little theory of our own, vague as yet and unsubstantial, but worth,
we do venture to think, his consideration or the consideration of
anybody who is in want of a theory to sport with. This is, that these
plays, or at any rate a considerable number of them, were really
and truly written by Walter Raleigh. We have not as yet had time to
examine this theory very closely, or (like Mr. Smith with his) to find
very much evidence in support of it. But of what we have done in that
direction we freely make him a present. The following plays were all
produced after the year 1603, the year when Raleigh was sent to the
Tower for his alleged share in the Cobham plot:—_Othello_, _Measure
for Measure_, _Lear_, _Pericles_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Macbeth_,
_Cymbeline_, _Winter’s Tale_, _Tempest_, _Henry VIII._, _Taming of the
Shrew_. It has been allowed on Mr. Smith’s side that Bacon, amid all
his variety of business, both public and private, must have been very
hard put to it to find the mere time to write the plays. No man of
that age could have had at that time so much leisure on his hands as
Raleigh. But that is not all. In the ninth chapter of his _Instructions
to his Son_, on the inconveniences arising from the immoderate use of
wine, is a passage which might almost be described as a paraphrase of
Cassio’s famous discourse on the same subject. Nor is this all. Raleigh
had been in the Tower before, in 1592, on a rather delicate matter, in
which Mistress Throckmorton, afterward Lady Raleigh, had a share. The
injustice of his second imprisonment would naturally recall the first
to his mind, equally or still more unjust as he probably thought. To
the second he would hardly dare to allude; but what was more likely
than that he should find a sort of melancholy pleasure in recalling the
first? Now, if Mr. Smith will turn to the second scene of the first act
of _Measure for Measure_ (first acted in December 1604, and written
therefore in the first year of Raleigh’s imprisonment), he will find
an allusion to the unfortunate cause of his first disgrace obvious to
the dullest comprehension. The apparently no less obvious allusion
in _Twelfth Night_ to Cole’s brutality at Raleigh’s trial cannot,
unfortunately, stand, as we know for certain from John Manningham’s
Diary that the comedy was played in the Middle Temple Hall in the
previous year. But from such evidence as we have given (and, did time
and space serve we could add to it) we think a very good case could be
made out for Raleigh, and we commend the making of it to Mr. Smith,
who seems to have plenty of time to spare on such matters. At any rate
if he will not have Shakspeare for the author of these plays, he must
really now begin to think of getting some other Simon Pure than Bacon,
if within a quarter of a century and more he has been able to find no
better warranty for his theory than that he has given us. But we must
entreat him to be a little more careful of poor Raleigh, if he discard
our suggestion, than he has been of poor Shakspeare, the only evidence
of whose existence he has declared to be the date of his death! But
perhaps he is only following Plutarch, whom Bacon praises for saying
“Surely I had rather a great deal men should say there was no such man
at all as Plutarch, than that they should say there was one Plutarch
that would eat his children as soon as they were born.”—_Saturday
Review._
SOME SICILIAN CUSTOMS.
BY E. LYNN LINTON.
Naturally the most important events of human life are birth,
marriage, death. Hence we find among all peoples who have emerged
from primitive barbarism, ceremonies and customs special to these
three supreme circumstances. These ceremonies and customs are of most
picturesque observance and most quaint significance in the middle
term of civilization;—amongst those who are neither savages not yet
blocked out into fair form, nor educated gentlefolk smoothed down to
the dead level of European civilization; but who are still in that
quasi-mythical and fetichistic state, when usages have a superstitious
meaning beyond their social importance, and charms, signs, omens, and
incantations abound as the ornamental flourishes to the endorsement of
the law.
We will take for our book of reference no certain Sicilian customs,[41]
one of Dr. Pitrè’s exhaustive cycle. We could not have a better guide.
Dr. Pitrè has devoted twenty good years of his life, health, and
fortune to collecting and preserving the records of all the popular
superstitions, habits, legends and customs of Sicily. Some of these are
already things of the past; others are swiftly vanishing; others again
are in full vigor. Dr. Pitrè’s work is valuable enough now; in a short
time it will be priceless to students and ethnologists who care to
trace likenesses and track to sources, and who are not content with the
mere surface of things without delving down to causes and meanings.
