The festival of St. Paulinus is held on the 22nd of June, if that day happens to fall on Sunday, if not, it is celebrated on the Sunday next ensuing. Very few foreigners have ever witnessed it, as it occurs at a season when most strangers have quitted Southern Italy. The writer is acquainted with the locale, but the following description of this fête it taken partly from a small work by Gregorovius (a well-known German scholar), who was once present at it, and partly from a discourse delivered by an Italian priest, Sacᵉ Bendetto Trombetta.
"The festival of St. Paulinus derives a special and singular interest from the circumstance that the ceremonies and dances which attend it resemble in a remarkable manner the feast held in honour of Rugonath in the Kulu valley, a remote district of the Himalayas;[1] in the former case the shrines contain images of saints, in the latter, of heathen gods."
The line of railway between Naples and Nola passes through a fertile and highly cultivated district, as its name "Terra di Lavoro" imports.
In this province, as in parts of India, the land is very much sub-divided, each holding comprises half a dozen acres at most, and each proprietor, as is the case in India, possesses his own noria, or Persian-wheel, by means of which he irrigates the land. In the part we are speaking of in South Italy, the ground is worked entirely by spade cultivation, the foot of the labourer is also brought into play, it is not an uncommon thing to see a man and a woman, both barefooted, walking each of them along a particular line or furrow, and with a peculiar motion of both feet perform the final harrowing or raking after the seed has been sown.
After about two-thirds of the distance between Naples and Nola has been accomplished the railway begins to run almost parallel with a low mountain range which is clothed almost to its summit with olive-trees; one or two fortresses or fortified villages exist on the highest points.
The town of Nola contains no architectural monuments worthy of notice, its cathedral is almost a ruin (it was in process of restoration in 1882-83), for during the revolution of 1860 certain men of bad character set fire to it in the hopes of being able to plunder its rich
- ↑ See Chapter III. of this series, ante, p. 277.
