Their Christmas pilgrimages are by no means prompted by purely religious motives, though, undoubtedly, such considerations have some weight with them, the common peasantry being a religiously inclined people, and often making pilgrimages simply from a sense of duty and propriety. But in these wanderings to Rome, their principal object is to earn a little money to support them during the winter months, when their "occupation is gone." As they are hired in Rome by the owners of the various houses adorned with a Madonna-shrine (of which there are over fifteen hundred in the city) to play before them at the rate of a paul or so for each full novena, and as they can easily play before thirty or forty a day, they often return, if their luck is good, with a tolerable little sum in their pockets. Besides this, they often stand as models, if they are good-looking fellows, and thus add to their store; and then again, the forestieri (for, as the ancient Romans called strangers barbari, so their descendants call them foresters, wood-men, wild-men) occasionally drop baiocchi and pauls into their hats, still further to increase it.
Sometimes it is a father and son who play together, but oftener two old friends who make the pilgrimage in pairs. This morning, as I was going out for a walk round the walls, two admirable specimens of the pifferari were performing the novena before a shrine at the corner of the street. The player of the zampogna was an old man, with a sad, but very amiable face, who droned out the bass and treble in a most earnest and deprecatory manner. He looked as if he had stood still, tending his sheep, nearly all his life, until the peace and quiet of Nature had sunk into his being, or, if you will, until he had become assimilated to the animals he tended. The other, who played the piffero, was a man of middle age, stout, vigorous, with a forest of tangled black hair, and dark quick eyes that were fixed steadily on the Virgin, while he blew and vexed the little brown pipe with rapid runs and nervous fioriture, until great drops of sweat dripped from its round open mouth. Sometimes, when he could not play fast enough to satisfy his eagerness, he ran his finger up and down the vents. Then, suddenly lowering his instrument, he would scream, in a strong peasant-voice, verse after verse of the novena, to the accompaniment of the zampogna. One was like a slow old Italian vettura all lumbered with luggage and held back by its drag; the other panting and nervous at his work as an American locomotive, and as constantly running off the rails. Both, however, were very earnest at their occupation. As they stood there playing, a little group gathered round. A scamp of a boy left his sport to come and beat time with a stick on the stone step before them; several children clustered near; and two or three women, with rosy infants in their arms, also paused to listen and sympathize. At last the playing ceased. The pifferari took up their hats and looked smilingly round at us.
"Where do you come from?" I asked.
"Eh!" said the piffero, showing all his teeth, and shrugging his shoulders good-naturedly, while the other echoed the pantomime.
"Dal Regno"—for so the Abruzzi peasants call the kingdom of Naples.
"And do you come every year?"
"Sì, Signore. Lui" (indicating his friend) "ed io" (pointing to himself) "_siam' compagni per trenta tre anni. E siam' venut' a Roma per far la noven' ogn' anno."[B]
[Footnote B: "He and I have been companions for thirty-three years, and every year we have come to Rome to play the novena.">[
To this the old zampogna bent his head on one side, and said, assentingly,—"Eh! per trenta tre anni."—
And, "Ecco," continued the piffero, bursting in before the zampogna could go on, and pointing to two stalwart youths of about twenty-two or-three years of age, who at this moment came up the street with their instruments,—"These are our two sons. He is mine,"—indicating one with his reversed thumb; "and that other is his,"—jerking his head towards his companion. "And they, too, are going to play in company, as we do."