All women, the world over, who expect to become mothers, are curious
as to the sex of the unborn child; and every old wife has a bundle
of unfailing signs and omens which determine the question out of
hand without leaving room for doubt. In Sicily these signs are as
follows—among others of dubious modesty, which it is as well to leave
in obscurity. If you suddenly ask an expectant mother: “What is the
matter with your hand?” and she holds up or turns out the palm of her
right hand, her child will be a boy. If she holds up her left hand or
turns out the back of her right, it will be a girl. If she strews salt
before the threshold, the sex of the first person who enters in at the
door determines that of the unborn—a man for a boy, a woman for a
girl. If she goes to draw water from the well, and throws a few drops
over her shoulder without looking back, the sex of the first person
who passes, after the performance of this “sortilegio,” in like manner
determines the sex of the child. After the first child, the line in
which the hair grows at the nape of the neck of the preceding is an
unfailing sign of that which is coming after. If it grows in a peak it
presages a boy, if straight a girl. This is also one of the infallible
signs in India. If the woman sees an ugly or a deformed creature,
and does not say in an audible voice: “Diu ca lu fici”—God has made
it—she will produce a monster. If she repeats the charm, devoutly as
she ought, she has saved her child from deformity.
The patron saint of expectant mothers in Sicily is S. Francisco di
Paola. To secure his intervention in their behalf they go to church
every Friday to pray specially to him. The first time they go they
are blessed by putting on the cord or girdle proper to this saint; by
receiving, before their own offering, two blessed beans, a few blessed
wafers, and a small wax taper, also blessed, round which is twisted a
slip of paper whereon is printed—“Ora pro nobis Sancte Pater Francisce
di Paola.” The cord is worn during the time of pregnancy; the candle
is lighted during the pains of childbirth, when heavenly interposition
is necessary; and the beans and wafers are eaten as an act of devotion
which results in all manner of good to both mother and child.
In country places pregnant women who believe in the knowledge of the
midwife rather than in the science of the doctor, are still bled at
stated times, generally on the “even” months. Dr. Pitrè knew personally
one woman who had been bled the incredible number of two hundred and
thirteen times during her pregnancy. She had moreover heart disease;
and she offered herself as a wet-nurse.
The quarter in which the moon chances to be at the time of birth has
great influence on the future character and career of the new-born. So
have special days and months. All children born in March, which is the
“mad” month of Italy (“Marzo è pazzo”), are predisposed to insanity.
Woe to the female child who has the ill-luck to be born on a cloudy,
stormy, rainy day! She must infallibly become an ugly woman. Woe to
the boy who is born with the new moon! He will become a “loup garou,”
and he will be recognized by his inordinately long nails. But well is
it for the child who first sees the light of day on a Friday—unlike
ourselves, with whom “Friday’s child is sour and sad”—or who is born
on St. Paul’s night. He will be bright, strong, bold and cheerful. He
will be able to handle venomous snakes with impunity for his own part,
and to cure by licking those who have been bitten. He will be able to
control lunatics and to discover things secret and hidden; and he will
be a chatterbox.
More things go to make a successful or unsuccessful “time” in Sicily
than we recognize in England. A woman in her hour of trial is held and
hindered as much as was ever poor Alcmena, when Lucina sat crosslegged
before her gate, if a woman “in disgrazia di Dio”—that is, leading an
immoral life—either in secret or openly, enters the room. The best
counter-agent then is to invoke very loudly Santa Leocarda, the Dea
Partula of Catholicism. If she be not sufficiently powerful, and things
are still delayed, then all the other saints, the Madonna, and finally
God himself, are appealed to with profound faith in a speedy release.
In one place the church bells are rung; on which all the women within
earshot repeat an Ave. In another, the silver chain of La Madonna della
Catena is the surest obstetrician; and science and the doctor have
no power over the mind of the suffering woman where this has all. To
this day is believed the story of a poor mother who, when her pain had
begun, hurried off to the church to pray to the Madonna della Catena
for aid. When she returned home, the Holy Virgin herself assisted her,
and not only brought her child into the world, but also gave her bread,
clothes and jewels.
If the child be born weak or dying, and the need is therefore imminent,
the midwife baptizes it. For which reason she must never be one who
is deaf and dumb—nor one who stutters or stammers. Before baptism
no one must kiss a new-born infant, seeing that it is still a pagan;
which thing would therefore be a sin. In Modica the new-born child
is no longer under the protection of the Madonna, but under that of
certain mysterious beings called “Le Padrone della Casa.” To ensure
this protection the oldest of the women present lays on the table, or
the clothes chest, nine black beans in the form of a wedge—repeating
between her teeth a doggerel charm, which will prevent “Le Padrone
della Casa” from harming the babe or its mother. Others, instead of
black beans, put their trust in a reel or winder with two little bits
of cane fastened to it crosswise, which they lay on the bed, and which
also is certain to prevent all evil handling by these viewless forms.
