Last night I dreamt we both were dead,
And, love! beside each other laid.
Doctors and Surgeons filled the place
To make autopsy of the case--
Knives, scissors, saws, with eager zest
Of each laid open wide the breast:--
Dumfounded then was every one,
Yours held two hearts, but mine had none!
The _canzuni_ differ very much as to adherence to the strict laws of
rhyme and metre; more often than not assonants are readily accepted in
place of rhymes, and their entire absence has been thought to cast a
suspicion of education on the author of a song. One truly illiterate
living folk-poet was, however, heard severely to criticise some of the
printed _canzuni_ which were read aloud to him, on just this ground of
irregularity of metre and rhyme. His name is Salvatore Calafiore, and
he was employed a few years ago in a foundry at Palermo, where he was
known among the workmen as "the poet." Being very poor, and having a
young wife and family to support, he bethought himself of appealing to
the proprietor of the foundry for a rise of wages, but the expedient
was hazardous: those who made complaints ran a great chance of getting
nothing by it save dismissal. So he offered up his petition in a
little poem to this effect: "As the poor little hungry serpent comes
out of its hole in search of food, heeding not the risk of being
crushed, thus Calafiore, timorous and hard-pressed, O most just sir,
asks of you help!" Calafiore was once asked what he knew about the
classical characters whose names he introduced into his poems: he
answered that some one had told him of them who knew little more of
them than he did. He added that "Jove was God of heaven, Apollo god of
music, Venus the planet of love, Cicero a good orator." On the whole,
the folk-poets are not very lavish in mythological allusion; when they
do make it, it is ordinarily fairly appropriate. "Wherever thou dost
place thy feet," runs a Borgetto _canzuna_, "carnations and roses,
and a thousand divers flowers, are born. My beautiful one, the goddess
Venus has promised thee seven and twenty things--new gardens, new
heavens, new songs of birds in the spot where thou dost take thy
rest." The Siren is one of the ancient myths most in favour: at
Partinico they sing:
Within her sea-girt home the Siren dwells
And lures the spell-bound sailor with her lay,
Amid the shoals the fated bark compels
Or holds upon the reef a willing prey,
None ever 'scape her toils, while sinks and swells
Her rhythmic chant at close and break of day--
Thou, Maiden, art the Siren of the sea,
Who with thy songs dost hold and fetter me.
It is rarely indeed that we can trace a couple of these lyrics to the
same brain--we may not say "to the same hand," for the folk-poet's
hand is taken up with striking the anvil or guiding the plough; to
more intellectual uses he does not put it--yet expressing as they do
emotions which are not only the same at bottom, but are here felt and
regarded in precisely the same way, there results so much unity of
design and execution, that, as we read, unawares the songs weave
themselves into slight pastoral idylls--typical peasant romances in
which real _contadini_ speak to us of the new life wrought in them
by love. Even the repeated mention of the Sicilian diminutives of
the names of Salvatore and Rosina helps the illusion that a thread of
personal identity connects together many of the fugitive _canzuni_.
Thus we are tempted to imagine Turiddu and Rusidda as a pair of lovers
dwelling in the sunny Conca d'Oro--he "so sweet and beautiful a youth,
that God himself must surely have fashioned him"--a youth with "black
and laughing eyes, and a little mouth from whence drops honey:" she a
maiden of
... quattordicianni,
L'occhi cilestri e li capiddi biunni--
"fourteen years, celestial eyes, blonde hair;" to see her long tresses
"shining like gold spun by the angels," one would think "that she
had just fallen out of Paradise." "She is fairer than the foam of the
sea"--
"My little Rose in January born,
Born in the month of cold and drifted snow,
Its whiteness stays thy beauty to adorn,
Nought than thy velvet skin more white can show.
Thou art the star that shines, tho' bright the morn,
And casts on all around a silver glow."
