Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875

My friend Nanni Silvani was all that I have described the buttero to be. He was indeed a very perfect specimen of his class; and if the reader will allow me to tell him how I first came to be acquainted with Nanni, the relation of the circumstances will at the same time show him one of the most remarkable phases of the buttero's life, and one of the most curiously characteristic scenes of Italian—and especially Roman—life which it falls to the lot of foreign visitors to witness.

It will be readily understood that the cattle, whether horned beasts or horses, which wander from pasture to pasture over the vast extent of the Campagna are liable to stray occasionally, and perhaps to become mingled with the herds belonging to another proprietor. It is necessary, therefore, that they should be marked; and this marking is the occasion of a great and very remarkable festival and solemnity. It is called La Merca, which is a Romanism for La Marca, the "mark" or "marking" of the cattle. This operation takes place in the spring, generally in May; and the mercante di campagna whose herds of horned cattle, oxen, cows and buffaloes and droves of horses are to be marked on a settled day invites all his friends and acquaintance to come and see the operation. From what has already been said of the social habits and status of the persons occupying that position, it will be readily imagined that the company thus called together is often a very numerous and sufficiently brilliant one. A good half of the assemblage will in all probability belong to the more ornamental sex. A liberally supplied picnic luncheon will not fail to complete the pleasures of the day; and altogether the festival of the merca of such or such a year will probably remain as an epoch in the memories of many of those invited to be present. The carriages, the horses, the light country gigs and conveyances of all kinds must be ordered early in the pleasant May morning, for a drive (or ride) of several miles across the Campagna is before us, and perhaps before the spot appointed for the business in hand is reached a scramble across a mile or so of open rolling ground impracticable for wheels. But nothing can be more lovely than the views of the hills around Rome in the fresh early hours of a May morning. Even the melancholy Campagna puts on a look of brightness and smiles a pale smile for the nonce. We soon overtake or are overtaken by other parties bound for the same destination. All are chatting and laughing in high good spirits, for the spectacle that awaits us is a favorite one with the Roman dames and their attendant squires. There are very few, if any, foreigners among the invited, partly because it hardly comes in their way to hear anything about the merca and its specialties, or to make the acquaintance of the hosts upon such occasions; partly and mainly perhaps because they have almost all of them left Rome for the summer before the season for these rural festivals commences.

At length we reach the ground. A large hollow in the undulating surface of the Campagna, surrounded in great part by a steeply rising bank, has been chosen as the scene of operations, in order to afford as much vantage-ground as may be for the spectators. But other accommodation than such as is afforded by Nature has been provided. A range of seats of rough planks, something in the form of the grand stand on a race-course, has been erected by the hospitable mercante di campagna, who is busily engaged in receiving and seating his numerous friends. Large droves of young horses, and still larger herds of bullocks and buffaloes, are assembled in a neighboring yard. Before taking our places on the range of seats we go to have a look at this portion of the dramatis personae in the coming spectacle—from the outside, be it understood, of a high railed palisade, or stazzionata, as this description of enclosure is called in the language of the Roman Campagna. The appearance of the animals inside, of the buffaloes especially, does not tempt one to make any nearer acquaintance with them. The wild cattle of the Western prairies can hardly look wilder or more savage. Whether the buffaloes are in reality more savage in their temper than the other horned cattle, or not, seems to be a doubtful question. Some of the herdsmen say they are so: others deny it. Possibly the former may have the more sensitive imaginations, for unquestionably the buffalo is a far more terrible-looking fellow than his congener. His dark color and the form of the vicious-looking, crumply horn in great part contribute to this. But it seems to me that the expression of the eye produces the same effect to a yet greater degree. The buffalo's eye is smaller than that of the ordinary bull or cow, and often gleams out of the shaggy thicket of black hair around it with a red glare that has something truly diabolical in it. There may perhaps be collected in the yard and in one or two enclosures near it some forty or fifty young horses, and perhaps altogether from a hundred to a hundred and fifty head of horned cattle. Lounging about around these enclosures, or looking on while the last completing touches are given to the strong and high railing which surrounds the space in front of the range of seats, are several butteri and their aids, awaiting the master's signal for the beginning of the day's work.

