The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1909-07-31

tering toward her hut with bundle of sticks.
She stopped and dropped her burden for mo-
ment's gossip.
"Ci vuole del piove, madre." eve are badly In
need of rain, good mother) ventured. Nobody
in the campagna talks of anything else just now.
Yes she answered in her dialect. Looks
like They have clean forgot the Campagna this
season. 1t don't appear to me that They are
tending to their business like They used to when
was young. Yet we burn just as many candles
and go regularly to mass. What do you suppose
They can be doing up there2 It's shame to
neglect us so !"
up there, it may be necessary to explain to
American readers means Heaven, which for the
Italian peasants is a big city, with golden walls
and colored glass domes just out of sight in the
sky. "They" means benevolent but sometimes
forgetful old gentleman with long white beard
his son Jesus, the Madonna, and the three hun
bred odd italian saints who sit around the throne
and act as paid attorneys fees paid in incense
and candles) to present to the Almighty the
pleas of their fellow countrymen who are still
laboring in the world below.
The old woman's tones somehow conveyed to
my mind the impression that she suspected the
whole heavenly host of having gone Off some
where for weeks vacation and frolc by the
celestial seaside, at moment when it would
have been much more becoming in "Them" to
stay in their offices and pay strict attention to
business.
l readily admitted, in response to the grand
mother, that the Campagna did look neglected.
and we parted sadly after agreeing that the only
thing to do was to burn more candles.
Two days later these arid, interminabe hills
and these parched Tipped peasants whose pray er
Co.. f<1r
bread, are beginning to wear on my nerves and
mar the pleasure of tramping. This section of
the Campagna is the dullest and most desolate
country through which 1 have ever travelled,
| yet am glad to have seen it for have encoun-
tered here three curious phases of life which /
did not dream existed longer in any civilized
land three curious classes of people who, or
| which seem to have been, left twenty centuries
behind in the march of progress. The three
classes are cave-dwellers, jewellers in grass huts
| and worshippers of idols.
Three weeks ago saw q community of cave
| jewellers, near the village of Vejano, and have
seen others since Against steep hillside near
VejaDo is a nearly perpendicular, fiat faced cliff
| formed of soft volcanic tufa, honeycombed by
| superimposed ranges of caves In the lower
''pigeon-holes'' the peasants stall their pigs and
| donkeys while in the upper ones they and their
| families live. One of the men readily consented
to let me see the interior of his cave and led me
| to it along a narrow ledge which forced us to
| cling like flies to the cliff side. The entrance
| was a rectangular hole, three by four feet in
diameter, and led to square 1oored cave ten by
| ten, with a seven-foot ceiling. In that hole the
| man lived with wife and two babies. In JUS
tice to the facts 1 must say that the place was
dry, coy, amply ventilated by the single open
| ing and so far as could see, these modern tro-
glodytes were no worse off than fellow peasants
| living in one-room houses. A couple of stools
and table built against the wall constituted the
furniture. Above the table shelves we're hewr
convenient for pots and bottles, and the straw
pallet on the floor was no worse than many 6
one on which have slept comfortable in some
roadside tavern after long days walk. About
seventy-five people, the peasant told me, live in
similar adjacent caverns.
"And who followed out all these caves?"
asked.
"Chi 10 sa," was his answer. "They have beer
here always"
But" 1 objected, "they are not the work o.
nature see the angles and the doorway"
'That is true" he responded, land / remem
Der hearing my father say in his time-peace tt
his soul-that they were the work of the Giants
| L
at Rome.'
The peasant was correct. The caves, as hat
happened to read "in printed book" were thu
work of the Etruseans, that powerful race O.
italian aborigines the ruins of whose prehis
toric monuments are SO massive that their build
ing work is technically styled 'cyclopean" il
textbooks on the history of architecture, ant
the aborigines themselves spoken of toda!
among the common people of Italy simply a
"The Giants"
The jewellers in straw huts, whom observed
in another part of the Campagna. are shepherds
In certain sections of the sheep country Their
are wide, uncultivated tracts of rolling land
barren except for the short grass on which thu
focks Craze. Villages are miles apart, houses arr
rare. One may sometimes walk half day with
out meeting any human being but the shep
herds and without coming in sight of any struc
ture but the huts in which these nomads live
during nine months of the year. The huts arr
built of straw. matched on cane frame, shaped
like an American Indian wigwam. They arr
just high enough for a man to stand erect in
and the diameter of their circular floor is JUS
sufficient to permit one to lie at full length. L
is impossible to imagine more primitive OF
wretched habitations, and almost equally i'm
| possible to realize that they exist today In ar
enlightened country like Italy, less than 1Ot
miles from such modern metropolis as Rome.
AS for the third class of people who seem sc
strangely out of place in this twentieth century
the idol worshippers- have encountered then
at every crossroads and at every village, where
ever there stands Christian church. The lido
ordinarily occupies the principle chapel and is
usually life sized wax doll with painted cheeks
a straw. colored dolls wig and pork smile or
10 Tod q
tinsel crown, it is CARRIED in sky blue robe stud
ded with silvery stars, and is seated on yellow
wooden throne. In its arms is a second smaller
idol, dwarf with a protruding wooden fore
head on which is placed another tinsel crown
and in its hand is usually a faded rose. The big
idol is called the Santa Maria and the little one
is called the Bambino. Every day the peasants
come to worship these two idols to offer sacri-
| fees of money, candles and flowers, and to pros
| trate themselves in an ecstacy of alteration
| sometimes rubbing their foreheads against the
| stone pavement of the church. The peasants
as a general rule (and / make this statement
only after having inquired of them frst-hand)
| do not pray to the Madonna or the Christ in
| heaven, of whom these images are but symbols,
| they pray to and worship the wooden images
themselves, and it is this which accounts for the
| fact that every village has its favorite Madonna
| to which are attributed characteristics and
| powers utterly different from those supposed to
be possessed by the Madonna of neighboring
| village. Iknow of one which is accredited with
| power to cure certain skin diseases, and another
whose particular function is the protection OF
| orphan girls. If the peasants understood that
| these wooden figures were mere lifeless statues
and that each was equally and in exactly the
same way symbolic of the same one holy woman
who is in heaven, they could not clothe one
image with attributes that another did not pos
sess. But the peasants do not reason about
such things. Each village has its wooden Santa
| Maria and worships it. VOLTA tout However,
l sincerely hope, if these notes ever get into
| print that no reader will abuse my words or
| distort them into an intended criticism of the
Catholic religion, for have the deepest respect
| for Catholicism and have long since learned
| that the superstitions and abuses about which
scription is not criticism at all but if | were
inclined to criticise or moraliZe it would be to
| voice the wish already expressed by leading
Catholic prelates of this nation that the priests
| in smaller communities might strive more ac-
lively to win their simple hocks away from
superstition and teach them what the Christian
religion really is SEABRooK.
A 5000, 600 bushel CROP such as the Gov
eminent report gives us a right to look for,
furnishes a new reason for corn to assert its
kingship among the farm products of the
United States. From present indications the