29 - Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie, "Sunny Sicily: ITs Rustic and Its Ruins" (1904)

Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie, Sunny Sicily: Its Rustics and Its Ruins, The MacMillan Co., New York: 1904

 

 

CHAPTER II

LIFE ON THE COUNTRYSIDE

 

The peasantry of Sicily are particularly hospitable: they let strangers peep into their homes, watch their cooking or washing operations, and smile good-naturedly at the inquisitive visitor who is doubtless of equal interest to them. I had been into a small house one day, and was standing outside with a native from Palermo, asking something about the tiny charcoal basin in which the housewife had been cooking when a woman touched by companion on the arm.

“Would the lady like to see a corpse?” she asked.

“What?” inquired the Palermo gentleman.

“A corpse—a dead man,” she repeated.

“Why?”

“Because my husband died last night and is still lying upstairs. Would the lady like to see the ‘dead room?’ He looks so beautiful. He was a virtuous man, he was. Peace rest his soul,” and she wiped away a tear with the corner of her apron.

The suggestion was kindly meant, no doubt, but a strange corpse, in a strange back street, killed perhaps by some strange disease, was a little too much for my feelings, so thanking her, we turned to leave. She seemed distressed at our refusal, so I asked my companion to thank her again, and assure her we appreciated her thought.

“I hope your husband’s virtue is rewarded, and that he has gone to heaven,” I said.

She looked at me, and replied calmly—

“My husband’s soul has not left the room yet. It often takes three days for the soul to settle,” she continued, “and sometimes we have to call upon it from the street.”

Here was a strange idea.

“Is it still in the body?” I inquired, interested.

“Oh, no, it left the body at once, it always does, but the soul does not leave the house immediately, you know. My husband did not kill himself, so he will not suffer.”

“Suffer?”

“Yes, don’t you know that if a man kills himself his spirit must remain on earth so long as the good God intended him to live. Have you not heard these spirits in the wind?” she continued in awe-struck whisper. “They wail with the spirits of the decapitated.”

Capital punishment was given up years ago; but the people still believe that the evil spirits of its victims never leave the earth.

“When did your husband die?” asked my friend, as the widow seemed communicative.

“Ah, God be thanked, he died early: it was barely two o’clock.”

This remark surprised me, until I learned that when a person is about to die his friends and relations stand round and actually pray that the flame of life may flicker out before the hour of midnight. They have the greatest abhorrence of the time wearing on, as death in the small hours of the morning displeases the spirits and makes it more difficult for the departed one to get free and soar to heaven.

In the country such superstitions rule the people with a thralldom of fear; but the stranger only appreciates the joy, not the horrors, of the countryside, where even the ploughed fields in Sicily have their charm. The rich coloring of the soil is very noticeable, while in the midst of that oasis of brown furrows may stand a magnificent old almond tree literally covered with its wealth of pink blossom. The scene may be changed; the upturned field may join another swaying with the tender green of the young wheat, and here and there dotted on that soft, moss-like ground stand other trees laden with white blossom, pear, or perhaps cherry—the most snow-like of all. A red-roofed cottadge or a thatched hovel skirts the meadow. A rustic’s bright shirt, a woman’s mustard-colored petticoat or orange neck-scarf, a child’s faded pink flannel dress or heliotrope pinafore, all lend color. ‘Tis a land of color, a land of variegated scene and endless charm.

The unexpected is always appearing, and the unexpected in Sicily generally manges to lend itself to an artistic picture.

The countryside is more picturesque perhaps even than the cities, at all events it is more unique in itself, for there the hand of Nature alone has had its way, and no foreign nation has left an imprint as in the towns.

But though the countryside is delightful the hotels are undeniably bad. In Sicilian inns today basins are smaller than the sponges used by English visitors, the beds are not always clean, and the food is sometimes horrible; the country hotels have still much to learn in many ways.

People who are afraid of roughing it must confine themselves to Palermo, Girgenti, Syracuse, Messina, and Taormina, where there are quite good hotels and comforts. Outside those five towns Marsala, Trapani, and Catania may be visited by the less fastidious stranger, but beyond those one must be prepared for rough traveling and bad accommodation. Speaking generally, the good hotels charge from ten to twelve francs a day pension, and it is wise to insist on a room looking south, for after all one goes to Sicily for sunshine, and not to enjoy its warmth robs one’s visit of half its pleasure.

