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 makes a circuit of the mountain, taking one up to the town in about an hour. It proceeds inland, past the church of the Annunziata, the famous shrine of the Madonna di Trapani, and the ascent soon begins. As one looks back towards the sea, Trapani gradually assumes the form that gave it its Greek name of Drepanum, for it juts out towards the island of Levanzo like a sickle “with the sea roaring all round it.” Marsala is usually visible beyond the innumerable salt pans and windmills. One of these windmills is especially pleasing; it consists of five or six dummy ships with real sails on a pond; these ships form, as it were, the rim of a wheel lying on its side, the spokes being poles which attach the ships to the axle, an island in the middle of the pond. The wind blows and the ships race after one another round and round the pond, causing the poles to work the mechanism which is inside the island.

The manufacture of salt is one of the chief industries of Trapani and one of the chief causes of its wealth. In Sicily it practically never rains during the summer; the sea water is collected in large, open pans, being raised by means of the screw which has been in use all over the island for nearly twenty-two centuries, ever since Archimedes invented it to remove the water from the hold of one of Hiero’s ships at Siracusa. All through the summer the heat of the sun evaporates the moisture, leaving the salt which is afterwards exported to Newfoundland, Norway, the North of France and many other countries and used for salting fish and other purposes.

The road continues to ascend and the horizon appears to ascend also, so that the sea takes up with it the Ægadean islands till, presently, Marettimo looks over the top of Levanzo, while Favognana lies away to the left. The Isola Grande (S. Pantaleo), the fourth island, is not a prominent object, being low and near the land, a good deal to the south towards Marsala; but in former times, when it was Motya, it was the most important of them all. The sea extends right and left till it is lost in the haze which so commonly obscures a Sicilian horizon.

The road goes more and more inland and, still rising, diverges from the shorter road taken by the old horse bus and passes through Paparella. Presently the mountain shuts out Trapani and the sea, and then the country lying inland about the base of the mountain comes into view bounded by a distant amphitheatre and, as the road completes the circuit of the mountain, and still rising joins the other shorter road at the Trapani gate of the town, the sea comes into sight again, with the horizon high above Trapani and the promontory of Capo S. Vito bounding it on the right.

This mountain, formerly world-renowned as Mount Eryx, and still often called Monte Erice, is now Monte S. Giuliano and gives its name both to the town on the top and to the comune of which that town is the chief place. The highest point of the town is towards the east of the mountain-top, and here are several towers, some belonging to the Castello, a Norman fortress, and others to Le Torri, the summer residence of Count Pepoli. On the north, east and south sides of the summit the mountain is precipitous, but towards the west it slopes from the towers through a public garden called the Balio, and then through a maze of narrow, winding streets, down to the Trapani gate. The normal population of the town is about 4000, but in the summer and autumn this is largely increased, inasmuch as the great heat of Trapani and the low country drives as many as can afford it to live on the summit where it is seldom too hot.

The rest of the comune lies dotted about on the plain at the foot of the mountain and consists of a dozen small villages, all visible from the summit. These have mostly grown up within the last hundred years or so as colonies from the chief town, for when the country was less secure the women and children were left within the town walls while the men went down to work in the fields and to fish in the sea, returning for Sundays and festas, and gradually, as it became possible, settlements were formed below to which the women and children could safely be moved. Custonaci, however, one of the villages of the comune, did not spring up in this way and is of older date than the others.

The peculiar charm of the mountain cannot be fully realized unless one visits it at all seasons and in all weathers. I have been there in the winter; the summit was hidden in a cloud which, as we drove up into it, obscured the view and chilled the marrow. It was before the days of the motor, when a horse bus did the journey by a shorter route in about three hours. I was on the box with the coachman who gave me a spare cloak with a hood to keep me dry and warm. Two of my friends, natives of the mountain, one a doctor and the other the accountant to the Municipio, were at the Trapani gate to meet me, both in hooded cloaks, so that I did not recognize them till they spoke. The wind was tremendous. The narrow sloping streets were running with water as we walked up through the town to the albergo, where Donna Anna received us. There was no blazing fire or warm room as there would have been in an English inn, only semidarkness and dampness. The damp had patched the painting on the ceiling and disfigured the whitewashed walls, on which were hung a few pictures—a lithograph of the Madonna di Custonaci, a cheap Crucifixion, a reproduction of the design for the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele in Rome, three shiny chromolithographs of English country scenes, representing the four seasons minus one, an absurd French engraving, Education Maternelle and S. Francesco da Paola, with a shell for holy water. S. Francesco belongs to South Italy, but he is a favourite in Sicily because he walked across the Straits of Messina to carry the Last Sacraments to a dying man. On the undulating tiled floor were a few of the rugs peculiar to the neighbourhood. They are made by the natives on looms, the length being thin, strong string and the width white, black and coloured cotton rags—old petticoats, shirts, aprons and so on, washed clean and torn into narrow strips. With a little ingenuity they make the colours go in simple patterns, chiefly diamonds and zigzags; but sometimes they are more daring and attempt drinking-cups, etc.: the most effective are made by running the strips in rows without any regard to pattern.

Some winds blow some clouds away, but the roots of this cloud were so firmly wedged in among the narrow streets and through the cracks of the doors and windows, which would not shut close, that this wind could do nothing with it but blow it more deeply in and the house was full of mist like the Albert Hall in a winter fog. The natives consider it more healthy to keep the same temperature indoors and out, so there is not a house on the mountain with a fireplace, and only a few with stoves. The absence of chimneys is a feature of the town, as it is of other Sicilian towns that can bear their absence better. And these are the people who commiserate an Englishman on being compelled to live in our cold, damp, foggy island! In support of my statement that we do occasionally see the sun, I showed them a picture-postcard of a house in London standing in a garden. It was midday, but we had to have a lamp to see the picture; nevertheless they supposed that the flowers were artificial and were renewed when we had a festa because, of course, real flowers will not grow in our perpetual fog. I told them that our fogs prevent flowers from growing in England just as much as their brigands prevent foreigners from travelling in Sicily, and that both are more spoken of than seen.

