128 Reviews.
They afford a description of country and village life in Sicily, on the coast between Messina and Palermo.
The subject of Vendetta is conjugal infidelity with the tragic end common in the island. Little, if any, folklore comes into the story.
Magheria, the play, abounds in it, as the title suggests. The heroine is compelled to fall in love with her suitor by a process of sympathetic magic belonging to a widely spread type. An orange containing some of her hair was bound with a cord, then dipped in virgin wax and smeared with the fat of a black hen. A pin having been driven into it, the orange was thrown down a well. The spell given in the story was recited during the rite. The victim is supposed to fall ill and to remain so until she yields, the fruit keeping sound until then. According to rule a counter-spell should rot the orange and save the girl. In this case the girl does actually fall ill and accepts her suitor, but as she had previously heard of what had been done against her, and may have fallen ill through fright, it seems probable that the author intended to ridicule the superstition. The priest condones it because of the motive. This sort of charm is used elsewhere, as at Mentone, simply for revenge, with the variation that the fruit is meant to and does rot, thus causing the victim's illness. Love is usually, and more appro- priately, won by philters.
Much other folklore is to be found in this little drama : spitting as a protection from witches ; the broom reversed at the door to prevent their entering the house ; crossing oneself with the left hand against the devil's power, the right hand being kept sacred to God ; ingratiating the devil by keeping his Lent, that is, by committing a mortal sin on each of forty successive days.
What with vendetta, magic, and majfia^ religion must suffer in Trinacria.
In a preface to Magheria Signor Pitre, the distinguished Sicilian traditionist, vouches for the author's knowledge of the people. He lays stress on the spoken spell as an essential part of conjura- tions.
J. B. Andre\vs.