In days of yore there were kings of the “two Sicilies.” In these days there are still two Sicilies, but they are the Sicily of Comfort, and the Sicily of Discomfort. The ordinary traveler never leaves the big towns, so he is sure to obtain his needs, although people who expect every home convenience, every luxury and no unpleasantness, people who think more of creature-comforts than of glorious scenery and lovely sights, had better remain in their own country, for even the big towns are primitive.

The second Sicily is the land of discomfort, but it is the land of history and beauty. Those who care to put up with disagreeables for the sake of seeing much that is picturesque and hearing much that is interesting, will revel in this old-world Sicily. Take it all round, it still remains the land of the sixteenth century, it is still untrammeled by so-called civilization; and although in some ways Sicily is a peep back into the darkness of the Middle Ages, yet it has a distinct charm of its own which cannot be found in the lands of modern hotels, French cooks, and electric light. Those who discount creature-joys in their search for new experiences will find ample field in Sicily. The towns are interesting; but the countryside is more primitive, more replete with quaint charms, more old-world, romantic and poetical.

They work hard, those country peasants, and cultivate every inch of soil they can. It is extraordinary to look out of the windows of the railway carriage even between Messina and Palermo and see how they have reclaimed land from the sea. The shore itself has been brought under cultivation in some parts. Stones and shingle have been collected into heaps, or piled up to form walls, and that yellow, sandy shore, with a little mixture of earth and clay, has been induced to produce cabbages, potatoes, or cauliflowers. It is strange to see a cauliflower sitting under an umbrella, but such a thing is possible in Sicily. Four sticks are driven into the ground, and a rag or old handkerchief is fastened above them, giving the effect of a small tent or umbrella, beneath which reposes the cauliflower destined to go to seed. Birds must be a great nuisance, judging by the endless scarecrows, some of which are almost as perfect in their “make-up” as the real live one which appeared at the Drury Lane pantomime.

Birds abound in some parts of Sicily, in others they have been almost entirely exterminated. Quails are generally numerous; nightingales, larks, and swallows are well known.

Black, long-haired pigs, or small sheep—both black and white—were browsing by the seashore, and endless herds of goats were being led home as evening wore on. Goats are universal in Sicily—butter, milk, and cheese from goat are to be fund everywhere, and even in the streets of a large town like Palermo the herds are driven through every morning and evening, and the milk sold to anyone who comes out with a vessel into which it can be milked.

Surely no other country in the world has so many goats in proportion to its size. They may be counted in hundreds, nay thousands, and seem to live on nothing—nothing, that is to say, which costs money. We have seen them making a meal of orange and lemon peel and of bits of seaweed; one would imagine this would affect the milk, but it appears not to do so. We have seen them on rocky boulders where scarcely a blade of grass was visible, and we have watched the kindly goat-herd cut the prickly-pear into strips as his four-legged friends stood around him, each with his nose in the air waiting for a delectable morsel. The goat cannot bite the growing prickly leaf for himself, it is too hard and pointed, but he munches it up with relish when sliced for him. Some people have whole herds of goats, others have only one, and even in Palermo—the Paris of Sicily—the family goat which is sent off in charge of a small child every morning to browse by the roadside, and brought home in the evening to be milked, is on occasions walked upstairs to some attic and spends the night in the family sleeping-room, as a dog or a cat might do.

In the early morning cows are also paraded through the streets, their owner calling out he has milk to sell. These cows wear wonderful painted collars, wooden bands some six or eight inches wide, on which quaint religious pictures are designed: a masher in a high starched collar is no more uncomfortable than the Sicilian cow in its decorative neck gear. She wears a bell to herald her approach, and a calf is always running by her side. On one occasion we saw a cow with a calf tied close up to her collar, while attached to her tail was a somewhat irascible goat who spent its time trying to get free or nibbling at the poor cow’s tail. The owner never paid the slightest attention to the goat’s struggles or the cow’s discomfort, but stooped down to fill one tumbler after another with warm milk. Cow’s milk is cheaper than goat’s, and not considered as nutritious.

Sheep and goats are consistently led as in the old Bible days, and follow their shepherd quite well. In fact, shortly after leaving Messina in the train, we saw a man with a large flock of sheep following behind him in such wise.