At Marsala, the night after that following the birth, the windows
of the room where the infant lies are shut close, a pinch of salt
is strewn behind the door, and the light is left burning, so that a
certain malignant spirit called ’Nserra may not enter to hurt the
new-born. In other places they hide in the woman’s bed—generally
under the pillow—a key, or a small ball, or a clove of garlic, or the
mother’s thimble, or scissors, all or any of which does the same good
office of exorcism as the pinch of salt, and the light left burning.
For the first drink, a whole partridge, beak and feet, is put into a
pint of water, which is then boiled down to a cupful, and given to the
woman as the best restorative art and science can devise. When she is
allowed to eat solids she has a chicken, of which she is careful to
give the neck to her husband. Were she herself to eat it, her child’s
neck would be undeniably weak.
When taken to the church to be baptized, the infant, if a boy, is
carried on the right arm—if a girl, on the left. In the church the
father proper effaces himself as of no account in the proceedings; and
the godfather carries off all the honors. The more pompous ceremonial
at baptism occurs only at the birth of the first son. The Sicilian
proverb has it: “The first son is born a baron.”
Immediately after the baptism Sicilian Albanians dance a special dance;
and when they go home they throw out roasted peas to the people. Hence:
“When shall we have the peas?” is used as a periphrasis for: “When
does she expect her confinement?” The water in which the “chrism,” or
christening cup is washed, is accounted holy, because of the sacred oil
which it has touched. It is flung out on to a hedge, so that no foot of
man may tread the soil which has received it. Also the water in which
the child is first washed is treated as a thing apart. It is thrown on
to the highway, if the babe be a boy; under the bed, or the oven, or in
some other part of the house, if it be a girl;—the one signifying that
a man must fare forth, the other that a woman must bide within.
When the child “grows two days in one,” and “smiles to the angels?”
it is under the guardianship of certain other viewless, formless and
mysterious creatures, who seem to be vagabonds and open-air doubles of
the “Padrone della Casa.” These are “Le Donne di fuori.” The mother
asks permission of these “Donne,” before she lifts the child from the
cradle. “In the name of God,” she says, as she takes it up, “with your
permission, my ladies.” These “Donne di fuori,” are not always to be
relied on, for now they do, and now they do not, protect the little
one. It is all a matter of caprice and humor; but certainly no mother
who loved her child would omit this courteous entreaty to the, “Donne”
who are supposed to have had the creature in their keeping while she
was absent, and it was sleeping.
Not everyone in Sicily can marry according to his desire and the
apparent fitness of things; for there are old feuds between parish and
parish, as bitter as were ever those of Guelf and Ghibelline in times
past; and the devotees of one saint will have as little to say to the
devotees of another as will Jew and Gentile, True Believer and Giaour.
In early times this local rivalry was, naturally, more pronounced than
it is at present; but even now in Modica it is extremely rare if a San
Giorgioaro marries a Sampietrana, or vice versâ—each considering the
other as of a different and heretical religion. A marriage made not
long ago between two people of these several parishes turned out ill
solely on the religious question, the husband and wife not agreeing to
differ, but each wanting to convert the other from the false to the
true faith, and indignant because of ill-success. Just lately, says Dr.
Pitrè, a Syracusan girl, whose patron saint was Saint Philip, and who
was betrothed to a young man of the confraternity of the Santo Spirito,
sent all adrift because, a few days before the marriage was to take
place, she went to see her lover, lying ill in bed, and found hanging
to the pillow a picture of the objectionable Santo Spirito. Whereat,
furious and enraged she snatched down the picture, tore it into a
thousand pieces which she trampled under foot, and then and there made
it a sine quâ non that her husband-elect should substitute for this
a picture of Saint Philip. This the young man refused to do; and the
marriage was broken off.
