There is the fico arnese, the smallest of all, and the fico santillo, both of which are best when dried; the fico vollombola, which is never dried, because it only makes the spring fruit; the fico molegnano, which ripens as late as the end of October and must be eaten fresh; the fico coretorto (“ wry-heart”—from its shape), which has the most leathery skin of all and is often destroyed by grubs after rain; the fico troiano; the fico arzano; and the fico vescovo, which appears when all the others are over, and is eaten in February (this may be the kind referred to in Stamer’s “Dolce Napoli” as deriving from Sorrento, where the first tree of its kind was discovered growing out of the garden wall of the bishop’s palace, whence the name). All these are neri—black. Now for the white kinds. The fico paradiso has a tender skin, but is easily spoilt by rain and requires a ridiculous amount of sun to dry it; the fico vottato is also better fresh; the fico pez-zottolo is often attacked by grubs, but grows to a large size every two or three years; the fico pascarello is good up till Christmas; the fico natalino; lastly, the fico ——, whose name I will not record, though it would be an admirable illustration of that same anthropomorphic turn of mind. The santillo and arnese, he added, are the varieties which are cut into two and laid lengthwise upon each other and so dried (Query: Is not this the “duplex ficus” of Horace?).
“Of course there are other kinds,” he said, “but I don’t remember them just now.” When I asked whether he could tell these different fig-trees apart by the leaves and stems alone and without the fruit, he said that each kind, even in winter, retained its peculiar “faccia” (face), but that some varieties are more easy to distinguish than others. I enquired into the mysteries of caprification, and learned that artificial ripening by means of a drop of oil is practised with some of them, chiefly the santillo, vollombola, pascarello and natalino. Then he gave me an account of the prices for the different qualities and seasons which would have astonished a grocer.
All of which proves how easy it is to misjudge of folks who, although they do not know that Paris is the capital of France, yet possess a training adapted to their present needs. They are specialists for things of the grain-giving earth; it is a pleasure to watch them grafting vines and olives and lemons with the precision of a trained horticulturist. They talk of “governing” (governare} their soil; it is the word they use in respect to a child.
Now figs are neither white nor black, but such is the terminology. Stones are white or black; prepared olives are white or black; wine is white or black. Are they become colour-blind because impregnated, from earliest infancy, with a perennial blaze of rainbow hues—colour-blinded, in fact; or from negligence, attention to this matter not bringing with it any material advantage? Excepting that sign-language which is profoundly interesting from an artistic and ethnological point of view—why does not some scholar bring old Iorio’s “Mimica degli Antichi” up to date?—few things are more worthy of investigation than the colour-sense of these people. Of blue they have not the faintest conception, probably because there are so few blue solids in nature; Max Mueller holds the idea of blue to be quite a modern acquisition on the part of the human race. So a cloudless sky is declared to be “quite white.” I once asked a lad as to the colour of the sea which, at the moment, was of the most brilliant sapphire hue. He pondered awhile and then said:
“Pare come fosse un colore morto” (a sort of dead colour).
Green is a little better known, but still chiefly connected with things not out of doors, as a green handkerchief. The reason may be that this tint is too common in nature to be taken note of. Or perhaps because their chain of association between green and grass is periodically broken up—our fields are always verdant, but theirs turn brown in summer. Trees they sometimes call yellow, as do some ancient writers; but more generally “half-black” or “tree-colour.” A beech in full leaf has been described to me as black. “Rosso” does not mean red, but rather dun or dingy; earth is rosso. When our red is to be signified, they will use the word “turco,” which came in with the well-known dye-stuff of which the Turks once monopolized the secret. Thus there are “Turkish” apples and “Turkish” potatoes. But “turco” may also mean black—in accordance with the tradition that the Turks, the Saracens, were a black race. Snakes, generally greyish-brown in these parts, are described as either white or black; an eagle-owl is half-black; a kestrel un quasi bianco. The mixed colours of cloths or silks are either beautiful or ugly, and there’s an end of it. It is curious to compare this state of affairs with that existing in the days of Homer, who was, as it were, feeling his way in a new region, and the propriety of whose colour epithets is better understood when one sees things on the spot. Of course I am only speaking of the humble peasant whose blindness, for the rest, is not incurable.
One might enlarge the argument and deduce his odd insensibility to delicate scents from the fact that he thrives in an atmosphere saturated with violent odours of all kinds; his dullness in regard to finer shades of sound—from the shrieks of squalling babies and other domestic explosions in which he lives from the cradle to the grave. That is why these people have no “nerves”; terrific bursts of din, such as the pandemonium of Piedigrotta, stimulate them in the same way that others might be stimulated by a quartette of Brahms. And if they who are so concerned about the massacre of small birds in this country would devote their energies to the invention of a noiseless and yet cheap powder, their efforts would at last have some prospects of success. For it is not so much the joy of killing, as the pleasurable noise of the gun, which creates these local sportsmen; as the sagacious “Ultramontain” observed long ago. “Le napolitain est passionné pour la chasse,” he says, “parce que les coups de fusil flattent son oreille.”[[2]] This ingenuous love of noise may be connected, in some way, with their rapid nervous discharges.
[2] I have looked him up in Jos. Blanc’s “Bibliographic.” His name was C. Haller.
I doubt whether intermediate convulsions have left much purity of Greek blood in south Italy, although emotional travellers, fresh from the north, are for ever discovering “classic Hellenic profiles” among the people. There is certainly a scarce type which, for want of a better hypothesis, might be called Greek: of delicate build and below the average height, small-eared and straight-nosed, with curly hair that varies from blonde to what Italians call castagno chiaro. It differs not only from the robuster and yet fairer northern breed, but also from the darker surrounding races. But so many contradictory theories have lately been promulgated on this head, that I prefer to stop short at the preliminary question—did a Hellenic type ever exist? No more, probably, than that charming race which the artists of Japan have invented for our delectation.
Strains of Greek blood can be traced with certainty by their track of folklore and poetry and song, such as still echoes among the vales of Sparta and along the Bosphorus. Greek words are rather rare here, and those that one hears—such as sciusciello, caruso, crisommele, etc.—have long ago been garnered by scholars like De Grandis, Moltedo, and Salvatore Mele. So Naples is far more Hellenic in dialect, lore, song and gesture than these regions, which are still rich in pure latinisms of speech, such as surgere (to arise); scitare (excitare—to arouse); è (est—yes); fetare (foetare); trasete (transitus—passage of quails); titillare (to tickle); craje (cras—to-morrow); pastena (a plantation of young vines; Ulpian has “pastinum instituere”). A woman is called “muliera,” a girl “figliola,” and children speak of their fathers as “tata” (see Martial, epig. I, 101). Only yesterday I added a beautiful latinism to my collection, when an old woman, in whose cottage I sometimes repose, remarked to me, “Non avete virtù oggi”—you are not up to the mark to-day. The real, antique virtue! I ought to have embraced her. No wonder I have no “virtue” just now. This savage Vulturnian wind—did it not sap the Roman virtue at Cannae?