Another noticeable feature of the run from Messina to Palermo is the number of waterless rivers, spanned by fine iron bridges: a tiny stream trickling through an oasis of stone and rubble was all that remained of the river; subtropical rains turn this into a roaring torrent, hence the necessity of a handsome bridge, when a wall of earth would cost a quarter as much and suit the train-track equally well. Everything is done to collect the water. There are small stone aqueducts all over the place; there are stone reservoirs like miniature Roman baths; the earth is dug out round the roots of the trees so that the moisture may accumulate in the little basin, just as the trees in the boulevards of Madrid are planted in stone baths for the same purpose.

Every cottage has its outside bakehouse, to lessen the heat indoors, and to ensure safety from fire. Nearly every cottage has also its well, with a marble, stone, or concrete rounded wall, and an iron top to close it down. The peasants carry the water-pitchers and all other burdens on their heads, as they do so universally in Southern climes. Equally, of course, the women seem to do all the work. They were busy in the fields, busy washing at the streams, or hanging the wet clothes out on the prickly-pear to dry, busy minding the goats or packing the lemons for export. Poor women! The hotter the climate the more they seem to have to work.

The little cottages, in truly Southern style, had no windows, and often consisted of only one room, lighted solely by the door. The floor was earthen, of course, and there was no possible chance of a current of air, for there is not even a chimney in a cottage of this kind. The small fire is lighted in a brazier, or on Mother Earth, either inside or outside the door, and a long black streak on the whitewashed wall denotes where each housewife lays her olive chips. If it is lighted inside, as often happens in the winter, the smoke escapes by a hole made for the purpose. Windows are too expensive a luxury, for good glass costs money, and bad glass cracks in the sun; but as the people live almost entirely out of doors, the sleeping-room being dark does not matter. If the home is of a grandeur nature, it is two storeys high, and has an outside staircase in addition to upper windows, which are really wooden shutters left open all day.

They are certainly a hard-working people in the country, though as much cannot be said for the townsfolk. As lemons have been the chief product of cultivation, both rich and poor alike are suffering from the terrible depression of the lemon trade, due to the prohibitive duty on the fruit in America, which is now largely supplied by lemons from California. Many thousand tons of lemons and oranges are exported yearly to the United States, England, Germany, etc., both as a whole fruit, peel, halved in brine, or candied.

Depression in trade leads to emigration, and from 12,000 to 15,000 Sicilians are emigrating yearly to the United States. As a rule, a man goes first, and in eight months or a year he sends home enough money to enable his wife and family to join him. A member of the Sicilian nobility told me that on one of his properties, where a few years ago the total population was 20,000 people, there are now only about 8,000, and he cannot procure labor to work his land for love or money.

There was some talk a little while ago of Italians emigrating to England, but the Italian consuls made inquiries and decided that “agriculture is being gradually abandoned in Great Britain,” and it would, therefore, be a false move; so to Tunis and the States stream the Sicilians.

Talking of emigration reminds me of a curious instance of its results which I experienced in Messina when leaving the island. The heavy luggage had been left at the station for the night, so about an hour before the Reggio boat started I went off to claim, and register it direct to Florence. Granny and her maid were to join me with the small luggage at the boat. The station seemed all shut up when I arrived, but seeing an odd man I inquired for the left-luggage office.

“It is not open,” was the reply; “the station is closed; there are no trains due.”

This was terrible. How could we cross without our luggage? It was not possible to leave it behind, for we might never see it again. The man could suggest nothing.

“Guess you’re from my country,” said a voice with a strong American twang. Turning round, I saw a dapper little American girl of about twenty-four or twenty-five.

“Well, I’m English,” I answered, “which is much the same.”

“I heard what you said,” she continued; “the station is not open, but I reckon I can help you, if you’ll come right along with me.”

“I’m very much obliged to you,” I replied gratefully, “for I must get at those boxes before the boat starts. But how are you going to manage?”

“My uncle is an official here, and I guess he’ll do it, ma’am.”

