Home | Valente and DiRenzo Family History - From Our Correspondent in Geneva - Gambatesa's customs
Gambatesa's Traditions and Special Days
Notes by Angelo Abiuso (Geneva). [Robert Angelo has added a few notes in brackets, like this one.]
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The Generational Divide
They is a huge divide between the generation who grew up just after World War II -- when there was starvation in Gambatesa -- and the young people today. Now Gambatesans take their automobiles to go feed the pigs, even if the masseria ("farm") isn't that far from the village.
The change in the economy has changed Gambatesa. In the years just after the War the countryside of the village was like a picture postcard [Note: Giovanni Valente said to his daughter Vittoria about America: "All this land! If we had this land in Italy, no one would leave."], but now it is impassable in many places.
The Woman's World
Last summer (2003) I was sitting on the balcony at my grandmother's house in Via Nazionale Sannitica. Every evening Gambatesans walk up and down the street, talking, talking and talking. [Fare una passeggiata, "to take a walk" or "stroll", in the case of Gambatesa in the evening with family or friends along the main street of the village: People walk from Largo Fontana to La Peschiera (the other fountain just after the end of the town center of Gambatesa. Actually on Via Nazionale Sannitica.]
I was not alone. My mother and my grandmother were sitting on the balcony too. We were looking at the street. My grandmother said:
Look at these women! They are dressed in a nice way and their husbands are pushing the baby carriage (spingere il passegino, the small car you put babies in) -- and they complain the whole day! and they ask for a divorce! Chi pozzn'accide ("They deserve to be shot"). We had to work in the fields, to cook, to clean the house, to look after many children, to wash clothes in the old way (in the river); we had to shut up! We had good reasons to ask for a divorce, but we didn't (We didn't even know that word). We were happy if our husbands didn't beat us.
Dating in the mid-1960s (The girlfriend)
A man from Gambatesa told me this story. When he was young, about 17 or 18 years old, he met a girl from another village which was nearby to Gambatesa. Usually girls could be met on the street during the passeggiata (early evening "stroll") on the weekends, or at church, or at the fountain when the girls went to fetch water. The boy really liked this girl, and he asked her if he could date her. And the girl said, "Yes, but you have first to ask my father."
So on the market day at the father's village (I think it was on Saturday morning), he asked some people from Gambatesa about the young man from Gambatesa: was he a serious man? (The boy did not know how the girl's father knew that he wanted to date her; so maybe she had told her father.) So at the market in his own village, her father was selling goods in the market, and maybe he recognized some people by their accent, that they were from Gambatesa. -- You can recognize which village people are from just by their accent, even if the village is very close by. -- "Do you know something about this young Gambatesan: is he a serious boy" ([What did "serious" mean?] That he was not an alcoholic, not an adulterer, that he works, that he is honest)? And so the people from Gambatesa asked, Why do you want to know this? And probably the man said, Because he wants to date my daughter. -- Because in Gambatesa when you ask this kind of question, about people or about something touchy or sensitive, a bit personal, people will ask you straight away: Why do you want to know this? After you explain why you are asking the question they will either answer truthfully, or if they don't want to answer the Gambatesans will say, Sorry, but this does not concern you (but the Gambatesans say this in a very rude way in dialect). -- So the Gambatesans were laughing and said, "She chose the best of the village" (proprio meglio) which they meant ironically, because the boy was a shallow fellow (He liked to make jokes, to have fun; he dated lots of different girls: he was what is called a "skirt chaser").
And so the girl's father went to Gambatesa, and he found the boy and he told him, "You, come over here." And so the boy was very scared (because the man was big and strong): "I heard that you want to date my daughter; I warn you not to do stupid things; you can come to see her at my house, with me" -- I forget what day -- maybe it was Tuesday or Wednesday -- in the afternoon. He chose the middle of the week to discourage the boy, because usually people visited on Saturday or Sunday. (I think the boy went one or two times, but he dropped her after a couple of weeks, because he was very shallow.)
That was the normal way to date in those days: you visited the house. No! you did not go out together the way young people date nowadays. Also, Zio Angelo Abiuso once told me that when they used to organize a dance for the young people in Gambatesa, the parents were the ones who organized it and they were in the room watching.
Things started to change in Gambatesa only during the 1980s, and by the beginning of the 90s all the old ways were finished. Maybe because of the level of educated young people: the rate of literacy: women were going to school too, and they were marrying later and having fewer children, and they looked for husbands farther away from their home villages (Emmanuel Todd, a French demographer, wrote about changes like this in North Africa).
