Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions

One morning, in the autumn of 1908, I was sitting in front of one of the windows of the albergo looking out across the harbour at the mountains of Calabria, waiting for coffee a...

Being in Catania for Holy Week I went to the cathedral on Palm Sunday. The archbishop in his yellow mitre, red inside because he is also a cardinal, accompanied by nine canons i...

Enrico Pampalone entered the world with a compliment to his godfather, for of all the days in the year he chose to be born on my birthday. Peppino sent me a telegram at once, th...

I do not remember who started the idea that the buffo should come to Catania with me; it grew up, as inevitable ideas do, without any of us being sure whether he suggested it, o...

When "Arethusa arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains" she had scarcely reached the age at which women begin to dream of love. She spied the approaching ri...

One makes friends rapidly in Sicily. I made friends for life with all the coast-guards during three or four hours which I spent with them in their caserma. The corporal was the...

One day the bells were ringing for the festa of S. Somebody, but it was not really his day. Peppino told me that his proper day had been stormy or unsympathetic or the people ha...

Once I was at Trapani in September, and observed in a small shop in a back street some queer little dolls' heads made of wax. They seemed to form a set, some women and some men,...

took his diploma. They replied that I was confusing cause and effect; for in the beginning it was not the universities that made the doctors, it was the doctors that made the un...

Since I last wrote to you there has been a continual to-do and no time for writing letters. What has been the to-do? Is it possible you have forgotten my telling you that I am s...

We started from Catania at three o'clock on a dull afternoon at the end of March to see one of the streams of lava that Etna was sending out during the eruption of 1910. Peppino...

As I had missed the emotional interview at the tomb the buffo generously arranged that there should be a private repetition of the scene specially for the young ladies and me; b...

At the table in front of me sat three gentlemen; beyond them, at a separate table, sat a distinguished-looking lady, quietly but well dressed in foamy white musliny stuff, with...

Although I had to miss a great deal that it would have been interesting to see on the stage, I spent a couple of mornings with the buffo in his workshop helping to make the scen...

When the drunken sulphur-miners quarrel and kill one another on Saturdays and Sundays, the murderers are seldom brought to justice because of Omerta; a word which is said to be...

Sicilians sometimes claim that much of what has been stated in the foregoing chapter is now out of date, and that, with the advance of civilisation, the power of the mafia and t...

In 1901 I spent ten days on Mount Eryx, now usually called Monte San Giuliano, near Trapani, where I went to see the nocturnal procession of _Noah's Ark and the Universal Deluge...

Next morning I called on the buffo in his workshop. His two combustible Turkish pavilions were finished, ready to be fired by Ettorina, and he was full of his devils. I inquired...

Caltanissetta is a busy town of some 45,000 inhabitants near the middle of the island and about 2000 feet above the sea. It depends for its prosperity on almonds, grapes, olives...

Michele Lombardo, a goldsmith of Trapani, came to me one day and said he wished me to be his compare. I at once had a vision of myself as a black man riding round a circus on a...

A Sicilian wedding is conducted either on system _a_, when the happy couple go away for their honeymoon and the ceremony is performed in the morning, or on system _b_, when they...

I was back in Catania before the 9th of May and began talking about S. Alfio in the Teatro Machiavelli. One of the actors whose name is Volpes, the one who did the listening fat...

arrangements of the marionette theatre in Catania would be condemned by the County Council, which I believe to be correct, but, on visiting the theatre since, I find I was wrong...

mystery of our spring, may think the flowers they saw sinking into the earth last autumn return again with the marks of decay removed, they cannot come behind our scenes and mak...

CONTENTS CASTELLINARIA CHAPTER PAGE I. CHANGES IN THE TOWN 17 II. FESTA RIMANDATA 36 PALERMO III. MARIONETTISTS AT HOME 53 IV. MALAGIGI 66 V. ARGANTINO 73 VI. THE ESCAPE FROM PA...

One may see in the foregoing story of S. Alfio the foundation of some of the incidents painted on the carts, and perhaps the saints' travelling bareheaded and barefooted is the...