It must, however, be admitted that the natives do not appear to suffer from the effects of their climate. They boast that statistics show them to be particularly free from pulmonary complaints, and to have an unusually low death rate. As the doctor said, in a tone of professional discontent, they enjoy an epidemic of good health.

Supper consisted of maccaroni, bread and wine, and the table-cloth and napkins were as damp as one’s towels after a bath. My two friends sat with me and introduced me to a student with a slight cast in one of his melancholy eyes, a misty tenor voice and the facile Italian smile, who had come up from Castelvetrano to study a little philosophy, and supped with me.

When it was bedtime, they all three came with Donna Anna into my bedroom to make sure that I was comfortable and the old landlady took the opportunity of consulting the accountant about the prisoners. Although the inhabitants of the province of Trapani are all good people, nevertheless now and then some slight crime is committed, an occasional wounding, a simple stabbing or so, and consequently it is convenient to have a prison handy. Part of the castle on the mountain is used for the purpose and Donna Anna provides the prisoners with their food and also sees to their sheets, bedding etc. They could not have a better matron and if she keeps everything in the prison as clean and good as it is in her house, I am afraid she may perhaps make the prisoners more comfortable than they deserve.

When she had disposed of her business she asked whether I should like some fire in my bed. I was going to decline, not being in the habit of using a warming-pan, but then I thought of the table-cloth and the napkins at supper—and my friends said that every one on the mountain always has fire in the bed in cold, damp weather—so I agreed, and Donna Anna fetched what looked like a flower-pot containing hot charcoal. She put this between my sheets with a wicker cage over it, and presently shifted its position. I wanted her to leave it all night in a corner of the room to take the chill off, but this met with opposition from all because they did not wish me to be found in the morning asphyxiated in my sleep like a Parisian milliner in a novel. I would have chanced it, had I been allowed, for the milliners always have the greatest difficulty in stopping up all the chinks, and even then occasionally survive; whereas, although Donna Anna pinned up a blanket across my window, it did not keep out the gale that was raging all about the room. The general opinion being against the charcoal, I acquiesced and it was taken back to its home in the kitchen. It was the only fire in the house and was what Dickens would have called an honest and stout little fire. It had cooked the maccaroni for supper and, after warming all the beds, went back to rest from its labour until the morning when it would be called to make the coffee for breakfast. It deserved its rest, not that it dried my sheets, but it warmed them; and the doctor assured me that it is the coldness and not the dampness of wet sheets that gives one a chill, so he considered me practically safe. If only I had had a cold at the time, he said, I should have been completely safe on the principle that one must be off with the old cold before one can be on with the new. Owing, doubtless, to the kindly influence of the good little fire, I passed a comfortable night and took no harm.

When I came down in the morning there was the student immersed in his philosophy; the industrious little fire had obligingly allowed itself to be coaxed into two, and he had secured part of it in a flower-pot on the floor between his feet and had a rug over his knees. The cloud was as thick and the wind as boisterous as it had been the day before, so I followed his example, got another flowerpot, split off a bit of fire for myself and sat down with a rug.

The next morning the cloud had gone and I returned to Trapani. The bus started very early and I had to rise before the sun, but the view would have repaid sitting up all night. We saw Marettimo hovering over Levanzo “on the horizon all highest up in the sea to the West,” as Ithaca is described in the Odyssey. We saw Ustica floating over Cofano and Capo S. Vito. We looked down on Custonaci, the Sanctuary of the Madonna and the great curve of the bay from Cofano to the foot of the mountain. We gazed over the low, undulating country covered with villages, roads, fields and villas that lay all around us on the inland sides—the country through which in 1860 Garibaldi marched to Calatafimi with his thousand volunteers after landing at Marsala. We saw Monte Inice and the heights above Segesta. We saw Pantellaria, halfway to Africa, but we could not see Africa itself for Cape Bon is only visible under very exceptional atmospheric conditions.

I have been on the mountain in the spring and eaten quails for supper. It was the time of their migration, and they had been caught as they rested on the islands. I have never been able to ascertain exactly what it is that the quails do. First I read in a book that when going north in the spring they rest on Levanzo and when returning south in the autumn, on Favognana. Levanzo being north of Favognana this meant that, in both cases, they choose for their resting-place the second island they come to. There is no mistake about this being what I read, for I made a memoria technica about it at the time out of what Rockstro, my old counterpoint master, used to say musicians do in performing the diatonic major scale unaccompanied. In ascending they pass over the grave supertonic and take the acute supertonic, and in descending they pass over the acute supertonic and take the grave supertonic; the two supertonics being only a comma apart, as the two islands are only a very little way from one another.

Then I was told by a native of Trapani that this is just what the quails do not do, and that, in fact, they rest on the first island they come to, namely, on Favognana when going north, and on Levanzo when going south, being too tired to fly across the geographical comma that divides the two islands. I was next told by another native of Trapani that the quails rest on all the three islands indiscriminately and not merely on Levanzo and Favognana, thus destroying any attempt at purity of intonation and introducing equal temperament along with Marettimo, which had not hitherto been touched upon. He also said that if in any year it was found that the quails avoided any one of the islands, the reason would be that there were too many people on it. Finally, I was told by another native that when the quails were going north in the spring of 1906 the wind suddenly changed and blew most of them into Trapani itself, and people picked them up by hundreds in the streets. It does not matter, of course, so long as one gets the quails for supper, but if one really did want to know, one would have as much difficulty as in finding out how Orlando got hold of la Durlindana and where it originally came from.

The student from Castelvetrano was still there with his melancholy eyes, studying philosophy. He said he found the mountain more suitable for his purpose than his native town because it was more tranquil. I had been at Castelvetrano, but had not noticed that it was a particularly noisy place, indeed, I could no more have distinguished between the tranquillity of Castelvetrano and that of the mountain than between the acute and the grave supertonic.

