Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories (32 page)

1
.
Nedda’s Sicilian nickname, meaning a woman born in Viagrande, a village in the Plain of Catania.

2
.
La Piana di Catania is the name given to the lowland area lying to the south of Mount Etna.

3
.
A knee-length, narrow-sleeved vestment of linen and lace worn by priests on occasions that require a high degree of solemnity.

4
.
‘It won’t be long before I go and see her, the mistress of my soul.’

1
.
A small town halfway between Licodia and Syracuse.

1
.
The scapular
(abitino della Madonna),
found in some peasant communities, consists of two small pieces of cloth, joined by string and worn back and front next to the skin.

1
.
Sicilian for eucalyptus.

2
.
The Italian text reads
monte Arturo,
almost certainly a misprint for Mont’ Altore, situated halfway between Licodia and Vizzini.
There is no Monte Arturo in Sicily.

3
.
Sicilian for Phosphorus, the morning star.

1
.
Literally ‘evil-haired’, because of the popular belief that anyone with red hair was of a villainous disposition.

2
.
The slaughter-house, named after the district where it was situated, along the shore (
La Plaja)
south of Catania.

3
.
Etna.

4
.
The term given to the hardened lava scree on the slopes of Mount Etna.

1
.
Salvatore Farina (1846–1918), a Sardinian, was the author of some fifty novels and editor of a Milanese literary review.
Verga first met him in Milan in 1872.

2
.
Gramigna
is dog-grass or couch-grass, which interferes with the growth of a farmer’s crops, and must be dug out and burnt.

1
.
San Rocco (St Roch), who lived in the fourteenth century, is the protector against plagues.
He is supposed to have recovered from the plague himself after being befriended by a dog, and dogs invariably appear in the paintings and frescoes in which he is depicted.
Rivalries between the devotees of various saints are a common feature of Italian as well as Sicilian life.
The annual Festa dei Ceri at Gubbio, in Umbria, is a colourful pageant in which teams of strong young men race through the streets carrying enormously heavy statues of different saints under decorative canopies, or
baldacchini,
cheered on by their sometimes fanatical supporters.

2
.
A special cape worn by high dignitaries of the Roman Catholic church.

3
.
The feast day of San Pasquale is 17 May.

1
.
Region bordering on the southern shores of Lake Como, favoured by affluent Milanese for their country villas.

2
.
Famous luxury hotel at Cernobbio, on Lake Como.

3
.
Literally Elysian Fields, in the hotel gardens.

1
.
Ferdinand II, Bourbon ruler of the Two Sicilies from 1830 to 1859.
He earned the nickname by ordering the bombardment of Sicilian cities to crush the popular uprising of 1848.

2
.
Mortmain is the conveyancing of property to a corporate body, such as the Church, which then claims perpetual ownership of it.
The law of mortmain was not abolished in Britain until 1960.

3
.
Garibaldi landed in Sicily with his thousand-strong army on 11 May 1860, proclaimed himself dictator and drove out the Bourbons with the help of a popular uprising.

1
.
A litter was a sort of large sedan chair carried by mules, one in front and one behind.
It was used on nearly all the inland roads of Sicily until almost the end of the nineteenth century.

2
.
The attempted assassination took place in the royal chapel at Capodimonte, Naples, on 7 December 1855.

3
.
See
note 1 in ‘The She-Wolf’, p.
237
.

1
.
The Grilli fields are a farming district 3 kilometres south-east of Mineo.

2
.
See
the story about ‘The Reverend’, pp.
137–45
.

3
.
Probably the tract of pasture land north-east of Mineo where there are grottoes in the hillsides.

1
.
i.e.
Etna.

2
.
The morning star.

3
.
A vine bush placed on the door served as an inn sign, like the garland of ivy that was hung outside taverns in England.
Hence the proverb: A good wine needs no bush.

4
.
‘ll pane che si mangia bisogna sudarlo’,
(Genesis iii, 19).

1
.
Holy-water sprinkler.

2
.
The Plain of Lamia is a farming district lying a little over thirty miles north-west of Syracuse.

3
.
St Agrippina was a third-century martyr, the patron saint of Mineo, where she was buried.
Her feast is 23 June.

4
.
8 October.

5
.
The figures refer to the number of spikelets on each ear of wheat.

6
.
A saint much revered in Sicily, where in popular speech the attractive paintings and images of saints often serve as terms of comparison for a person’s physical appearance.

7
.
According to popular superstition, an endive leaf carried about the person was supposed to inspire true love in the object of one’s affection.

8
.
Cuda di dragu
(‘dragon’s tail’) is the Sicilian name for a twister or water-spout.

9
.
See
note 1 in ‘The She-Wolf, p.
237
.

10
.
Lucy, a popular saint in eastern Sicily, was born in Syracuse.
Her feast day is 13 December.

11
.
A town lying about nine miles south-east of Santa Margherita.

1
.
Saridda, a diminutive of Sara, would normally be used only as a name for a child.

2
.
The popular name for Mount Etna.

1
.
The story is based on an incident that took place in the hillside town of Bronte shortly after Garibaldi’s redshirts entered Catania in 1860.
The red, white and green tricolour was the Piedmontese, and later the Italian, national flag.
The general who comes into the story later on was Nino Bixio, Garibaldi’s lieutenant.

2
.
Felt hats were worn by the well-to-do.
Peasants wore caps.

3
.
See
the story about another ‘Reverend’ (pp.
137–45
).

4
.
A revolving device in the wall separating the parlour of a convent from the
inner cloister, sometimes used by unmarried mothers to transmit their babies into the care of the nuns.

1
.
The Galleria, or Galleria Vecchia, is the glass-covered arcade linking the Piazza del Duomo with the Piazza della Scala.
Built in 1865, it is one of the main architectural features of Milan’s city centre.

2
.
One of the several gates in the old city walls, the so-called Spanish walls
(mura spagnuole)
or
bastioni.

3
.
A square lined with fashionable shops along the Via Verdi.

4
.
The two ‘islands’ referred to were tenement blocks outside the old city walls.

5
.
Monumental arch, built in honour of Napoleon III, at the western end of the Parco Sempione, the gardens of the Castello Sforzesco.

6
.
Like the Porta Garibaldi, these are gates in the
bastioni,
the old city walls.

7
.
The Naviglio Grande is a famous canal dating from the Middle Ages which connects the River Ticino with the centre of Milan.
It was used in the sixteenth century for transporting marble from the quarries near Novara for the building of Milan’s cathedral, hence the reference to the latter.

8
.
Fashionable restaurant in the Piazza della Scala.

9
.
A theatre in the Corso Garibaldi.

10
.
A broad, crescent-shaped thoroughfare in front of the Castello Sforzesco, with a large piazza at its centre.

11
.
A theatre in the Largo Cairoli, near the castle.
The Gnocchi is a well-known café in the same area.