Altogether, the scene is a very strange one. The contact of the rural and the city life, the elements of which meet in these countries so rarely and mix so little and so unwillingly, seems strange and incongruous. Nothing can be wilder than all the local surroundings of the scene; nothing less town-like than the living things, human and other, which are to enact their parts in it; nothing less rural, nothing more completely of the town townish, than the assembled company of spectators. Evidently, the individuals belonging to either category look upon those of the other very little in the light of fellow-creatures. In no country in the world is the division between the town population and that of the country so wide as it is in Italy. No one of either class seems to be struck by, or even to see, the extreme beauty of the prospect from the spot on which we are standing. It is a spot in the Campagna somewhat to the south-west of a line drawn from the city to the base of the Alban Hills; and though the place chosen for the operation of the merca is, as I have said, a hollow, the generality of the immediate neighborhood is somewhat higher than the level of the surrounding plain, and the eye is thus enabled to wander far and wide over the Campagna—to the Alban Hills southward; to the peak of Monte Cavo, where the early rays of the sun are just touching with light the old gray walls of the convent on its summit; to the large village of Rocca di Papa on its hillside a little farther to the left; to the town of Grotto Ferrata on the lowest instep of the hill, and more still to the left; and then Frascati, with the heights of Tusculum above it; and thence to that wonderfully beautiful opening in the range of hills where Preneste lies; and beyond that, as we turn the delighted eye slowly round to the eastward, the olive-rich hill of Tivoli, the woods that mark the position of Hadrian's Villa, and the whole range of the Sabine Hills. But little do the Roman dames care for the scene so fair. Their eyes are all for matters nearer at hand. They are curiously scanning the men who are going to be the heroes of the day—the butteri—some sitting carelessly on their horses, some lounging around the enclosure. And well aware are they in either case that they are the cynosures of neighboring eyes, and the consciousness that they are so is betrayed in every movement and every glance of their roving eyes. Never did knights of old enter the lists, while the heralds reminded them that bright eyes beheld their deeds, more stimulated to bear themselves well in the coming contest than are these modern knights of the Campagna to show their prowess in the ring which is to witness a not less arduous and hardly less dangerous emprise.

At length the hospitably busy mercante di campagna has seated all his guests, and the work of the day may begin. Some half dozen or so of butteri and their aids enter the arena, which is thoroughly enclosed on all sides by high and secure palisades. The long cloaks are discarded now, as may be supposed. I hardly know when else the butteri are to be seen without them or on foot. Now they are seen as succinct as may be. Every muscle is braced up for the coming struggle, and there may be observed something in the faces and bearing of the men that indicates that the work in hand is not expected to be child's play. They stand in a group in the middle of the enclosed space. The day's work will begin with the most arduous part of it—with that which needs all the fresh strength and address of the men—the marking of the buffaloes. A young buffalo bull, not yet grown to his full strength, but yet abundantly powerful enough to be a very formidable antagonist, is driven into the arena, and the gate by which he has entered is immediately closed behind him. Many a yearling of the more domesticated breeds is a larger and heavier animal, and yet most men would, if they were compelled to such a struggle, prefer to measure their force against an animal of the latter class than against this half-savage creature. He may be considered, indeed, to be wholly savage, save in so far as he may be supposed to inherit from his progenitors the nature of a race that man has more or less perfectly subjected and compelled to labor. On first entering the arena he tosses up his head and shakes the shaggy black locks of wiry hair from before his small wicked-looking eyes, looks half alarmedly, half defiantly around, and stamps three or four times with one fore foot on the ground, partly, as it would seem, in wonder and doubt, and partly in increasing anger. Then he trots slowly round the enclosure, starting aside and shying as the bright colors of the ladies' dresses (at safe distance behind the palisades) catch and offend his eye. Evidently he is seeking an egress and escape from a scene which must appear to him so wondrous and full of strange and unknown dangers. But he has soon satisfied himself that there is no way out, that his enemies have encompassed him about on every side. Then once again he throws his shaggy head into the air, shaking his short thick curly horns in a very menacing manner, and this time accompanying the action with a loud bellow, the compound expression of fear, wonder and wrath.

