Thus There Are
"Turkish" Apples And "Turkish" Potatoes.
But "turco" may also mean
black - in accordance with the tradition that the Turks, the Saracens,
were a black race.
Snakes, generally greyish-brown in these parts, are
described as either white or black; an eagle-owl is half-black; a
kestrel un quasi bianco. The mixed colours of cloths or silks are
either beautiful or ugly, and there's an end of it. It is curious to
compare this state of affairs with that existing in the days of Homer,
who was, as it were, feeling his way in a new region, and the propriety
of whose colour epithets is better understood when one sees things on
the spot. Of course I am only speaking of the humble peasant whose
blindness, for the rest, is not incurable.
One might enlarge the argument and deduce his odd insensibility to
delicate scents from the fact that he thrives in an atmosphere saturated
with violent odours of all kinds; his dullness in regard to finer shades
of sound - from the shrieks of squalling babies and other domestic
explosions in which he lives from the cradle to the grave. That is why
these people have no "nerves"; terrific bursts of din, such as the
pandemonium of Piedigrotta, stimulate them in the same way that others
might be stimulated by a quartette of Brahms. And if they who are so
concerned about the massacre of small birds in this country would devote
their energies to the invention of a noiseless and yet cheap powder,
their efforts would at last have some prospects of success. For it is
not so much the joy of killing, as the pleasurable noise of the gun,
which creates these local sportsmen; as the sagacious "Ultramontain"
observed long ago. "Le napolitain est pas-sionne pour la chasse," he
says, "parce que les coups de fusil flattent son oreille." [Footnote:
I have looked him up in Jos. Blanc's "Bibliographic." His name was C.
Haller.] This ingenuous love of noise may be connected, in some way,
with their rapid nervous discharges.
I doubt whether intermediate convulsions have left much purity of Greek
blood in south Italy, although emotional travellers, fresh from the
north, are for ever discovering "classic Hellenic profiles" among the
people. There is certainly a scarce type which, for want of a better
hypothesis, might be called Greek: of delicate build and below the
average height, small-eared and straight-nosed, with curly hair that
varies from blonde to what Italians call castagno chiaro. It differs
not only from the robuster and yet fairer northern breed, but also from
the darker surrounding races. But so many contradictory theories have
lately been promulgated on this head, that I prefer to stop short at the
preliminary question - did a Hellenic type ever exist? No more, probably,
than that charming race which the artists of Japan have invented for our
delectation.
Strains of Greek blood can be traced with certainty by their track of
folklore and poetry and song, such as still echoes among the vales of
Sparta and along the Bosphorus. Greek words are rather rare here, and
those that one hears - such as sciusciello, caruso, crisommele,
etc. - have long ago been garnered by scholars like De Grandis, Moltedo,
and Salvatore Mele. So Naples is far more Hellenic in dialect, lore,
song and gesture than these regions, which are still rich in pure
latinisms of speech, such as surgere (to arise); scitare (excitare - to
arouse); e (est - yes); fetare (foetare); trasete (transitus - passage of
quails); titillare (to tickle); craje (cras - to-morrow); pastena (a
plantation of young vines; Ulpian has "pastinum instituere"). A woman is
called "muliera," a girl "figliola," and children speak of their fathers
as "tata" (see Martial, epig. I, 101). Only yesterday I added a
beautiful latinism to my collection, when an old woman, in whose cottage
I sometimes repose, remarked to me, "Non avete virtu oggi " - you are not
up to the mark to-day. The real, antique virtue! I ought to have
embraced her. No wonder I have no "virtue" just now. This savage
Vulturnian wind - did it not sap the Roman virtue at Cannae?
All those relics of older civilizations are disappearing under the
standardizing influence of conscription, emigration and national schooling.
And soon enough the Contranome-system will become a thing of the
past. I shall be sorry to see it go, though it has often driven me
nearly crazy.
What is a contranome?
The same as a sopranome. It is a nickname which, as with the Russian
peasants, takes the place of Christian and surname together. A man will
tell you: "My name is Luigi, but they call me, by contranome,
O'Canzirro. I don't know my surname." Some of these nicknames are
intelligible, such as O'Sborramurella, which refers to the man's
profession of building those walls without mortar which are always
tumbling down and being repaired again; or O'Sciacquariello (acqua - a
leaking - one whose money leaks from his pocket - a spendthrift); or San
Pietro, from his saintly appearance; O'Civile, who is so uncivilized, or
Cristoforo Colombo, because he is so very wideawake. But eighty per cent
of them are quite obscure even to their owners, going back, as they do,
to some forgotten trick or incident during childhood or to some pet name
which even in the beginning meant nothing. Nearly every man and boy has
his contranome by which, and by which alone, he is known in his
village; the women seldomer, unless they are conspicuous by some
peculiarity, such as A'Sbirra (the spy), or A'Paponnessa (the fat
one) - whose counterpart, in the male sex, would be O'Tripone.
Conceive, now, what trouble it entails to find a man in a strange
village if you happen not to know his contranome (and how on earth are
you to discover it?), if his surname means nothing to the inhabitants,
and his Christian name is shared by a hundred others. For they have an
amazing lack of inventiveness in this matter; four or five Christian
names will include the whole population of the place.
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