On The Other Hand,
A Shrine May Well Have Stood For Many Years On This Spot, For It Marks
The Half-Way House In The Arduous Two Days' Journey Between San Severino
And Castro-Villari, A Summer Trek That Must Date From Hoary Antiquity.
Our bedroom contained two rough couches which were to be shared between
four priests and myself.
Despite the fact that I occupied the place of
honour between the two oldest and wisest of my ghostly entertainers,
sleep refused to come; the din outside had grown to a pandemonium. I lay
awake till, at 2.30 a.m., one of them arose and touched the others with
a whispered and half-jocular oremus! They retired on tiptoe to the
next room, noiselessly closing the door, to prepare themselves for early
service. I could hear them splashing vigorously at their ablutions in
the icy water, and wondered dreamily how many Neapolitan priests would
indulge at that chill hour of the morning in such a lustrai rite,
prescribed as it is by the rules of decency and of their church.
After that, I stretched forth at my ease and endeavoured to repose
seriously. There were occasional lulls, now, in the carnival, but
explosions of sound still broke the stillness, and phantoms of the
restless throng began to chase each other through my brain. The exotic
costumes of the Albanian girls in their green and gold wove themselves
into dreams and called up colours seen in Northern Africa during still
wilder festivals - negro festivals such as Fro-mentin loved to depict. In
spectral dance there flitted before my vision nightmarish throngs of
dusky women bedizened in that same green and gold; Arabs I saw, riding
tumultuously hither and thither with burnous flying in the wind; beggars
crawling about the hot sand and howling for alms; ribbons and flags
flying - a blaze of sunshine overhead, and on earth a seething orgy of
colour and sound; methought I heard the guttural yells of the
fruit-vendors, musketry firing, braying of asses, the demoniacal groans
of the camels - -
Was it really a camel? No. It was something infinitely worse, and within
a few feet of my ears. I sprang out of bed. There, at the very window,
stood a youth extracting unearthly noises out of the Basilicata bagpipe.
To be sure! I remembered expressing an interest in this rare instrument
to one of my hosts who, with subtle delicacy, must have ordered the boy
to give me a taste of his quality - to perform a matutinal serenade, for
my especial benefit. How thoughtful these people are. It was not quite 4
a.m. With some regret, I said farewell to sleep and stumbled out of
doors, where my friends of yesterday evening were already up and doing.
The eating, the dancing, the bagpipes - they were all in violent
activity, under the sober and passionless eye of morning.
A gorgeous procession took place about midday. Like a many-coloured
serpent it wound out of the chapel, writhed through the intricacies of
the pathway, and then unrolled itself freely, in splendid convolutions,
about the sunlit meadow, saluted by the crash of mortars, bursts of
military music from the band, chanting priests and women, and all the
bagpipers congregated in a mass, each playing his own favourite tune.
The figure of the Madonna - a modern and unprepossessing image - was
carried aloft, surrounded by resplendent ecclesiastics and followed by a
picturesque string of women bearing their votive offerings of candles,
great and small.
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