carnival

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.