The next time I met this student he had completed his studies and was employed as a clerk in the Italian railway station at Chiasso, the frontier town on the S. Gottardo, at an annual salary of 1,080 lire, which is about £43 4s. He could hardly have been sent to a station more remote from his native town. He had had a holiday of twelve days, and had gone home to embrace his adorata mamma. The government gave him a free pass, so he travelled by rail, crossing from Reggio to Messina, and it took him forty-six hours. When he arrived at Castelvetrano he was so knocked up by the journey and the change of air that he was obliged to go to bed, where he remained till it was time for him to get up and return to Chiasso, and this means that he was in bed for more than a fortnight, because his holiday was extended to twenty days in consideration of his illness. He was quite contented about his position and prospects and told me these facts without any complaint. On the whole, Mount Eryx would appear to be not such a bad school for philosophers: nevertheless, when one considers the large part played in evolution by the inherited desire of the organism to live beyond its income, one may doubt whether it is good for a country’s progress that many of its men should be so philosophically contented with so little. They do not, however, include the whole of the population, for Italy cannot be said to be without examples of aggressive discontent. It is somewhere between the two extremes that practical commonsense should be looked for. In the meantime, if it is a question of sharing a supper of spring quails on Mount Eryx, a peaceful, gentle philosopher is probably a more agreeable companion than a socialistic nihilist.

If one had the power of choosing one’s company, this philosopher would counsel one not to exercise it; for he looks upon choosing as a presumptuous kind of trying to control nature. I pointed out that one cannot altogether detach oneself from nature and that doing nothing is still choosing not to choose, but he replied that it is the lesser evil, as in choosing not to write a tragedy in five acts, which I had to admit can seldom be wrong. Further he asked, inasmuch as we had neither arranged our meeting nor ordered the quails, were we not at the moment both enjoying the advantage of having acted on his philosophy? I bowed and said I had been particularly fortunate this evening; but in Sicily one is always safe because the people are so charming that the art of travelling among them consists in allowing things to happen and in being ready to welcome whatever may come.

Perhaps the best season for going on the mountain is the late summer and early autumn, when the Trapanese come up for the villegiatura. It is not too hot during the day, as it is by the sea, and it can be almost chilly by night, which it never is below. Every one is in a holiday frame of mind; even the ladies of Eryx go out, whereas during the winter they seldom leave the house, unless, perhaps, after a storm for a turn in the balio to see how the trees look when laden with snow. There are picnics and excursions to other places on the slopes of the mountain where friends are passing the summer who presently return the visits by coming up to breakfast with us. There is a touring company performing in the theatre, there is music, there are drives and all manner of quiet amusements.

On the mainland of Italy, tobacconists’ shops display the Royal Arms with a notice that they are licensed to sell tobacco and salt. Here a license is necessary only for tobacco, salt being free in Sicily. This combines with the absence of rain to make the manufacture of salt profitable; but should a thunderstorm dilute the pans, the fresh water must be evaporated out again and time and money are lost. Storms come so rarely in the summer, however, that the caprices of the weather interfere but little either with the salt works or the excursions.

If there is no excursion or no special occupation, we go to the caffÉ or the club, or call on the chemist who is sure to be surrounded by friends, or sit in the balio smoking and talking nonsense by the hour. And there is always the inexhaustible wonder of the great view. The spacious dome of the sky, which curves above and around, unites at the horizon with the inverted dome of the earth and sea, which curves around and below, the two together forming an enormous hollow globe in the midst of which the top of the mountain seems to be suspended like the floating island of Laputa. Conte Pepoli can sit in his castle and watch the half-tame ravens, with little silver bells on their necks, as they flit around the window and perch on the crazy wooden balcony where an old priest is asleep in a chair, over the edge of a precipice of many hundred feet, backed by leagues upon leagues of Sicily.

CHAPTER IX—THE MADONNA AND THE PERSONAGGI

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 more common than they are now.

Usually, in other parts of Italy, the same story is repeated at the same season: in one place, always the Passion at Easter; in another, always the Nativity at Christmas, and so forth. On the mountain they have the procession at irregular intervals, after perhaps three or four years, and the story, though now, as a rule, scriptural, is never the same again. When it does occur, it is as an extra embellishment of the annual harvest thanksgiving; it takes place by night and always introduces the Madonna di Custonaci. And now it is time to say a few words about this famous Madonna, whose influence is felt throughout the whole comune at all times, but nowhere more than on the Mountain, and at no time more than during the harvest thanksgiving.

Mount Eryx, as every one knows, was in classical times famous for the worship of Venus: here stood perhaps the most celebrated of all her temples—the one with which her name is most familiarly associated—and here, long before Horace wrote of “Erycina ridens,” she was worshipped as Aphrodite by the Greeks, and as Astarte or Ashtaroth by the Phoenicians. Hardly any vestige of a temple can now be made out, but the remains of the Pelasgic walls that protected the city in prehistoric ages are still to be seen near the Trapani gate. The late Samuel Butler (author of Erewhon) wrote The Authoress of the Odyssey (Longmans, 1897) in support of his view that the Odyssey was written by a woman who lived at Trapani and upon the mountain, and who in the poem described her own country. In Chapter XII. he quotes Thucydides (vi. 2), to show that the Sicans had inhabited this corner of the island from a very remote period, having come probably from Spain. After the fall of Troy, some of the Trojans, who had escaped the Greeks, migrated to Sicily, settled in the neighbourhood of the Sicans and were all together called Elymi, their cities being Eryx and Segesta. The city walls were originally built by the Sicans, and restored by the Phoenicians when they came to the mountain; on many of the stones the quarrymen’s marks in Phoenician characters are still visible.

