Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions

by Henry Festing Jones

cradle attended by three angels who were planted on the floor in front of her, rather a Christmas-cardy group. Four queens with crowns had come, no doubt they were the wives of Joachim’s kings, and there was a Jewish priest whom I took to be Simeon, he had a head-covering with horns such as Caiaphas wears at Varallo. My priest, however, assured me that Simeon was not a priest, he was only “un uomo qualunque”; and he would have it that the figure represented Melchizedek. This occasion must not be confused with a subsequent one when the Nunc Dimittis was improvised by Simeon, who, he said, could not have lived long enough to be present on both occasions.

“Reverend Father,” I objected, “pardon me if I give you an example which points in the other direction. The best man or, as you would say, the compare at my grandfather’s wedding not only lived to perform the ceremony of marrying my father and mother, but lived long enough also to marry my brother.”

The priest wavered, but was not convinced; he repeated that this was Melchizedek and that he always appears at the birth of the Madonna, and I was so much under the spell of the Nascita that I could not remember precisely when Melchizedek lived. Whoever this personage was, he had passed into this room from Joachim’s room on the day of the Sacred Name of Maria, that is on the Sunday after the birth, and he had officiated at the baptism. On the floor was a bath of water with cinnamon, in which the baby had been washed and with which the guests were to cross themselves. S. Anna was in her bedroom in the alcove behind, but not in bed, she got up and sat in a chair on the ninth day after the birth.

Through the door in the side the guests were to pass to the sixth room, where there were nuns engaged in household duties, mending the linen, darning the stockings, and so on. One was working a sewing-machine, and in the alcove behind was their bedroom.

The side door led to the seventh room, where there was another nun ironing and directing the servants who were making quince marmalade and extract of pomidoro and discharging similar autumnal duties; behind was the servants’ bedroom.

Lastly we came to the eighth room, which, like the front entrance, filled the whole compartment and had no alcove. This was the kitchen and dining-room in one. The hospitable board was spread with such profusion that there was not room on it for another egg-cup. Here Joachim was to entertain the kings and queens to dinner later on. Three Turks and one female servant were controlling affairs, making the cuscuso and preparing the maccaroni. There were young chickens in a corner; I inquired for their mother, and was told she was busy making the soup; then I saw that a saucepan was simmering on the stove. The walls were hung with brightly polished copper cooking utensils and there were baskets of maccaroni on the floor.

The three principal rooms were carpeted with tissue-paper advertisements of a new bar in the Via Torrearsa which has lately been opened by relations of our host. Each room was lighted by a naked candle kept in place upon the floor by a drop of wax. All the walls were hung with wall-papers, originally designed for larger apartments, and adorned with pictures, among which I observed Carlo Dolci’s Ecce Homo. The Avvocato Scalisi saw, or says he saw, two saints flanking an advertisement of cod-liver oil, and in Joachim’s room was a portrait of Pope Pius X blessing the company which included besides the kings a couple of officers in uniform. But then the Avvocato Scalisi is a humorist, and the trouble with humorists is that they are too fond of assuming all their readers to be humorists also, whereas they sometimes have a reader of another kind who is puzzled to know whether what they say is to be taken seriously or not.

We were about to make our compliments preliminary to departure, when our host produced a tray with marsala

and biscuits, so we sat down for a few minutes and I observed what I took to be a little waxen paladin among the wine-glasses. He was, however, no paladin, though he wore armour and a helmet; he was S. Michele waiting to arrive on his festa, the 29th September. It was now the 20th and, partly to please me and partly because it did not much matter for a day or two, he arrived at once. He had wings, but they wanted repairing, so I carried him carefully from the tray and deposited him in the corner of the room in which the baby lay.

My priest found several other examples of the Nascita and took me to see them before I left Trapani. The differences were slight; in one case there were only three rooms; in another the rooms were divided so as to vary in size; in another the rooms had windows at the back with balconies. Sometimes the guests were reading the Giornale di Sicilia, and I saw opera-glasses on the table in one room and in another the gentlemen had deposited their tall hats on the sofa. There were book-cases full of books and the bedrooms were furnished down to the most insignificant but necessary details. S. Joachim in one of the houses was entertaining only three friends, and they had no kingly marks upon them; they were perhaps descendants of the condottieri. I thought afterwards of going back to inquire, but one cannot very well return to a house where one has seen a Nascita and ask to be allowed to look again to make sure whether or not the guests have hung up their crowns on the hat pegs of the umbrella-stand at the front entrance. There was something about these gentlemen, something in their costume as they sat at a round table with S. Joachim, a queer 1830 feeling that put me in mind of Mr. Pickwick and his three friends sitting in their private room at the “George and Vulture,” George Yard, Lombard Street, except that they were only drinking coffee.