Old Calabria Part 6

"Luigi--Luigi," they begin again. "Now, which of them can he mean?"

"Perhaps O'Marzariello?"

"Or O'Cuccolillo?"

"I never thought of him," says the good-natured individual. "Here, boy, run and tell O'Cuccolillo that a foreign gentleman wants to give him a cigar."

By the time O'Cuccolillo appears on the scene the crowd has thickened.

You explain the business for the fiftieth time; no--he is Luigi, of course, but not the right Luigi, which he regrets considerably. Then the joke is made clear to him, and he laughs again. You have lost all your nerve, but the villagers are beginning to love you,

"Can it be O'Sciabecchino?"

"Or the figlio d' O'Chiappino?"

"It might be O'Busciardiello (the liar)."

"He's dead."

"So he is. I quite forgot. Well, then it must be the husband of A'Cicivetta (the flirt)."

"He's in prison. But how about O'Caccianfierno?"

Suddenly a withered hag croaks authoritatively:

"I know! The gentleman wants O'Tentillo."

Chorus of villagers:

"Then why doesn't he say so?"

O'Tentillo lives far, far away. An hour elapses; at last he comes, full of bright expectations. No, this is not your Luigi, he is another Luigi.

You are ready to sink into the earth, but there is no escape. The crowd surges all around, the news having evidently spread to neighbouring hamlets.

"Luigi--Luigi. . . . Let me see. It might be O'Rappo."

"O'Ma.s.sa.s.sillo, more likely."

"I have it! It's O'Spennatiello."

"I never thought of him," says a well-known voice. "Here, boy, run and tell----"

"Or O'Cicereniello."

"O'Vergeniello."

"O'Sciabolone. ..."

"Never mind the G---- d---- son of b----," says a cheery person in excellent English, who has just arrived on the scene. "See here, I live fifteen years in Brooklyn; d.a.m.n fine! 'Ave a gla.s.s of wine round my place. Your Luigi's in America, sure. And if he isn't, send him to h.e.l.l."

Sound advice, this.

"What's his surname, anyhow?" he goes on.

You explain once more.

"Why, there's the very man you're looking for. There, standing right in front of you! He's Luigi, and that's his surname right enough. He don't know it himself, you bet."

And he points to the good-natured individual. . . .

These countryfolk can fare on strange meats. A boy consumed a snake that was lying dead by the roadside; a woman ate thirty raw eggs and then a plate of maccheroni; a man swallowed six kilograms of the uncooked fat of a freshly slaughtered pig (he was ill for a week afterwards); another one devoured two small birds alive, with beaks, claws and feathers. Such deeds are sternly reprobated as savagery; still, they occur, and nearly always as the result of wagers. I wish I could couple them with equally heroic achievements in the drinking line, but, alas! I have only heard of one old man who was wont habitually to en-gulph twenty-two litres of wine a day; eight are spoken of as "almost too much" in these degenerate days. . . .

Mice, says Movers, were sacrificially eaten by the Babylonians. Here, as in England, they are cooked into a paste and given to children, to cure a certain complaint. To take away the dread of the sea from young boys, they mix into their food small fishes which have been devoured by larger ones and taken from their stomachs--the underlying idea being that these half-digested fry are thoroughly familiar with the storms and perils of the deep, and will communicate these virtues to the boys who eat them.

It is the same principle as that of giving chamois blood to the goat-boys of the Alps, to strengthen their nerves against giddiness--pure sympathetic magic, of which there is this, at least, to be said, that "its fundamental conception is identical with that of modern science--a faith in the order or uniformity of nature."

