Involuntarily, one thinks of the
drunkard-strewn field of battle at the close of our Highland games; one
thinks of God-fearing Glasgow on a Saturday evening, and of certain
other aspects of Glasgow life. . . .
I accepted the kindly proffered invitation of the priests to share their
dinner; they held out hopes of some sort of sleeping accommodation as
well. It was a patriarchal hospitality before that fire of logs (the
night had grown chilly), and several other guests partook of it,
forestal inspectors and such-like notabilities - one lady among them who,
true to feudal traditions, hardly spoke a word the whole evening. I was
struck, as I have sometimes been, at the attainments of these country
priests; they certainly knew our Gargantuan novelists of the Victorian
epoch uncommonly well. Can it be that these great authors are more
readable in Italian translations than in the original? One of them took
to relating, in a strain of autumnal humour, experiences of his life in
the wilds of Bolivia, where he had spent many years among the Indians;
my neighbour, meanwhile, proved to be steeped in Horatian lore. It was
his pet theory, supported by a wealth of aptly cited lines, that Horace
was a "typical Italian countryman," and great was his delight on
discovering that I shared his view and could even add another - somewhat
improper - utterance of the poet's to his store of illustrative quotations.
They belonged to the old school, these sable philosophers; to the days
when the priest was arbiter of life and death, and his mere word
sufficient to send a man to the galleys; when the cleverest boys of
wealthy and influential families were chosen for the secular career and
carefully, one might say liberally, trained to fulfil those responsible
functions. The type is becoming extinct, the responsibility is gone, the
profession has lost its glamour; and only the clever sons of pauper
families, or the dull ones of the rich, are now tempted to forsake the
worldly path.
Regarding the origin of this festival, I learned that it was
"tradition." It had been suggested to me that the Virgin had appeared to
a shepherd in some cave near at hand - the usual Virgin, in the usual
cave; a cave which, in the present instance, no one was able to point
out to me. Est traditio, ne quaeras amplius.
My hosts answered questions on this subject with benignant ambiguity,
and did not trouble to defend the divine apparition on the sophistical
lines laid down in Riccardi's "Santuari." The truth, I imagine, is that
they have very sensibly not concerned themselves with inventing an
original legend. The custom of congregating here on these fixed days
seems to be recent, and I am inclined to think that it has been called
into being by the zeal of some local men of standing.