Off I went with the strange American maid in pursuit of her uncle. The whole thing was very funny. Messina is one of the largest towns in Sicily, a place of great importance, and yet its station was closed. Still more remarkable, an American girl had an Italian official for an uncle. We went round some back door, and out came the relative in his uniform. We explained matters, and he kindly said he would see what he could do. American girl, Italian official, and I, picking up half a dozen loafers by the way, unearthed those trunks, and managed eventually to get them registered on to Florence. It all took an awful time. Officials move slowly in those parts, and at least ten men weighed and reweighed those trunks, although the ticket from the last place bore the weight inscribed upon it—but no, they preferred to weigh them all over again. All this gave me an opportunity of conversing with the Yankee girl.

“I’m right glad to hear English, ma’am,” she said, “it tickles me some, it does. I just hate Italian.”

“Then why do you live here?”

“I am studying medicine.”

“Studying medicine at Messina when you have such good schools in America?”

“Waal, it’s just this way,” she said, “my poppa and momma are Sicilians, and they emigrated seventeen years ago, when I was right small. They made a little money over there, and we children were raised in New York. Two years ago poppa and momma took it into their heads to come home again, and we girls came too. Now, sister and I just hate it; but poppa and momma are so happy right back here with all their own relations around, they’ve decided to stay. Sister and I can’t—we just can’t. it’s so slow, these Sicilians don’t live, they crawl, ma’am, and as I must do something to make my bread and butter if I go out there, I’m studying medicine. There are sixty-eight women students here in Messina, and as soon as ever I get my degree, I’ll pack up right sharp and be off. Sister’s younger than I am, but she’s going to do it too, as soon as she’s old enough. Guess with my degree I’ll be alright in New York; anyway, I mean to try my luck, for I can’t—I just can’t stay here.”

“But think of the sunshine you will leave, the fruit, the flowers, and the peace.”

“I don’t want ever to see another orange, ma’am; and I guess I’d rather have a New York blizzard than a Sicilian scirocco.”

She was quite a nice girl, evidently of humble origin, but she had imbibed the “go-aheadness” of a new country, and the old-world one had lost its interest. Very sad for the parents, who, in seeking their fortune, had lost the sympathy of their children.

The sciroccos this girl hated so are pretty bad, but ‘tis an ill wind that blows no one any good, and the more scirocco there is the more plentiful are the pistachio nuts. Hot wind agrees with pistachios, and these little green almonds are a valuable crop in Sicily.

The climate of the island is delightful. Generally speaking, it is considered the mildest and most equable in Europe; but there are terrible winds. Aeolus is a noisy god. The atmosphere is warm and mild, bright and clear, but the winds are horrible—not cold, but boisterous. Men hold their hats on with the crooks of their sticks, and women—well, they sometimes don’t hold them on at all. Wind is bad for tempers, as well as hats.

These are the ordinary winter winds, but in summer the “scirocco” is a curse. Visitors are rare in summer, for the towns become intolerably hot, so strangers do not often suffer from the scirocco, or malaria, which is prevalent in the hot weather in the plains. From January to May is the time to visit Sicily; in March and April she is at her best, for then the island, as a rule, enjoys the most agreeable weather in Europe. October and November are also very beautiful months.

Speaking roughly, the Riviera is ten degrees warmer again than the South of France so that really Palermo is twenty degrees warmer than London, which means a very considerable difference in the temperature. Were it not for the frequent wind, the climate would be simply perfect.

Of course, it may only have been chance, but during three weeks in Palermo we never had a single day without wind. Two days a scirocco blew—horrible, of course—but the other days, though nearly always sunny and bright, were windy, sometimes only in the morning or afternoon, but sometimes all day. When a scirocco is really bad, it literally becomes a dust-storm. One day in Trinacria, for a couple of hours, the atmosphere was almost as thick as a yellow London fog or a Mexican “norther,” both of which are equal nightmares. Both make one listless and lifeless, grimy and sad.

No Southern people ever seem to possess the energy of their Northern brothers, and in Sicily a dolce far niente life is much enjoyed. Time is no object. According to Pliny, Aristhomacus watched the life of the bee carefully for fifty-eight years, which is just the sort of work a Sicilian of to-day would like. He would not require to hurry with fifty-eight years before him to accomplish one thing.

In the big towns people loiter at street corners as ancients did in the market-places, quite content to stand and gaze at nothing by the hour, with a pinch of gossip thrown in occasionally. In the smaller villages and country they seem particularly fond of living at their front doors or lying on the roadside sleeping; in fact, they never appear in a hurry or perturbed by anything, unless—ah! Yes, unless they lose their temper, and then the lamb becomes a devil.