I have also met persons who claim to have been cured of rachitic troubles in their youth by eating a puppy dog cooked in a saucepan. But only one kind of dog is good for this purpose, to be procured from those foundling hospitals whither hundreds of illegitimate infants are taken as soon as possible after birth. The mothers, to relieve the discomfort caused by this forcible separation from the new-born, buy a certain kind of puppy there, bring them home, and nourish them _in loco infantis._ These puppies cost a franc apiece, and are generally destroyed after performing their duties; it is they who are cooked for curing the scrofulous tendencies of other children. Swallows' hearts are also used for another purpose; so is the blood of tortoises--for strengthening the backs of children (the tortoise being a _hard_ animal). So is that of snakes, who are held up by head and tail and p.r.i.c.ked with needles; the greater their pain, the more beneficial their blood, which is soaked up with cotton-wool and applied as a liniment for swollen glands. In fact, nearly every animal has been discovered to possess some medicinal property.

But of the charm of such creatures the people know nothing. How different from the days of old! These legendary and gracious beasts, that inspired poets and artists and glyptic engravers--these things of beauty have now descended into the realm of mere usefulness, into the pharmacopoeia.

The debas.e.m.e.nt is quite intelligible, when one remembers what acc.u.mulated miseries these provinces have undergone. Memories of refinement were starved out of the inhabitants by centuries of misrule, when nothing was of interest or of value save what helped to fill the belly. The work of b.e.s.t.i.a.lization was carried on by the despotism of Spanish Viceroys and Bourbons. They, the Spaniards, fostered and perhaps imported the Camorra, that monster of many heads which has established itself in nearly every town of the south. Of the deterioration in taste coincident with this period, I lately came across this little bit of evidence, curious and conclusive:--In 1558 a number of the country-folk were captured in one of the usual Corsair raids; they were afterwards ransomed, and among the Christian names of the women I note: Livia, Fiula, Ca.s.sandra, Aurelia, Lucrezia, Verginia, Medea, Violanta, Galizia, Vittoria, Diamanta, etc. Where were these full-sounding n.o.ble names two centuries later--where are they nowadays? Do they not testify to a state of culture superior to that of the present time, when Maria, Lucia, and about four others of the most obvious catholic saints exhaust the list of all female Christian names hereabouts?

All this is changing once more; a higher standard of comfort is being evolved, though relics of this former state of insecurity may still be found; such as the absence, even in houses of good families, of clocks and watches, and convenient storage for clothes and domestic utensils; their habits of living in penury and of buying their daily food by farthings, as though one never knew what the next day might bring; their dread of going out of doors by night (they have a proverb which runs, _di notte, non parlar forte; di giorno, guardati attorno_), their lack of humour. For humour is essentially a product of ease, and n.o.body can be at ease in unquiet times. That is why so few poets are humorous; their restlessly querulous nature has the same effect on their outlook as an insecure environment.

But it will be long ere these superst.i.tions are eradicated. The magic of south Italy deserves to be well studied, for the country is a cauldron of demonology wherein Oriental beliefs--imported direct from Egypt, the cla.s.sic home of witchcraft--commingled with those of the West. A foreigner is at an unfortunate disadvantage; if he asks questions, he will only get answers dictated by suspicion or a deliberate desire to mislead--prudent answers; whoso accepts these explanations in good faith, might produce a wondrous contribution to ethnology.

Wise women and wizards abound, but they are not to be compared with that _santa_ near Naples whom I used to visit in the nineties, and who was so successful in the magics that the Bishop of Pozzuoli, among hundreds of other clients, was wont to drive up to her door once a week for a consultation. These mostly occupy themselves with the manufacture of charms for gaining lucky lottery numbers, and for deluding fond women who wish to change their lovers.

The lore of herbs is not much studied. For bruises, a slice of the Opuntia is applied, or the cooling parietaria (known as "pareta" or "paretene"); the camomile and other common remedies are in vogue; the virtues of the male fern, the rue, sabina and (home-made) ergot of rye are well known but not employed to the extent they are in Russia, where a large progeny is a disaster. There is a certain respect for the legitimate unborn, and even in cases of illegitimacy some neighbouring foundling hospital, the house of the Madonna, is much more convenient.

