Sicilian Vespers

“ Beaten, not rung, they clamor with the maddening insistence of fiends until the ear rebels and no longer notices their angry tumult. One tradition has it that there is not a bell-clapper in the island, for the returning French took the iron tongues away after the Massacre of the Vespers, to keep the people from ringing alarms. But the ingenious Sicilian found that he could make much more noise with a hammer, and though six hundred years and more have rolled by, he is still so tickled with the racket that he seems each time to be trying to break all previous records. ”

“ Sixteen years later, in 1282, the French paid dearly for their oppression in the terrible massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, when they were exterminated throughout the island.
Then the Sicilians invited Don Pedro de Aragón, the son-in-law of Manfred, their last Norman king, to rule them; and the Aragonese dynasty, with varying fortunes, lasted until 1409, when it became extinct, and Sicily was attached to Spain and governed by Spanish viceroys. Never did a government care less for its subjects ”

“ It was from there that in the Middle Ages, when the French ruled the island, a vesper bell had tolled the signal for the inhabitants to rise and fall upon their cruel masters in a massacre that was known ever afterwards as "The Sicilian Vespers."
"Bells have never been rung in Sicily since," said Douglas, then as Dulcie's eyebrows went up in amazed contradiction he explained: "They are never really rung here. In most countries the bells swing backwards and forwards, but in our churches they are quite steady, and only the clapper moves about inside the bell." ”

“ This tale sounds too remarkable to be invented. Yet it is in fact only a variant of a myth localised also in Sicily, and doubtless in many other places. 318 The Palermo version is worth noting. It is a pendant, of course quite unhistorical, to one of the traditions of the Sicilian Vespers. After the massacre, the Pope laid an interdict on Sicily. The churches were closed and the bells silent. The people could not live so; something must be done. So they built a ship, and a group of gentlemen went on board, carrying with them all the silver cups and dishes which they possessed. ”

“ The beginning of the thirteenth century sees the break-up of the Norman power, and Sicily transferred to the empire; one of the more notable facts of this transfer being the removal of sixty thousand Saracens to Nocera, in the south of Italy. Saracen, however, though it means Mahometan, by no means, necessarily, means Arab. Then we have the dominion of the French, ending with the Sicilian Vespers, and the death of eight thousand of them. Catalonians, Genoese, Modern Greeks, and Albanians (?) complete the list of the elements of intermixture in Sicily ”

“ The rising spread to the city, where the republic was proclaimed, and then through the rest of the island; thousands of French men, women and children were butchered (there may be some exaggeration in the wholesale character of the slaughter) , and by the end of April the whole of Sicily was in the hands of the rebels. Charles at once led an expedition against the Sicilians and besieged Messina ”

“ Carven slabs from the temple friezes—what a story they tell of the primitive and ardent culture of the early Greeks perched upon their twin hills at Selinus, beside the sounding deep! One whole hall is lined with them, arranged symmetrically in series, speaking even to-day with the voice of that mystic lore which, to understand, reveals ancient Sicily. And though individual carvings excel them in precision and beauty, as a series denoting the exact progress of Greek Sicilian art from its crudest to its most perfected form, the metopes are unsurpassed. ”

“ The evening was sunny and still, the air serene, and the sea calm, except around the rock of Scylla. The green Sicilian shore rose up, clearly and distinctly, from the azure ocean; and the sails of the Amphion, the Electra, the Glatton, the Pompey, and all our numerous war-ships which studded the Straits, shone white as snow in the sunbeams; while Sicilian gun-boats, slave-galleys, and xebecques dotted the sea between: the cloudless sky and the range of hills which terminates at the Faro, formed the background. ”

“ It is an important matter. Do you wish the Sicilians, both in their public and private capacity, to be considered friends to you, or enemies? If enemies, what is to become of you? Whither will you free for refuge? On what will you depend? Just now you repudiated the greater part of the agriculturists, most honourable and wealthy men, both Sicilians and Roman citizens. Now, what will you do about the Sicilian cities? Will you say that the Sicilians are friendly to you? ”

