Nor are they truly venerable,
like ours. They date, for the most part, from the timewhen the
Government abolished the oldsystem of inhumation in churches - a system
which, for the rest, still survives; there are over six hundred of these
fosse carnarie in use at this moment, most of them in churches.
And a sad thought obtrudes itself in these oases of peace and verdure.
The Italian law requires that the body shall be buried within
twenty-four hours after decease (the French consider forty-eight hours
too short a term, and are thinking of modifying their regulations in
this respect): a doctor's certificate of death is necessary but often
impossible to procure, since some five hundred Italian communities
possess no medical man whatever. Add to this, the superstitions of
ignorant country people towards the dead, testified to by extraordinary
beliefs and customs which you will find in Pitre and other collectors of
native lore - their mingled fear and hatred of a corpse, which prompts
them to thrust it underground at the earliest possible opportunity.
. . . Premature burial must be all too frequent here. I will not
enlarge upon the theme of horror by relating what gravediggers
have seen with their own eyes on disturbing old coffins; if only half
what they tell me is true, it reveals a state of affairs not to be
contemplated without shuddering pity, and one that calls for prompt
legislation. Only last year a frightful case came to light in Sicily.
Videant Consules.
Here, at the cemetery, the driving road abruptly ends; thenceforward
there is merely a track along the sea that leads, ultimately, to Capo
Nau, where stands a solitary column, last relic of the great temple of
Hera. I sometimes follow it as far as certain wells that are sunk,
Arab-fashion, into the sand, and dedicated to Saint Anne. Goats and cows
recline here after their meagre repast of scorched grasses, and the
shepherds in charge have voices so soft, and manners so gentle, as to
call up suggestions of the Golden Age. These pastoral folk are the
primitives of Cotrone. From father to son, for untold ages before
Theocritus hymned them, they have kept up their peculiar habits and
traditions; between them and the agricultural classes is a gulf as deep
as between these and the citizens. Conversing with them, one marvels how
the same occupation can produce creatures so unlike as these and the
goat-boys of Naples, the most desperate camorristi.
The cows may well be descendants of the sacred cattle of Hera that
browsed under the pines which are known to have clothed the bleak
promontory. You may encounter them every day, wandering on the way to
the town which they supply with milk; to avoid the dusty road, they
march sedately through the soft wet sand at the water's edge, their
silvery bodies outlined against a cserulean flood of sky and sea.
On this promenade I yesterday observed, slow-pacing beside the waves, a
meditative priest, who gave me some details regarding the ruined church
of which Gissing speaks. It lies in the direction of the cemetery,
outside the town; "its lonely position," he says, "made it interesting,
and the cupola of coloured tiles (like that of the cathedral of Amalfi)
remained intact, a bright spot against the grey hills behind." This
cupola has recently been removed, but part of the old walls serve as
foundation for a new sanctuary, a sordid-looking structure with
red-tiled roof: I am glad to have taken a view of it, some years ago,
ere its transformation. Its patroness is the Madonna del Carmine - the
same whose church in Naples is frequented by thieves and cut-throats,
who make a special cult of this Virgin Motherand invoke Her blessing on
their nefarious undertakings.
The old church, he told me, was built in the middle of the seventeenth
century; this new one, he agreed, might have been constructed on more
ambitious lines, "but nowadays - - " and he broke off, with eloquent
aposiopesis.
It was the same, he went on, with the road to the cemetery; why should
it not be continued right up to the cape of the Column as in olden days,
over ground dove ogni passo e una memoria: where every footstep is a
memory?
"Rich Italians," he said, "sometimes give away money to benefit the
public. But the very rich - never! And at Cotrone, you must remember,
every one belongs to the latter class."
We spoke of the Sila, which he had occasionally visited.
"What?" he asked incredulously, "you have crossed the whole of that
country, where there is nothing to eat - nothing in the purest and most
literal sense of that word? My dear sir! You must feel like Hannibal,
after his passage of the Alps."
Those barren clay-hills on our right of which Gissing speaks (they are
like the baize of the Apennines) annoyed him considerably; they were
the malediction of the town, he declared. At the same time, they
supplied him with the groundwork of a theory for which there is a good
deal to be said. The old Greek city, he conjectured, must have been
largely built of bricks made from their clay, which is once more being
utilized for this purpose. How else account for its utter disappearance?
Much of the finer buildings were doubtless of stone, and these have been
worked into the fort, the harbour and palazzi of new Cotrone; but this
would never account for the vanishing of a town nearly twelve miles in
circumference. Bricks, he said, would explain the mystery; they had
crumbled into dust ere yet the Romans rebuilt, with old Greek stones,
the city on the promontory now occupied by the new settlement.
