CHAPTER VI.

A MUSICAL FESTIVAL.

The poetry of this evening was not yet exhausted. I had scarcely fallen asleep in my little locanda, when the twanging of citherns, and the sounds of voices singing in parts, awakened me. They played and sang for at least an hour before the house. It was meant for a young girl who was one of its inmates. They sang first a serenade, then Voceros or dirges. Singular, that a young girl should be serenaded with dirges; and the proper serenade itself with which they commenced was as mournful as a Vocero. It is impossible to tell how overpoweringly touching is the solemn melancholy of this music in the stillness of the night; the tones are so wailing, so monotonous, and long drawn out. The first voice sang solo, then the second joined, and the third, and at last the whole band. They sang _in recitativo_, as they sing in Italy the ritornello. In the ritornello too, sentiments not meant to be melancholy are sung in an almost plaintive strain; but when this in itself melancholy kind of music is applied to the Vocero, the whole soul is thrilled with sadness. I had heard night-singing in other parts of Corsica, but none of such a powerful and solemn character as this; I shall never forget the dirges of that night in Calvi. Often yet I hear their echo; and one word particularly, _speranza_, becomes frequently audible to me in the plaintive tones in which it was sung.

In the morning I wandered accidentally into the shop of an old shoemaker, who proved to be the cithern-player of the previous night. At my request he readily brought out his instrument. The Corsican _cetera_ has sixteen sides; it has almost the form of the mandoline; but is larger, and has the sounding-board not quite round, but somewhat flattened. The strings are struck with a little, flat, pointed ram's-horn. I found here, therefore, the universal experience confirmed, that shoemakers as a class are thoughtful, musical, and poetical. This Hans Sachs of Calvi readily got an assemblage of the best singers together. Shoes and lasts were thrown into a corner, and the little company collected in a room behind the shop, the window of which looked out upon the gulf through a profusion of flowers and creeping plants; the singers drew their seats together, their leader took his cithern, and opened in rich full tones. But let me mention who the singers were. There was first of all the old shoemaker as _maestro_; then there was his young apprentice, who learnt from him music and boot-making; then a well-dressed young man of the legal profession; and finally a silver-haired old man of seventy-four. Old as he was, he sang right heartily, though not perhaps with all the vigour of his youth; as the notes of the Corsican Voceros are very long, the amiable old fellow sometimes lost breath.

Now commenced a really beautiful concert. They sang whatever I wanted, serenades and voceradi or laments, but generally laments, because the originality and beauty of these charmed me most. One among the many Voceros was upon the death of a soldier. The story was this. A young man from the mountains has left his father, mother, and sister, and gone to serve on the Continent. After many years he returns home an officer. He ascends to his paese; none of his relations recognise him. He confides the secret to his sister only, to her unspeakable joy. He bids his father and mother, to whom he has not made himself known, prepare for to-morrow a meal as sumptuous as they can—he will pay them for it. In the evening he takes his gun, and goes out to shoot. He has left a knapsack heavy with gold in his chamber. His father discovers this, and determines to murder the stranger that same night. The horrid deed is consummated. When morning has come, and noon has come, but still not her brother, his sister inquires after the stranger; in the anguish of her heart she tells her parents that he is her brother. They rush into the room, father, mother, and sister, and——there he lies in his blood! Now follows the Lamento of the sister. The story is true; the popular ballads of the Corsicans invariably deal with real events. The shoemaker narrated the circumstances in most dramatic style, and the silver-haired old man assisted him with the liveliest gestures; then the first snatched up his cithern, and they sang the lamento.

These friendly minstrels, whom I told that I would translate their songs into my native tongue, and that I would not forget them and the hours I had spent with them, entreated me to stay yet this other evening in Calvi, and they would spend the whole night in singing to me; but if I was resolved on leaving, then I must go to Zilia, which, they said, had the best singers in Corsica. "Ah!" said the shoemaker, "the best of them all is dead. He sang as mellow as any bird, but he went to the hills and became a bandit, and the country-people protected him long from the officers, because he sang so beautifully; but they caught him at last, and he lost his head in Corte."

Thus Calvi became an oasis of song to me in these quiet, thinly-inhabited regions. I found it interesting, therefore, to remember that two of the best Corsican poets had been natives of Calvi—Giovanni Baptista Agnese, a writer of religious poetry born in the year 1611, and Vincenzo Giubega, who died in the year 1800, at the age of thirty-nine, as judge in Ajaccio. Giubega is not unjustly termed the Anacreon of Corsica. I have read some beautiful love-poems and sonnets of his, characterized by much grace and feeling.

Few of his songs survive; he burned most of them before his death. As Sophocles says that memory is the queen of things, and because the muse of poetry herself is a daughter of Mnemosyne, I shall mention here another once world-renowned Corsican of Calvi—Giulio Giudi, in the year 1581 the wonder of Padua on account of his unfortunate memory. He could repeat 36,000 names after once hearing them. People called him _Giudi della gran memoria_. But he produced nothing; his memory had killed all his creative faculty. Pico von Mirandola, who lived before him, produced, but he died young. It is with the precious gift of memory as with all other gifts—they are a curse of the gods, when they give too much.

I have already mentioned the name of Salvatore Viale. This author, a native of Bastia, is the most productive poet the island can yet boast of. One of his works is a comic poem called _La Dinomachia_, in the vein of the _Secchia Rapita_ of Tassoni; and he has translated Anacreon, and part of Byron. Byron in Corsica, therefore!—Viale has earned the gratitude of his country by an unwearied scientific activity, and his illustrations of the manners and customs of the Corsicans are highly meritorious. Corsica has also a translator of Horace—Giuseppe Ottaviano Savelli, a friend of Alfieri, of whom I have already spoken. I could name many more Corsican poets, as, for example, Biadelli of Bastia, who died in the year 1822, a writer of songs. But their poems will never attain more than a Corsican celebrity. The most beautiful poetry of Corsica is her popular poetry, and Grief is the greatest Corsican poet.