Tuscan folk-lore and sketches, together with some other papers

The bride and bridegroom were of course placed at the head of the table. She tried to assume an air of indifference; he to make up for his want of appetite and to prime himself to face the assembled company, by assiduity at the wine-flask. Signs, in fact, were not wanting that, however much the marriage may have been originally one of convenience, the passion which sleeps in blood warmed by Italian sun and enriched by the odours of the forest, had been thoroughly roused by the events of the day and the pungent jests of the guests.

I was placed next to the bridegroom, between him and the sharp-faced, humorous-looking priest, and from this coign of vantage could survey all the table. Our friend with the white beard distinguished himself especially; continually interrupting himself, however, to cry “Viva gli Sposi!” Then the whole company would clap their hands and cry “Evviva gli Sposi” in their turn; only there were some who complained that Il Rosso (the man had been red-haired originally) seemed to have a spite against them, and always called the Evvivas just when they had their glasses in their hands.

But he was sly, this Rosso. He would call “Viva gli Sposi,” and set the whole table clapping vigorously, and then add as an after-thought, “and the one who married them,” or, “and the one next the padre”; whereupon Don Tito or myself would have suddenly to leave off clapping, drop our eyes with all due modesty, and thank the assembled company.

Towards the end of the dinner Il Rosso began to hum.

“Will he improvise?” I asked the priest.

“No doubt he will, both he and his father are noted for it; but not yet, he has not raised the glass often enough.”

After a little while, however, Il Rosso, feeling himself sufficiently well primed, came to the head of the table. Silence was proclaimed, and he sung a stornello in honour of the bride and bridegroom, wishing them the usual good things of this life; children to help them with their work, and plenty to eat and drink. He was followed by a little excitable woman with a strident voice, much admired by her audience, who had already sung once at the bride’s house during the rinfresco. Her one form of dramatic action consisted in thumping the table with her closed fist.

Dinner being over, a few of the favoured guests were invited into the parlour to take coffee – coffee with rum in it, that is; black coffee alone is not approved of. The rest lounged about the fields and chestnut woods for a time, but by about five most of them were on their way home. They all came and shook hands most heartily as they went away, with a: – “Do come and see me”; for they are most hospitable people, and would beg you to share their last crust of bread with them. “Vuol favorire” is the phrase you hear from child or grandmother, if you happen to drop in on them while they are eating.

The guests, having cows and heifers to be seen to before nightfall, set out home through the cool of the chestnut woods; and we, with our donkey and its poetical driver, quietly dropped down the rock-paved road, past the acacia hedges to the village below. The beauty of rock, forest, and torrent had passed into our souls, and I thought wonderingly of the strange mixture of the idyllic and the realistic in the scenes of which this nature had been the setting; of the frankness mingled with reserve, open-heartedness with shrewdness, hospitality with a tendency to critical carping that form the characteristics of this most attractive peasant population.5

OLIVE-OIL MAKING NEAR FLORENCE

The sky, “stripped to its depths by the awakening North,” is of that peculiarly limpid clearness which only the tramontana brings with it; the sun’s rays, penetrating with their full force through the pure, dry atmosphere, are as warm and genial as those of Eastertide. Yet it is mid-winter, and we are going to witness a thoroughly winter occupation; the making of the olive-oil in a villa at a little distance out of Florence.

Leaving the tram at the foot of the hill, we climb for about three-quarters of an hour through vineyards in which the fresh green of the springing wheat contrasts hopefully with the knotted, bare vine branches. The slopes around us are clothed with olives, whose grey-green is thrown into relief by the austere rows of cypresses in the distance, and the spreading tops of the pine-trees on the further hills.

At last, on a ridge between two valleys, we sight the square twelfth-century tower of the villa in question; the remainder of the building dates from the fourteenth century. The heavy grating of the lower windows, the picturesque archway leading to the square, paved courtyard, the little garden on one side, with its olive-tree bending over the grey wall towards the road below – all breathe an almost cloistered quietness. Parva domus magna quies,6 runs the legend sculptured in black letters on grey marble over the house door.