“ He was very handsome, with a glowing, sun-warmed beauty, like one of his own Sicilian fruits. He was but twenty-three years of age; his heart was warm, and his head was hot. He said to her:
'Maiden, where I come from the land is beautiful as the sea is; the shores laugh; the hills are rich as a mother's breasts for her first-born; men and women live on fruit and wine, and song and love; yet not in my own Sicilia did ever I see so handsome a maiden as art thou!'
And this he said in his own soft amatory Sicilian tongue, which is like the flow of honey from the lip of a ewer of gold. ”

“ Banker though he is, the good gentleman has ideas above mere money-making, and if you are content to sit at his feet in the big, dim counting-room—which smells of cheese and wine, of garlic and rubber-stamp ink—you can learn much about the Sicilian problem, which is as perplexing to the Italian Government as the Irish bogy is to Downing Street. ”

“ Last of all the great molders of Sicily came the Normans, knights who with their keen blades carved a slice out of the Byzantine Empire on the Italian mainland and, conquering the Sicilian Muslims, built up a kingdom for themselves. Sicily’s period of greatest glory dawned with their conquest. They developed a splendid fabric of feudalism; and all the arts as well as the more usual graces of civilization stamped the new kingdom for their own. The very Italian language, as Dante himself acknowledges, had its feeble beginnings in the court of the Emperor Frederick II at Palermo. ”

“ There is always the vendetta in Sicily. If you had been a Sicilian, and treated me as you did, even my brother would have sent a man to kill you. He would not have fought you: a Sicilian when he is injured does not wish to risk himself or give his enemy a chance—he wishes to be revenged. ”

“ We have little, but we have honour. The man to whom this knife belonged has neither, and against him, and such as he, we warn women like yourself, who are young, beautiful, and honest. These words are not written to the incomparable artist, the matchless singer, the wonder of Sicily, and the pride of the nation. They are addressed to you—simply as Aliandra Basili, an honourable Sicilian maiden, the daughter of an honest Sicilian notary. It is known to us all that you have put your faith and trust in Tebaldo Pagliuca. ”

“ They got ashore safely, in spite of the Bourbons’ cruisers, and before they left for Calatafimi Garibaldi posted his now famous proclamation claiming Sicily for King Victor Emmanuele.
Of course there are a cathedral, Punic and Christian tombs, the remains of ancient walls and harbor works, latomie and so on, but to-day Marsala really spells only—Wine! The largest and most important establishments are those of the Englishmen Ingham and Woodhouse, and the Sicilian Florio of Palermo. But there are numerous others not so well known nor doing so large a business. ”

“ Thus at last a single man put the period to the island’s troubled history, ended definitely her ambitions for individual greatness and made her an important part of a greater and more powerful whole.
So it is clear that there has never been a Sicilian nation, nor has there ever been even a Sicilian language; but every great race that dwells about the Mediterranean at some time has had a part in Sicily’s story, and each race in its turn has left an indelible imprint upon language and customs, upon architecture and people. Here one sees a pure Greek face of classic beauty ”

“ The tendency is marked in all primitive peoples—a large part of the Sicilians are still primitive—to tell an inquirer the thing they suppose he most wishes to know; and the Saracenic blood in the Sicilian has doubtless left him a certain heritage of poetic imagination and exaggeration for the most utter commonplaces of life. At any rate, this inclination is found throughout the island, and it does not, except to the flustered tourist-in-a-hurry, seem a peculiar drawback or fault. Indeed, it rather adds to the fascination of the people, who appear to fit perfectly into their environs. ”

“ Palermo is a prosperous city, doing much business in the export of wine, oranges, lemons, and sulphur. Its prosperity is due to the enterprise of some Scotch merchants. Left to themselves the Sicilians would do little. "Our people are not like yours," said a Sicilian to me, "they have no courage." He meant business enterprise. Sicily has come through many changes and suffered from the domination of many masters. In Roman days it was the granary of Italy. ”

