From The Month.
The Tuscan Peasants And The Maremna.
The Maremna is, in summer, the word that drives the sleep from many an Italian woman's pillow as she thinks of the perils that her husband, her brother, or her betrothed is encountering as he reaps the fertile harvest, and gains, at the risk of his life, the wages that will enable him and his to live through the winter. "A me mi pare una Maremna amara" is the burden of the song with which many a child is rocked to sleep. And with reason. The Maremna is the Littorale or shores of the Tuscan Sea; and there the coasts that bound the blue waters of the Mediterranean are lined by tangled jungles and pestilential marshes, whence at each sunset arises the baleful fever, which, passing in scorn over the ruined cities that its pernicious breath has depopulated, creeps along like the sleuth-hound until it finds the hardy mountaineer returning from his day of labor, and smites him with the wasting blight which saps his strength. Yet year after year do the sons of Italy descend with unwearied energy to these valleys and deadly plains, to reap the crops that have grown uncared for but luxuriantly, death and disease stalking behind them, and the fear of falling victims to the power of the evil air urging them to increased exertions, in order that they may earlier return and share their scanty gains with their wives and children. They march gayly, too, often singing alternately in their rough monotone the songs they have composed themselves, cheerful in the consciousness that they are fulfilling a duty; and this although knowing that they have to fight a foe against whom neither courage nor energy nor strength can avail, but whose damp breath appears to draw the marrow from their bones and fill them with fever; sometimes sending them weak and emaciated, useless as workmen, to their native homes; sometimes in a few hours laying their bodies low, to lie, far from family and friends, in unconsecrated ground.
When the Italian peasants speak of the Maremna, they mean that district of Italy which runs along the shores of the Mediterranean from Monte Nebo and the mountains south of Leghorn over the flat marshes of the Tuscan shores, and the desolate promontory of Monte Cervino, as far as the sunny shores of Sorento and Amalfi. To the south of the Tuscan frontier the (to English ears) more familiar name of Campagna is applied to the whole of that portion of the Maremna which lies within the ancient Agro Romano; still further to the south the word Maremna becomes identical with what are called the Pontine Marshes. The mountaineers of Modena, Parma, and Tuscany call the country which they periodically visit, whether south or north, Maremna: the inhabitants frequently give it a local name. Undefined as are its boundaries, and almost unknown to geography as is its name, its characteristics are much the same throughout; everywhere we meet the same wide plains, tangled jungles, ruined cities, wooded hills, ever-recurring swamps and morasses; throughout the whole district the same terrible ague, the same desolating fever, the fatal influence of the malaria, rage with destructive effect. Although often characterized as a swamp or a marsh, yet the Maremna by no means consists of plains like the fens; on the contrary, there are several high mountains, which run down even into the sea: the land near the coast is, however, in general flat.
Part of the Maremna is cultivated, and produces grain; the greater portion, however, is kept for pasture. As soon as the herbage begins to fail on the mountains of Tuscany, the peasants drive their flocks down to the pastures of the Maremna. There they remain six or seven months. The women and children are left at home, and the men and boys during this time bear all the privations, hardships, and dangers. An Italian poet exclaims: "Alas, how often do they return home bowed down by fever! how often do they never return! for, where they sought to earn the sustenance of their families, they meet with death." While some descend with their flocks and act as shepherds, the majority are there for the purpose of cutting wood, making charcoal and potash; their last work is to reap the hay and corn, and then those who are left alive return. Part of their wages has already been sent home; the remainder they bring with them.
Halfway between Leghorn and Pisa stands the old church of St. Pier d'Arena. It is very large, and built as nearly as possible to resemble the form of a ship. In old days the sea reached this point, and the name 'Arena' points to the strand on which the church was built. Tradition states it was here St. Peter landed on his visit to Italy, and the church was built to commemorate the event.
One October, now many years ago, after a visit to this church, I met a troop of shepherds and their flocks on their march to the Maremna. The procession must have covered half a mile of ground. Never yet have I looked on a troop of these sunburnt children of the south as they were wending their way to a land whence all would not return, without saluting them even as I would a forlorn hope advancing to attack the breach of a fortress. Soldiers of duty, "Morituros vos saluto." And higher is the courage and deeper is the love that impels these brave men, singing as they go, to encounter the fever and thirst and pestilential air of the Maremna, than that which animates many even of those soldiers who fight for God and king and fatherland.