In a country like Sicily it seems as if there should be no poverty. The sun smiles for nearly three hundred days in a year, but it is this very sunshine combined with their Latin blood that makes them indolent as a people. If the Sicilians had one half the energy of the nations of the North, they would all be rolling in wealth. As it is, the island is poor, which is probably the reason why thieving is so prevalent.

Brigandage has almost died out, at least on an organized system; but lawlessness is still rife, and highway robbery constant. A chapter relating the life of an Englishman—when taken by brigands—during three weeks’ sojourn among them, appears later in the volume, and gives his own personal experiences.

Servants think nothing of robbing their masters: a purse left for a few minutes on the sofa in one of the best hotels in the island disappeared, and was never heard of again; in fact, one has to look closely after bags and wraps, or they also disappear with the dexterity of conjuring. It is not safe to leave a parasol in a carriage unless the driver has been notified, and thus held responsible.

Crime is rife—the knife is constantly in use. Love quarrels and family feuds are always rampant, but drink has less to do with their origin in Sicily than in any other lands, for drink is practically unknown. Is this abstemiousness the result of a mixed race, or what? Vandal, Goth, Saracen, Norman, Spaniard, Frenchman, Italian, have all had their day there, yet Sicily remains well-nigh teetotal.

Although there is this great cry for poverty in Sicily, I did not myself remark it except along the eastern coast. Back streets are smelly because they have open gutters, as in many other continental towns, but these streets are not as poor or as dirty as the back streets of Berlin, Petersburg, London, or New York. The people are well clothed, their garments thriftily mended—not so thriftily as in France, perhaps—but they are all shod, in itself a form of luxury, and not a necessity in a warm climate. They smoke and drink little, but they are none the worse for that.

The longer one stays in Sicily the more impressed one becomes with the sadness of her people, no doubt a legacy of the Saracenic occupation. They have their folk-songs, but one seldom hears them; they have their marionettes, but the audience never smiles or claps. They have no national dance like the Irishman’s jig, the Scotchman’s reel, the Bavarian’s shoeplat, or the nigger’s cake-walk. They have not even Italian hurdy-gurdies as we have in London, to which slum children and even grown-up folk dance so eagerly and so well—except on Thursdays and Sundays, when the Municipality allows them out in Palermo. Their amusement seems to consist in lolling about in the sunshine and hanging round doors, propping themselves against walls and gossiping, but seldom in singing, dancing, laughing, or making merry. The children rarely play; their chief form of amusement appears to be to beg or hang on to the backs of cabs and carriages. They have not even dogs and cats to play with. I never saw so few dogs and cats as there are in Palermo, and in some parts of the country there are not even birds to sing and cheer the peasants at their work.

On a name-day—the name of a Catholic saint is given to everyone baptized into that Church—festival is held. We once came upon an excruciating band of music in a back street. The performers were gazing at a window opposite, and quite a little crowd had collected below. It was the man’s name day, and his friends had come to serenade him. No doubt they felt happy enough, but they did not show it; no sign of merriment was on their faces, and their tuneless tunes were not exciting; but if they are sad, their land is gay.

Geraniums grow almost wild in the country—in fact, anything once given a start seems to flourish. Long stretches of geranium are nor uncommon near the stations, but hedges otherwise are unknown, except for occasional ones of prickly-pear, which grow to the height of twelve or fifteen feet, and are of course impenetrable. The leaf on the prickly-pear is often used for protecting seeds—one leaf is doubled in two and put over the seedling to keep off the cold winds. It is rather amusing to see a field with rows and rows of little tents or walls of prickly-pear, but it is by no means an uncommon sight. Then, again, people carve their name or pictures on the leaves of the pear, and sometimes quite quaint designs may be seen. These pears are like camels—they absorb large quantities of water, and then live a long while without requiring any more, so that the moisture they retain keeps the goats alive during times of drought.

Cypress trees flourish, and look tall, dark, and handsome amongst the luxuriant vegetation, whilst the carob (locust) is to be found everywhere. The white, dead-looking branches of the fig tree add a certain interest, between the heavily lade orange and lemon groves, the pink almond blossom, and gray-leaved olives.

A fairy seems to have danced over the land, and abundant vegetation to have sprung from beneath her tread.