Here in Sicily, as elsewhere, the seafaring population have little or
nothing to say to the landsfolk by way of marriage; holding themselves
more moral, more industrious, and in every way superior to those who
live by the harvests of the earth or by the quick returns and easy
profits of trade. But there is much more than this. The daughter of a
small landed proprietor will not be given to the master of men in any
kind of business, nor will the son of the former be suffered to marry
the daughter of the latter. A peasant farmer, without sixpence, would
not let his girl marry a well-to-do shepherd. A workman or rather a
day laborer—“bracciante”—would not be received into the family of a
muleteer, nor he again into one where the head was the keeper of swine
or of cattle. The husbandman who can prune vines disdains the man who
cannot dig, let him be what he will; the cow-herd disdains the ox-herd,
and he again the man who looks after the calves. The shepherd is above
the goat-herd; and so on, down to the most microscopic differences,
surpassing even those of caste-ridden India.
When conditions, however, are equal, and there are no overt objections
to the desired marriage, the mother of the young man takes the thing
in hand. She knows that her son wants to marry, because he is sullen,
silent, rude, contradictious and fault-finding; because last Saturday
night he hitched up the ass to the hook in the house wall, instead of
stabling it as he ought, and himself passed the night out of doors; or
because—in one place in Sicily—he sat on the chest, stamped his feet
and kicked his heels, so that his parents, hearing the noise, might
know that he was disturbed in his mind, and wanted to marry so soon as
convenient. Then the mother knows what is before her, and accepts her
duties as a good woman should.
She dresses herself a little smartly and goes to the house of the Nina
or Rosa with whom her son has fallen in love, to see what the girl is
like when at home, and to find out the amount of dower likely to be
given with her. She hides under her shawl a weaver’s comb, which, as
soon as she is seated, she brings out, asking the girl’s mother if she
can lend her one like it? This latter answers that she will look for
one, and will do all she can to meet her visitor’s wishes. She then
sends the daughter into another room, and the two begin the serious
business of means and dowry.
In olden times the girl who did not know how to weave the thread she
had already spun had small chance of finding a husband, how great
soever her charms or virtues. Power looms and cheap cloth have changed
all this and substituted a more generalized kind of industriousness;
but, all the same, she must be industrious—or have the wit to appear
so—else the maternal envoy will have none of her; but leaving the
house hurriedly, crosses herself and repeats thrice the Sicilian word
for “Renounced.” In Modica the young man’s mother sets a broom against
the girl’s house-door at night which does the same as the weaver’s
comb elsewhere; and, if all other things suit, the young people are
betrothed the following Saturday. And after they are betrothed the
girl’s mother goes to a church at some distance from her own home,
where she stands behind the door, and, according to the words said by
the first persons who pass through, foretells the happiness or the
unhappiness of the marriage set on foot.
The inventory of the girl’s possessions—chiefly house and
body-linen—is made by a public writer, and always begins with an
invocation to “Gesù, Maria, Giuseppe”—the Holy Family. It is sent
to the bridegroom-elect wrapped in a handkerchief. If considered
satisfactory, it is kept; if insufficient, it is returned. If accepted
as sufficient, there is a solemn conclave of the parents and kinsfolk
of the two houses. The girl is seated in the middle of the room.
Her future mother-in-law, or the nearest married kinswoman of the
bridegroom if she be dead, takes down and then plaits and dresses
her hair—all people who have been to Italy know what a universal
office of maternal care is this of dressing the girl’s hair;—slips
the engaged ring on her finger; puts a comb in her head; gives her
a silk-handkerchief, and kisses her. After this the girl rises,
kisses the hands of her future father-and mother-in-law, and seats
herself afresh, between her own kinsfolk on her left, and those of
her “promesso sposo,” on her right. In some places is added to these
manifestations a bit of flame-colored ribbon (“color rosso-fuoco;
colore obbligato”), which the future mother-in-law plaits into the
girl’s tresses while combing her hair, and which this latter never puts
off till the day of the wedding. Formerly a “promessa sposa” wore a
broad linen band across her brow and down her face, tied under her chin
with a purple ribbon.
On her side the girl’s mother gives the future son-in-law a scapulary
of the Madonna del Carmine, fastened to a long blue ribbon. When the
formal kiss of betrothal is given between the young people, the guests
break out into “Evvivas!” and the wine and feasting begin. Formerly
a “promessa sposa” shaved off one or both of her eyebrows. But this
custom was inconvenient. If anything happened to prevent the marriage
it spoilt all chances for the future.