Now, what has to be done is simply this—to seize him, throw him to the ground on his side, then to impress the branding-iron on his flank, and dismiss him to make way for another. Of course nothing would be easier with properly contrived appliances and means than to accomplish this with promptitude, safety to man and beast, without struggle and without glory. But this would involve change of habitudes, recourse to new methods, modern improvements, a confession to the mind of the buttero that he was no longer able to do what his fathers for many a generation had done before him. It would be to lose the opportunity of exhibiting himself and his prowess on the great festival of the year, together with those subsequent hours of repose and reward for danger and fatigue endured which heroes of all ages, from the quaffers of mead in the halls of Odin to the "food for powder" around the vivandière's paniers, have never disdained. For these sufficient reasons the merca is practiced still in the old way in the Roman Campagna, and the victory of the man over the brute has to be achieved by main force and dexterity. The buttero has not so much as a lasso, or even a halter or a stick, to assist him in the struggle. There is the beast with his horns, and there is the man with his hands. Probably it might have been better to seize the creature instantly on his entry into the arena, while he was under the influence of his first bewilderment; and doubtless when the men have got hot to their work, and the advancing sun warns them to get on with it, the business will be more summarily despatched. But in the first opening of the day's work a little show-off is indulged in. The buffalo has ceased his trot round the railing, and stands head in air as he bellows his defiance. That is the moment seized by the watchful buttero for accepting the challenge. With a sudden spring at the animal he seizes him by the horns, and with a sudden vigorous and knowingly-applied wrench throws him to the ground on his side. Then burst forth the plaudits from the well-dressed crowd, more heartily bestowed perhaps by the ladies than by their kid-gloved cavaliers, who are conscious that they could not have done so much to save their own lives or those of the fair dames by their side. With the fall of the beast to the ground the work is done. All the rest is without difficulty, and is completed in a minute. Other men come forward and apply the brand to the struggling but comparatively helpless brute, who in the next minute finds himself free from his persecutors and at liberty to trot off out of the enclosure.

Thus matters pass in a case where the buttero is master of his business, where he is in his own best condition of muscular force and activity, and where he is not matched against a beast of exceptional strength. It frequently occurs, however, that all these conditions are not fulfilled. Some men are cleverer at it than others. It will be readily understood that, as in wrestling, the knack of the thing counts for much, and sometimes, either from want of this or some other circumstance of disadvantage, the struggle is prolonged. Man and beast put forth their utmost strength. They sway backward and forward; the ground becomes trampled into mud; the strong muscles of the creature's brawny neck resist every effort of his enemy. Not a man of the group within the area comes to the assistance of his comrade. They watch the contest indeed with vigilant eyes, and should real danger to the man's life ensue they are ready to throw themselves forward and overpower or drive off the buffalo. But short of this the fight must be a duel. The man must throw his beast, or be thrown. Not unfrequently, the latter occurs; and then the city crowd, who were so loud in their plaudits of the victor—cruel as their ancestors whose upturned thumbs condemned the conquered gladiator in the Coliseum—are equally loud in their hooting of the prostrate buttero. But only his self-love and self-respect, and not his life, in these days pays the penalty. As he falls worsted his fellows, watchful to prevent mischief, though perhaps not sorry for a rival's discomfiture, rush forward and overpower the conquering brute.

And this goes on until the assembled butteri and their aids have got through their day's work and marked all the animals that were awaiting the brand, and the merca for that year is finished. The citizens, dames and dandies get them back to their carriages and to the city, while the butteri, victors and vanquished alike, spend the night in discussing the vicissitudes of the merca and worshiping Bacchus with rites which in this most conservative of all lands two thousand years have done but little to change.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

THREE FEATHERS

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "A PRINCESS OF THULE."

