In the afternoon we went across country to a spot on the route, past which the people had already begun to come. I asked, what they had been doing at Trecastagne all night. They told me that the journey from Catania takes about three hours, more or less according to the ability of the runner, so that they begin to arrive somewhere about 3 a.m. and keep on arriving all the morning; and others come from other villages on the eastern slopes. Then they make a row till the church is opened and the nudi go in and light their candles before S. Alfio. Some of them go on their knees and lick the stone floor of the church all the way from the entrance to the altar, but this is being discouraged because it covers the floor with blood and is considered not to be hygienic. Perhaps it might also be well to prohibit the running with bare feet, for that must also make the floor in an unhygienic condition, to say nothing of the roads that lead to the village. Some take stones and beat their breasts, and they all shout continually “Con buona fede, Viva S. Alfio!” After Mass they dress and eat and drink. Some of them have carried their food on their backs, others have friends who have brought it in their carts, and the
food includes eels, which come from the Lake of Lentini; thus they enjoy the luxury of eating fish on the Slopes of Etna and moreover fish from the place of S. Alfio’s martyrdom. At midday the car bearing the three saints is brought out into the street, but this, it seems, does not interest the nudi; they have run naked to the shrine, they have lighted their candles, they have performed their vow and are now free to enjoy themselves. Of course, those who suffer from hernia do not attempt to run until after they believe themselves to be cured of that complaint; but rheumatic patients are often much better after running to Trecastagne, the exertion has upon them an effect like that of a Turkish bath, but it knocks them up in other ways.
By the afternoon, when it is time to return, what with the running, the walking, the driving, the fasting, the shouting, the religious exaltation, the want of sleep, the eating and drinking, the fireworks and the jollity of the festa, many of them are drunk. Joe says the festa is a continuation of some Bacchic festival, and this is more than likely, just as it is more than likely that the Bacchic festival was a continuation of some earlier one. He wants S. Alfio to be a transformation of Bacchus, just as Bacchus was a transformation of Dionysus and Dionysus of some earlier divinity, and so on back to him who first discovered wine, ages and ages before the vates sacer who immortalised Noah.
“And how much do the people believe?” I asked.
“Ah!” replied Joe; “who knows? And what is faith?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said; “sometimes one thing and sometimes another. It is a difficult question.”
Then I remembered that he had asked me the same question, and I had made the same reply at Nicolosi six weeks before, and I also remembered something that had happened in between. “The other day,” I continued, “I had to wait in the station at Messina, and I asked the porter who was helping me with my baggage whether he
had seen the comet. He replied, ‘No, I have not seen the comet, and I shall not even look for it; I do not believe in the comet.’“
“Oh, well, you know what he meant by that? He had heard that it was going to destroy the world, so he did not want to believe in it; he did not want it to exist; he was not going to encourage such a dangerous phenomenon by having anything to do with it. ‘I’ll leave you alone and I expect you to leave me alone.’“
“Yes; I suppose he thought that if he removed his custom the comet would fail.”