes, and, upon the sills, carnations bloom in pots, with marjoram and rosemary for the soup-flavouring, and marsh-mallow for the healing of hurts. The stone steps are uneven that lead to the threshold; the kitchen is dark, above the loose rafters of which chestnuts lie all winter time to dry with the heat of the fire below; a great black pot is hanging now over the red embers on the square centre-hearth, and Caterina knows every dint in those bright copper vessels that gladden the gloomy walls—every sunken brick in the floor. No wonder she sorrows a little to leave the hard bench where she has sat so often to fan the flame or—one among many—to roast chestnuts of an autumn evening; no wonder she drops a passing regret to the broken stone balcony without the door, where ofttimes she has stood gossiping with neighbours beneath the trellised vine or has listened to the ready vows of village swains! Though she be going to a better cottage, where there are windows and even a chimney, Caterina can still be sorry to leave the yellow gourd flowers that trail across the ground in the garden of her girlhood, will still perchance miss awhile the Michaelmas daisies, the sunflowers, the tomatoes, and even her own pet fruit-orchard stretching across green grass towards the river. But though she sigh a furtive sigh for all this, the vows of the one particular swain have been heard and registered now, so there must be a good-bye for ever to anything the others might have had to say, and this must be the last day even for the gossip of a maiden.