Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, January 1885

by Various

When the child “grows two days in one,” and “smiles to the angels?” it is under the guardianship of certain other viewless, formless and mysterious creatures, who seem to be vagabonds and open-air doubles of the “Padrone della Casa.” These are “Le Donne di fuori.” The mother asks permission of these “Donne,” before she lifts the child from the cradle. “In the name of God,” she says, as she takes it up, “with your permission, my ladies.” These “Donne di fuori,” are not always to be relied on, for now they do, and now they do not, protect the little one. It is all a matter of caprice and humor; but certainly no mother who loved her child would omit this courteous entreaty to the, “Donne” who are supposed to have had the creature in their keeping while she was absent, and it was sleeping.

Not everyone in Sicily can marry according to his desire and the apparent fitness of things; for there are old feuds between parish and parish, as bitter as were ever those of Guelf and Ghibelline in times past; and the devotees of one saint will have as little to say to the devotees of another as will Jew and Gentile, True Believer and Giaour. In early times this local rivalry was, naturally, more pronounced than it is at present; but even now in Modica it is extremely rare if a San Giorgioaro marries a Sampietrana, or vice versâ—each considering the other as of a different and heretical religion. A marriage made not long ago between two people of these several parishes turned out ill solely on the religious question, the husband and wife not agreeing to differ, but each wanting to convert the other from the false to the true faith, and indignant because of ill-success. Just lately, says Dr. Pitrè, a Syracusan girl, whose patron saint was Saint Philip, and who was betrothed to a young man of the confraternity of the Santo Spirito, sent all adrift because, a few days before the marriage was to take place, she went to see her lover, lying ill in bed, and found hanging to the pillow a picture of the objectionable Santo Spirito. Whereat, furious and enraged she snatched down the picture, tore it into a thousand pieces which she trampled under foot, and then and there made it a sine quâ non that her husband-elect should substitute for this a picture of Saint Philip. This the young man refused to do; and the marriage was broken off.

Here in Sicily, as elsewhere, the seafaring population have little or nothing to say to the landsfolk by way of marriage; holding themselves more moral, more industrious, and in every way superior to those who live by the harvests of the earth or by the quick returns and easy profits of trade. But there is much more than this. The daughter of a small landed proprietor will not be given to the master of men in any kind of business, nor will the son of the former be suffered to marry the daughter of the latter. A peasant farmer, without sixpence, would not let his girl marry a well-to-do shepherd. A workman or rather a day laborer—“bracciante”—would not be received into the family of a muleteer, nor he again into one where the head was the keeper of swine or of cattle. The husbandman who can prune vines disdains the man who cannot dig, let him be what he will; the cow-herd disdains the ox-herd, and he again the man who looks after the calves. The shepherd is above the goat-herd; and so on, down to the most microscopic differences, surpassing even those of caste-ridden India.

When conditions, however, are equal, and there are no overt objections to the desired marriage, the mother of the young man takes the thing in hand. She knows that her son wants to marry, because he is sullen, silent, rude, contradictious and fault-finding; because last Saturday night he hitched up the ass to the hook in the house wall, instead of stabling it as he ought, and himself passed the night out of doors; or because—in one place in Sicily—he sat on the chest, stamped his feet and kicked his heels, so that his parents, hearing the noise, might know that he was disturbed in his mind, and wanted to marry so soon as convenient. Then the mother knows what is before her, and accepts her duties as a good woman should.

She dresses herself a little smartly and goes to the house of the Nina or Rosa with whom her son has fallen in love, to see what the girl is like when at home, and to find out the amount of dower likely to be given with her. She hides under her shawl a weaver’s comb, which, as soon as she is seated, she brings out, asking the girl’s mother if she can lend her one like it? This latter answers that she will look for one, and will do all she can to meet her visitor’s wishes. She then sends the daughter into another room, and the two begin the serious business of means and dowry.

