Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-11
THE ITALIAN 'FL0CKS.
With Their Melodious Bells and Pic
turesque Shepherds
CANNOT BUT INSPIRE THE POET.
Wakeman's Search for the Hero Of Lorenzo
the Magnificent.
THE MOUNTAIN SIDE AT EvENTIDE


FLORENCE, ITALY, Dec. 26.-About the
| year 1480, 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, Philippine Lippi. Botticelli,
Ghrlandajo and Michael Angelo. The
host, whose wealth and matchless attain
ments made him known among the poten-
tates and savants of Southern Europe as
Lorenzo, the Magnificent" wrote a pas.
toral poem Of wondrous sweetness and power
called "La Nencia Da Barbarino.'s was
once IN position (being an editor, worse
lucky to have this little-known though sur
passing composition translated for the first
time into English, in the original meter, by
no less a scholar and poet than Sir Edwin
Arnold. The poem, comprising 300 lines,
depicts in simple, though glowing words
and imagery, the hopeless and consuming
passion of the shepherd lad, "Ravella, -: for
a dainty peasant girl, "Nencia." One can
not read this lowly life heart-cry without
the awakening in his own soul of thrilling
and commisserative tenderness for the hum
BILE lives it SO plaintively reveals; and it
was with this feeling that sought, perhaps
over-mucb, for the poetic and romantic side
of the picture, to know the real everyday
lives OF those who tend the focks and herds
of Italy.
My first wanderings were in Southern
Italy, the territory of olden Apulia. Here
the shepherds are not only distinct class,
bat, though holding themselves aloof from
all other peasant classes, are almost dis
tinct race In ancient times all this country
was subject to scourging depredations by
he c., ,5~iy fl,t
people should herd together in walled towns
for protection to life and property. Then
nearly the entire population of old ApuIia
were shepherds. They drove their herds
from the towns to the mountains, returning
for safety at night.
Unchanged by Twenty Centuries.
The descendants of these in direct line
for more than 2, 900 years, are doing that
identical thing to-day, not for safety but
from traditionary custom. All those who
exist in Southern Italy to-day who are not
shepherds, goatherds and herdsmen, form
the population of cities and towns and COM
prise the contadini or field laborers; and
the ancestors of all these may be said to
have gradually grown away from the shep-
herds life, rather than that the shepherds
of our time are a product of new forms of
rural economic necessities. They rarely
L
do they instantly depart from the focks. are
| absorbed in 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 ex-
clusiveness 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 interesting
l
| fully 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 protuber-
| ent muscles, like broad -butted tree to the
shoulders, the yellowish-blue tinge of the
white OF the eye, the distended nostrils, and
the dazzling teeth, all pronounce the East
ern origin and retained physiological afiai-
ties.
| Like Our Western StocktraiIs.
| In every pert Of Southern Italy you will
come upon broad, grass-grown highway.
| 1t is called the "traturo." For 20 centuries
it has served the same purpose. 1t can be
nearly likened to our own vast Western
stocktrails Leading from "grass to grass"
| when herds are driven northward, fattening
on their way to the great live stock markets.
On this "traturo" occurs the yearly spring
exodus from the lower valleys and coast
wise moors and marshes to the Apulian
Mountain summer pastures. In the autumn
hundreds of thousands return along these
ancient ways. During the winter the herds
men and shepherds live in town novels or in
huts near the towns and villages. The herds
and focks are then driven out to and re-
turned from daily grazing. But in the SUM-
| mer time on the mountain sides is the real
outdoor life of the guardian of the focks and
herds.
Whether he be herdsman, goatherd or
shepherd, he is usually given charge of
flock or herd of from so to 100 animals.
Among the cattle, and herding in common
with them, are large numbe Of species Of
buffalo, smaller and less hairy than the now
extinct American bison. In herd of 100
cattle, 90 will be provided with unmusical
bells. In flock of as many sheep twice
as many will nave bells, some of which are
exceedingly melodious; and the quality of
his bells are of more concern to the Apuiau
shepherd than that OF his sheep. The latter
are odd little poddy creatures. Nearly all
ale black. Their legs and hoofs are black
and shiny as ebony drum-sticks. Their
eyes are exceedingly small an6 brilliant
yellow; while the little creatures are as agile
as chamois.
Weird, strange groups are these which
follow the focks and herds to the mountains.
Nearly every shepherd of Southern Italy is
married. He marries young. He rears, or
rather there grows, seemingly all unGon-
scious to himself. large family. The sons
marry other shepherds daughters; the
daughters, other shepherds sons. Himself
perhaps born in the grass by the side of the
"traturo," in cleft of some rock in the
edge of a torrents gravina, or in some low
hut on hill or moor, he emerges from baby
hood to childhood nomad; is a nomad in
youth and manhood; he mates as nomad; !;
and never ceases nomadic life until the
quickllme of some village Campo Santo
consumes his bones. So that to every flock
belongs family.
The tatterdemalion group possesses no
home but that of the daily grazing land of
| the flock. Their sole possessions never equal
S. in value. Their total earnings do not
exceed IL cents per day. Like Wallachian
Glpsies they squat anywhere for rest and
sleep, and eat anything that will sustain
life. If they possess single aspiration on
earth, it is that secret one of so many other
Italian field and moor laborers to 'take to
the hills" that is, to become outright
brigands.
A Picturesque Being.
Universal Incidence and repugnance to
effort are safeguards against this. The
Apulian shepherd himself is picturesque
fellow enough. despite your consciousness of
his vacuous Ignorance, his unvarying cruel
ty to his focks, and his utter sodden, rather
than active, brutality to his wife and chill
dren, vino serve as his pack-mules. like the
American squaws, for transporting mis-
slender belongings to the hills. Tall. and
straight as an arrow, he is clad from head to
T. l.. Il.