Vogho lo core che tinite ’m pietto!”
(“That lover of mine is called Handsome Beppo,
The best player of cards all around this way;
He’s been playing on Hearts at zecchinetto,
And says now they turn up, now are sorted away.
What matters the heart in the card-pack to me?
The heart in his bosom’s the heart for me!”)
Here lies the sleeping fisherman, worn out probably with hours of hauling at the heavy nets, who is snatching a chance hour of repose, prone upon his chest with face buried in his crossed arms. Little he seems to reck of the damp of the soil or the heat of the sun, nor can a noisy game of mora played by a couple of his companions beside him disturb his deep slumber. Mora has ever been the classic game of the South, and indeed, there is abundant evidence to show that it was played by the ancestors of these dwellers in Magna Graecia hundreds of years before Pompeii was overthrown. The game, which requires nothing but the human fingers, bears no little resemblance to our own humble pastime of “Up Jenkin!” which may almost be described as a species of drawing-room mora; [pg 25]perhaps some Italian traveller in a past age may actually have introduced this form of the southern diversion into prosaic England. The two players, face to face and craning forward with outstretched necks, simultaneously extend their right hands with one or more fingers pointing upward, the aim of each man being to guess the exact number, from two to ten, jointly displayed by both right hands. If one of them hit upon the correct figure, then he gains one point towards the stakes, which are usually made in centesimi rather than in soldi. How rapidly do the lean supple brown fingers flash backwards and forwards, and with what gusto do the two frenzied combatants yell out their numbers! Mora has been a favourite recreation with these people almost from their cradles, and he would be a bold man indeed who would venture to challenge a Torrese at this game, for the native’s skill and experience are almost bound to tell eventually in his favour, and the odds are “Lombard Street to a China orange” against the outside player. There are certain maxims too with regard to the game which are closely observed by those who play it, as well as peculiar expressions, such as tutte to denote that all ten fingers are being shown, or chiarella for all but one. Five points usually make the game, and these are commonly marked by holding up one or more fingers of the disengaged left hand.—These are a few of the many sights to be witnessed by those who can afford to endure the pestering attentions of small boys, and the uncomplimentary staring of the adult population in such places as the Torres or Castellamare; and such as wish to make themselves acquainted with the details of southern life and manners cannot do better [pg 26]than pass an idle hour in the fishmarket or the piazza of these little industrial towns of the Vesuvian shore. For to regard Southern Italy from the majestic isolation of a railway compartment or a hired carriage cannot possibly give the traveller the smallest insight into the ordinary phases of local life; for he is ever looking, as it were, into a picture from which all trace of colour has vanished.
It is but a short quarter of an hour by train from Torre Annunziata to Castellamare di Stabia, the ill-fated Stabiae of the Romans, which shared the evil lot of Pompeii and Herculaneum. On our right we have the sea, with the castle-topped islet of Revigliano, whilst on looking to the left we can survey the fertile valley of the Sarno, and the shapeless mounds which hide that precious goal of every traveller to these shores, the buried city of Pompeii. Everywhere thrives sub-tropical vegetation:—cactus and aloe draped in wreaths of smilax; tall straggling masses of scarlet geranium that cling for protection to the Indian fig, and blossom in security amid their spiky but safe retreats; shrubs of fragrant yellow genista; clumps of purple-leaved ricini, as the Italians name the castor-oil plant. If it were summer time, the daturas would be covered with their great white floral trumpets, and every oleander bush would be one blaze of the coarse carmine blossoms that are here called Mazza di San Giuseppe, or St Joseph’s nosegay, and a very gaudy rank bouquet they make. But in spring-time the oleander can but display long greyish leaves and pods of snowy fluff, which is blown hither and thither like thistle-down on the air; and it is only in flaming summer that these regions are brightened by St [pg 27]Joseph’s flower, or by the still more gorgeous masses of the mesembryanthemum, which clambers on all sides over the lava rock and hangs in crimson festoons from tufa cliffs, making impossibly splendid splashes of colour in the landscape.
* * * * * * *