Diversions in Sicily

One wet Saturday evening in May I found myself at Castelvetrano consulting Angelo, the guide, about the weather. His opinion was that it would clear up during the night; I said...

Being alone one autumn evening in Palermo, about a year and a half after I had seen Samson, I returned to the teatrino and found it open. On asking the young man at the door whe...

Peppino usually took half an hour off and came about noon to wherever I was sketching to fetch me to lunch. One morning as we walked along nearly every man we met smiled and sai...

The brigadier and the corporal both sent illustrated postcards to me from Selinunte and I sent them postcards in return, but the corporal unaccountably desisted after being tran...

Three or four miles inland from Trapani, at the north-west corner of Sicily, rises a precipitous solitary mountain, nearly 2500 feet high, with a town on the top. A motor bus ma...

The next time I was in Palermo, Turiddu, the conduttore, who used to take me about the town, had returned after being for a year in Naples. He was employed at another hotel, but...

Educated Sicilians have not a high opinion of the marionettes; it is sometimes difficult to induce them to talk on the subject. They say the marionettes are for the lower orders...

In August, 1901, I was on the mountain and saw a procession representing Noah's Ark and the Universal Deluge--one of those strange and picturesque cavalcades that were formerly...

Before the last act, which concluded with the death of Angelica, a dwarf had appeared in front of the curtain (not a human dwarf, but a marionette dwarf) and recited the program...

My next experience in a marionette theatre was at Trapani. I approached the subject with Mario, a coachman whom I have known since he was a boy. He was quite ready to help me, a...

After the players were gone I resumed my normal habits. One morning, as Peppino and I were returning to colazione he asked me whether I had seen the procession down on the shore.

On the morning of Sunday, 25th August, 1901, every one on Monte San Giuliano was up early and at 7.30 a brass band began to perambulate the town to announce that the festa had b...

Next evening the play was _Feudalismo_. Giovanni does not return from prison; he is a shepherd and is made to marry a girl without being told of the relations that had subsisted...

One day after rehearsal I had an appointment with a young man whose acquaintance I had made the previous evening behind the scenes. He was sitting on a packing-case, exchanging...

The train passed through the tunnel under the headland on which stands the Albergo Belvedere, and steamed into the station of Castellinaria, a town that is not so marked on any...

The day before the festa there came a professor of pedagogy, and Peppino was not best pleased to see him because he knew him as a jettatore. I had supposed this word to mean a p...

Last time I was at Castellinaria there came to the town for a week a company of Sicilian actors. I was afraid the dialect would be beyond me, but Peppino assured me that it woul...

17. _The Wicked Man in Prosperity_ contented with his state and persisting in evil, a fit subject for reproof. A voluptuary and a miser, magnificently attired, is clasping to hi...

The procession of the grain closed the harvest home and in the evening of the same day began the proceedings relating to the Return of the Madonna to Custonaci. At 8 p.m. anothe...

Calatafimi is a town of 10,000 inhabitants about twenty miles inland from Trapani. A slight eminence to the west of the town, 1115 feet above the sea, crowned by the ruins of a...

6. _The Departure of the Prodigal_.--A gay young man mounted on a courser and attended by friends also on horseback. One of his companions carries a scroll: "Invenies multos, si...

2. _The Blind Design of the Prodigal_.--His departure from his father's house. A resolute youth in the garb of nudity, with a bandage over his eyes; his right hand is tied behin...