“ No poet is more determined to deal out his compliments in a liberal, open-handed way than is the Sicilian. While the Venetians and the Tuscans are content with claiming seven distinctive beauties for the object of their affection, the Sicilian boldly asserts that his bedda possesses no less than thirty-three biddizzi. ”

“ The Sicilians are not courageous, but they are desperate. The regiment of Highlanders which carried the day on the Heights of Abraham, and so won Quebec and won Canada, could defeat the whole population of Sicily on a level plain. But the knowledge that they have this power, and that their vengeance would come like an act of God on the following day, would not deter a Sicilian from slaughtering stragglers. [Pg 323] An army of Sicilians would not stand for a moment against the vehement bayonets and claymores; but the Sicilian will always strike when he has the power, undeterred by consequences. ”

“ One feature of the Sicilian landscape greatly struck the Ingletons.
"There are no cottages scattered about like we have in England," remarked Lilias. "Do the people who work in the fields all live in these little towns on the tops of hills? Why don't they have their homes close to their work?"
"It's an old Sicilian custom," explained Signor Trapani. ”

“ Sicilians vie with Cantonese as the most migrating people in the world. Sicily, like Canton, is overpopulated and poverty-ridden. Another, more important factor, appears to be that at every change of government, Mafistas were forced into flight and exile in droves. They settled and colonized all over the earth. There are huge Sicilian colonies spread around Europe, in England, South America, North Africa, the Orient and the United States. ”

“ When a Sicilian is feeling well, his “Good morning, sir!” sounds like “Spartacus to the gladiators.” When anyone addresses you as though murder were contemplated, with yourself as the victim, be easy. It is most likely to be a polite wish for a pleasant journey, delivered with characteristic Latin fervor and inflection. Our first morning in Taormina, a wild looking peasant beauty bearing upon her shapely head a huge dripping amphora, stopped us with uncouth gestures and a laugh so eldritch it startled us. ”

“ Not so much can be said for the servants, for the Sicilian accepts dirt as a thing given of God and therefore not to be too severely quarreled with under any circumstances; yet he does his best to live up to the finicky notions of the foreigner who, to his unprejudiced eye, is so jaundiced. And the Sicilian’s best, in his efforts to please the stranger, is a very warm-hearted and genial best indeed, full of cheery smiles, of the utmost willingness to fetch and carry, of entire devotion, sometimes to the point of doing actual violence for his patron. ”

“ Real civilization in Sicily dates from neither of those races, but from Dorian and Ionic Greeks, who came perhaps as early as the founding of Rome—that is, in the seventh or eighth century B.C. The great cities of the Sicilian Greeks were Syracuse, Segesta and Girgenti, where still survive colossal remains of their genius. In military and political senses, the island for 3,000 [Pg ix] years has been overrun, plundered and torn asunder by every race known to Mediterranean waters. ”

“ There has never been a Sicilian nation. Perhaps that is the reason the story of the island is so hard to follow, it’s all snarled up with the history of first one, then another nation. The most obvious way of learning something about Sicily is to read what historians have to say about it; a pleasanter way is to listen to what the poets from Homer to Goethe have sung of it, paying special heed to Theocritus—he knew Sicily better than anybody else before his time or since! ”

“ The natural resources of Sicily and its fortunate position, as the entrepôt of the Eastern and Western Mediterranean, were the means of enriching its people beyond that of any territory of equal area known in any age. The harbors of Palermo and Syracuse were constantly crowded with shipping. Sicilian merchantmen were to be encountered in every European port ”

“ A purely commercial civilization is dangerous.
Just as the good go to heaven, it is supposed, sometime, the painters, poets, people who have given me greatest pleasure, go to Sicily.
Pedro-Emilio Coll, that delightful Venezuelan, writes about it. He says: The king starts out to enjoy himself—meaning Blanco-Fombona. For pleasure he went to Palermo to dwell a time under the azure shell of the Sicilian sky confronting an azure sea. Coll goes on to say that ever afterward, Fombona experienced something like homesickness for Sicily. ”