Diversions in Sicily, by H. Festing Jones

This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler.

DIVERSIONS IN
SICILY

by
HENRY FESTING JONES

LONDON: A. C. FIFIELD  1920

First Published . . . 1909
Re-issued . . . 1920

TO
ENRICO PAMPALONE

My dear Enrico,

Your father and I, sitting one summer night on the terrace at Castellinaria watching the moon on the water, agreed that this book might be dedicated to you, although you have not yet put it into my power to ask your permission.

“After all,” exclaimed your father, “what is existence?”  And I was unable to give him a satisfactory reply.

When Orlando and his Paladins were overcome at Roncisvalle through the treachery of Gano di Magonza, were they all slain?  When “the Crusaders’ streams of shadowy

midnight troops sped with the sunrise,” did none linger?  When the angel carried up to heaven the soul of Guido Santo, did he never fight another battle?  The young men of your island hardly think so; their thoughts and actions are still coloured by the magnificent language and the chivalrous exploits of Christian and Turk.  As long as there is an imaginative shoeblack in the Quattro Canti working for pennies by day, so long will those pennies be paid for the story to be told by night in the marionette theatre.  Often will Angelica recover her ring, and as often be robbed of it again; often will the ghostly voice of Astolfo, imprisoned in a myrtle upon Alcina’s magic isle, reveal the secret of his woe; often will Rinaldo drink of the Fountains of Hatred and of Love, and, forgetful of the properties of those waters, return and drink once more.

And what of those other and less heroic figures—the brigadier and his guards

gambling among the ruins of Selinunte, the ingenious French gentleman classifying the procession at Calatafimi, Micio buying his story-books and chocolate at Castellinaria, and many another whom I should like to think you will some day meet, palely wandering up and down these pages?

To pursue the subject might disincline you ever to take leave of the world of the unborn, whereas I am desirous of making your acquaintance as soon as possible.  Let me, then, rather assure you that life is not all marionettes and metaphysics, and that I know of no reason why you should not at once enter upon an existence as real as that enjoyed by your dear father or your beautiful mother—it would be unbecoming in a son to expect more.  Castellinaria is waiting to welcome you.  You could not have a more delightful birthplace than your native town, or more charming compatriots than your fellow-townspeople.  Only resemble

your parents, and you will never regret having hastened the day when I shall be entitled to sign myself

Your affectionate Godfather,
HENRY FESTING JONES.

NOTE

Chapters VIII–XI have been enlarged and re-written since August, 1903, when they appeared as A Festa on Mount Eryx in The Monthly Review.  I have to thank Mr. John Murray for kindly giving me permission to reprint them here.

A few sentences in Chapter XIII have been taken from a pamphlet I wrote and had printed for private circulation in 1904, entitled: Diary of a Journey through North Italy to Sicily in the spring of 1903, undertaken for the purpose of leaving the MSS. of three books by Samuel Butler at Varallo-Sesia, Aci-Reale and Trapani.

It would be impossible to enumerate and thank all the many friends who, with the courtesy and patience that never desert a

Sicilian, have given me information, explanation and assistance.  Among them are two, however, to whom, and to whose families, I desire to give my special thanks, namely: Cavaliere Uffiziale Giovanni Grasso, of the Teatro Macchiavelli, Catania; and Signor Achille Greco, of the Marionette Theatre, in the Piazza Nuova, Palermo.

Signor Greco wrote to me recently that, for Rosina’s riddle in his episode of the masks in Samson, he had dipped in the stream of children’s games current to-day in Palermo; he did not appear to know that Plato had dipped in his own Athenian stream for the riddle quoted by Glaucon towards the end of the fifth book of the Republic.  The riddles are similar not because Rosina had read the dialogue, nor because Glaucon had seen the play, but because the two streams flowed as one until Greek colonists took their folk-lore with them into Sicily before Plato was born.