But Rusidda's mother will have nothing to say to poor Turiddu; he
complains, "Ah! God, what grief to have a tongue and not to be able to
speak; to see her and dare not make any sign! Ah, God in heaven, and
Virgin Mary, tell me what I am to do? I look at her, she looks at me,
neither I nor she can say a word!" Then an idea strikes him; he gets a
friend to take her a message: "When we pass each other in the street,
we must not let the folk see that we are in love, but you will lower
your eyes and I will lower my head; this shall be our way of saluting
one another. Every saint has his day, we must await ours." Encouraged
by this stratagem, Turiddu grows bold, and one dark night, when none
can see who it is, he serenades his "little Rose:"
"Sleep, sleep, my hope, yea sleep, nor be afraid,
Sleep, sleep, my hope, in confidence serene,
For if we both in the same scales be weighed,
But little difference will be found between.
Have you for me unfeigned love displayed,
My love for you shall greater still be seen.
If we could both in the same scales be weighed,
But small the difference would be found between."
He does not think the song nearly good enough for her: "I know not
what song I can sing that is worthy of you," he says: he wishes he
were "a goldfinch or a nightingale, and had no equal for singing;" or,
better still, he would fain "have an angel come and sing her a song
that had never before been heard of out Paradise," for in Paradise
alone can a song be found appropriate to her. One day (it is Rusidda's
fete-day), Turiddu makes a little poem, and says in it: "All in roses
would I be clad, for I am in love with roses; I would have palaces
and little houses of roses, and a ship with roses decked, and a little
staircase all of roses, which I the fortunate one would ascend; but
ere I go up it, I wish to say to you, my darling, that for you I
languish." He watches her go to church: "how beautiful she is! Her air
is that of a noble lady!" The mother lingers behind with her gossips,
and Turiddu whispers to Rusidda, "All but the crown you look like a
queen." She answers: "If there rode hither a king with his crown who
said, 'I should like to place it on your head,' I should say this
little word, 'I want Turiddu, I want no crown.'" Turiddu tells her he
is sick from melancholy: "it is a sickness which the doctors cannot
cure, and you and I both suffer from it. It will only go away the day
we go to church together."
But there seems no prospect of their getting married; Turiddu sends
his love four sighs, "e tutti quattru suspiri d'amuri:"
"Four sighs I breathe and send thee,
Which from my heart love forces;
Health with the first attend thee,
The next our love discourses;
The third a kiss comes stealing;
The fourth before thee kneeling;
And all hard fate accusing
Thee to my sight refusing."
And now he has to go upon a long journey; but before he starts he
contrives one meeting with Rusidda. "Though I shall no longer see
you, we yet may hope, for death is the only real parting," he says. "I
would have you constant, firm, and faithful; I would have you faithful
even unto death." She answers, "If I should die, still would my spirit
stay with you." A year passes; on Rusidda's _festa_ a letter arrives
from Turiddu: "Go, letter mine, written in my blood, go to my dear
delight; happy paper! you will touch the white hand of my love. I am
far away, and cannot speak to her; paper, do you speak for me."
At last Turiddu returns--but where is Rusidda? "Ye stars that are in
the infinite heavens, give me news of my love!"
Through the night "he wanders like the moon," he wanders seeking his
love. In his path he encounters Brown Death. "Seek her no more," says
this one; "I have her under the sod. If you do not believe me, my fine
fellow, go to San Francesco, and take up the stone of the sepulchre:
there you will find her." ... Alas! "love begins with sweetness and
ends in bitterness."
The Sicilian's "Beautiful ideal" would seem to be the white rose
rather than the red, in accordance, perhaps, with the rule that makes
the uncommon always the most prized; or it may be, from a perception
of that touch of the unearthly, that pale radiance which gives the
fair Southerner a look of closer kinship with the pensive Madonna
gazing out of her aureole in the wayside shrine, than with the dark
damsels of the more predominant type. Some such angelical association
attached to golden heads has possibly disposed the Sicilian
folk-poet towards thinking too little of the national black eyes and
olive-carnation colouring. Not that brunettes are wholly without
their singers; one of these has even the courage to say that since his
_bedda_ is brown and the moon is white, it is plain that the moon must
leave the field vanquished. One dark beauty of Termini shows that she
is quite equal to standing up for herself. "You say that I am black?"