It was believed that at certain seasons of the year the goddess left her shrine on the mountain and went over into Africa accompanied by all the pigeons of the neighbourhood, and this was the occasion for a festival of Anagogia. [151] A little later, when the pigeons returned, the goddess was believed to come back with them, and then there was another festival of Catagogia. Seeing that she would have had to go little more than 120 miles in order to reach what is now Cape Bon, and then only to cross the gulf of Tunis to arrive at the Phoenician colony of Carthage, one may suppose it probable that these flittings began when Astarte was in power.

In our own time the Madonna di Custonaci reigns upon the Mountain, and is Protectress of the whole comune. Her sacred picture is normally in her sanctuary down at Custonaci, about 15 kilometres distant, but when any general calamity afflicts the district, it is brought up to the Matrice or Mother Church of the comune on Mount Eryx. On these occasions three days of humiliation are proclaimed, priests and men, their heads crowned with thorns, their necks encircled with cords, go about the town flagellating themselves; in the evening fires are lighted in the balio, and all the villages below answer by lighting fires too, to show that they are taking part in the general tribulation. A document is signed by the sindaco, and then the picture is brought from Custonaci and set over the great altar in the church of the Matrice. When it has become quite clear that the anger of Heaven has been appeased, the picture is taken back to Custonaci.

The calamity that most commonly befalls the comune is a drought, or the fear of a drought. Rain is not wanted while the salt is being made, but as soon as that is all under cover in the autumn it is time for the rain to begin, otherwise the crops will fail. In 1893 the rain was delayed until matters began to look so serious that it was determined to bring the picture up to the mountain. The proper formalities having been observed, the people all went out in crowds to welcome it and, as it was borne along, cried—

“Acqua, Maria, acqua!” (“Rain, Maria, rain!”)

Meanwhile the clouds were gathering and presently a tremendous thunderstorm came on which drenched them all, and they returned to the mountain, shouting—

“Basta, Maria, basta!” (“Leave off, Maria, leave off!”)

The lightning struck the church and injured four persons who were standing near the altar, but the Madonna was already in her place, and owing to her presence they recovered.

The picture, like many of the thaumaturgic representations of the Madonna, is the work of St. Luke the Evangelist—all except the head which was done by an angel who descended from heaven expressly for the purpose. This being so, one would expect to find its home on the top of the very Mountain itself, in the chief place of the comune, and not down at an insignificant little village like Custonaci. Some have thought that to allow the Sanctuary of a Madonna Ericina to take the place of the Temple of Venus Erycina would have been to insist on a parallelism about which it was desirable to say as little as possible. Others believe the real reason why we have a Madonna di Custonaci to be preserved in the following legend. [154]

A French vessel, laden with precious merchandise and also with this still more precious picture, was returning to Marseilles from Alexandria in Egypt, and, while sailing the Sicilian seas, encountered a furious tempest. The more the unhappy mariners laboured to govern their craft, the less they succeeded, and at last, despairing of earthly help, they turned their thoughts to the Madonna. With streaming eyes they knelt before the painting and prayed without ceasing to the Queen of Heaven that she would be graciously pleased to conduct them safely home. For a long time they met with no response, but when they were nearing Cofano, every sailor heard a voice, as though coming from the picture and declaring that the Madonna desired to be landed on the neighbouring coast. Whereupon they bound themselves by a vow that if they reached land in safety they would build a sanctuary then and there in memory of their miraculous preservation. No sooner was the vow uttered than the wind fell, the storm ceased and the surface of the waters became as smooth as polished glass, over which the fortunate bark glided without guidance into harbour—and this to the great astonishment of the crew who observed that her course lay among dangerous shoals and sunken rocks.

The joyful mariners returned thanks to their Blessed Protectress and immediately began to perform their vow; but while disembarking, they found themselves surrounded by a crowd of armed peasants who, taking them for Turkish pirates, ran to the spot with the intention of frustrating their supposed nefarious designs. Mutual explanations averted bloodshed, and the peasants then began to dissuade the sailors from performing their vow in so literal a manner, pointing out that they would be abandoning their precious charge to the risk, if not the certainty, of sacrilegious theft at the hands of the corsairs who frequented that harbour. In the end the simple mariners yielded to the arguments of the peasants, and with many tears consigned the picture to their care. The peasants put it into a cart harnessed with two oxen who started to draw it inland, but would only go in a direction chosen by themselves and, after proceeding two or three kilometres, lay down and by no means could be persuaded to go a step further. This was accepted as an indication of the Madonna’s approval of what had been done and of her desire that her church should be erected there, and on that spot now stands the Sanctuary of Custonaci. The poor sailors, grieving bitterly for the loss of their treasure, returned to the ship and continued their interrupted voyage till they reached Marseilles in safety.

Owing to the culpable negligence of those who ought to have considered it a privilege to be permitted to chronicle the many important miracles which the Madonna performed in honour of the arrival of her picture, we have particulars of only two cures wrought in those times, one on a cripple and the other on a mute. Any one, however, who is disposed to doubt that there were many more has only to visit the sanctuary and take note of the large number of votive pictures there exhibited. Besides, how else could the fame of this wonder-working image have travelled abroad so extensively unless the wonders had been not less numerous than undoubted?

There is uncertainty as to the exact date of the arrival of the picture at the Sanctuary: some give the year 1570; others consider this too late, if only because wills exist dated as far back as 1422 bequeathing gifts to Santa Maria di Custonaci; others say that this need not have anything to do with our Madonna, because there has been a church or chapel at Custonaci dedicated to the Virgin from very early times, and there is nothing to show that these wills do not refer to the earlier Madonna; others believe 1370, not 1570, to be the true date. We should have something to guide us if we could ascertain how often the picture has been transported to the mountain in times of calamity, but here again the culpable negligence of the chroniclers has left us with records of only fifty-one such occasions from the beginning of the 16th century to 1794, viz. five when the pestilence walked by midday, four when the mountains trembled and the earth opened, two when the locusts came without number and devoured the fruits of the ground, four when war clouds gathered in the sky and thirty-six when the autumn rains were delayed.