With my parents generation things changed; Gambatesa was no longer an agricultural area; it was more like a developed area in Europe.
In the old days, the parents did not let the young people get to know each other very well before they were married, and so it was only after the wedding that they got to know each other well. So you used to hear people in Gambatesa say, If I had known you before marrying, I would never have married you.
How accents differ from village to village
"You can recognize which village people are from just by their accent, even if the village is very close by." Even with Tufara, which is very close to Gambatesa, you can recognize the difference. For example, in Gambatesa they say something like u porcia; in Tufara: u porco. Even the sentence structure is different from one village to the next. (Cf. The dialect spoken in Gambatesa.)
Bridge of the 13 Arches
Moreover brigands, famines, cholera, earthquakes and other natural disasters contributed, for the whole of the 19th century and part of the 20th, to making life hard and insecure above all for the least well-to-do. (Source: Gambatesa - its History and Art)
Brigands
Maria Mignognia (the grandchild of Eligio Mignognia, born in 1865), lived for many years in the taverna near the Ponte dei 13 Archi ("13 Arches Bridge") in Gambatesa. She told me the story of the robbers in the area of the Tappino Fondo Valle.
There were many robbers between 1890 and 1920. Her grandfather used to shoot at them with an old rifle (one of those rifles you have to load from the top). He used to load the rifle with salt. The taverna ("inn or hostel"), a very big one, was often attacked at that time. The robbers used to come with horses. According to her they were like Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor.
The robbers had large knifes called marracci and a kind of Arab sword (scimitar). The carabinieri from Celenza and Gambatesa tried several times to capture them, but they never succeeded. Maria told me the robbers had a 6th sense.... Her grandfather died in 1935 (he was about 70 years old). All that is left of the taverna now is a hill of stone.
World War II
Then she told me about World War II and the fighting in the area around Gambatesa. As I told you elsewhere, the Tappino Fondo Valle is a key point.
The day or the night before the arrival of the Canadian soldiers, the Germans blew up the Bridge of the 13 Arches (3 Germans died in the process). The next day the Canadians arrived with a company of engineers to help the troops to cross the river. But the Gambatesans were asked to rebuild the bridge (they got a wage for it) under the control of British military police. Maria Mignognia was among the workers. Two men from Gambatesa were in charge of the work: Giovanni Antonio Macchiarola and Antonio Gallo (called "the Boss"); both were able to speak English because they had been to America.
Around 1955-1956 G.A. Macchiarola built the altare maggiore ("main altar") in the church of San Bartolomeo Apostolo. And the statue of the Madonna in the Largo Madonna was put in place by G.A. Macchiarola, who built the column.
The Gambatesa Band
The band would play sad music on Good Friday -- marches funèbres -- like played at funerals. The band followed the people to the cemetery tomb, and played this music. The same music was played for the procession on Good Friday.
Gambatesa's band is like a military band in the instruments it plays: trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, drums. [Question: "Like in the old Fellini movies?"] Yes, but they do not wear uniforms or uniform hats. The band has 20-30 members, mostly young people in their early 30s. The band also plays in other towns in the Molise area.
There are no bagpipes in the band. No one can play the bagpipes in Gambatesa, I think.
2003 Addition
The band has nice uniforms now. But maybe there are two bands in Gambatesa.
Gambatesa's Maitunate
Many people play musical instruments in Gambatesa, due to a 400 or 500 year old tradition in Gambatesa called the Maitunate. Gambatesa is the only village in Molise to do this. On New Years Eve, bands -- there are several small bands -- go from house to house and sing something special to make fun of the people who live there (but the tune they play is always the same, only the words they sing change). If a girl has 2 or 3 boyfriends, they will sing about that, for example, but they even make things up. Everyone in authority is sung about: the mayor, the carabinieri, the priest.
This is a night when you are allowed to say anything, even very rude and bad things. But the people who are targeted are warned beforehand; they have to take the teasing good-naturedly, and they invite the singers inside to eat with them. Then on New Years Day they gather in the Villa and re-sing all the songs they sang the night before.
The Maitunate I would call the call une fête païenne ("a pagan festival") because it is similar to an old tradition during the Roman Empire, which was the day called the Saturnalia [It took place during the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year], in memory of the god Saturn. During the Saturnalia the slaves and their masters used to change places for just for one day. So it was a day where everything was permitted: you could say and do almost anything you wanted and you could not be held responsible.
One year the carabinieri sued the singers. The reply was that this is a 400 or 500 year old tradition.... But they were going to stop doing this in Gambatesa. But then in the village of Riccia, just next door to Gambatesa, they said that if Gambatesa stopped, then Riccia would start. So Gambatesa went on with its tradition, in order not to lose it to another village.
