The whole village is being closed and I've just moved the landrover into the vicolo to look fierce in front of the garden gate.
The Committee turned up yesterday evening with the flags to hang from the windows (not enough, so I'll put them on the first floor). They're banners really, rather than flags I suppose, it's the same word in Italian.
It is really quite an ancient festivity; there are records from the 13th century of men dressing as women, women as men and swaggering about giving orders, free drink and vast pails of pasta being offered by the local landowners, cooked in vessels borrowed from the local madhouse.
Mad house it became after a few days of that; it got out of hand year after year - total licentiousness only supressed by the start of Lent. And sometimes Lent was not enough and soldiers had to be sent from Arezzo.
Eventually it was suppressed - more soldiers for little outbursts of carnivalism for a few years, but down it went around the late 1400s.
The Church was pleased as there was mock religiosity as well; the arrival of the king, inflammatory speeches about enjoyment and choice, then a mock funeral at his death with open coffin carried through the village and the revellers as the mourners.
Its revival has the local priest in a sulk, refusing to ring the bells (for which relief....) but some remarkably fine costumes; over 190 figures walk now, the women are men, and the men are women; there is free wine and pasta again too, though the mad house is no more. I could not say about the other carnival practices. All the figures are masked. And Lewes itself would be jealous of the burning of the king.
6 comments:
what no bells?! how can we make the priest sulk more often?
and why isn't this post written in the style of robertson davies?
Lenna. I mentioned dithering over alphabetizing names. And I'm not up to 'd' yet anyway, never mind 'r'.
Sulking priests is too good a post title to comment on now.
Just stop for a second to think about what you said: "over 190 figures walk now". This is all they are doing, "walk". This is what turns what should be a jolly event into a cadaveric watch. Even corpses could jump, dance, talk, à la saint-saens, but just walk? that's death alright, can't somebody kick them in the sheens until they actually move in an interesting fashion rather than simply walk to their lemmings extinction???
The only way to make priests sulk is to drink their wine, steal their ham and salami, take their collection money before they can pocket it, laugh in their face and kick them where it hurts.
You'll be an anti-clerical in the full, continental European meaning of the term then.
It is true that if they are argued with and heading for defeat they don't sulk, they anathematize.
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