On the morning of Sunday, 25th August, 1901, every one on Monte San
Giuliano was up early and at 7.30 a brass band began to perambulate the
town to announce that the festa had begun. At 8.30 the band entered the
Matrice, and before Mass the sacred picture was unveiled, the band
saluting it with a burst of music. Much may be done in music by allusion
and suggestion. The service concluded with an extremely graceful
movement in six-eight time, that drove the Madonna out of the mind of at
least one listener and substituted a vision of laughing girls swaying
lightly to the rhythm and singing of the dancing waves whose foam gave
birth to Venus.
When the church emptied we got a better view of the picture. It is about
6 ft. high by 3 broad, painted in oils on wood prepared with gesso, and
represents a smiling Madonna with the Child at her breast. She is seated
on a throne in a landscape; two angels hold over her head a massive
golden crown; the Child is crowned also and in His hand are three ears of
corn, to signify fruitfulness; He also holds the keys. The crowns are
really only half-crowns, but they are gold or silver-gilt, and are
fastened into the wood of the picture. All round the Madonna's nimbus is
a raised band of gold set with twelve diamond stars, valued at 14,000
lire. A large diamond earring hangs in her right ear, the only one that
is visible; three large diamond rings are on the fingers of her right
hand and one on the finger of her left which supports the Child, and
suspended all over her skirts is an immense quantity of jewellery. The
frame is of wood entirely coated with silver, in the form of a
Renaissance doorway with a fluted column on each side and a broken
pediment over the top. It is almost concealed by the jewellery hung
about it, earrings, chains, necklaces, rings, watches etc. These are
offerings from the faithful, but what is shown is nothing like all.
There is a large chest containing much more and what has been given this
year is exposed in a separate case. These valuables constitute the
Madonna's dowry and she carries it with her on her journeys; but some of
the more important articles never leave the mountain; her diamond stars,
for instance, are removed from the picture when it goes down, and their
place is taken by less valuable stars of gold.
In the afternoon there were horse-races outside the Trapani gate on a
fairly level piece of road, and a concert and illumination in the balio
in the evening.
In the course of the day I bought a copy of the explanatory pamphlet.
Its title was _L'Arca Noetica_. _Simbolo Mariano_. _Processione
notturna figurativa_ (_I Personaggi_) _in omaggio alla Diva di Custonaci
Celeste Patrone degli Erecini_. _Ultimo Lunedi d'Agosto_, 1901. It was
to be a procession of cars, there were to be no figures on horseback.
Having introduced cars, as in _Jael_, to give special importance to the
three points of the story, viz. the opening, the climax, and the
conclusion (or, as the pamphlet expressed it, Causa, Consequenza e
Termine), it was, no doubt, felt that more could be done with them than
with single figures on horseback in presenting the somewhat intractable
subject of _Noah's Ark and the Universal Deluge_.
The preparations had taken a month or six weeks. The course is for the
arciprete of the Matrice, who is the head of the clergy of the district,
to determine what the story shall be and how it is to be told. The
designing of each personaggio, or of each group of personaggi, is then
confided to one of the inhabitants, who, provided he bears in mind the
general scheme, is free to follow his natural artistic instincts. The
dresses are hired from Palermo, and an astonishing quantity of jewellery
is lent by the families of the comune; in 1897 the personaggi carried 85
lbs. weight of it, and far more is always lent than can possibly be used.
It is all gold and precious stones, no silver is to be seen, and nothing
is ever lost, stolen, or mislaid; even the thieves become honest on these
occasions. It is sewn on to the dresses in various designs and makes
them look very rich, so that what is hired from Palermo is only the
costumes in the rough, so to speak.
In wandering about the town next day, I came upon four or five of the
cars lurking in obscure churches where they had been prepared. It was
not easy to make much of them; there were a few rocks, banks and clouds,
also the waters of the deluge, all made of papier mache painted to appear
real, and in among the rocks and banks were real plants, mostly the dwarf
palm which grows plentifully on the mountain. There were wooden supports
for the figures, to help them to stand in their places. Each car carried
under it an apparatus to supply it with acetylene gas, used in 1901 for
the first time.