Orlando Abiuso has written a scholarly description of Gambatesa's Maitunate: Amori e delusioni nei versi delle « Majtunate ». (This page is in Italian only.)
La Madonna delle Traglie
Traglia is an old word meaning slitta, a sleigh or sled or sledge used in the past to carry sheaves of wheat (In the alps sleighs were used to carry wood and hay).
On the last Sunday of July takes place what is called in Gambatesa La Madonna delle Traglie. That is the name Our Lady of Victory takes just for that day.
The day (called i tragl' in dialect) begins early in the morning at 7:00 AM with a Mass at the Chapel of Our Lady of Victory. Because of the size of the chapel part of the people have to stay outside in the courtyard.
After the Mass starts the procession. The priest, the mayor, the local police, the carabinieri, the music band and the Gambatesans (but only those who are fit ...) bring the statue of Our Lady of Victory back to the village using old paths through the countryside. Sometimes they even cross fields (the harvest being done makes it easier) if the path is not in good shape.
The procession arrives at the old Via Appulo-Sannitica but stops just before entering the village (more or less 500 meters before the crossing point of the Tufara road with the Foggia road) for a few hours.
At 11:00 AM starts a second procession. The traglie, decorated with the sheaves of wheat (which had been put in place early in the morning on the Foggia road), are now following. The traglie were pulled by horses, oxen and donkeys in the past; they are pulled by tractors today.
More or less every family in Gambatesa used to have its own traglia. The aim was and is still to have the best one. Using wheat and sheaves of wheat for decoration is a matter of art in Gambatesa. The horses, oxen and donkeys were decorated too. Today tractors are decorated with wheat.
The second procession goes from Via Nazionale to La Villa (Largo Fontana) and then to Largo della Madonna. [Village street map] From Largo della Madonna the procession goes through Viale Vittorio Veneto and Corso Roma to the Church of San Bartolomeo Apostolo (In the middle of Corso Roma, on the right coming from La villa, there are big stairs going up to the church and the Castle).
The traglie do not follow the Madonna to the church but stop at Largo della Madonna. On Largo della Madonna a threshing machine threshes the sheaves of wheat in the afternoon. The wheat and the straw are offered to the church. Once sold the money will be used to organize the 15th of August's Feast of the Assumption celebration.
[The wheat grown in Gambatesa is "winter wheat". This wheat is sown in the fall, lies dormant through the winter, sprouts in the spring, and is harvested in the early summer. In Gambatesa they grow durum wheat, which is used to make macaroni, but in Gambatesa they also add durum to common wheat when they make bread.]
Related Pages:
• Photographs of woven wheat decorations for the Feast of the Madonna of the Traglie, from July 2006 in Gambatesa.
• Postcard photograph of a "wheat sleigh" in Gambatesa, from the 1950s or 60s, showing a traglia being pulled by oxen.
• Notes about the village of Gambatesa, with a short description and photograph of the Procession of the Traglie; from a circa 1920s Italian schoolbook Il Molise: libro sussidiario per la cultura regionale (in Italian and English translation).
• Threshing Wheat in Gambatesa, a description of the ancient treatment of wheat after its harvest, with a photograph from 1947.
Feast of the Ascension
On the weekend following the Ascension, the people in Gambatesa offer milk to the church; so everyone goes to the church with bottles of milk. It's like when they offer wheat to the church in July, but this time it's milk. The offering is so that the village can have a big celebration for the 15th of August, the Assumption of Mary. The milk is made into cheese and ricotta. They sell the cheese and ricotta to the people of Gambatesa and the money is given to the church. There is a feast committee; they choose someone from the committee, and the committee makes the cheese and ricotta at his or her house. This event does not have a special name; it is just named after the Feast of the Ascension.
The Madonna's Cheese
The committee would divide Gambatesa into sectors, and then each team would go to ask for milk in the area they chose. They would ask at the masserie ("farms") whether the farmers wanted to give milk for the Madonna. People would give 1 liter or 2 liters, however much they wanted. In the past they might give the whole day's milking (la mungitura, la traite), but maybe this was only the morning's milking or the evening's milking of the herd of cows, because there was no refrigeration in those days and the milk would spoil.
The cheese the committee makes from the milk is very hard cheese (It looks like Gambatesa's homemade soap), like the Parmigiano you scrape over pasta. In the past they used to dry the cheese inside the house, and often you had that smell of cheese in the house (coming from inside the cupboard).