she cries, "and what of that? Black writing looks well on white paper,
black spices are worth more than white curds, and while dusky wine
is drunk in a glass goblet, the snow melts away unregarded in the
ditch."[1] But the apologetic, albeit spirited tone of this protest,
indicates pretty clearly that the popular voice gives the palm to
milk-white and snowy faced maidens; the possessors of _capiddi biunni_
and _capidduzzi d'oru_ have no need to defend their charms, a hundred
canzuni proclaim them irresistible. "Before everything I am enamoured
of thy blonde tresses," says one lyrist. The luxuriant hair of the
Sicilian women is proverbial. A story is told how, when once Palermo
was about to surrender to the Saracens because there were no more
bowstrings in the town, an abundant supply was suddenly produced by
the patriotic dames cutting off their long locks and turning them to
this purpose. The deed so inspired the Palermitan warriors that they
speedily drove the enemy back, and the siege was raised. A gallant
poet adds: "The hair of our ladies is still employed in the same
office, but now it discharges no other shafts but those of Cupid, and
the only cords it forms are cords of love."
In the early morning, almost all the year round the women may be
seen sitting before their doors undoing and doing up again this long
abundant hair. The chief part of their domestic work they perform out
in the sunshine; one thing only, but that the most important of all,
has to be done in the house--the never finished task of weaving the
clothes of the family. From earliest girlhood to past middle age the
Sicilian women spend many hours every day at the loom. A woman
of eighty, Rosa Cataldi of Borgetto, made the noble boast to
Salomone-Marino: "I have clothed with stuff woven by my hands from
fourteen to fifty years, myself, my brothers, my children, and their
children." A girl who cannot, or will not, weave is not likely to
find a husband. As they ply the shuttle, the women hardly cease from
singing, and many, and excellent also, are the songs composed in
praise of the active workers. The girl, not yet affianced, who is
weaving perhaps her modest marriage clothes, may hear, coming up from
the street, the first avowal of love:
Ciuri d'aranci.
Bedda, tu tessi e tessennu mi vinci;
Bedda, tu canti, e lu me' cori chianci.
It has been said that love begins with sweetness and ends in
bitterness. What a fine world it would be were Brown Death the only
agent in the bitter end of love! It is not so. Rusidda, who dies, is
possibly more fortunate than Rusidda who is married. When bride
and bridegroom return from the marriage rite, the husband sometimes
solemnly strikes his wife in presence of the assembled guests as a
sign of his henceforth unlimited authority. The symbol has but too
great appropriateness. Even in what may be called a happy marriage,
there is a formality akin to estrangement, once the knot is tied.
Husband and wife say "voi" to each other, talking to a third person,
they speak of one another as "he" and "she," as "mio cristiano," and
"mia cristiana," never as "my husband" and "my wife." The wife sits
down to table with the husband, but she scrupulously waits for him to
begin first, and takes tiny mouthfuls as if she were ashamed of eating
before him. Then, if the husband be out of humour, or if he thinks
that the wife does not work hard enough (an "enough" which can
never be reached), the nuptial blow is repeated in sad and miserable
earnest. The woman will not even weep; she bears all in silence,
saying meekly afterwards, "We women are always in the wrong, the
husband is the husband, he has a right even to kill us since we live
by him." These things have been recorded by one who loves the Sicilian
peasant, and who has defended him against many unfounded charges. A
hard case it would be for wedded Rusidda if she had not her songs and
the sun to console her.