The disputes extend also to the date of the painting, some even denying that it was painted by St. Luke. But to do this they are obliged to ignore all the considerations which support the orthodox view, viz. the place from which the sailors brought it, the many wonders performed by it, the miraculous preservation of the colouring during all the years that have elapsed since St. Luke’s time, the widespread belief in the efficacy of its powers and lastly the fact that, though many have made the attempt, no artist has yet succeeded in producing a perfect copy of the original.

I asked several people what St. Luke had to do with Alexandria, and was always told that St. Mark’s body was brought from there to Venice in 828, why then should not another of the Evangelists have been there also? Why not indeed? But this reply was as little satisfying as those with which pre-occupied age endeavours to silence inquisitive childhood, and produced much the same sort of result, spurring me on to further investigations.

A musician who desires to compose a tune that shall become popular must contrive something apparently original and yet not so original as to demand study; it must also contain echoes of other tunes previously popular, and yet they must be so indefinite that no one can tell for certain where they come from, which is what we mean when we say it is a wise tune that knows its own father. Similarly, the framers of the foregoing legend had to compose an entirely Christian story, as original as was compatible with the use of the forms of Christian legend, and yet they could not neglect all the pagan traditions with which their public had been impregnated for generations. In the first place the picture must come over the sea—everything that arrives in an island does so; one of the most effective of the common forms in legend is the arrival of a boat with a precious cargo from a distant land, often bringing corn to stay a famine, and every one is now familiar with the opening of Lohengrin. Tunis would not do for the point of departure, not only because it is where pagan Astarte came from when she arrived in Sicily, but also because it had been Moslem since the seventh century and could not have been accepted by the people as a Christian seaport. It is quite likely that the popularity of the St. Mark legend determined the selection of Alexandria, which had the advantage also of being on the coast of the same continent as Tunis. The storm, the vow and the oxen are as much common form in legend as the ship; and the next thing that strikes one is the curious similarity between the alternate domiciles of the Madonna on the mountain and at Custonaci, and the flittings of Venus Erycina to and fro between the mountain and Carthage. If we look upon the arrival of the picture at Custonaci as involving the transplanting of a piece of Africa into Sicily, much as an ambassador’s house is regarded as being part of his own country transplanted into a foreign land, we may then consider that the Madonna, to all intents and purposes, still travels between the Mountain and Africa, only she now has an easier journey and avoids actually dwelling among heretics. In this view the transporting of her picture backwards and forwards should be looked upon as the modern version of the feasts of Anagogia and Catagogia.

It is admitted that the picture has, more than once, been placed in the hands of skilful modern painters whose services have been called in merely to repair any damage it may have sustained in its journeyings—they have had nothing to do therefore with the miraculous preservation of the colouring. What these experts thought about the date of the original painting is known only to themselves. We need not suppose that they agreed—that would have been indeed a miracle and quite a fresh departure for a picture with a reputation earned in a different branch of thaumaturgy. It does not much matter, however, what they thought, for experts in matters of art are the victims of such cast-iron prejudices that if once they fancy they see the influence of Leonardo da Vinci in a picture and take it into their heads that it comes from Piedmont, it will be found the most difficult thing in the world to persuade them that it really was painted in Egypt more than 1000 years before Giotto.

We shall probably not be far wrong if we assume that something like the processions of the Personaggi, involving the display of the most beautiful men and women that could be found, took place on the mountain in heathen times as part of the cult of the goddess and that, as a compromise, they were not abolished but accommodated to Christian usages.

Giuseppe PitrÈ, in his Feste Patronali in Sicilia, gives an account of the procession on the mountain held in 1752. We are to suppose that the wickedness of the good people of Eryx had attained to such monstrous proportions that the whole universe, incited thereto by observing the anger of God against them, took up arms in the cause of justice. The Madonna di Custonaci, however, intervened and saved her chosen people. It began with the Wrath of God, personified by a warrior armed with thunderbolts and lightning and setting forth to destroy the mountain. Then came the Angry Heavens, the Benignant Moon, Mars and Mercury ready to avenge the outrages done to God; Jove grasping a thunderbolt and about to hurl it against the comune, Venus anxious to overthrow the city, and Saturn whetting his golden scythe. The Sun is obscured, the Four Winds blow terribly, the Four Elements assist in the work of desolation, the Four Seasons threaten misery and affliction. Mount Eryx being convinced by this display that it is in a great danger, the Genius of the city appears next, bearing in his hand a figure of the Madonna di Custonaci. He calls to his assistance Divine Counsel, Devotion, Beneficence and Piety, and the procession closes with the Guardian Angel.

It must have been a magnificent spectacle. Many clouds have rested on Mount Eryx since 1752 and we do not now expose our bedrock of paganism quite so openly. This, indeed, but for the slight veneer of Christianity, might have passed for a downright pagan procession.

In 1894, L’Aurora Consurgens della Cantica was the subject. There were twelve figures showing the growth of idolatry and culminating with the Emperor Julius CÆsar who, it will be remembered, accepted worship as a god; moreover, his death having occurred not half a century before the birth of Christ, he was naturally followed by the Aurora, symbolizing the Madonna di Custonaci, and the explanatory pamphlet contained a reference to the Song of Solomon vi. 10: “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?” After the Aurora came the Rising Sun, Faith, Christian Civilization, Mount Eryx, Charity and Youth—meaning, probably, that Christianity will never grow old. In conclusion came a car with a copy of the sacred picture and a chorus of youths.