Gifts from the man to the woman are de rigueur—a survival of the old
mode of barter or purchase. These gifts are generally of jewelry;
but sometimes the pair exchange useful presents of body-linen, &c.
At Easter the man gives the woman either a luscious sweet called
“cassata,” or a “peccorella di pasta reale,” that is a lamb couchant
made of almond paste, crowned with a tinsel crown, carrying a flag,
and colored after nature. At the Feast of St. Peter—the 29th of July;
not the same as Saints Peter and Paul—he gives keys made of flour and
honey, or of almonds, or of caramel. On the 2nd of November—the day
off All Souls’—he takes her sweet brown cakes with a white mortuary
figure raised in high relief, as a child, or a man, or a death’s head
and cross bones, or a well-defined set of ribs to symbolize a skeleton,
according to the nearest relative she may have lost. But in Mazarra
no one who loved his bride would give her aught in the likeness of a
cat, as this would presage her speedy death. Biscuits for St. Martin’s
day; gingerbread in true lovers’ knots, tough and tasteless, and
sugar bambini for Christmas; huge hearts, of a rather coarse imitation
of mincemeat, and sugared over, for the Feast of the Annunciation; on
the day of Saints Cosmo and Damian, medlars, quinces and the saints
themselves done in honey and sugar—and so on;—these are the little
courtesies of the betrothal which no man who respected himself,
or desired the love of her who was to be his wife, would dream of
neglecting.
During the time of betrothal, how long so ever it may last, the young
people are never suffered to be one moment alone, nor to say anything
to each other which all the world does not hear. The man may go once
a week to the girl’s house; where he seats himself at the corner of
the room opposite to that where she is sitting; but he may not touch
her hand nor speak to her below his breath. In the country, when they
cannot marry for yet awhile, they engage themselves from year to year.
But they are always kept apart and rigorously watched.
Formerly marriages were somewhat earlier than now. Now they are delayed
until the young fellow has served his three years in the army. They
used to be most general when he was twenty and she eighteen; and a
proverb says that at eighteen a girl either marries or dies. The church
did not sanction marriages earlier than these several ages, save in
exceptional cases; and any one who assisted at the marriage of a girl
below the age of eighteen, without the consent of her parents and
guardians, was imprisoned for life and forfeited all he had. This law,
however, was frequently broken in remote places, and especially about
Palermo, where “the marriages of Monreale” have passed into a proverb.
When a young girl, say of sixteen, marries and has a good childbirth,
they say, “She has been to Monreale.”
May and August are unlucky months in which to be married. September
and the following three months are the most propitious. The prejudice
against May dates from old classic times; while June was considered as
fit by the Romans as it is now by the Palermitans. Up to the end of the
sixteenth century the day of days was St. John the Baptist’s. Two days
in the week are unlucky for marriage—Tuesday and Friday:
“Nè di Venere nè di Marte
Non si sposa nè si parte.”
Sunday is the best day of all; especially in country places, where it
is evidently the most convenient.
If the bride or one of the bridal party slips by the way, if the ring
or one of the candles on the altar falls in church, the young couple
may look out for sorrow. If two sisters are married on the same day,
ill will fare the younger. If one candle shines with less brilliancy
than the other, or one of the kneeling spouses rises before the other,
that one whose candle has not burnt as it should, or the one who has
risen before the partner, will die first or die soon.
In Piano de’ Greci—the Greek Colony about twelve miles from
Palermo—the young husband keeps his Phrygian cap on his head in
church, as a sign that he too is now the head of a new family; and in
olden times the bride used to come into church on horseback. In one
place, Salaparuta, the bride enters in at the small door and goes out
by the large; and she must perforce pass beneath the campanile, else
she has not been married properly. In the Sicilian-Albanian colonies,
after the wedding-rings—of gold for the man, of silver for the woman,
as marking her inferior condition—have been placed on their fingers
and the wedding crowns on their heads, the officiating priest puts a
white veil on himself. He then steeps some bread in a glass of wine,
and gives the young couple to eat three times; after which, invoking
the name of the Lord, he dashes the glass to the ground. Then they all
dance a certain dance, decorous, not to say lugubrious, consisting
properly of only three turns made round and round as a kind of waltz,
guided by the priest, with the accompaniment of two hymns, one to the
Prophet Isaiah, and the other—Absit omen—to the Holy Martyrs. After
the dance comes the Holy Kiss. The priest kisses the husband only, and
he all the men and his bride. She kisses only all the women.