All the _canzuni_ that have been quoted are, so far as can be judged,
of strictly popular origin, nor is there any sign of continental
derivation in their wording or shape. Several, however, are the
common property of most of the Italian provinces. There is a charming
Vicentine version of "The Siren," and the "Four Sighs" makes its
appearance in Tuscany under a dress of pure Italian. Has Sicily,
then, a right to the honour of their invention? There is a
strong presumption that it has. On the other hand, there are some
Sicilianized songs of plainly foreign birth, which shows that if the
island gave much to the peninsula, it has had at least something back
in return. There is a third category, comprising the songs of the
Lombard colonies of Piazza and San Fratello, which have a purely
accidental connection with Sicily. The founders of this community were
Lombards or Longobards, who were attracted to Sicily somewhere in
the eleventh century, either by the fine climate and the demand for
soldiers of fortune, or by the marriage of Adelaide of Monferrato with
Count Roger of Hauteville. But what is far more curious than how or
why they came, is the circumstance of the extraordinary isolation in
which they seem to have lived, and their preservation to this day of
a dialect analogous with that spoken at Monferrato. In this dialect
there exist a good many songs, but a full collection of them has yet
to be made.
Besides the _ciuri_ and _canzuni_, there is another style of
love-song, very highly esteemed by the Sicilian peasantry, and that
is the _aria_. When a peasant youth serenades his _'nnamurata_ with an
_aria_, he pays her by common consent the most consummate compliment
that lies in his power. The _arii_ are songs of four or more
stanzas--a form which is not so germane to the Sicilian folk-poet as
that of the _canzuna_; and, although he does use it occasionally,
it may be suspected that he more often adapts a lettered or foreign
_aria_ than composes a new one. An aria is nothing unless sung to a
guitar accompaniment, and is heard to great advantage when performed
by the barbers, who are in the habit of whiling away their idle hours
with that instrument. The Sicilian (lettered) poet, Giovanni Meli,
has written some admirable _arii_, many of which have become popular
songs.
Meli's name is as oddly yoked with the title of _abate_ as Herrick's
with the designation of clergyman. He does not seem, as a matter of
fact, to have ever been an _abate_ at all. Once, when dining with a
person influential at court, his host inquired why he did not ask to
be appointed to a rich benefice then vacant. "Because," he replied, "I
am not a priest." And it appeared that when a young man he had adopted
the clerical habit for no other reason than that he intended to
practise medicine, and wished to gain access to convents, and to make
himself acceptable to the nuns. It was not an uncommon thing to do.
The public generally dubbed him with the ecclesiastical title. Not
long before his death, in 1815, he actually assumed the lesser orders,
and in true Sicilian fashion, wrote some verses to his powerful friend
to beg him to get him preferment, but he died too soon after to profit
by the result. The Sicilians are very proud of Meli. It is for them
alone probably to find much pleasure in his occasional odes--to others
their noble sentiments will be rather suggestive of the _sinfonia
eroica_ played on a flute; but the charm and lightness of his
Anacreontic poems must be recognised by all who care for poetry. He
had a nice feeling for nature too, as is shown in a sonnet of rare
beauty:
Ye gentle hills, with intercepting vales,
Ye rocks with musk and clinging ivy dight;
Ye sparkling falls of water, silvery pale,
Still meres, and brooks that babble in the light;
Deep chasms, wooded steeps that heaven assail,
Unfruitful rushes, broom with blossoms bright,
And ancient trunks, encased in gnarled mail,
And caves adorned with crystal stalactite;
Thou solitary bird of plaintive song,
Echo that all dost hear, and then repeat,
Frail vines upheld by stately elms and strong,
And silent mist, and shade, and dim retreat;
Welcome me! tranquil scenes for which I long--
The friend of haunts where peace and quiet meet.
I must not omit to say a word about a class of songs which, in
Sicily as elsewhere, affords the most curious illustration of the
universality of certain branches of folk-lore--I mean the nursery
rhymes. One instance of this will serve for all. Sicilian nurses play
a sort of game on the babies' features, which consists in lightly
touching nose, mouth, eyes, &c., giving a caressing slap to the chin,
and repeating at the same time--
Varvaruttedu,
Vucca d'aneddu,
Nasu affilatu,
Occhi di stiddi,
Frunti quatrata,
E te' cca 'na timpulata!