Nothing clashes in this villa. The present proprietor, with his antiquarian and artistic tastes, and his love of Latin inscriptions, has produced a rare welding of past with present. On one side of the entrance gate, for instance (whose columns, be it noticed, are crowned with two bombs, probably French, from Elba), another inscription, unearthed during the excavation of some Roman villa, offers rest to those who are justly indignant at the world’s perfidy:

jovi hospitalisacrumo quisquis es dummodo honestussi fortepessimos fugis propinquosinimicorumsolitaria succedens domoquiesce.7

The same pessimistic note is struck by a third inscription over the archway before mentioned. There we find, writ large, the following Elban motto:

Amici, nemici;Parenti, serpenti;Cugini, assassini;Fratelli, coltelli.8

We owe it to the owner to add that, like most people who rail against mankind in general, he is very tender-hearted to mankind in particular.

Passing from the brilliancy of the outer air, we stumble through a low doorway, over which, on the usual grey marble, stands printed Frantoio (crushing-house), and find ourselves in the hot, heavy atmosphere of the oil-making room. We distinguish a low, broad archway dividing the room into two parts, and at the further end a small twinkling light; while nearer the entrance a lamp, swung from the roof, enables us, after a little practice, to make out the objects around us. The whole place is pervaded by a grey steam, sweetish yet piquant, of the peculiar odour of the undried olive.

So great is the heat that the peasants are working without coats, and we, too, are glad enough to lay aside our winter wraps. Looming white through the steam, the first object that attracts our attention is the ox that patiently turns the great stone crushing wheel. Round and round he goes, triturating the dead oak leaves that make his path soft, while the olives, continually poured into the circular concavity in which the wheel moves, are quickly reduced, stone and all, to a dark-looking pulp. The whiteness of the steam and of the ox, the creature’s lustrous eyes as they catch the light, the dark olives pouring into the trough, the peasants dimly visible, make up a scene likely to remain impressed for a long while on the memory.

As soon as the crushing process is over and the ox led back to his stall, a number of flat, circular baskets are brought, made of rope-work, and open above and below. The lower openings having been closed for the moment, by drawing a rope, the baskets are filled with the pulp and piled one above another in the press. Now begins the second part of the operation, which costs the peasants a considerable amount of exertion.

We had noticed, near the archway, a tall pole, with a rope round it, pierced by a crosspiece, and turning on a swivel. This rope having been wound round the beam that works the press, and again round another upright on the further side of the press, four peasants set to work at the crossbar. Again and again is the press-bar drawn to the further upright, let go, and drawn back again, while the oil flows in an invisible stream through the pipe that leads to its destined receptacle, which is concealed under the floor beneath a trap-door. Every now and then the men stop and sit down on stones or on a heap of unused baskets to mop the perspiration which streams from them in that warm sweet atmosphere. It was during one of these pauses that they drew my attention to the advantages of the system on which they were working. In other villas, they said, the press-beam was wound towards the peasants, and sometimes broke under the pressure and injured them; but their padrone had invented a method of winding it away from them, thus freeing them from all danger in case of a breakage.

Meanwhile, at the further end of the room, by the dim yellow light of the twinkling lamp we had already noticed, another man is busy shovelling a rich dark-brown substance into bins against the wall. This is the so-called sansa, the olive pulp from which the oil has been expressed. “It goes down to Galluzzo (the township at the foot of the hill),” said the man, in answer to my enquiries. “There they treat it with sulphuric acid, and get machine-oil out of it.”

At last the pulp in the network baskets is pressed dry, the press is unscrewed, the fresh sansa shaken out ready to be shovelled into the bins, and the various utensils that have been used plunged into the boiling water of the cauldron that steams in one corner of the room. The trap-door is now raised, and the oil carried across the yard to another room, the walls of which are lined with huge red terra-cotta vessels kept carefully closed. Into one of these the oil is poured and left to settle, sansa being heaped well up round the vessel to maintain a high temperature within. When the oil is finally poured off it is of a lovely golden colour, as clear and transparent as water. But it is not destined to reach the public in this Arcadian state. Scarcely has it left the hands of the peasants, before it is manipulated and adulterated to such an extent that even in Florence pure olive oil is almost unobtainable. Cotton oil, colza oil, etc., are mixed with it, rendering it absolutely hurtful to the consumer. The Italian government has offered prizes for the discovery of a method of exposing the adulteration. At present no more certain way has been found than that of Professor Bechi, a well-known Italian chemist. He treats the oil in question with nitrate of silver, and judges of the adulteration by the resulting coloration.

