There Was A Tame Hawk At The Station Of
S. Ambrogio.
The station-master said it used to go now and again
to the church-steeple to catch sparrows, but would always return in
an hour or two.
Before my stay was over it got in the way of a
passing train and was run over.
Young birds are much eaten in this neighbourhood. The houses and
barns, not to say the steeples of the churches, are to be seen
stuck about with what look like terra-cotta water-bottles with the
necks outwards. Two or three may be seen in the illustration on p.
113 outside the window that comes out of the roof, on the left-hand
side of the picture. I have seen some outside an Italian
restaurant near Lewisham. They are artificial bird's-nests for the
sparrows to build in: as soon as the young are old enough they are
taken and made into a pie. The church-tower near the Hotel de la
Poste at Lanzo is more stuck about with them than any other
building that I have seen.
Swallows and hawks are about the only birds whose young are not
eaten. One afternoon I met a boy with a jay on his finger: having
imprudently made advances to this young gentleman in the hopes of
getting acquainted with the bird, he said he thought I had better
buy it and have it for my dinner; but I did not fancy it. Another
day I saw the padrona at the inn-door talking to a lad, who pulled
open his shirt-front and showed some twenty or thirty nestlings in
the simple pocket formed by his shirt on the one side and his skin
upon the other. The padrona wanted me to say I should like to eat
them, in which case she would have bought them; but one cannot get
all the nonsense one hears at home out of one's head in a moment,
and I am afraid I preached a little. The padrona, who is one of
the most fascinating women in the world, and at sixty is still
handsome, looked a little vexed and puzzled: she admitted the
truth of what I said, but pleaded that the boys found it very hard
to gain a few soldi, and if people didn't kill and eat one thing,
they would another. The result of it all was that I determined for
the future to leave young birds to their fate; they and the boys
must settle that matter between themselves. If the young bird was
a boy, and the boy a young bird, it would have been the boy who was
taken ruthlessly from his nest and eaten. An old bird has no right
to have a homestead, and a young bird has no right to exist at all,
unless they can keep both homestead and existence out of the way of
boys who are in want of half-pence. It is all perfectly right, and
when we go and stay among these charming people, let us do so as
learners, not as teachers.
I watched the padrona getting my supper ready. With what art do
not these people manage their fire. The New Zealand Maoris say the
white man is a fool: "He makes a large fire, and then has to sit
away from it; the Maori makes a small fire, and sits over it." The
scheme of an Italian kitchen-fire is that there shall always be one
stout log smouldering on the hearth, from which a few live coals
may be chipped off if wanted, and put into the small square
gratings which are used for stewing or roasting. Any warming up,
or shorter boiling, is done on the Maori principle of making a
small fire of light dry wood, and feeding it frequently. They
economise everything. Thus I saw the padrona wash some hen's eggs
well in cold water; I did not see why she should wash them before
boiling them, but presently the soup which I was to have for my
supper began to boil. Then she put the eggs into the soup and
boiled them in it.
After supper I had a talk with the padrone, who told me I was
working too hard. "Totam noctem," said he in Latin, "lavoravimus
et nihil incepimus." ("We have laboured all night and taken
nothing.") "Oh!" he continued, "I have eyes and ears in my head."
And as he spoke, with his right hand he drew down his lower eyelid,
and with his left pinched the pig of his ear. "You will be ill if
you go on like this." Then he laid his hand along his cheek, put
his head on one side, and shut his eyes, to imitate a sick man in
bed. On this I arranged to go an excursion with him on the day
following to a farm he had a few miles off, and to which he went
every Friday.
We went to Borgone station, and walked across the valley to a
village called Villar Fochiardo. Thence we began gently to ascend,
passing under some noble chestnuts. Signor Bonaudo said that this
is one of the best chestnut-growing districts in Italy. A good
tree, he told me, would give its forty francs a year. This seems
as though chestnut-growing must be lucrative, for an acre should
carry some five or six trees, and there is no outlay to speak of.
Besides the chestnuts, the land gives a still further return by way
of the grass that grows beneath them. Walnuts do not yield nearly
so much per tree as chestnuts do. In three-quarters of an hour or
so we reached Signor Bonaudo's farm, which was called the Casina di
Banda. The buildings had once been a monastery, founded at the
beginning of the seventeenth century and secularised by the first
Napoleon, but had been purchased from the state a few years ago by
Signor Bonaudo, in partnership with three others, after the passing
of the Church Property Act.
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