All day long people kept on coming up the mountain and pouring into the
town. Those who did not come on foot left their carts and horses
outside, and they all swarmed up through the narrow, irregular, roughly
paved streets from the Trapani gate to the balio, till by nightfall the
Piazza was as crowded as Piccadilly on Mafeking night. Every one who has
been present at an Italian festa knows what it is like--men shouting and
elbowing their way through the people with flaming lamps fitted to their
baskets, selling water and syrups, cakes and confectionery, melon seeds
and peanuts--others going about with halfpenny buttonholes of gelsomina,
each neatly folded up in a vine-leaf to keep the scent in--three
independent piano-organs and a brass band in the middle distance--an
enthusiastic blind singer, a survival of Demodocus in the _Odyssey_, with
a falsetto voice and no bridge to his nose keeping a group of listeners
spellbound in the foreground with their favourite ballad, illustrated by
a large sheet of oil paintings in eight tableaux, about the man who
murdered his wife and mother with one bloody knife--there it is lying on
the supper-table--and was ultimately taken by the carabinieri and
executed.
This blind singer with no bridge to his nose is a humorist; on one
occasion when he was fibbing in a particularly flagrant manner, he
enforced his remarks by calling upon heaven to strike him blind and smash
his nose if he was not speaking the truth.
While you are thinking that the tumult must be at its height, peaceful
nuns are creeping up the convent stair, silently, one by one, they reach
the roof, every one can see them collecting together in the moonlight and
taking hold of the dangling bell-ropes. All of a sudden you realize what
a mistake you had been making about the tumult as the riotous bells fling
their additional accompaniments out into the night, all over the town,
over the whole comune, down to Trapani, to Cofano and out to the islands.
In the meantime those in charge of the cars had been giving their final
directions and seeing that everything was in order, and the personaggi,
who had been being dressed ever since early in the afternoon, were ready
to receive visitors. About 10 p.m. each of them began to hold an At
Home. They sat there silent and motionless in their houses among trays
full of superfluous jewellery and surrounded by lighted candles, gazing
imperturbably in front of them while people streamed through the room
admiring them, fingering their dresses and jewels, and asking questions
of their relations and friends. About 11.30 I was conducted along the
illuminated streets through the crowd to a house where I stood on a
balcony looking up a street down which the procession was to come.
We had to wait till long after midnight, but at last the moving lights
began to shine on the high houses in the distance, the band was heard
approaching, and at 1.45 the first car staggered into sight. It
represented _The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men_; there were three
of each, reclining in the front part of the car and offering flowers to
one another, instigated so to do by the Monster of Iniquity, a loathsome
dragon, who was insinuating himself among them from rocks behind, while
the Angel of the Lord, a singularly beautiful child, stood on a high
cloud in the background, in an attitude of horror, about to take wing
from such a world of wickedness. Cupid was there also, sitting at the
feet of the daughters of men and taking aim generally.
The second car brought _Sin_, a bearded man in an imperial attitude with
a golden sceptre resting on his hip. He dominated a globe round which
the old Serpent had coiled himself. He was dressed in dark-blue velvet,
and wore a voluminous red cloak. On his breast was a bunch of grapes,
made entirely of diamond rings; each grape was a separate ring isolated
from the others and so sewn on that the hoop, being passed through a hole
in the material, was not visible, and only the rose of diamonds was
displayed. There were fifty-five grapes, and they sparkled and glittered
in the flickering lights as the car lurched down the street and passed
the balcony.
The third car represented _The Voice of God_, a beautiful figure of an
Angel blowing a trumpet, and the words written on the cloud behind were
"Delebo hominem." In the front of the car sat a youth and a girl holding
hands to represent the wicked population destined to destruction.
Then _The Universal Deluge_ came pitching and tossing round the
corner--rather an ambitious car. The foreground was occupied by the
water, with the head of a drowning man throwing up his arms, and the
indication of another entirely submerged. The waves were beating against
a steep bank up which a tigress was climbing, carrying her cub in her
mouth. On the top of the bank stood a lovely woman endeavouring to save
her terrified child. She was the only living figure on the car,
everything else, even the terrified child, being of papier mache.
_The Ark_ came on the fifth car and had no living figure at all, being
merely Noah's Ark resting on Mount Ararat with a dove in front. This may
sound rather uninteresting and as though designed to support home
industries, but, to the initiated, it palpitated with significance, for
it symbolized the Madonna herself, the only means of salvation from the
waters of punishment; and as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat while the
flood subsided, so does the Madonna di Custonaci rest upon Mount Eryx
while the calamity is stayed.
No. 6 was _The Sacrifice_ and represented Noah, an imposing old man with
long white hair and beard, standing at an altar where a real sheep lay
dead under a net and his three sons were in front praying.
