The record-union., 1891-01-11
Description and Account of Their
Everyday Life.
METHODS OF HERDING. FIELD CRAFT.
FLUTE PLAYING.
Inspiration Drawn from the Pastoral
Poem Written by ssLorenzo, the
Observation-Disclosures Continues
His wanderings Among the Peas
ants of Italy.
Regular Correspondence of the SUNDAY
UNION. Copyright, 1901.

Regular Correspondence of the SUNDAY
UNION. Copyright, 1901.
FLORENCE Qtaly), Nov. q, 1890.
About the year 1880, at the dawn of the
golden age in Italy, there were daily
gathered at the table of the chief citizen
of Florence such men as Pulci, Filipino
Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo and Mich
ael Angelo. The host, whose wealth and
matchless attainments made him known
among the potentates and savants of
southern Europe as Lorenzo, the Mag
nificent,'' wrote pastoral poem of won-
drous sweetness and power called La
Nencia Da Barbarino." I was once in a
position (being an editor, worse luck!)
to have this little-known though surpass-
ing composition translated for the first
time into English, in the original metre,
by no less a scholar and poet than Sir
Edwin Arnold. The poem, comprising
300 lines, depicts in simple though glow
ing words and imagery, the hopeless and
consuming passion of the shepherd-lad,
''Ravella," for dainty peasant-glrl,
''Nencia." One cannot read this lowly-
life heart-cry without the awakening in
his own soul of a thrilling and commiser-
ative tenderness for the humble lives it so
plaintively reveals; and it was with this
feeling that l sought, perhaps over-much
for the poetic and romantic side OF the
picture, to know the real everyday lives
of those who tend the fiocks and herds of
Italy.
My first wanderings were in southern
Italy, the territory of olden Apulia.
Once this was part of Grecia Magma. Its
great cities were Arpinum, Luceria, Arpi
and Canusium. Partly on foot, partly by
the antique cabriolet of provincial Italy,
rtlx /, bfa lactia of tho aneipnt "a
Romans, and partly on the backs of tiny
donkeys of wondrous shagginess and
marvellous power, l made my way in a
zig-Zag course back and forth across the
infrequently-travele little known, weird
and lonely, yet always transcendently
beautiful and fascinating peninsula. Up-
wards of 800 castles, modern, medieval
and in ruins, striking recalling the splen-
dor and decay of Ireland, were counted.
The few remaining relics OF Canine, where
the Romans met their crushing defeat OF
b. G. 2l6 and where the historic city was
finally destroyed, in 1888, by Robert Guis-
card, one of TaSSoS heroes, were found.
Bari, upon the Adriatic, as famous now
for its fish as in the time OF Horace, was
seen. The ancient abbey and church OF 3.
Niccolo, where are found the paintings of
one of the earliest Italian masters, Viva
rini, and where in 1898, Pope Urban II.
held the famous council which sought to
reconcile the Church of Greece with that
of Rome, was visited. l climbed past
Melfi, with its castle of the old Norman
sovereigns, to the extinct volcano, Monte
Vulture, the "Apulian Vultur" of Hor-
ace, whose crater, overgrown with oaks
and beecheS, now contain two lakes,
perched above one of which is the most
eerie monastery of Europe, possibly eX-
cepting Monserrat, Spain, and from whose
towers the blue waters Of the Mediterra-
mean on the west, and those of the Adri-
attic on the east, could be discerned. /
tramped, too, with hundreds OF return
ing pilgrims, camping with them at night
by the wayside; sat with the carrettajo as
his cart and OK waited by the fountains;
climbed to the shrines with the reveren-
tial pilgrims; waited by the mounting
blocks with roadside beggars; made
countless and astounding excuses to get
into the interior of cabins for draughts of
acqua di latte and nanfa, butter-milk and
orange water, which you can get every
where in the country for the value of half
an American cent; struggled from town
to mountain with the pecore and his
focks; assisted more than one shepherd
in building a rude hut of stone, after the
manner OF the Pagan beehive" cell
upon wind-swept moors; and after max
ing my home for brief season among
the shepherds of the eastern mountain
range of Otranto, followed on foot, the
classic Appain Way to the shepherd
haunts of the olive and vine-girt hills of
Tuscany. Shepherds, shepherds every
where; but nowhere was the dream of
shepherd-life breathing from ''La Mem
cia," as the altar from the heart OF rose,
fulfilled.
One of the most interesting facts re-
garding the shepherds of Southern Italy
is that they are not only distinct class,
but, through holding themselves aloof
from all other peasant classes, are almost
distinct race. In ancient times all this
country was subject to seourging depre-
dations by the Saracens, to an extent re-
quiring that people should herd together
in walled towns for protection of life and
property. Then nearly the entire popu-
1ation of old Apulia were shepherds.
They drove their herds from the towns
to the mountains, returning for safety
at night. The descendants of these in a
direct line for more than 1900 years are
doing that identical thing to-day, not for
safety, but from traditional custom. All
those who exist in Southern Italy to-day
who are not shepherds, goatherds OF
herdsmen, form the population of cities
and towns and comprise the contadini or
field laborers, and the ancestors of all
these may be said to have gradually
gradually grown away from the shep-
herds life, rather than that the shep-
herds of our time are product OF new
forms of rural economic necessities.
They rarely intermarry with other
classes. When they do they instantly de-
part from the flocks, are absorbed in the
lower orders of the cities, or become the
most desperately hopeless of the human
cattle that labor in the fields. The pride
in their own descent, in the exclusive
ness of their class, in the long line of
shepherd ancestry they can trace, amounts
almost to a passion. 1t is practically the
one pride they possess. This isolation of
blood and interest has preserved interest
ing traces in physiognomy. They are
wonderfully Saracenic in their look. The
tall, slender, supple figure, the oval face
and shining skin, the neck, tiny at the
throat, spreading quickly and heavily in
protuberant muscles, like broad-butted
tree, to the shoulders, the yellowish-
tinge of the white of the eye, the distended
nostrils and the dazzling teeth, all pro-
nounce the Eastern origin and retained
physiological affinities.
In every part of Southern Italy you
will come upon q broad, graSS-grown
highway. 1t is called the ''traturon For
twenty centuries it has served the same
purpose. 1t can be nearly likened to our
own vast western stock trails leading
from grass to grass" when herds are
driven northward, tattening on their way
to the great livestock markets. On this
"traturo" occurs the yearly spring exo-
dus from the lower valleys and coastwise
moorS and marshes to the Apulian noun
tam summer pastures. IN the autumn.
hundreds of thousands return along these
ancient ways. During the winter the
herdsmen and shepherds live in town
novels, or in hutS near the towns and
villages. The herds and fiocks are then
driven out to and returned from daily
grazing. But in the summer time on the
mountain sides is the real outdoor life ol
the guardian of the flocks and herds
Whether he be herdsman, goatherd oi
shepherd, he is usually given charge of q
flock or herd of from fifty to 100 animals
naax,nr Tho cattlo aud hard il, ,o.a,.a-