And all hard fate accusing
Thee to my sight refusing."
And now he has to go upon a long journey; but before he starts he contrives one meeting with Rusidda. "Though I shall no longer see you, we yet may hope, for death is the only real parting," he says. "I would have you constant, firm, and faithful; I would have you faithful even unto death." She answers, "If I should die, still would my spirit stay with you." A year passes; on Rusidda's festa a letter arrives from Turiddu: "Go, letter mine, written in my blood, go to my dear delight; happy paper! you will touch the white hand of my love. I am far away, and cannot speak to her; paper, do you speak for me."
At last Turiddu returns—but where is Rusidda? "Ye stars that are in the infinite heavens, give me news of my love!"
Through the night "he wanders like the moon," he wanders seeking his love. In his path he encounters Brown Death. "Seek her no more," says this one; "I have her under the sod. If you do not believe me, my fine fellow, go to San Francesco, and take up the stone of the sepulchre: there you will find her." ... Alas! "love begins with sweetness and ends in bitterness."
The Sicilian's "Beautiful ideal" would seem to be the white rose rather than the red, in accordance, perhaps, with the rule that makes the uncommon always the most prized; or it may be, from a perception of that touch of the unearthly, that pale radiance which gives the fair Southerner a look of closer kinship with the pensive Madonna gazing out of her aureole in the wayside shrine, than with the dark damsels of the more predominant type. Some such angelical association attached to golden heads has possibly disposed the Sicilian folk-poet towards thinking too little of the national black eyes and olive-carnation colouring. Not that brunettes are wholly without their singers; one of these has even the courage to say that since his bedda is brown and the moon is white, it is plain that the moon must leave the field vanquished. One dark beauty of Termini shows that she is quite equal to standing up for herself. "You say that I am black?" she cries, "and what of that? Black writing looks well on white paper, black spices are worth more than white curds, and while dusky wine is drunk in a glass goblet, the snow melts away unregarded in the ditch."[1] But the apologetic, albeit spirited tone of this protest, indicates pretty clearly that the popular voice gives the palm to milk-white and snowy faced maidens; the possessors of capiddi biunni and capidduzzi d'oru have no need to defend their charms, a hundred canzuni proclaim them irresistible. "Before everything I am enamoured of thy blonde tresses," says one lyrist. The luxuriant hair of the Sicilian women is proverbial. A story is told how, when once Palermo was about to surrender to the Saracens because there were no more bowstrings in the town, an abundant supply was suddenly produced by the patriotic dames cutting off their long locks and turning them to this purpose. The deed so inspired the Palermitan warriors that they speedily drove the enemy back, and the siege was raised. A gallant poet adds: "The hair of our ladies is still employed in the same office, but now it discharges no other shafts but those of Cupid, and the only cords it forms are cords of love."
In the early morning, almost all the year round the women may be seen sitting before their doors undoing and doing up again this long abundant hair. The chief part of their domestic work they perform out in the sunshine; one thing only, but that the most important of all, has to be done in the house—the never finished task of weaving the clothes of the family. From earliest girlhood to past middle age the Sicilian women spend many hours every day at the loom. A woman of eighty, Rosa Cataldi of Borgetto, made the noble boast to Salomone-Marino: "I have clothed with stuff woven by my hands from fourteen to fifty years, myself, my brothers, my children, and their children." A girl who cannot, or will not, weave is not likely to find a husband. As they ply the shuttle, the women hardly cease from singing, and many, and excellent also, are the songs composed in praise of the active workers. The girl, not yet affianced, who is weaving perhaps her modest marriage clothes, may hear, coming up from the street, the first avowal of love:
Ciuri d'aranci.
Bedda, tu tessi e tessennu mi vinci;