It would seem that the personages formerly appeared on foot, for the earliest record states that in 1750 they appeared for the first time on horseback. In 1897 the subject was Jael, and the cavalcade consisted of eight figures, of whom Deborah, seated in the shade of a palm tree surrounded with a chorus of damsels, Jael in the tent with Sisera nailed to the ground, and Triumph, appeared on cars, each of the others being on horseback and the horses being led by grooms suitably attired. A nocturnal procession, whether the figures go on foot, on horseback, or on cars, does not strike one as being a particularly favourable medium for the telling of a story. Nevertheless, by choosing a subject with which the people are more or less familiar, by emphasizing the climax and by providing an explanatory pamphlet for 2d., a more satisfactory result is produced than one would have supposed probable, as I realized when I saw the procession in August, 1901. The sacred picture had been on the mountain since 1893, an unusually long time, and was now to be taken back to the sanctuary at Custonaci, which, during its absence, had been beautified “in the Gothic style.” The two events of the Procession and the Return synchronizing, there was a double festa, lasting four days on the mountain and four days more at Custonaci.

CHAPTER X—THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE

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 begun. At 8.30 the band entered the Matrice, and before Mass the sacred picture was unveiled, the band saluting it with a burst of music. Much may be done in music by allusion and suggestion. The service concluded with an extremely graceful movement in six-eight time, that drove the Madonna out of the mind of at least one listener and substituted a vision of laughing girls swaying lightly to the rhythm and singing of the dancing waves whose foam gave birth to Venus.

When the church emptied we got a better view of the picture. It is about 6 ft. high by 3 broad, painted in oils on wood prepared with gesso, and represents a smiling Madonna with the Child at her breast. She is seated on a throne in a landscape; two angels hold over her head a massive golden crown; the Child is crowned also and in His hand are three ears of corn, to signify fruitfulness; He also holds the keys. The crowns are really only half-crowns, but they are gold or silver-gilt, and are fastened into the wood of the picture. All round the Madonna’s nimbus is a raised band of gold set with twelve diamond stars, valued at 14,000 lire. A large diamond earring hangs in her right ear, the only one that is visible; three large diamond rings are on the fingers of her right hand and one on the finger of her left which supports the Child, and suspended all over her skirts is an immense quantity of jewellery. The frame is of wood entirely coated with silver, in the form of a Renaissance doorway with a fluted column on each side and a broken pediment over the top. It is almost concealed by the jewellery hung about it, earrings, chains, necklaces, rings, watches etc. These are offerings from the faithful, but what is shown is nothing like all. There is a large chest containing much more and what has been given this year is exposed in a separate case. These valuables constitute the Madonna’s dowry and she carries it with her on her journeys; but some of the more important articles never leave the mountain; her diamond stars, for instance, are removed from the picture when it goes down, and their place is taken by less valuable stars of gold.

In the afternoon there were horse-races outside the Trapani gate on a fairly level piece of road, and a concert and illumination in the balio in the evening.

In the course of the day I bought a copy of the explanatory pamphlet. Its title was L’Arca Noetica. Simbolo Mariano. Processione notturna figurativa (I Personaggi) in omaggio alla Diva di Custonaci Celeste Patrone degli Erecini. Ultimo LunedÌ d’Agosto, 1901. It was to be a procession of cars, there were to be no figures on horseback. Having introduced cars, as in Jael, to give special importance to the three points of the story, viz. the opening, the climax, and the conclusion (or, as the pamphlet expressed it, Causa, Consequenza e Termine), it was, no doubt, felt that more could be done with them than with single figures on horseback in presenting the somewhat intractable subject of Noah’s Ark and the Universal Deluge.

The preparations had taken a month or six weeks. The course is for the arciprete of the Matrice, who is the head of the clergy of the district, to determine what the story shall be and how it is to be told. The designing of each personaggio, or of each group of personaggi, is then confided to one of the inhabitants, who, provided he bears in mind the general scheme, is free to follow his natural artistic instincts. The dresses are hired from Palermo, and an astonishing quantity of jewellery is lent by the families of the comune; in 1897 the personaggi carried 85 lbs. weight of it, and far more is always lent than can possibly be used. It is all gold and precious stones, no silver is to be seen, and nothing is ever lost, stolen, or mislaid; even the thieves become honest on these occasions. It is sewn on to the dresses in various designs and makes them look very rich, so that what is hired from Palermo is only the costumes in the rough, so to speak.

In wandering about the town next day, I came upon four or five of the cars lurking in obscure churches where they had been prepared. It was not easy to make much of them; there were a few rocks, banks and clouds, also the waters of the deluge, all made of papier machÉ painted to appear real, and in among the rocks and banks were real plants, mostly the dwarf palm which grows plentifully on the mountain. There were wooden supports for the figures, to help them to stand in their places. Each car carried under it an apparatus to supply it with acetylene gas, used in 1901 for the first time.

All day long people kept on coming up the mountain and pouring into the town. Those who did not come on foot left their carts and horses outside, and they all swarmed up through the narrow, irregular, roughly paved streets from the Trapani gate to the balio, till by nightfall the Piazza was as crowded as Piccadilly on Mafeking night. Every one who has been present at an Italian festa knows what it is like—men shouting and elbowing their way through the people with flaming lamps fitted to their baskets, selling water and syrups, cakes and confectionery, melon seeds and peanuts—others going about with halfpenny buttonholes of gelsomina, each neatly folded up in a vine-leaf to keep the scent in—three independent piano-organs and a brass band in the middle distance—an enthusiastic blind singer, a survival of Demodocus in the Odyssey, with a falsetto voice and no bridge to his nose keeping a group of listeners spellbound in the foreground with their favourite ballad, illustrated by a large sheet of oil paintings in eight tableaux, about the man who murdered his wife and mother with one bloody knife—there it is lying on the supper-table—and was ultimately taken by the carabinieri and executed.

This blind singer with no bridge to his nose is a humorist; on one occasion when he was fibbing in a particularly flagrant manner, he enforced his remarks by calling upon heaven to strike him blind and smash his nose if he was not speaking the truth.

While you are thinking that the tumult must be at its height, peaceful nuns are creeping up the convent stair, silently, one by one, they reach the roof, every one can see them collecting together in the moonlight and taking hold of the dangling bell-ropes. All of a sudden you realize what a mistake you had been making about the tumult as the riotous bells fling their additional accompaniments out into the night, all over the town, over the whole comune, down to Trapani, to Cofano and out to the islands.

