Stia is a picturesque city. Its market-place, set on rising ground, with houses jutting out from both sides, suggested the arrangements of scene decoration. Its ancient church is unattractive from outside, but beautiful within. Stia is a convenient centre for walks, but we thought badly of its Albergo Alpina, and would give the preference another time to the inn at Pratovecchio, the situation of which is quite as convenient. The Falterona is usually ascended from Stia, but the snow that had recently fallen made the ascent impossible. We were even prevented from penetrating to the fir woods which have been planted in honour of Dante near the sources of the Arno, a spot to which the expression “Capo d’Arno” is now currently applied. Our walks were limited to the valleys and the lower heights, but we thereby saw more of the people than we should have done otherwise. They were courteous and friendly and charmed us by their unaffected ways. In Dante’s ears the speech of the inhabitants of the Casentino sounded harsh and ugly; to us their Italian seemed correct and clear, and we were struck more than once by their conversational ease.
With pleasure we recalled a homestead on the road to San Godenzo, in which seemed to linger that unaffected rusticity of classic times which the Georgics of Virgil have preserved for us. We were sheltering from a shower in an outhouse when the woman of the farm came out and invited us in. We entered a long low room with a window at each end, the further one looking out into the distance of the hills. The room seemed dark at first, but as one’s power of vision readjusted itself to the mellow light, the wide hearth stood forth with its glowing embers with the children hanging round. Earthenware pots and plates shone bright from shelves against the wall; and the board and the benches, all rounded and polished with use, also caught the reflection from the glow. One of the children threw on some crackling sticks; two others, dark-haired and red-cheeked, came and clung about their mother. Rickety chairs were placed for us near the hearth, then the woman resumed her low seat and went on winding her yarn. In her rough homespun, with her little ones about her, she looked a picture of health and vigour. She readily talked of her home and the children’s varying ways, and of the mill at Stia to which she was sending the yarn which she had spun. Presently the husband too came in, a figure such as one associates with the hills, tall and well-made. He began cleaning his gun, and with the same friendliness talked of the hares he had shot, and of the sport still in store for him. They seemed a happy family, making us welcome with the simple dignity which is so marked a feature in the Italian peasant, and speeding us on our way with the wish that for our sake the weather might improve.
Yet another interior remains with me, the workshop of a cobbler below Porciano. Here a number of houses stood huddled together against the slope of the hill. The word vino, roughly painted in red on a wall that faced the road at an angle, attracted our attention, for we were thirsty, as one often is in a country where one feels suspicious of the water, and we entered. The hale, white-haired cobbler rose from his stool and motioned us to a seat with a certain formality. He then reached two glasses and a huge straw-covered flagon from the shelf, drew out the bit of tow that closed its mouth, and flicked on the floor the drops of oil that floated on the wine, and a little of the wine itself. Here was a reasonable basis for the offer of a libation! Then he filled our glasses, and resuming his work spoke of a son in America, and of the love of change and the growing desire for travel in the younger generation. We too were travelling: whence had we come, whither were we bound? His caustic aptness of speech recalled the saying that the smell of leather sharpens a man’s wits. We had been puzzled that day by a roadside shrine dedicated to a saint Mona Giovanna, and I asked about her, hazarding the remark that his trade was known to go with love of reading. He seemed pleased, and pointing to a small store of books he said he could oblige us, and drew forth the story of the saint in the cheap form in which these stories circulate among the peasantry. In this case it was the question of a woman whose claim to holiness the folk endorsed, while the clergy refused to accept it. Finally the bells at Stia tolled of their own accord as she entered the town, and the candle she was carrying to the shrine was miraculously set alight. In the pantheon of the saints Giovanna has found a place in connection with Bagno on the further side of the hills, but the cobbler was sure about the miracle happening at Stia, and the book confirmed his belief.
This was one of several occasions on which I engaged in conversation with the people on their local saints. Many of the stories which have been worked into legends, and now go to swell the bulk of the Acta Sanctorum, are fresh in the mind of the folk, and a question or two draws from them an account of most wondrous wonders which happened in these districts. The incidents are related in sober earnest, but sometimes the narrator ends with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders. “This is what they say, as to when it happened, chi lo sa?” The chief saint of the district, of whom many wonders are told, is St Torello, the saint of Poppi, whose image faces that of the abbot Fedele of Strumi in the chief church of the place. The wonders worked by Torello chiefly refer to wolves, his power over them was such, that he succeeded in taming one and turning him practically into a dog. In our British Isles the wonder of taming the wolf and setting him to guard the sheep, “which he does to this present day,” is attributed to the woman saint Modwen who came into England from Ireland. Torello seems to have been content to have the wolf as his companion, and those who called upon him against wolves henceforth found protection. The learned editors of the Acta Sanctorum suggested that Torello lived in the eleventh century, but his legend, as it was put into writing by an inhabitant of Poppi, contains lingering pre-Christian superstitions. The great wolf locally called “Moninus,” whom he put under a ban, seems to be unknown except in this district. Torello is also called upon by the people to protect them against famine and the plague.
The driving road over the Consuma to Florence is a well planned road, which rises to a height of 3435 ft. On the day when we crossed the mountains the weather gave a peculiar grandeur to the wildness of the surroundings. We joined the road above Romena and cast a farewell look back on the Casentino. It stretched away in a sunny morning haze, with the hills of Poppi and Bibbiena just visible, and the heights of La Verna overshadowed by clouds. The road went steadily rising through scenery which became more and more bleak and desolate. We passed Casaccia, a solitary inn, since turned into a private house, and appropriated to some society. After passing Casaccia the road wound in and out at about the same height till a gap in the hills was reached, down which one looked down into the valley of the Solano; the old path here joined the new road. In this valley a storm was brewing. Clouds came rolling up, but they could not prevail against the strong wind which blew from the pass. It was grand to see the masses of blue and purple and black, rolled back on each other in the valley, more and more densely packed. Every now and then a streak of cloud escaped and ran under shelter of a rock till it met the wind, which seized it and scattered it and dashed it towards us in the form of blinding snow. On the further side of the pass the weather was settled and fine. The sun shone clear and a blue sky spanned the distant view towards the Mediterranean. This view was limited in the north only by the distant mountains of Carrara; in the south it embraced Florence and all the hills around it, spreading away to the flatness of the distant coast. And in the glow of the late afternoon sun we once more caught sight of the Arno in the near distance. We had left it a rushing mountain stream at Stia; we now beheld it again a broad, shining river, flowing beneath the city of Florence.
HINTS FOR THE TRAVELLER
The Casentino is reached from Florence.
—by rail via Arezzo (55 miles, 6 trains daily, in 1½-4 hours) and Bibbiena (20 miles, 3 trains daily, in 1½ hours). The railway goes on to Poppi, Pratovecchio and Stia, the terminus of the line lying midway between the two latter towns which are about a mile apart.