No. 7 was _The Rainbow_, another lovely girl as an angel standing between
a bank of clouds and a rainbow. On the breast of this figure was worked
in jewels Noah's dove with an olive-branch; this was particularly
appropriate, as it happens also to be the badge of the town.
The procession was closed by a long car carrying first a band of
musicians, then a chorus of youths attired as angels and crowned with
roses, the whole backed by a sort of temple front framing a copy of the
sacred picture. This car had to stand still from time to time while its
occupants performed music composed specially for the occasion, and the
continual stopping dictated the movements of the other cars and was
signalled to them by bells, so that there might always be about the same
space between them.
The cars were drawn by men and the figures made no attempt to stand
rigidly still--anything of the kind would have been out of the question,
for they must have been on the move between five and six hours. The last
car passed my balcony at 3.30, an hour and three-quarters after the first
had come into sight, and one could tell the next day that they had been
through nearly the whole town, for hardly a street was safe to walk
in--they were all so slippery with the wax that had dropped from the
candles. The constant moving of their limbs by the figures, though they
never lost the general idea of the attitude, together with the tottering
motion caused by the roughness of the paving, prevented any sense of the
pose plastique or living picture.
Every one of the female figures, except _The Voice of God_, had her
breast encrusted with jewels, usually in a floral design, and the borders
of their dresses were heavy with jewellery; the male figures also wore as
much as could be suitably sewn on their costumes.
Omitting consideration of the final car, which was there to close the
procession and bring on the music and the Madonna, and also of the Ark,
which could hardly have been otherwise, there were six cars, three
carrying groups and three practically single figures, for the boy and
girl at the feet of _The Voice of God_, though they were the children of
Donna Anna, my landlady, were not really necessary. Of the groups, the
one representing _The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men_ was certainly
the finest. It told its story in the right way and was full of the right
kind of imagination. _The Sacrifice_ was next best, and owed much to the
extreme dignity of the principal figure. I should have liked _The Flood_
better if it had had more living figures and less papier mache, though I
am not ashamed to admit that I have no idea how this could have been
done. Shakespeare himself, who apologizes for trying to make a cockpit
hold the vasty fields of France, might have been excused for not
attempting to decant The Universal Deluge into a receptacle scarcely
bigger than a costermonger's barrow. Of the three remaining cars, _Sin_
was beyond comparison the finest both in conception and execution.
Perhaps he would have looked the part more obviously if he had had more
of a once-aboard-the-lugger expression on his kind and gentle face; on
the other hand, the designer of this car may have intended that Sin is
most successful in seducing the righteous when he appears with nothing
repulsive in his aspect. The other two were merely just what they should
have been--ordinary business cars, so to speak. Had these three single
figures appeared on horseback with grooms to lead them, as in former
times, the procession would have gained in variety and the importance of
the groups on the cars would have been emphasized.
But this is a small matter. The procession as it was, with its car after
car jolting along under an August full moon, the sparkling of the jewels,
the flashing of the torches, the blazing of the gas, the beauty of the
figures and the immense multitude of reverent worshippers made up a scene
never to be forgotten. The impressiveness was deepened by the knowledge
that this Mountain, where Astarte, Aphrodite and Venus have all reigned
in turn, is also a place where much that has helped to mould the poetry
and history of the world has happened since the Sicans first girded it
with its megalithic cincture. Added to this was the conviction that for
many and many an age some such procession has been winding through these
narrow, irregular streets, the form changing, but the intention remaining
ever the same--Praise to the Giver of the Increase.
The programme for the next day contained nothing till 5 p.m., when there
were more horse-races, then Vespers in the Matrice, brilliantly
illuminated; after dusk fireworks outside the Trapani Gate, and at night
a concert in the illuminated balio.
In the afternoon of Wednesday, the 28th, a procession of fifty-nine mules
and horses passed through the town. Each animal was accompanied by its
owner, a peasant of the comune, and was loaded with bags of grain, an
offering for the Madonna. This grain was to be sold and, in the mean
time, was estimated to be worth 2500 lire. About 1500 lire was collected
during the festa, partly at the church doors and partly in the value of
unused wax candles, and the municipio gave 1000, so that altogether the
receipts were about 5000 lire. Against this the expenses of the festa
were expected to amount to about 4000 lire, and the balance will go
towards the expenses of the next.