Calabrian Shepherds playing in Rome at Christmas.
In the last days of Advent the Calabrian minstrels enter Rome, and are to be seen in every street saluting the shrines of the virgin mother with their wild music, under the traditional notion of soothing her until the birth-time of her infant at the approaching Christmas. This circumstance is related by lady Morgan, who observed them frequently stopping at the shop of a carpenter. To questions concerning this practice, the workmen, who stood at the door, said it was done out of respect to St. Joseph. The preceding [engraving], representing this custom, is from a clever etching by D. Allan, a Scottish artist of great merit. In Mr. Burford’s excellent panorama of the ruins of Pompeii, exhibited in the Strand, groups of these peasantry are celebrating the festival of the patron saint of the master of a vineyard. The printed “Description” of the panorama says, these mountaineers are called Pifferari, and “play a pipe very similar in form and sound to the bagpipes of the Highlanders.” It is added, as lady Morgan before observed, that “just before Christmas they descend from the mountains to Naples and Rome, in order to play before the pictures of the Virgin and Child, which are placed in various parts of every Italian town.” In a picture of the Nativity by Raphael, he has introduced a shepherd at the door playing on the bagpipes.
Christmas Carols.
Carol is said to be derived from cantare, to sing, and rola, an interjection of joy.[414] It is rightly observed by Jeremy Taylor, that “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and good-will towards men,” the song of the angels on the birth of the Saviour, is the first Christmas carol.
Anciently, bishops carolled at Christmas among their clergy; but it would be diverging into a wide field to exemplify ecclesiastical practices on this festival; and to keep close to the domestic usages of the season, church customs of that kind will not now be noticed.
In Mr. Brand’s “Popular Antiquities,” he gives the subjoined Anglo-Norman carol, from a MS. in the British Museum,[415] with the accompanying translation by his “very learned and communicative friend, Mr. Douce; in which it will easily be observed that the translator has necessarily been obliged to amplify, but endeavours every where to preserve the sense of the original.”
Anglo-Norman Carol.
Seignors ore entendez a nus,
De loinz sumes venuz a wous,
Pur quere Noel;
Car lem nus dit que en cest hostel
Soleit tenir sa feste anuel
Ahi cest iur.
Deu doint a tuz icels joie d’amurs
Qi a danz Noel ferunt honors.