Jules Breton has caught and put on canvas, more than once, the spirit of peasant piety which pervaded that vespers; the air of restful, provincial, old-world religious fixity, breathing through the richly colored and wonderfully picturesque scene in that ancient church.
Around the tallow-encrusted base of the figure of San Francesco, the patron saint of the village, flared the great yellow candles. A few glimmered on the altar. 119The figure stood on a pedestal a little to one side of the centre of the church. To the left, kneeling on the worn stones of the floor, or sitting on tiny rush-bottomed chairs, were the closely grouped women, some few in the coveted black-lace prayer-shawls, but the mass in the solid-colored commoner ones, drawn over the head and spreading out into a cone around the kneeling or sitting figure. These shawls, dark red, green, or yellow, treasured among the poor, made that night in the candle-light a softened color-scheme that is indescribable. To the right were the men and boys, clad for the most part in the baggy homespun worn in the fields, though here and there some villager boasted a suit from the tailor’s hands.
As we entered, an old man with furrowed face, horn spectacles and raucous voice, and a slender, Raphael-faced boy, both in vestments, were chanting from well-thumbed books held into the light of the candles about the saint’s figure. Overhead in the choir the old organ toiled uncertainly through the music of the service, and ever and anon the boy took up and rang the tinkling silver bell.
His clear, superb soprano voice was in fine contrast with that of the elder singer, but the whole scene, the portion of the service at the altar, the muffled murmur of the people repeating the forms, the rustle and stir as they knelt or rose, the shifting of the shadows on the wall, was all so strange, almost barbaric, yet so harmonious and beautiful that its very detail was evasive.
When the service was ended, the people, without haste or without form, gathered around the priest while he christened a tiny wailing infant, held up by the midwife, with the proud father at her side. 120They named it Giuseppe. Yet another to join the millions of Giuseppes, Giacomos and Giovannis!
As we left the church, the father of the child followed us and bade us come to his house, where the christening was being celebrated. Through the dark, narrow streets we wended our way to the other end of the town, climbed the stone stairs to an overcrowded upper room, and spent a politely sufficient length of time eating anise cakes and drinking sweet wine.
With the tact of womankind, my wife had brought some trinkets of American origin as a gift for the child, whereat the assemblage beamed its appreciation, and just before we left the father said to me aside, as if it was a secret he was keeping from his wife: “If I can save twenty more lire, the next one will be born in Pittsburg, praise the Holy Mother.”
At home all the favored neighbors and relatives had gathered for a dance. The large room on the ground floor of the Casa Squadrito was ringed around with a double row of guests. Whole families sat together, on the stairway were seated the youngsters already drowsy; crowding around the wide door opening into the street were the unbidden, but none the less interested and curious. The head of the Mannino family, weary with the labors of his sixty years and the fatigue of a stiff, home-laundered collar, was nodding before the music struck up, occasionally raising his head to blink at the light solemnly and to make sure none of the young men were unduly near his daughter, the heiress of his hard-got wealth.
Every one who had any heavy gold rings, bracelets or brooches, or any of the pretentious gold-mounted strands of old coral, which are handed down so carefully 121from mother to daughter, had them on, for a display of gold ornaments is a sure sign of rural social distinction. Feet that were rarely shod were now encased in scarpi made by Carmelo Merlino and his fellow craftsmen in the village, and dress among women in the throng varied from a department store ready-made cloth gown sent home from America to a ragged working frock, the wearer of which kept her shoeless and stockingless feet shyly tucked out of sight.
All were awaiting our arrival, for Antonio, who was with us, was host as well as chief musician. A home-made acetylene lamp, of the blacksmith brother’s contriving, was lighted and set high up on a bracket, throwing every object in the room, even to the boys perched in the transom, into sharp relief. The mandolins and guitars hanging on the wall were taken down, and with a skilful, brilliant prelude—for he is an excellent mandolin-player—Antonio swept into one of the stirring, if monotonous time-honored tarantelle airs.
Even though eyes were dancing in young faces all around the room, all were too shy to take the floor till, Giovanina and Maria Squadrito urging into acquiescence two of the Di Bianca girls, the four formed a square and began a swaying, pirouetting movement, preceding the whirling and crossing over with the accompanying snapping of the fingers in imitation of the castanet, and the smiting of the tambourines. Round and round they whirled, across and back, first one set of partners, then the other, the assemblage applauding a little shyly as yet.
The tarantelle is called after the black spiders about Taranto, whose dangerous bites killed so many people early in the fifteenth century that many odd cures 122were proclaimed, and one that was officially advocated was music and dancing. I do not know whether the tarantelle dance which was evolved did the spider-victims any good, but a fanatical wave of dancing swept over the peninsula and the surrounding island, and the tarantelle became a fixture among the folk-customs of the southern provinces.
When the young girls were weary, an effort was made to get the young men out and into action, but all of them seemed to be in the throes of a monstrous diffidence. Little Giovanni Squadrito, Jr., and his small brother Tono were not thus afflicted, and dragged out the Di Bianca boy, a handsome fellow, dressed in the best Roman fashion, and another youngster who, though a child in years, had massive work-scarred hands. The four gave an exhibition of dancing that was delightful indeed, and when Giovanni and Tono went skipping about, their hobnailed shoes scratching and clattering on the tiles, their mother’s face beamed with real pride. Although very weary with a hard day’s work preparing for the departure, she was among the brightest and merriest of the company.
Then Nicola, the blacksmith, and the shoemaker steamship agent, persuaded a third loutish youth to take the floor, but a fourth dancer was lacking. At the instant when the last of the other men had refused to take the floor as yet, the village butcher appeared in the door and was hailed with acclaim by those who knew his terpsichorean gifts. He glided into his place on the tiles, drew tighter the knot in his neckerchief, ran his hand through his Saturday-night stubble of beard, tossed his hat to a friend and entered upon the most startling, dashing, withal graceful and self-contained feats in dance movements I have ever seen. 123He was on his tiptoes the greater part of the time and gave a perfect reproduction of the traditional dance.
Then something happened that is rare—the men and women danced together, waltzing; and when, after a number of varied dances, tarantelle and square, a dance by the old folks was called for, the first person to respond was Mrs. Squadrito. In vain the people of his own age endeavored to get the slumber-smitten Mannino on his feet. At last Giovanina, who had been dancing almost constantly, filled the vacant place among the elder people, and the music broke forth once more. I caught my wife’s eyes turned to me in amazement, and I replied in kind. Caterina Squadrito, with fifty-five years of hard labor and the bearing and rearing of ten children behind her, danced a long round of the tarantelle with an ease, grace and abandon which put to shame the efforts of her youngest daughter. When she was gyrating and swaying in the middle of the floor, with all the mass of people about keeping time to the music, laughing and applauding, that room presented a picture which I shall never forget.
Not long after this the mothers who were holding their sleeping children in their arms grew too weary of the burdens and started for home. The others made haste to follow and filed by us, bowing formally as they offered their hands, wishing us good-night and bon riposo.
Sunday morning bright and early the entire family began that weekly process of cleaning and dressing up which is, I believe, general in all rural districts of Christian countries. Little Ina was arrayed in a pretty little white dress, with a long white veil, and on her head was set a wreath of artificial leaves and white 124flowers. Going by in the street were others. It being her last Sunday, all of her little friends put on their festa dress in her honor, and a procession of the children was held from a church in another quarter of the village to the one on the square.
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CHAPTER VIII THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE
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CHAPTER X FROM SICILY TO NAPLES
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