MANNERS AND CUSTOMS AT CORTE.
A good deal of historical interest is attached to Corte. From the
earliest times it has been the seat of the national government, and
the centre of the more important popular demonstrations. The old town
and citadel have undergone more sieges and been worn by more numerous
assaults than even Calvi or Bonifacio.
Here Paoli lived, and, from his modest home, regulated the government
of his country; and here was the home of the patriot Gaffori.
An anecdote is told in connection with the latter which is truly
Corsican in its Spartan-like heroism.
It was in 1746, during one of the ceaseless conflicts with Genoa, and
Gaffori was storming the city. He had already made much progress, and
the Genoese commander was beginning to tremble for the fate of his
fort. Suddenly the Corsican firing ceased, and every gun was silent,
whilst the islanders gazed horror-struck on the walls. Upon them was
bound the young son of Gaffori, who had been taken prisoner, and whom
the Genoese general had commanded to be placed there in order to deter
the successful storming party, or as a mark for his father's guns.
Gaffori paused a moment; but only a moment. In another minute he gave
the order, and the assault continued.
But the heroic father had his reward. The breach was made, Corte fell,
and Gaffori's son was rescued unhurt from his perilous situation.
Corte abounds in pointer dogs. Paoli had his six canine friends, who
kept house with him at Corte; but tradition tells not whether they,
too, were pointers or no.
The men of Corte struck me as being a finer race physically than any
other in the island. They are tall and well-made, with upright figures.
Corsicans, in face and figure, are more akin to the English than the
Italians: there is none of the soft roundness of the Italian about
them; they are bony, manly, and muscular.
But the Cortéans appeared to me to excel even their other compatriots
in idleness. As one of themselves said, "The young men of Corte do
nothing but walk the streets from morning till night, and all they have
to occupy them is to think of evil."
The Corsican women, however, at Corte as elsewhere, are essentially
domestic and retiring. Flaunting and finery have not yet become the
fashion among these simple-hearted daughters of Eve; and as long as
their lords require it of them, they will probably remain the same
light-hearted, energetic, hard-working family supporters that they now
are.
To them may be applied, with great accuracy, the old rhyme:--
"Good wives, like city clocks, should be
Exact with regularity;
Yet not, like city clocks so loud,
Be heard by all the vulgar crowd.
"Good wives to snails should be akin,
Always their houses keep within,--
Yet not to carry (fashion's hacks)
All they possess upon their backs."
The only occasion on which the women of Corsica appear to have an
outing is on Sunday morning, after early Mass, when, in their neat
attire of black and white, they sometimes take a quiet turn up and down
the main street or place.
A funeral, too, may bring them out. On passing through Olmeto some
weeks afterwards, we met half a dozen women coming down the road
together, dressed rather more gaily than usual; and our driver
immediately remarked, "There must be a funeral in Olmeto, or the women
would not be out."
"But," we asked, "do they not put on mourning for the occasion?"
"Oh no; only the relatives do that."
"But," we said, "there are so many people always dressed in black in
Corsica; how is that?"
"Well, people only go into mourning for a very near relation; but the
first time they wear it for three or four years, and the second time,
unless they are young children, for the rest of their life."
This accounts for the number of sombre female figures one sees in this
island, the black handkerchief which is worn over the head rendering
them peculiarly funereal-looking; and explains why you never meet an
elderly woman in any other attire.
But the group of women we met were evidently only acquaintances or
distant relations of the dead, for their costume was more than usually
lively, one or two of them wearing a blue or orange head-gear and other
unaccustomed bits of finery. The ceremony appeared to them, no doubt,
in the light of an agreeable dissipation, as it did to a certain poor
Welshwoman of my acquaintance, who remarked, cheerfully, that "Mother
had a' been quite gay lately; she'd a' been to three funerals last
week!"
The church at Corte is in the higher part of the town, surrounded by
narrow streets and houses that have lain in ruins ever since the last
bombardment of the town. It is not a pretentious building, either
within or without.
Poor paintings and gaudy images of saints bedecked every side altar,
and a highly coloured Madonna stood in a niche on either side of the
principal altar, where the tall candles shed artificial sunlight on
beautiful but badly arranged flowers.
The service was mumbled through by an old priest, less to our
edification than apparently to that of the reverent crowd of women
worshippers who filled the building.
Scarcely a man was to be seen in church. Their Sunday duties appeared
to consist in squatting in rows just outside the porch, smoking their
pipes, and watching the entrance of their better halves.
In Corsica the men are not church-goers. Coming from North Italy, where
the congregations are composed more of men than of women, one cannot
fail to be struck by this fact.
Fillipini remarks of his countrymen that they are a religious
community. He would scarcely say so now. French influence and French
scepticism are already making themselves felt among the Corsican
men; and the priesthood on the island does not appear sufficiently
strong, as a body, intellectually or morally, to preserve their fading
influence. But the men in Corte, although they may not care to go to
church, yet are sufficiently orthodox to join in a good procession on
St. Joseph's Day.
It was about five o'clock in the evening, when the sound of distant
chanting and the hum of many voices drew us to the window.
There we saw, coming up the road under the elm trees, a troop of
about sixty or seventy men and women, carrying banners and dressed in
uniform.
First came the women, of whom there were not altogether more than about
a dozen.
They were dressed in a pretty costume of bright blue skirt, white head
kerchief, and round white cape, trimmed with blue, and they carried in
their midst a banner "with a strange device," that we could not make
out.
Then came men, in white shirts and trowsers, with white head-gear
something between a cap and a turban, and green capes.
Then more men, with white attire and crimson capes. These capes
evidently differed according to the relative wealth of the wearer, for
some were of crimson silk edged with gold, and some of simple calico.
These carried a large crucifix.
Finally came a troop with rich purple capes. These were carrying, with
some difficulty, an immense statue of St. Joseph, gilt all over, and
surrounded by a gold frame. Four of the men bore the image on stout
poles, whilst a fifth held it straight in the centre.
This troop was evidently the "picked lot" of the procession, for they
chanted, as they walked, an extraordinary dirge-like chant, and were
accompanied by a few priests in black cassocks, likewise singing.
I have seldom seen anything much more picturesque than that gay
procession, as it wound with its banners under the shady avenue, and up
the hill-side towards the little church, now lost, now seen, between
the narrow crooked streets, the weird chant dying and rising by turns
on the quiet evening air.
Everything solemn, however, has its travesty, I imagine, and children
always reproduce in their games what has most impressed them.
So, an hour or two later, when the twilight was falling, and
the faithful were mostly in church, there came the parody of the
afternoon's procession.
Hearing a prodigious drumming, and the shouts of children, I looked out
and saw a collection of about twenty or thirty of the ragged barefoot
urchins of Corte, promenading the street in solemn procession, shouting
a song that I fear was profane, at the top of their voices, drumming
energetically with an old spoon upon a broken brass can that they had
evidently picked up from the roadside, and following the lead of a
bold-faced, pretty boy, who bore aloft the seedy remains of a large
wooden cross, which had apparently been previously used in church
decoration, as it still showed the remnants of withered moss and
evergreens.