Tears rose to the eyes of my companion as they passed. The flocks and herds marched first, all "ruddled," that is, marked with red, to show to whom they belonged. The procession was headed by the bell-wethers, with their curved horns; in close attendance upon them are tall, handsome, woolly-haired sheep-dogs, of a larger breed than ours, and with their necks defended by a collar studded with nails, the projecting points of which often turn the scale in the case of an encounter with the wolves. Nor are these the only robbers against which these vigilant watchers defend the sheep: if a human beast of prey, in shape of a thief, lies lurking in the ditches that border the roadside, watching an opportunity for seizing a lamb, they detect him and compel him to show himself. At night, too, they march round the nets that enclose the little encampment, and give the weary guardians time to sleep. Before they go to sleep, the peasants light a fire, and make cheese and ricotti, (a sort of Devonshire cream,) with which they repay the owner of the soil for leave to encamp on his grounds. As the milk is far more plentiful on their return in May, a spirit of natural, even-handed justice makes them generally contrive, both going and returning, to halt at the same stations. A necessary member of this company is the poet, or scribe, (scrivano.) To him is entrusted the task of composing, or else writing down and correcting, the "Respects" which each Tuscan shepherd is bound to send to his sweetheart. Collections of these rustic poems have lately been made and published. They are full of pathos and tenderness; the heart of the young exile yearns not only for his dama, (sweetheart,) but for the beauties of the country he has left behind him. Not his the harp to sing of festive banquets or goblets crowned with flowers; he loves the streams of fresh water, the flowering grass, the cultivated terraces, the pure air of his mountain home. Nature herself, and sorrow, the nurses of beauty, have breathed on him a spirit of truth and poetry as distinct from the sickly sentimentality and vice so often found in modern verse, as is the wild rider of the Arabian desert from the puny jockey who wins our handicaps. Strange, indeed, it would be if these poems, written in danger, absence, and exile, possessed not a fragrance all their own—one, however, that seems to escape not only in the most literal translation, but even when, under a slightly different form, they appear in the works of their more highly educated countrymen.
Independently of the troops that march almost patriarchally with their flocks and herds, like Abraham and Jacob, peasants often go down in gangs of five or six to look for work; sometimes, though rarely, necessity compels them to take with them their wives, and, if grown up, their children. In this case they almost invariably travel in one of the long, narrow, covered cars of the country. The men trudge along in groups of five or six, with their best clothes in a bundle slung to a stick, and, if by any possible contrivance it can be managed, with a gun upon their shoulder; for game of all kinds, roe, deer, wild boars, porcupines, woodcock, and snipe abound. I once saw these groups arriving, one after another, at a seaport town near the Gulf of Genoa, until they reached the number of 500 or 600: these all sailed in a steamer to Corsica, to till the rich ground of that island. In a fortnight the steamer returned, and freighted itself with an equally large cargo of laborers. Many go to Sardinia, a still more unhealthy island: their chief occupation there is mostly to fell the forests which have been bought by speculators. Some find work at the Grand Ducal Ironworks at Follonica, and at the mines in the interior of the island of Elba; others help to till the Maremna, the soil of which is so fertile that, if it lies one year fallow, it requires but to have the seed thrown broadcast over it in order to yield every alternate year, and without further tillage, a most magnificent crop. Others help to clear away the forest and the thicket, and prepare the ground for future years, and thus aid in the great works for reclaiming this land of jungle and fever that have been now carried on for so many years; others simply to make charcoal or potash, and to live by selling game at the neighboring towns. To sing the songs of their native villages is their chief pleasure. In the daytime one man will begin to sing at his work, and then another catches the refrain, and begins in turn. At night, too, round the fire, (which is said to scare away the fever,) they sing songs and tell their old stories, and repeat their legends of saints and miracles. Thus it happens that they return to their native villages, speaking the pure Tuscan language undefiled by the patois of Corsica or the miserable jargon of the other islands.