And now, business being over for this week, we are free to go and sup with our peasant acquaintances. Crossing a second courtyard, round which stand houses and stables for the donkeys and oxen (Italians do not work with horses), we pass under a second archway and enter our friend Ciuffi’s picturesque kitchen. The rough, uneven stone floor, that looks as though it might have been washed last year, the stout nondescript table, the chairs loaded up with every kind of extraneous matter, the picture of the Madonna with the tiny lamp burning before it, the rows of gaudy crockery over the sink, the cat purring contentedly in the chimney-corner – all these are illuminated, harmonized, almost glorified, by the caressing light of the huge wood fire, whose flames dance and crackle under the great projecting chimney. And beside the fire sits Ciuffi’s youngest daughter Armida, a girl of that fair, refined type that occasionally asserts itself startlingly among these black-haired, swarthy-complexioned peasants. She is sitting holding the frying-pan over the fire, but the menial occupation is forgotten as we watch the delicate poise of the head and stretch of the arm, the exquisite Greek profile, the lustrous dark eyes gazing dreamily into the fire, the fair wavy hair coiled into a knot at the back, and the soft pink of the common little cotton kerchief, which, tied with the point under the chin, is thrown up by the dark dress, and sets off the spring of the graceful neck.

And when, the rough white cloth being spread in the visitor’s honour, the family cluster round the mediæval oil-lamp that makes a little ruddy blot in the darkness beyond, we are more than ever struck at the wonderful ease and good-breeding displayed in word and movement by these peasants who do the hardest work and live the roughest of lives. The women especially have something indescribably lady-like about them, as they sit eating contentedly, perhaps without any plate, or pass from one to another one of the pocket-knives which are the only cutting implements on the table; or, it may be, question “my man,” as to the length of time that will be needed on the morrow to gather in the olives from a certain part of the podere. The more one has to do with these Tuscan peasants the more constrained does one feel to adopt the cant phrase, and call them emphatically Nature’s aristocracy.

A TUSCAN FARMHOUSE

Of all my experiences among the Tuscan peasants of the Pistoiese, none, perhaps, was more thoroughly characteristic than a three days’ visit at a farm-house just above the village I was staying in. I had just returned from the woods with my hammock, and was feeling rather listless in the absence of my peasant companion, when the farmer’s wife, who happened to be in the village that day, said to me, half joking, half in earnest: —

“Come home with me to the Cavi, Signorina; come and sleep there to-night.”

I jumped at the proposal, borrowed a big kerchief from my landlady, put a few things into it in the most approved peasant fashion, and we started off together.

I had already been to this farm with some friends for a picnic. On that day the people were threshing and treading the straw; and the stone-paved aia or threshing-floor before the house was bright with the corn, and resonant with the sound of the flail. Then, when the sun’s rays were less strong – for the peasants only thresh in the bright sunlight – two cows and a donkey were produced, and led round and round, knee-deep in the straw, to break it up for their winter food. I had been much struck at the time by the extreme primitiveness of the labour, though I could not help confessing that the swinging flails, yellow corn, and lazily moving animals formed a very much more picturesque contrast to the low grey stone house, and the blackness of its three open doorways, than any threshing-machine could have done.

Nothing of the kind was going on, however, when my hostess and I emerged from the chestnut woods on this cool September evening. The farmer, just back from his digging in the fields, – there are no ploughs, – was taking a meditative walk in front of the house.

He came forward to meet us, accompanied by his two dogs, and welcomed us with much hospitable grace. One of his sons was near him, watching the two cows graze, and at the same time lazily stripping chestnut leaves for the creatures’ fodder off a heap of boughs he had cut. While I was chatting to father and son, my hostess disappeared, and presently came down again, dressed in an old petticoat, chemise, and untidy slippers. She took up a basket of potatoes, and we both set to work to scrape and slice some of them for supper – town people could not possibly eat potatoes baked in their skins, she thought. As we chatted she suddenly exclaimed: —

“See how nice it is to live in the country, Signorina!”