In the meantime those in charge of the cars had been giving their final directions and seeing that everything was in order, and the personaggi, who had been being dressed ever since early in the afternoon, were ready to receive visitors. About 10 p.m. each of them began to hold an At Home. They sat there silent and motionless in their houses among trays full of superfluous jewellery and surrounded by lighted candles, gazing imperturbably in front of them while people streamed through the room admiring them, fingering their dresses and jewels, and asking questions of their relations and friends. About 11.30 I was conducted along the illuminated streets through the crowd to a house where I stood on a balcony looking up a street down which the procession was to come.

We had to wait till long after midnight, but at last the moving lights began to shine on the high houses in the distance, the band was heard approaching, and at 1.45 the first car staggered into sight. It represented The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men; there were three of each, reclining in the front part of the car and offering flowers to one another, instigated so to do by the Monster of Iniquity, a loathsome dragon, who was insinuating himself among them from rocks behind, while the Angel of the Lord, a singularly beautiful child, stood on a high cloud in the background, in an attitude of horror, about to take wing from such a world of wickedness. Cupid was there also, sitting at the feet of the daughters of men and taking aim generally.

The second car brought Sin, a bearded man in an imperial attitude with a golden sceptre resting on his hip. He dominated a globe round which the old Serpent had coiled himself. He was dressed in dark-blue velvet, and wore a voluminous red cloak. On his breast was a bunch of grapes, made entirely of diamond rings; each grape was a separate ring isolated from the others and so sewn on that the hoop, being passed through a hole in the material, was not visible, and only the rose of diamonds was displayed. There were fifty-five grapes, and they sparkled and glittered in the flickering lights as the car lurched down the street and passed the balcony.

The third car represented The Voice of God, a beautiful figure of an Angel blowing a trumpet, and the words written on the cloud behind were “Delebo hominem.” In the front of the car sat a youth and a girl holding hands to represent the wicked population destined to destruction.

Then The Universal Deluge came pitching and tossing round the corner—rather an ambitious car. The foreground was occupied by the water, with the head of a drowning man throwing up his arms, and the indication of another entirely submerged. The waves were beating against a steep bank up which a tigress was climbing, carrying her cub in her mouth. On the top of the bank stood a lovely woman endeavouring to save her terrified child. She was the only living figure on the car, everything else, even the terrified child, being of papier machÉ.

The Ark came on the fifth car and had no living figure at all, being merely Noah’s Ark resting on Mount Ararat with a dove in front. This may sound rather uninteresting and as though designed to support home industries, but, to the initiated, it palpitated with significance, for it symbolized the Madonna herself, the only means of salvation from the waters of punishment; and as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat while the flood subsided, so does the Madonna di Custonaci rest upon Mount Eryx while the calamity is stayed.

No. 6 was The Sacrifice and represented Noah, an imposing old man with long white hair and beard, standing at an altar where a real sheep lay dead under a net and his three sons were in front praying.

No. 7 was The Rainbow, another lovely girl as an angel standing between a bank of clouds and a rainbow. On the breast of this figure was worked in jewels Noah’s dove with an olive-branch; this was particularly appropriate, as it happens also to be the badge of the town.

The procession was closed by a long car carrying first a band of musicians, then a chorus of youths attired as angels and crowned with roses, the whole backed by a sort of temple front framing a copy of the sacred picture. This car had to stand still from time to time while its occupants performed music composed specially for the occasion, and the continual stopping dictated the movements of the other cars and was signalled to them by bells, so that there might always be about the same space between them.

The cars were drawn by men and the figures made no attempt to stand rigidly still—anything of the kind would have been out of the question, for they must have been on the move between five and six hours. The last car passed my balcony at 3.30, an hour and three-quarters after the first had come into sight, and one could tell the next day that they had been through nearly the whole town, for hardly a street was safe to walk in—they were all so slippery with the wax that had dropped from the candles. The constant moving of their limbs by the figures, though they never lost the general idea of the attitude, together with the tottering motion caused by the roughness of the paving, prevented any sense of the pose plastique or living picture.

Every one of the female figures, except The Voice of God, had her breast encrusted with jewels, usually in a floral design, and the borders of their dresses were heavy with jewellery; the male figures also wore as much as could be suitably sewn on their costumes.

Omitting consideration of the final car, which was there to close the procession and bring on the music and the Madonna, and also of the Ark, which could hardly have been otherwise, there were six cars, three carrying groups and three practically single figures, for the boy and girl at the feet of The Voice of God, though they were the children of Donna Anna, my landlady, were not really necessary. Of the groups, the one representing The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men was certainly the finest. It told its story in the right way and was full of the right kind of imagination. The Sacrifice was next best, and owed much to the extreme dignity of the principal figure. I should have liked The Flood better if it had had more living figures and less papier machÉ, though I am not ashamed to admit that I have no idea how this could have been done. Shakespeare himself, who apologizes for trying to make a cockpit hold the vasty fields of France, might have been excused for not attempting to decant The Universal Deluge into a receptacle scarcely bigger than a costermonger’s barrow. Of the three remaining cars, Sin was beyond comparison the finest both in conception and execution. Perhaps he would have looked the part more obviously if he had had more of a once-aboard-the-lugger expression on his kind and gentle face; on the other hand, the designer of this car may have intended that Sin is most successful in seducing the righteous when he appears with nothing repulsive in his aspect. The other two were merely just what they should have been—ordinary business cars, so to speak. Had these three single figures appeared on horseback with grooms to lead them, as in former times, the procession would have gained in variety and the importance of the groups on the cars would have been emphasized.

