How
different from the days of old! These legendary and gracious beasts,
that inspired poets and artists and glyptic engravers - these things of
beauty have now descended into the realm of mere usefulness, into the
pharmacopoeia.
The debasement is quite intelligible, when one remembers what
accumulated miseries these provinces have undergone. Memories of
refinement were starved out of the inhabitants by centuries of misrule,
when nothing was of interest or of value save what helped to fill the
belly. The work of bestialization was carried on by the despotism of
Spanish Viceroys and Bourbons. They, the Spaniards, fostered and perhaps
imported the Camorra, that monster of many heads which has established
itself in nearly every town of the south. Of the deterioration in taste
coincident with this period, I lately came across this little bit of
evidence, curious and conclusive: - In 1558 a number of the country-folk
were captured in one of the usual Corsair raids; they were afterwards
ransomed, and among the Christian names of the women I note: Livia,
Fiula, Cassandra, Aurelia, Lucrezia, Verginia, Medea, Violanta, Galizia,
Vittoria, Diamanta, etc. Where were these full-sounding noble names two
centuries later - where are they nowadays? Do they not testify to a state
of culture superior to that of the present time, when Maria, Lucia, and
about four others of the most obvious catholic saints exhaust the list
of all female Christian names hereabouts?
All this is changing once more; a higher standard of comfort is being
evolved, though relics of this former state of insecurity may still be
found; such as the absence, even in houses of good families, of clocks
and watches, and convenient storage for clothes and domestic utensils;
their habits of living in penury and of buying their daily food by
farthings, as though one never knew what the next day might bring; their
dread of going out of doors by night (they have a proverb which runs,
di notte, non parlar forte; di giorno, guardati attorno), their lack
of humour. For humour is essentially a product of ease, and nobody can
be at ease in unquiet times. That is why so few poets are humorous;
their restlessly querulous nature has the same effect on their outlook
as an insecure environment.
But it will be long ere these superstitions are eradicated. The magic of
south Italy deserves to be well studied, for the country is a cauldron
of demonology wherein Oriental beliefs - imported direct from Egypt, the
classic home of witchcraft - commingled with those of the West. A
foreigner is at an unfortunate disadvantage; if he asks questions, he
will only get answers dictated by suspicion or a deliberate desire to
mislead - prudent answers; whoso accepts these explanations in good
faith, might produce a wondrous contribution to ethnology.
Wise women and wizards abound, but they are not to be compared with that
santa near Naples whom I used to visit in the nineties, and who was so
successful in the magics that the Bishop of Pozzuoli, among hundreds of
other clients, was wont to drive up to her door once a week for a
consultation. These mostly occupy themselves with the manufacture of
charms for gaining lucky lottery numbers, and for deluding fond women
who wish to change their lovers.
The lore of herbs is not much studied. For bruises, a slice of the
Opuntia is applied, or the cooling parietaria (known as "pareta" or
"paretene"); the camomile and other common remedies are in vogue; the
virtues of the male fern, the rue, sabina and (home-made) ergot of rye
are well known but not employed to the extent they are in Russia, where
a large progeny is a disaster. There is a certain respect for the
legitimate unborn, and even in cases of illegitimacy some neighbouring
foundling hospital, the house of the Madonna, is much more convenient.
It is a true monk's expedient; it avoids the risk of criminal
prosecution; the only difference being that the Mother of God, and not
the natural mother of the infant, becomes responsible for its prompt and
almost inevitable destruction. [Footnote: The scandals that
occasionally arise in connection with that saintly institution, the
Foundling Hospital at Naples, are enough to make humanity shudder. Of
856 children living under its motherly care during 1895, 853 "died" in
the course of that one year-only three survived; a wholesale massacre.
These 853 murdered children were carried forward in the books as still
living, and the institution, which has a yearly revenue of over 600,000
francs, was debited with their maintenance, while 42 doctors (instead of
the prescribed number of 19) continued to draw salaries for their
services to these innocents that had meanwhile been starved and tortured
to death. The official report on these horrors ends with the words:
"There is no reason to think that these facts are peculiar to the year
1895."]
That the moon stands in sympathetic relations with living vegetation is
a fixed article of faith among the peasantry. They will prune their
plants only when the satellite is waxing - al sottile detta luna, as
they say. Altogether, the moon plays a considerable part in their lore,
as might be expected in a country where she used to be worshipped under
so many forms. The dusky markings on her surface are explained by saying
that the moon used to be a woman and a baker of bread, her face gleaming
with the reflection of the oven, but one day she annoyed her mother, who
took up the brush they use for sweeping away the ashes, and smirched her
face. . . .
Whoever reviews the religious observances of these people as a whole
will find them a jumble of contradictions and incongruities, lightly
held and as lightly dismissed. Theirs is the attitude of mind of little
children - of those, I mean, who have been so saturated with Bible
stories and fairy tales that they cease to care whether a thing be true
or false, if it only amuses for the moment.