Now this rhyme has not only its counterpart in the local dialect of
every Italian province, but also in most European languages. In France
they have it:
Beau front,
Petits yeux,
Nez cancan,
Bouche d'argent,
Menton fleuri,
Chichirichi.
We find a similar doggerel in Germany, and in England, as most people
know, there are at least two versions, one being--
Eye winker,
Tom Tinker,
Nose dropper.
Mouth eater,
Chinchopper,
Chinchopper.
Of more intrinsic interest than this ubiquitous old nurse's nonsense
are the Sicilian cradle songs, in some of which there may also
be traced a family likeness with the corresponding songs of other
nations. As soon as the little Sicilian gets up in the morning he is
made to say--
While I lay in my bed five saints stood by;
Three at the head, two at the foot--in the midst was Jesus Christ.
The Greek-speaking peasants of Terra d'Otranto have a song somewhat
after the same plan:
I lay me down to sleep in my little bed; I lay me down to
sleep with my Mamma Mary: the Mamma Mary goes hence and leaves
me Christ to keep me company.
Very tender is the four-line Sicilian hushaby, in which the proud
mother says--
How beautiful my son is in his swaddling clothes; just think
what he will be when he is big! Sleep, my babe, for the angel
passes: he takes from thee heaviness, and he leaves thee
slumber.
There is in Vigo's collection a lullaby so exquisite in its blended
echoes from the cradle and the grave that it makes one wish for two
great masters in the pathos of childish things, such as Blake and
Schumann, to translate and set it to music. It is called "The Widow."
Sweet, my child, in slumber lie,
Father's dead, is dead and gone.
Sleep then, sleep, my little son,
Sleep, my son, and lullaby.
Thou for kisses dost not cry,
Which thy cheeks he heaped upon.
Sleep then, sleep, my pretty one,
Sleep, my child, and lullaby.
We are lonely, thou and I,
And with grief and fear I faint.
Sleep then, sleep, my little saint,
Sleep, my child, and lullaby.
Why dost weep? No father nigh.
Ah, my God! tears break his rest.
Darling, nestle to my breast,
Sleep, my child, and lullaby.
Very scant information is to be had regarding the Sicilian folk-poets
of the past; with one exception their names and personalities have
almost wholly slipped out of the memory of the people, and that
exception is full three parts a myth. If you ask a Sicilian popolano
who was the chief and master of all rustic poets, he will promptly
answer, "Pietro Fullone;" and he will tell you a string of stories
about the poetic quarry-workman, dissolute in youth, devout in
old age, whose fame was as great as his fortune was small, and who
addressed a troop of admiring strangers who had travelled to Palermo
to visit him, and were surprised to find him in rags, in the following
dignified strain:
Beneath these pilgrim weeds so coarse and worn
A heart may still be found of priceless worth.
The rose is ever coupled to the thorn.
The spotless lily springs from blackest earth.
Rubies and precious stones are only born
Amidst the rugged rocks, uncouth and swarth.
Then wonder not though till the end I wear
Nought but this pilgrim raiment poor and bare.
Unfortunately nothing is more sure than that the real Pietro Fullone,
who lived in the 17th century, and published some volumes of poetry,
mostly religious, had as little to do with this legendary Fullone as
can well be imagined. It is credible that he may have begun life as
a quarry workman and ignorant poet, as tradition reports; but it is
neither credible that a tithe of the _canzuna_ attributed to him
are by the same author as the writer of the printed and distinctly
lettered poems which bear his name, nor that the bulk of the anecdotes
which profess to relate to him have any other foundation than that of
popular fiction. But though we hear but little, and cannot trust the
little we hear, of the folk-poet of times gone by, for us to
become intimately acquainted with him, we have only to go to his
representative, who lives and poetizes at the present moment. In
this or that Sicilian hamlet there is a man known by the name of "the
Poet," or perhaps "the Goldfinch." He is completely illiterate and
belongs to the poorest class; he is a blacksmith, a fisherman, or
a tiller of the soil. If he has the gift of improvisation, his
fellow-villagers have the satisfaction of hearing him applauded by the
Great Public--the dwellers in all the surrounding hamlets assembled at
the fair on St John's Eve. Or it may be he is of a meditative turn of
mind, and makes his poetry leisurely as he lies full length under
the lemon-trees taking his noontide rest. Should you pass by, it is
unlikely he will give himself the trouble of lifting his eyes: He
could not say the alphabet to save his life; but the beautiful earth
and skies and sea which he has looked on every day since he was born
have taught him some things not learnt in school. The little poem he
has made in his head is indeed a humble sort of poetry, but it is not
unworthy of the praise it gets from the neighbours who come dropping
into his cottage door, uninvited, but sure of a friendly welcome next
Sunday after mass, their errand being to find out if the rumour is
true that "the Goldfinch" has invented a fresh _canzuna_?