It is a true monk's expedient; it avoids the risk of criminal prosecution; the only difference being that the Mother of G.o.d, and not the natural mother of the infant, becomes responsible for its prompt and almost inevitable destruction. [Footnote: The scandals that occasionally arise in connection with that saintly inst.i.tution, the Foundling Hospital at Naples, are enough to make humanity shudder. Of 856 children living under its motherly care during 1895, 853 "died" in the course of that one year-only three survived; a wholesale ma.s.sacre.

These 853 murdered children were carried forward in the books as still living, and the inst.i.tution, which has a yearly revenue of over 600,000 francs, was debited with their maintenance, while 42 doctors (instead of the prescribed number of 19) continued to draw salaries for their services to these innocents that had meanwhile been starved and tortured to death. The official report on these horrors ends with the words: "There is no reason to think that these facts are peculiar to the year 1895."]

That the moon stands in sympathetic relations with living vegetation is a fixed article of faith among the peasantry. They will prune their plants only when the satellite is waxing--_al sottile detta luna,_ as they say. Altogether, the moon plays a considerable part in their lore, as might be expected in a country where she used to be wors.h.i.+pped under so many forms. The dusky markings on her surface are explained by saying that the moon used to be a woman and a baker of bread, her face gleaming with the reflection of the oven, but one day she annoyed her mother, who took up the brush they use for sweeping away the ashes, and smirched her face. . . .

Whoever reviews the religious observances of these people as a whole will find them a jumble of contradictions and incongruities, lightly held and as lightly dismissed. Theirs is the att.i.tude of mind of little children--of those, I mean, who have been so saturated with Bible stories and fairy tales that they cease to care whether a thing be true or false, if it only amuses for the moment. That is what makes them an ideal prey for the quack physician. They will believe anything so long as it is strange and complicated; a straightforward doctor is not listened to; they want that mystery-making "priest-physician"

concerning whom a French writer--I forget his name--has wisely discoursed. I once recommended a young woman who was bleeding at the nose to try the homely remedy of a cold key. I thought she would have died of laughing! The expedient was too absurdly simple to be efficacious.

The att.i.tude of the clergy in regard to popular superst.i.tions is the same here as elsewhere. They are too wise to believe them, and too shrewd to discourage the belief in others; these things can be turned to account for keeping the people at a conveniently low level of intelligence. For the rest, these priests are mostly good fellows of the live-and-let-live type, who would rather cultivate their own potatoes than quarrel about vestments or the Trinity. Violently acquisitive, of course, like most southerners. I know a parish priest, a son of poor parents, who, by dint of sheer energy, has ama.s.sed a fortune of half a million francs. He cannot endure idleness in any shape, and a fine mediaeval scene may be witnessed when he suddenly appears round the corner and catches his workmen wasting their time and his money--

"Ha, loafers, rogues, villains, vermin and sons of _b.a.s.t.a.r.di cornuti!_ If G.o.d had not given me these garments and thereby closed my lips to all evil-speaking (seizing his ca.s.sock and displaying half a yard of purple stocking)--wouldn't I just tell you, sp.a.w.n of adulterous a.s.sa.s.sins, what I think of you!"

But under the new regime these priests are becoming mere decorative survivals, that look well enough in the landscape, but are not taken seriously save in their match-making and money-lending capacities.

The intense realism of their religion is what still keeps it alive for the poor in spirit. Their saints and devils are on the same familiar footing towards mankind as were the old G.o.ds of Greece. Children do not know the meaning of "Inferno"; they call it "casa del diavolo" (the devil's house); and if they are naughty, the mother says, "La Madonna strilla"--the Madonna will scold. Here is a legend of Saint Peter, interesting for its realism and because it has been grafted upon a very ancient _motif:--_

The apostle Peter was a dissatisfied sort of man, who was always grumbling about things in general and suggesting improvements in the world-scheme. He thought himself cleverer even than "N. S. G. C." One day they were walking together in an olive orchard, and Peter said:

"Just look at the trouble and time it takes to collect all those miserable little olives. Let's have them the size of melons."