“Why?” I asked, curious to hear what poetical thought had been seething in her brain.

“Well, in the village, you see, you have to wear a dress, and go all clean and tidy, with boots on, too; but here one can go about so nice and dirty.”

She had evidently expressed her inmost soul, for she repeated, looking round at the blue hills, and inhaling the cool, fragrant air: – “So nice and dirty one can be here.”

By this time it was getting towards twenty-four o’clock. Twenty-four o’clock is a movable hour, and depends solely on the sun. In the height of summer it is at eight o’clock, and then retrogrades by a quarter of an hour at a time till it reaches five, when it begins to advance again. At the end of September, when I left, le venti quattro were at half-past six. The peasants’ supper-time is regulated by this sliding-scale, much to the disturbance of the appetite of those who are accustomed to eat by the clock and not by the sun.

“Now come and help me cook the supper,” said my hostess, as we moved towards the house. “See how many fine drawing-rooms I have,” she continued, with a smile.

With that she threw open the first room, and we entered the metato. This is the drying room and storehouse for the chestnuts. The floor is of earth, stamped hard. Above one’s head, stretching from one side of the room to the other, and forming a sort of ceiling, are narrow strips of wood, laid loosely side by side. On these the chestnuts are piled just as they come from the woods, and the heat and smoke of the fires which are lighted on the floor beneath, penetrating through the interstices, dry the chestnuts and split the shells. From the metato we passed through a door on the right into the second “drawing-room,” the kitchen. This, as usual, was a large, low, raftered room, with a small window and a big hearth. This kitchen boasted a chimney, however, which carried away, at any rate, part of the smoke; and, more wonderful still, there was at the back a tiny scullery, with sink and plate-racks. For my host was a rich man; not only actual possessor of his farm, but owner of another podere higher up on the mountain-side. Passing to the right again, and crossing a small entrance-hall, now full of sacks of grain, we entered the drawing-room par excellence, the room in which the family have their meals. This room was nearly filled up by the huge wooden table; but there was still room for a large cupboard with glass doors, behind which the best crockery was displayed, while on the walls hung bad portraits, offered for my careful inspection, of various members of the family. A dozen low wooden steps led from the sacks of grain to the upper regions. These consisted of four bedrooms, the plank floors of which gaped so widely that one could see and hear everything that went on below. Everywhere, in metato, kitchen, hall, parlour, and bedrooms, were coloured prints of the Madonna or of some saint; and each bedroom contained, in addition, a little glass box, enclosing a wax baby, surrounded by tinsel flowers. For this is a devout family, fond of processions and tapers. The mother lights a lamp before an image of the Madonna every Saturday; and she told me, with delight, how she had prayed to a certain saint when her daughter’s baby was born, intimating that that was why the child was such a fine one.

Our business lay now, however, in the kitchen. It was already getting dark, but a fire was blazing brightly on the hearth, with a copper-lined cauldron suspended over it from a chain in the chimney.

“We are going to have maccheroni this evening,” said my hostess. “I rolled them out before I left home this morning. But we must cut them first,” she added, as she produced the long strips of home-made unbaked paste.

We accordingly cut them into pieces about an inch square, and then, taking a pile in our hands, threw them one by one into the boiling salt and water of the cauldron. While they were cooking we made the tomato sauce, and the farmer grated the cheese; and by the time these were ready, and the table laid, the maccheroni could be taken off the fire.

It was now quite dark, the only light came from the dancing flames; and the whole family, including the broad-shouldered shepherdess, assembled in the kitchen to watch the progress of events. By the side of the fire sat the daughter-in-law, a beautiful, fair-haired, refined-looking woman, unswaddling her baby; in the middle of the floor, lighted from the right by the fire, my little grey-haired hostess was kneeling in front of the cauldron and fishing up the maccheroni, which she put in layers into a huge red earthern pipkin; and on the other side of the cauldron was the farmer with the tomato sauce, some of which he poured into the pipkin as each layer was completed, adding cheese, pepper and salt. Then there were the two sons, Beppe, low-built and square-cut, and Sandro, the baby’s father, more slender, more courteous in manner, but also more lazy; and lastly, two dogs and two cats who prowled on the outside of the group, in eager expectation of their supper.