In olden times the girl who did not know how to weave the thread she had already spun had small chance of finding a husband, how great soever her charms or virtues. Power looms and cheap cloth have changed all this and substituted a more generalized kind of industriousness; but, all the same, she must be industrious—or have the wit to appear so—else the maternal envoy will have none of her; but leaving the house hurriedly, crosses herself and repeats thrice the Sicilian word for “Renounced.” In Modica the young man’s mother sets a broom against the girl’s house-door at night which does the same as the weaver’s comb elsewhere; and, if all other things suit, the young people are betrothed the following Saturday. And after they are betrothed the girl’s mother goes to a church at some distance from her own home, where she stands behind the door, and, according to the words said by the first persons who pass through, foretells the happiness or the unhappiness of the marriage set on foot.

The inventory of the girl’s possessions—chiefly house and body-linen—is made by a public writer, and always begins with an invocation to “Gesù, Maria, Giuseppe”—the Holy Family. It is sent to the bridegroom-elect wrapped in a handkerchief. If considered satisfactory, it is kept; if insufficient, it is returned. If accepted as sufficient, there is a solemn conclave of the parents and kinsfolk of the two houses. The girl is seated in the middle of the room. Her future mother-in-law, or the nearest married kinswoman of the bridegroom if she be dead, takes down and then plaits and dresses her hair—all people who have been to Italy know what a universal office of maternal care is this of dressing the girl’s hair;—slips the engaged ring on her finger; puts a comb in her head; gives her a silk-handkerchief, and kisses her. After this the girl rises, kisses the hands of her future father-and mother-in-law, and seats herself afresh, between her own kinsfolk on her left, and those of her “promesso sposo,” on her right. In some places is added to these manifestations a bit of flame-colored ribbon (“color rosso-fuoco; colore obbligato”), which the future mother-in-law plaits into the girl’s tresses while combing her hair, and which this latter never puts off till the day of the wedding. Formerly a “promessa sposa” wore a broad linen band across her brow and down her face, tied under her chin with a purple ribbon.

On her side the girl’s mother gives the future son-in-law a scapulary of the Madonna del Carmine, fastened to a long blue ribbon. When the formal kiss of betrothal is given between the young people, the guests break out into “Evvivas!” and the wine and feasting begin. Formerly a “promessa sposa” shaved off one or both of her eyebrows. But this custom was inconvenient. If anything happened to prevent the marriage it spoilt all chances for the future.

Gifts from the man to the woman are de rigueur—a survival of the old mode of barter or purchase. These gifts are generally of jewelry; but sometimes the pair exchange useful presents of body-linen, &c. At Easter the man gives the woman either a luscious sweet called “cassata,” or a “peccorella di pasta reale,” that is a lamb couchant made of almond paste, crowned with a tinsel crown, carrying a flag, and colored after nature. At the Feast of St. Peter—the 29th of July; not the same as Saints Peter and Paul—he gives keys made of flour and honey, or of almonds, or of caramel. On the 2nd of November—the day off All Souls’—he takes her sweet brown cakes with a white mortuary figure raised in high relief, as a child, or a man, or a death’s head and cross bones, or a well-defined set of ribs to symbolize a skeleton, according to the nearest relative she may have lost. But in Mazarra no one who loved his bride would give her aught in the likeness of a cat, as this would presage her speedy death. Biscuits for St. Martin’s day; gingerbread in true lovers’ knots, tough and tasteless, and sugar bambini for Christmas; huge hearts, of a rather coarse imitation of mincemeat, and sugared over, for the Feast of the Annunciation; on the day of Saints Cosmo and Damian, medlars, quinces and the saints themselves done in honey and sugar—and so on;—these are the little courtesies of the betrothal which no man who respected himself, or desired the love of her who was to be his wife, would dream of neglecting.

During the time of betrothal, how long so ever it may last, the young people are never suffered to be one moment alone, nor to say anything to each other which all the world does not hear. The man may go once a week to the girl’s house; where he seats himself at the corner of the room opposite to that where she is sitting; but he may not touch her hand nor speak to her below his breath. In the country, when they cannot marry for yet awhile, they engage themselves from year to year. But they are always kept apart and rigorously watched.