Move about the sward like animated tropical flowers.
But the Albanian girls of Civita stand out for aristocratic
elegance - pleated black silk gowns, discreetly trimmed with gold and
white lace, and open at the breast. The women of Morano, too, make a
brave show.
Night brings no respite; on the contrary, the din grows livelier than
ever; fires gleam brightly on the meadow and under the trees; the
dancers are unwearied, the bagpipers with their brazen lungs show no
signs of exhaustion. And presently the municipal music of Castrovillari,
specially hired for the occasion, ascends an improvised bandstand and
pours brisk strains into the night. Then the fireworks begin,
sensational fireworks, that have cost a mint of money; flaring wheels
and fiery devices that send forth a pungent odour; rockets of many hues,
lighting up the leafy recesses, and scaring the owls and wolves for
miles around.
Certain persons have told me that if you are of a prying disposition,
now is the time to observe amorous couples walking hand in hand into the
gloom - passionate young lovers from different villages, who have looked
forward to this night of all the year on the chance of meeting, at last,
in a fervent embrace under the friendly beeches. These same stern men
(they are always men) declare that such nocturnal festivals are a
disgrace to civilization; that the Greek Comedy, long ago, reprobated
them as disastrous to the morals of females - that they were condemned by
the Council of Elvira, by Vigilantius of Marseilles and by the great
Saint Jerome, who wrote that on such occasions no virgin should wander a
hand's-breadth from her mother. They wish you to believe that on these
warm summer nights, when the pulses of nature are felt and senses
stirred with music and wine and dance, the Gran Madre di Dio is adored
in a manner less becoming Christian youths and maidens, than heathens
celebrating mad orgies to Magna Mater in Daphne, or the Babylonian
groves (where she was not worshipped at all - though she might have been).
In fact, they insinuate that - - -
It may well be true. What were the moralists doing there?
Festivals like this are relics of paganism, and have my cordial
approval. We English ought to have learnt by this time that the
repression of pleasure is a dangerous error. In these days when even
Italy, the grey-haired cocotte, has become tainted with
Anglo-Pecksniffian principles, there is nothing like a little
time-honoured bestiality for restoring the circulation and putting
things to rights generally. On ethical grounds alone - as
safety-valves - such nocturnal feasts ought to be kept up in regions such
as these, where the country-folk have not our "facilities." Who would
grudge them these primordial joys, conducted under the indulgent
motherly eye of Madonna, and hallowed by antiquity and the starlit
heavens above?