In the past they used to make a procession, and they used to put the cheese on small traglie pulled by goats: the goats were pulling small four-wheeled carts. (My father told me that the goats climb trees in Gambatesa. One of my professors used to say that "Goats were given to the poor to keep them poor", because goats destroy everything: trees, grass.)
That is from the memories of my Valente grandmother. My mother remembers hearing them talking at the Masseria Valente about "the Madonna's cheese", but she wasn't really sure what they were talking about.
2009 Note
Robert: Someone searched for la madonna della ricotta? Do you recognize that name? Would they use that name in Gambatesa?
Angelo: No you can't say "la madonna della ricotta". It would be like saying "Our lady of the fish and chips" ! In Italian you would say: la ricotta della madonna.
The Trousseau
It is not like it was in the past, but the trousseau has not disappeared. My mother and grandmother still have things from theirs. These things were meant to last the whole life.
Getting an Education at the Seminary
Years ago the only way for a poor boy to continue his schooling was to study at the seminary. Many Gambatesans got some education by saying they would become priests but then withdrawing just before taking vows. But many others took vows and did (and are still doing) good work for the Church. One of them is the general director of an hospital in Rome.
The Sindaco
The mayor is now elected by the people of Gambatesa. Elections are every 5 years. [The role of the sindaco in the 19th Century was very different from what it is now.] Gambatesans are very conservative and for many years they were governed by the Christian Democratic Party.
Vote Buying
It used to be that people who wanted to be mayor would try to buy votes through promising favori: vote for me and I'll let you build a new building on your farmland or I'll give you a job at the Municipio ("Town Hall"). The person who promised his vote was supposed to bring his whole family with him: I can bring you 10 votes, all my family. But that person then had to persuade his family to vote the way he promised they would, and maybe they wanted to vote for someone else. There were conflicts created by the trading of votes for favori.
The First Concettini
A man told me this story last summer (2007) about the first Concettini of Gambatesa. His name was Nicola Concettini (or, in the Italian way, Concettini Nicola) and he was abandoned as a baby on the stairs of the town hall, near the time of the Festa della Concezione Immacolata, at the beginning of the last century (ca. 1900). Nicola emigrated to the USA for a time, but he returned to Gambatesa. All the Concettini of Gambatesa are descended from him.
The man who told me the story said that there is a book by Nicoletta Pietravalle titled Storia dei comuni molisi dei tempi fu ai tempi nostri ("History of Molise's towns of times past to our times").
Nicola Concettini -- his nickname was T'zecole Tezzone -- was the first Concettini in Gambatesa. He was an abandoned child, but he knew who his father and his mother were. His mother was a servant in the house of di Iorio of Celenza Valfortore. This di Iorio was a cousin of Don Vincenzo d'Alessandro, the doctor of Gambatesa. Later when Nicola was older (but still a young man) di Iorio wanted to recognize him as his son, but Concettini refused.
Nicola Concettini was found the day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (8 December) by the Segretario Comunale (an official of vital statistics, subordinate to the sindaco) on the steps -- just near the door -- of the Municipio. So the Segretario Comunale gave the infant the name "Nicola" after his own father or a cousin of his, and the surname "Concettini" because it was the day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
The young boy was adopted by the Iadarola family; the nickname of the Iadarola was "Tezzone" (which in dialect means "a piece of carbonized wood" as found in a fire place after the fire has burned itself out) because they had a dark ("olive") complexion; the Concettini also are dark. The Iadarola who adopted Nicola had a daughter named Angela, and he married his daughter to Nicola (This Iadarola was the biggest landowner in Gambatesa), probably because by marrying his daughter outside his family he would lose everything to another man, but by this marriage the land would stay in the same family. Together Nicola and Angela had 10 children (5 boys and 5 girls).
Before leaving for the USA, Nicola had several jobs: he was a baker, grain-miller, he built two water mills out of wood in San Nicola (the water came from the Torrente Vallone), he was making beer (he was a brewer), a butcher and again a baker (This is just a list; I do not think there is any chronology in the list; he may have been a baker only once). In addition to everything else Nicola was making sparkling water and sorbet (harder than granita, but ice with syrup). But he lost everything. -- There was a man named or perhaps nicknamed B.; he was a relative, and this man lent Nicola some money. Nicola wanted to repay this loan on time (before the end of the term), but B. told him: don't worry, there is no hurry; we are relatives; and so the loan went past its term. This man B. had thought that Nicola would go bankrupt before he could repay the loan, and so B. had already started legal proceedings to get his hands on Nicola's property as a bankrupt. But Nicola did not know about this, and when he tried to repay the money B. said it was too late: he had already started proceedings. This was very mean-spirited, niurant' ("ignorant"), behavior: "It's too late"; and so Nicola lost everything (except his house) -- and this explains why he later went to America.