The maccheroni being now all transferred to the pipkin, the water was given to the dogs and cats, and we went into the parlour to eat. Needless to say there was no dressing for dinner. The men came in their hats and shirt-sleeves, the women in their bright kerchiefs. Yet certain rules of etiquette were strictly observed. The system of complimenti, for instance, was carried to an extent that seemed ridiculous to English eyes. The mother would fill the son’s plate, he would declare he could not eat so much, she would continue to press him, he to refuse, until the voices grew quite loud and excited. When it came to serving the shepherdess, things came almost to a good-natured quarrel. She was a low-built, broad-shouldered, broad-backed girl of about fifteen, of almost gigantic strength, who strode along in her hob-nailed shoes as though she had the seven-leagued boots on. I was evidently a great novelty to her, for she could scarcely eat for looking at me, and presently set the table in a roar of laughter by coming out with a: – “No, thank you,” instead of the usual blank “No.” Opposite to me sat Sandro with his wife and baby. Charming indeed was it to see the way in which the young fellow fondled and nursed the little one. When he came home from the fields, the first thing he did was to take it in his arms, and sit down on the doorstep in the sunlight; at supper-time he neglected himself to play with it and feed it. There is a great fund of kindness in the Italian character, crossed, however, by a vein of strange hard cruelty, arising perhaps from a remarkable want of dramatic imagination. Sandro and his wife sat side by side according to old-established custom. When a son marries, his housekeeping amounts to this: a double-bed and a large cupboard are put into the biggest bedroom, and husband and wife sit next each other at table. If there are several married sons, all the families live together until the quarrels are so intolerable as to drive them apart.

After supper, at about a quarter past eight, all the family went to bed. Three of the four bedrooms opened out of each other, and in the smallest of these three, the middle one, was a single bed in which the shepherdess usually slept. This was now reserved for me. The bed, the Madonna, and a rickety chest of drawers, were the only furniture considered necessary. In the room on the right slept Beppe and Sandro; in that on the left, which one entered through a doorway guiltless of a door, were the shepherdess and Sandro’s wife, Maria. Everyone was in bed in half a minute; for it was summer-time, and they “slept like beasts,” as my hostess put it, without even saying their rosary. “Good-night,” called out Beppe and Sandro. “Good-night,” answered everyone else, and then there was silence till between four and five next morning.

It was hardly dawn when Sandro’s voice was heard: – “Emilia, Emilia.” The shepherdess gave a grunt, tumbled on to the floor, and a moment later strode fully dressed across my room, clamped downstairs and went out. Maria slept longer, for the baby had kept her awake. As a matter of fact, the little thing could scarcely be expected to sleep, for it had been kept under the bedclothes all day. Italian peasant-babies have not a very pleasant life of it. In the morning they are tightly swaddled, put into bed under a wooden frame, and entirely covered with the clothes. There they lie in the dark, sleeping or screaming till about midday when they are taken up, reswaddled, fed, and put to bed again till the evening. Then the same process is repeated, and they are expected to sleep all night. This particular baby was washed about twice a week, if indeed the term “washing” can be applied to the operation. The mother sits down by the fire, and puts a glass of wine by her. She then fills her mouth with wine, puts it out into her hand, and rubs the baby, which screams violently.

At about eight o’clock the men came in from the fields, the cauldron was suspended from the chain, water was boiled, and my host set to work to make the polenta. The maize flour is added gradually to the boiling water until the mixture is so thick that none but a strong man can stir it. Then it is turned out on to a board kept for the purpose, cut into slices with a string, and eaten smoking hot with cheese. There are no plates, of course; all stand round and help themselves. Maize flour, chestnut flour, lentils, cheese, and beans, are the staple food of the peasants, with now and then a fowl to celebrate some specially great festa. Milk they never seem to drink, butter they rarely make; they use their dairy produce exclusively for cheese.