CHAPTER XXXVI

INTO CAPTIVITY

Toward eleven o'clock that night Mrs. Rosewarne became somewhat anxious about her girls, and asked her husband to go and meet them, or to fetch them away if they were still at Mr. Trewhella's house.

"Can't they look after themselves?" said George Rosewarne. "I'll be bound Mabyn can, any way. Let her alone to come back when she pleases."

Then his wife began to fret, and as this made him uncomfortable, he said he would walk up the road and meet them. He had no intention of doing so, of course, but it was a good excuse for getting away from a fidgety wife. He went outside into the clear starlight, and lounged down to the small bridge beside the mill, contentedly smoking his pipe.

There he encountered a farmer who was riding home a cob he had bought that day at Launceston, and the farmer and he began to have a chat about horses suggested by that circumstance. Oddly enough, their random talk came round to young Trelyon.

"Your thoroughbreds won't do for this county," George Rosewarne was saying, "to go flying a stone wall and breaking your neck. No, sir. I'll tell you what sort of hunter I should like to have for these parts. I'd have him half-bred, short in the leg, short in the pastern, short in the back, a good sloping shoulder, broad in the chest and the forehead, long in the belly, and just the least bit over fifteen hands—eh, Mr. Thoms? I don't think beauty's of much consequence when your neck's in question. Let him be as angular and ragged in the hips as you like, so long's his ribs are well up to the hip-bone. Have you seen that black horse that young Trelyon rides?"

"'Tis a noble beast, sir—a noble beast," the farmer said; and he would probably have gone on to state what ideal animal had been constructed by his lavish imagination had not a man come running up at this moment, breathless and almost speechless.

"Rosewarne," stammered Mr. Roscorla, "a—a word with you! I want to say—"

The farmer, seeing he was in the way, called out a careless good-night and rode on.

"Well, what's the matter?" said George Rosewarne a little snappishly: he did not like being worried by excitable people.

"Your daughters!" gasped Mr. Roscorla. "They've both run away—both of them—this minute—with Trelyon! You'll have to ride after them. They're straight away along the high-road."

"Both of them? The infernal young fools!" said Rosewarne. "Why the devil didn't you stop them yourself?"

"How could I?" Roscorla said, amazed that the father took the flight of his daughters with apparent equanimity. "You must make haste, Mr. Rosewarne, or you'll never catch them."

"I've a good mind to let 'em go," said he sulkily as he walked over to the stables of the inn. "The notion of a man having to set out on this wild-goose chase at this time o' night! Run away, have they? and what in all the world have they run away for?"

It occurred to him, however, that the sooner he got a horse saddled and set out, the less distance he would have to go in pursuit; and that consideration quickened his movements.

"What's it all about?" said he to Roscorla, who had followed him into the stable.

"I suppose they mean a runaway match," said Mr. Roscorla, helping to saddle George Rosewarne's cob, a famous trotter.

"It's that young devil's limb, Mabyn, I'll be bound," said the father. "I wish to Heaven somebody would marry her!—I don't care who. She's always up to some confounded mischief."

"No, no, no," Roscorla said: "it's Wenna he means to marry."

"Why, you were to have married Wenna?"

"Yes, but—"

"Then why didn't you? So she's run away, has she?" George Rosewarne grinned: he saw how the matter lay.

"This is Mabyn's work, I know," said he as he put his foot in the stirrup and sprang into the saddle. "You'd better go home, Roscorla. Don't you say a word to anybody. You don't want the girl made a fool of all through the place."

So George Rosewarne set out to bring back his daughters; not galloping, as an anxious parent might, but going ahead with a long, steady-going trot, which he knew would soon tell on Mrs. Trelyon's over-fed and under-exercised horses.

"If they mean Plymouth," he was thinking, "as is most likely from their taking the high-road, he'll give it them gently at first. And so that young man wants to marry our Wenna? 'Twould be a fine match for her; and yet she's worth all the money he's got—she's worth it every farthing. I'd give him the other one cheap enough."