But this is a small matter. The procession as it was, with its car after car jolting along under an August full moon, the sparkling of the jewels, the flashing of the torches, the blazing of the gas, the beauty of the figures and the immense multitude of reverent worshippers made up a scene never to be forgotten. The impressiveness was deepened by the knowledge that this Mountain, where Astarte, Aphrodite and Venus have all reigned in turn, is also a place where much that has helped to mould the poetry and history of the world has happened since the Sicans first girded it with its megalithic cincture. Added to this was the conviction that for many and many an age some such procession has been winding through these narrow, irregular streets, the form changing, but the intention remaining ever the same—Praise to the Giver of the Increase.

The programme for the next day contained nothing till 5 p.m., when there were more horse-races, then Vespers in the Matrice, brilliantly illuminated; after dusk fireworks outside the Trapani Gate, and at night a concert in the illuminated balio.

In the afternoon of Wednesday, the 28th, a procession of fifty-nine mules and horses passed through the town. Each animal was accompanied by its owner, a peasant of the comune, and was loaded with bags of grain, an offering for the Madonna. This grain was to be sold and, in the mean time, was estimated to be worth 2500 lire. About 1500 lire was collected during the festa, partly at the church doors and partly in the value of unused wax candles, and the municipio gave 1000, so that altogether the receipts were about 5000 lire. Against this the expenses of the festa were expected to amount to about 4000 lire, and the balance will go towards the expenses of the next.

CHAPTER XI—THE RETURN

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. another procession started. First came the band to clear the way, then a man beating a drum; this is a feature of Sicilian processions and is said to date from the time when the Saracens had possession of the island; it continues as long as the procession lasts, which may be for hours, and produces an unexpected effect. There is so much else going on that after a time you forget to notice it. But you have not really got away from it; you are being unconsciously saturated, and after the festa is over you become aware that you are suffering from a surfeit of drum; the rhythm runs in your head and keeps you awake at night; when you go out of doors you expect to hear it in the distance; when you turn a corner you listen for it, and as it is not there you find yourself listening for it all the more anxiously. But this wears off after two or three days.

Behind the drum came peasants walking two and two, carrying candles and an occasional banner; then the Society of the Misericordia, wearing those mysterious dresses that cover them entirely from head to foot, with holes for the eyes; then priests and men with lamps, and, lastly, the sacred picture out of the Matrice, carried by men, the whole frame quivering with its fringes of jewellery. Every few yards the procession stopped, partly to rest the bearers and partly to give the crowd an opportunity of seeing the picture.

Every church that lay on the route was lighted up and not till long past midnight, when the picture had been taken into each one of them to pay a farewell visit, was it carried back to the Matrice.

On Thursday, 29th, the day appointed for transporting the picture back to Custonaci, there was early Mass in the Matrice, where there was not nearly room for all the people, and after Mass a short sermon. The preacher contrasted the sadness of the present occasion with the joy of that happy day in 1893 when the Madonna had come to dwell among them, bringing the rain with her. He told them of her love for her people, of all she had done for them, of all they owed her and of how deeply she entered into the life of each one of them. He reminded them that the first name they had been taught to lisp at their mother’s knee was Maria; that she to whom they raised their prayers in time of tribulation was Maria; that the one they blessed for benefits received was always Maria. And now her gracious presence was to depart from her beloved Mountain; the time had come to utter the last farewell. Here the preacher spoke a few words so touching in their eloquence that all the women and most of the men burst into tears and made no attempt to conceal their emotion.

It would not occur to an Englishman to weep because a picture is taken from one place to another. Not so long ago quite a number of pictures were taken and put away in the Tate Gallery, and yet London looked stolidly on and not a tear was shed. Had one been shed, it would have been laughed at; and had only one or two of the congregation in the Matrice been so powerfully affected, it might have passed unnoticed, but the simultaneousness and spontaneity of their almost hysterical grief was very impressive, and no one could have had any idea of laughing who saw the weeping crowd that accompanied the Madonna out of the church while the band played a funeral march. She was carried on men’s shoulders, her face constantly turned towards the town, through the Trapani gate and down the road to the little church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, while the drum went in front, filling the air with the mournfulness of its perpetual rhythm. As the picture passed among the people one of the women cried out—

“See how pale the face of the Madonna has become; it is with sorrow to leave the Mountain.”

Another lifted up her voice and prayed that it might not be long before a calamity befell the comune—as that it might not rain till December, for example—in order that she might soon return. The bearers stopped at the little church, where a large chest had been prepared in which she was to repose during the rest of the journey, and the people’s grief culminated as the chest received her out of their sight.

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake tells us that, when the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with him, he asked, “Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so make it so?” and Isaiah replied, “All poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.” Certainly most of the Ericini are capable of a firm persuasion of something and probably, if Blake could have visited them at a time when the Madonna was going away from the mountain or coming back to it, he would have agreed that the age of imagination still lingers in this classic spot.

Those who did not accompany the picture beyond Santa Maria delle Grazie now proceeded to the balio, and the beating of the drum floated up continuously as the chest, followed by an immense crowd on foot, in carts, and on horseback, was carried down the zigzags and along the winding road to Custonaci. In many places booths had been erected, where wine and bread were given freely to all while the bearers rested. At other points were pulpits, and here they stopped to listen to a short sermon. A crowd had come out from Paparella to meet and join the throng, other crowds from Fico, Ragosia, Crocevia, Palazzolo and the other villages forming the comune, were waiting at various points along the road. From the balio the whole journey was visible, except when the windings of the road hid part of the crowd, and, with the help of glasses, the arrival at the sanctuary could be seen distinctly at about 5 p.m., nearly nine hours after the morning start. On ordinary occasions the journey takes about three hours. In the evening there were fireworks and illuminations at Custonaci and bonfires in many of the other villages.

When the picture is on the mountain it is the custom for the women of the town to go to the Matrice in the evening to pray. When it is at Custonaci they go to the balio, where a stone prie-Dieu has been built for them from which they can see the sanctuary. Here they will go and pray every evening until such time as the next calamity brings the picture up among them again.