Such is the peasant poet of to-day; such he was five hundred or a
thousand years ago. He presents a not unlovely picture of a stage in
civilisation which is not ours. To-morrow it will not be his either;
he will learn to read and write; he will taste the fruit of the Tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as it grows in our great centres
of intellectual activity; he will begin to "look before and after."
Still, he will do all this in his own way, not in our way, and so much
of his childhood having clung to him in youth, it follows that his
youth will not wholly depart from him in manhood. Through all the
wonderfully mixed vicissitudes of his country the Sicilian has
preserved an unique continuity of spiritual life; Christianity
itself brought him to the brink of no moral cataclysm like that which
engulfed the Norseman when he forsook Odin and Thor for the White
Christ. It may therefore be anticipated that the new epoch he is
entering upon will modify, not change his character. That he has
remained outside of it so long, is due rather to the conditions under
which he has lived than to the man; for the Sicilian grasps new ideas
with an almost alarming rapidity when once he gets hold of them;
of all quick Italians he is the quickest of apprehension. This very
intelligence of his, called into action by the lawlessness of his
rulers and by ages of political tyranny and social oppression, has
enabled him to accomplish that systemization of crime which at one
time bred the Society of the Blessed Pauls, and now is manifested in
the Mafia. You cannot do any business harmless or harmful, you
cannot buy or sell, beg or steal, without feeling the hand of an
unacknowledged but ever present power which decides for you what you
are to do, and levies a tax on whatever profit you may get out of
the transaction. If a costermonger sells a melon for less than the
established price, his fellows consider that they are only executing
the laws of their real masters when they make him pay for his temerity
with his life. The wife of an English naval officer went with her maid
to the market at Palermo, and asked the price of a fish which, it was
stated, cost two francs. She passed on to another stall where a fish
of the same sort was offered her for 1.50. She said she would buy it,
and took out of her purse a note for five _lire_, which she gave the
vendor to change. Meanwhile, unobserved, the first man had come up
behind them, and no sooner was the bargain concluded, than he whipped
a knife out of his pocket, and in a moment more would have plunged it
in the second man's breast, had not the lady pushed back his arm,
and cried by some sudden inspiration, "Wait, he has not given me my
change!" No imaginable words would have served their purpose so well;
the man dropped the knife, burst out laughing, and exclaimed: "Che
coraggio!" The brave Englishwoman nearly fainted when she returned
home. Her husband asked what was the matter, to which she answered: "I
have saved a man's life, and I have no idea how I did it."
Something has been done to lessen the hereditary evil, but the cure
has yet to come. It behoves the Sicilians of a near future to stamp
out this plague spot on the face of their beautiful island, and thus
allow it to garner the full harvest of prosperity lying in its mineral
wealth and in the incomparable fertility of its soil. That it is only
too probable that the people will lose their lyre in proportion as
they learn their letters is a poor reason for us to bid them stand
still while the world moves on; human progress is rarely achieved
without some sacrifices--the one sacrifice we may not make, whatever
be the apparent gain, is that of truth and the pursuit of it.
[Footnote 1: So Virgil:
"Alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur."
]