Pounding along a dark road, with the consciousness that the farther you go the farther you've got to get back, and that the distance still to be done is an indeterminate quantity, is agreeable to no one, but it was especially vexatious to George Rosewarne, who liked to take things quietly, and could not understand what all the fuss was about. Why should he be sent on this mad chase at midnight? If anybody wanted to marry either of the girls, why didn't he do so and say no more about it? Rosewarne had been merely impatient and annoyed when he set out, but the longer he rode, and the more he communed with himself, the deeper grew his sense of the personal injury that had been done him by this act of folly.

It was a very lonely ride indeed. There was not a human being abroad at that hour. When he passed a few cottages from time to time the windows were dark. Then they had just been putting down a lot of loose stones at several parts of the road, which caused Mr. Rosewarne to swear. "I'll bet a sovereign," said he to himself, "that old Job kept them a quarter of an hour before he opened Paddock's Gate. I believe the old fool goes to bed. Well, they've waked him up for me, any way."

There was some consolation in this surmise, which was well founded. When Rosewarne reached the toll-bar there was at least a light in the small house. He struck on the door with the handle of his riding-whip, and called out, "Hi, hi! Job! Come out, you old fool!"

An old man with very bandy legs came hobbling out of the toll-house, and went to open the gate, talking and muttering to himself: "Ay, ay! so yü be agwoin' after the young uns, Maister Rosewarne? Ay, ay! yü'll go up many a lane and by many a fuzzy 'ill, and acrass a bridge or two, afore yü come up wi' 'en, Maister Rosewarne."

"Look sharp, Job!" said Rosewarne. "Carriage been through here lately?"

"Ay, ay, Maister Rosewarne! 'tis a good half hour agone."

"A half hour, you idiot!" said Rosewarne, now in a thoroughly bad temper. "You've been asleep and dreaming. Here, take your confounded money!"

So he rode on again, not believing, of course, old Job's malicious fabrication, but being rendered all the same a little uncomfortable by it. Fortunately, the cob had not been out before that day.

More deep lanes, more high, open, windy spaces, more silent cottages, more rough stones, and always the measured fall of the cob's feet and the continued shining and throbbing of the stars overhead. At last, far away ahead, on the top of a high incline, he caught sight of a solitary point of ruddy fire, which presently disappeared. That, he concluded, was the carriage he was pursuing going round a corner, and showing only the one lamp as it turned into the lane. They were not so far in front of him as he had supposed.

But how to overtake them? So soon as they heard the sound of his horse would they dash onward at all risks, and have a race for it all through the night? In that case George Rosewarne inwardly resolved that they might go to Plymouth, or into the deep sea beyond, before he would injure his favorite cob.

On the other hand, he could not bring them to a standstill by threatening to shoot at his own daughters, even if he had had anything with him that would look like a pistol. Should he have to rely, then, on the moral terrors of a parent's authority? George Rosewarne was inclined to laugh when he thought of his overawing in this fashion the high spirit of his younger daughter.

By slow and sure degrees he gained on the fugitives, and as he could now catch some sound of the rattling of the carriage-wheels, they must also hear his horse's footfall. Were they trying to get away from him? On the contrary, the carriage stopped altogether.

That was Harry Trelyon's decision. For some time back he had been listening attentively. At length he said, "Don't you hear some one riding back there?"

"Yes, I do," said Wenna, beginning to tremble.

"I suppose it is Mr. Roscorla coming after us," the young man said coolly. "Now I think it would be a shame to drag the old gentleman halfway down to Plymouth. He must have had a good spell already. Shall I stop and persuade him to go back home to bed?"

"Oh no," said Mabyn, who was all for getting on at any risk.

"Oh no," Wenna said, fearing the result of an encounter between the two men.

"I must stop," Trelyon said. "It's such precious hard lines on him. I shall easily persuade him that he would be better at home."

So he pulled up the horses, and quietly waited by the roadside for a few minutes. The unknown rider drew nearer and more near.

"That isn't Roscorla's pony," said Trelyon listening. "That's more like your father's cob."

"My father!" said Wenna in a low voice.