Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions

by Henry Festing Jones

I considered what I should do if at Hastings or Grimsby or Newlyn I wanted to get inside a fisherman’s cottage, and it occurred to me that I should consult the parson. I knew a priest at Trapani whose acquaintance I had made at Custonaci, but I did not know where he was. I boldly stopped a couple of strange priests in the street and asked if they knew my priest; they did, and one of them took me to his house. It was rather mean of me to call upon him merely to ask him to help me to find a Nascita, I ought to have wanted to salute him and enjoy his company; but he did not appear to think it rude, and we went together to the old part of the town where the sailors live and asked at a house where he knew they always used to make a Nascita, but this year there was none. They told us of another likely house, but again we were disappointed. We tried several more without success, and at last I exclaimed:

“What a lack of faith!”

But my priest replied that that was not the explanation; it was lack of money, because these things cannot be made for nothing.

We could not then call at more houses because he was busy with his own affairs; it was his dinner-time, or he had to go to a wedding or a funeral or to do whatever it is that Trapanese priests do in the afternoon, so we postponed our search till the evening, when he returned with his brother, another priest, who knew a family who had made a Nascita, and we went to their house.

We were shown into a large room, at the end of which, on

a long table, was a sort of rabbit hutch or doll’s house, all on one floor, about eighteen inches high, with the front off showing that it was divided into eight square compartments, so that the whole hutch was about twelve feet long, the width of the room. These compartments were the rooms of Joachim’s house or flat, as we should say, and the figures in them were about eight inches high. In the arts actual size counts for little and, as with the marionettes, I soon accepted the dolls as representatives of men and women and felt as though I were present at some such family festival as Ignazio’s wedding, and the rooms, all leading one into the other, contributed to the illusion.

We were asked to begin with the entrance. The front part of it had been let to a cobbler who was sitting at his bench mending a shoe, and if it had been real life he would have been singing. Behind him was a garden of artificial flowers with a fountain of real water that was not playing that evening. A door led through the side wall into the second compartment, which was a salone. The porter, in evening dress, was introducing a married couple, also in evening dress, who had been invited and were accompanied by their baby in the arms of the wet-nurse. This compartment was divided by a partition with an open door through which one saw an alcove, or back room, with a buffet loaded with sweets, cakes, and ices, at which the guests were to refresh themselves as they passed. At Ignazio’s wedding footmen carried the refreshments about on trays. A door in the side led to the third compartment, where children were dancing to a toy piano with four real notes. I struck one and it sounded. A lady doll was playing, and I looked at her music, but the notes were too small for my eyes, so I asked our hostess what music it was, and she replied that it was a selection from the Geisha. I remembered then that there had recently been in the town a travelling opera company performing that work which is so popular in Italy that one often hears

the boys whistling the airs in the streets. A surname is not of much practical use in Sicily, and some of my friends have not mastered mine, but by those who know it, and who also know that it is the same as that of the composer of the Geisha, I have sometimes been credited with the music of his opera, a compliment which it distresses me to be compelled to decline. In the alcove behind were musicians playing guitars. I did not strike a note on a guitar, feeling sure that it would be out of tune with the piano.

A door in the side wall led to the fourth room, where S. Joachim was entertaining four kings who wore their crowns. These kings have nothing to do with Gaspare, Melchiorre, and Baldassare, who fall down and worship the infant Jesus, opening their treasures and presenting unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh, on the occasion of the Natività. Those three were led from the East to the manger at Bethlehem by the miraculous star; these in Joachim’s room came in response to the usual cards of invitation sent by the family, just as the relations and guests came to Ignazio’s wedding. The Madonna had, I think my priest told me, forty kings and sixty condottieri in her pedigree. Invitations had been issued to all their descendants, and no doubt all had accepted, but, owing to want of means on the part of the artist who made this Nascita and want of space in the rabbit hutch, only four kings could be shown. It is not everyone who can entertain so many as four kings; there were none at Ignazio’s wedding. In this room there was also a monsignore with red buttons to his sottana, he had an attendant who, my priest told me, was a seminarista. In the alcove behind was Joachim’s bed, and the empty cup from which he had drunk his morning black coffee stood on the table by his bedside.

The door leading to the fifth room was partly concealed by a notice with these words: “È Nata Maria,” and, accordingly, here we found the new-born child in an elaborate