The rocky pathway between this chapel and the meadow is obstructed by folk and lined on either side with temporary booths of green branches, whose owners vociferously extol the merits of their wares—cloths, woollens, umbrellas, hot coffee, wine, fresh meat, fruit, vegetables (the spectre of cholera is abroad, but no one heeds)—as well as gold watches, rings and brooches, many of which will be bought ere to-morrow morning, in memory of to-night’s tender meetings. The most interesting shops are those which display ex-votos, waxen reproductions of various ailing parts of the body which have been miraculously cured by the Virgin’s intercession: arms, legs, fingers, breasts, eyes. There are also entire infants of wax. Strangest of all of them is a many-tinted and puzzling waxen symbol which sums up all the internal organs of the abdomen in one bold effort of artistic condensation; a kind of heraldic, materialized stomache-ache. I would have carried one away with me, had there been the slightest chance of its remaining unbroken.[[1]]
[1] A good part of these, I dare say, are intended to represent the enlarged spleen of malaria. In old Greece, says Dr. W. H. D. Rouse, votives of the trunk are commonest, after the eyes—malaria, again.
These are the votive offerings which catch the visitor’s eye in southern churches, and were beloved not only of heathendom, but of the neolithic gentry; a large deposit has been excavated at Taranto; the British Museum has some of marble, from Athens; others were of silver, but the majority terra-cotta. The custom must have entered Christianity in early ages, for already Theodoret, who died in 427, says, “some bring images of eyes, others of feet, others of hands; and sometimes they are made of gold, sometimes of silver. These votive gifts testify to cure of maladies.” Nowadays, when they become too numerous, they are melted down for candles; so Pericles, in some speech, talks of selling them for the benefit of the commonwealth.
One is struck with the feast of costumes here, by far the brightest being those of the women who have come up from the seven or eight Albanian villages that surround these hills. In their variegated array of chocolate-brown and white, of emerald-green and gold and flashing violet, these dames move about the sward like animated tropical flowers. But the Albanian girls of Cività stand out for aristocratic elegance—pleated black silk gowns, discreetly trimmed with gold and white lace, and open at the breast. The women of Morano, too, make a brave show.
Night brings no respite; on the contrary, the din grows livelier than ever; fires gleam brightly on the meadow and under the trees; the dancers are unwearied, the bagpipers with their brazen lungs show no signs of exhaustion. And presently the municipal music of Castrovillari, specially hired for the occasion, ascends an improvised bandstand and pours brisk strains into the night. Then the fireworks begin, sensational fireworks, that have cost a mint of money; flaring wheels and fiery devices that send forth a pungent odour; rockets of many hues, lighting up the leafy recesses, and scaring the owls and wolves for miles around.
Certain persons have told me that if you are of a prying disposition, now is the time to observe amorous couples walking hand in hand into the gloom—passionate young lovers from different villages, who have looked forward to this night of all the year on the chance of meeting, at last, in a fervent embrace under the friendly beeches. These same stern men (they are always men) declare that such nocturnal festivals are a disgrace to civilization; that the Greek Comedy, long ago, reprobated them as disastrous to the morals of females—that they were condemned by the Council of Elvira, by Vigilantius of Marseilles and by the great Saint Jerome, who wrote that on such occasions no virgin should wander a hand’s-breadth from her mother. They wish you to believe that on these warm summer nights, when the pulses of nature are felt and senses stirred with music and wine and dance, the Gran Madre di Dio is adored in a manner less becoming Christian youths and maidens, than heathens celebrating mad orgies to Magna Mater in Daphne, or the Babylonian groves (where she was not worshipped at all—though she might have been).
In fact, they insinuate that——-
It may well be true. What were the moralists doing there?
Festivals like this are relics of paganism, and have my cordial approval. We English ought to have learnt by this time that the repression of pleasure is a dangerous error. In these days when even Italy, the grey-haired cocotte, has become tainted with Anglo-Pecksniffian principles, there is nothing like a little time-honoured bestiality for restoring the circulation and putting things to rights generally. On ethical grounds alone—as safety-valves—such nocturnal feasts ought to be kept up in regions such as these, where the country-folk have not our “facilities.” Who would grudge them these primordial joys, conducted under the indulgent motherly eye of Madonna, and hallowed by antiquity and the starlit heavens above? Every one is so happy and well-behaved. No bawling, no quarrelsomeness, no staggering tipplers; a spirit of universal good cheer broods over the assembly. Involuntarily, one thinks of the drunkard-strewn field of battle at the close of our Highland games; one thinks of God-fearing Glasgow on a Saturday evening, and of certain other aspects of Glasgow life. . . .
I accepted the kindly proffered invitation of the priests to share their dinner; they held out hopes of some sort of sleeping accommodation as well. It was a patriarchal hospitality before that fire of logs (the night had grown chilly), and several other guests partook of it, forestal inspectors and such-like notabilities—one lady among them who, true to feudal traditions, hardly spoke a word the whole evening. I was struck, as I have sometimes been, at the attainments of these country priests; they certainly knew our Gargantuan novelists of the Victorian epoch uncommonly well. Can it be that these great authors are more readable in Italian translations than in the original? One of them took to relating, in a strain of autumnal humour, experiences of his life in the wilds of Bolivia, where he had spent many years among the Indians; my neighbour, meanwhile, proved to be steeped in Horatian lore. It was his pet theory, supported by a wealth of aptly cited lines, that Horace was a “typical Italian countryman,” and great was his delight on discovering that I shared his view and could even add another—somewhat improper—utterance of the poet’s to his store of illustrative quotations.