Then Nicola decided to go to the United States, and it took one year to get there because he had to stop along the way to earn the money for the next stage of his travel. When he was in the States, they did not have water to shave in the mornings, so they tried to use gasoline to shave but it did not work, so they used urine. He probably worked on construction, road construction, and he wanted to bring back to Gambatesa a big crowbar, but it would not fit in his cardboard suitcase; so he put the bar in the fire and bent it over so that it would fit. The man who told me this story said that he still has that crowbar.
Back in Gambatesa he became guardia municipale ("municipal watchman"), and in addition he kept the keys of Gambatesa's castle. He was also working as a lumberjack in Gambatesa; and he cut this wood to proper size for fireplaces in the basement of the castle. He said that he once saw the ghost of an old officer and that when he saw the ghost he ran away. (They have, by the way, now found the secret escape from the castle -- they found it during renovations -- and it goes from the castle to the Vallone Iacovelli in the countryside.)
When Nicola was guardia there is a story concerning the women queuing at the fountain to get the water. And then one day arrived the servant of Don Giovanni Venditti (he was the lord-mayor (sindaco) of Gambatesa), and she wanted to pass all the queue and have the water right away. The other women objected and then a big fist-fight broke out among the women. Then Nicola arrived and he told the servant she had to wait for her turn like everyone else. Next day the mayor asked Nicola why he had made his servant wait, and then the mayor said Se lo hai fatto questa volta non lo fare mai più ("If this time you did it, don't ever do it again!") -- Don Giovanni used the familiar form of expression to belittle Nicola. So Nicola took his guardia képi ("box hat") in his left hand and covered the mayor's face with it, and with his right hand he struck the mayor in the face; and then he lost his job, of course.
According to the man who told me this story, in 1913 there were six to seven thousand inhabitants of Gambatesa. [In 1911 the census reported 3,689 people living in of Gambatesa; 3,572 were counted in the 1921; in 1901 it was 3,416.]
Then he told me a story that happened in Via San Nicola. In a house there was small green man; during the day he hid himself, but during the night he went about. His name was u mazzemarele. He would not talk but he would just break wind. It was a spirit that had run away from the castle, but then they captured it and they brought it back to the castle. (In my opinion the background of this story is that when there was a smell of wind people would blame it on the mazzemarele.)
Beginning of 1900s there were often informal fights (small riots) in the streets between people of different villages.
Gambatesa's Old Private Water Wells
Five or six years ago, the Italian government made a law that owners of private wells for water must pay a tax on their wells. And so in order not to pay the tax people in Gambatesa filled their wells with soil and stones. These wells were more than 100 years old. Many wells were less than 2 meters (yards) deep, but some were 3-4 meters deep. The wells were not dug by machine, but buy hand: the stone walls had all had to be laid in a circle by hand.
Natural Springs
Southern Italy is quite dry and people who owned natural water springs could become quite rich. Since Roman times there have been natural springs in the town of Sepino in Molise (This is near the ancient Samnite mountain town named Saepinum), and the families that owned them have been rich.
Farmland
The people were very attached to their own farmland. They would murder you if you moved the boundary markers in the fields (to give yourself more land to cultivate).
The Castle's Wall Paintings
They only discovered the wall paintings when they renovated the castle. They removed the wall coverings and found the paintings under them. No one knew the paintings were there. The frescos are the work of Renaissance artists, disciples of the masters.
In Geneva a castle like that would be regarded as a real treasure. But in Gambatesa, the people don't regard the castle as belonging to their cultural heritage. It is as if the castle were not something that is theirs. It is not like their farmland.
Legends about Gambatesa's Castle
The people of Gambatesa were really afraid of the castle on account of the power of the lord.
The "droit de signor" legends about the castle. Supposedly one night a husband-to-be dressed up as a woman and went to the castle in the place of his bride-to-be, and he took his scissors hidden under his clothes.... I always ask what happened to that man afterwards, but no one knows. Everyone knows the legends and many people believe them, but no one knows when they happened. There is supposed to be a room with a deep well with lances at the bottom of it into which people were hurled. If the bride slept with her husband-to-be before the lord did, then the lord would kill them both by throwing them there. People are expecting the renovators to find this secret room with skeletons.
According to the legends there are underground escape routes from the castle to the countryside or to the basements of nearby houses, and young people have looked in the basements of the houses near the castle to try to find them. But no one ever has.
2004 Addition
During the summer I spoke with Domenico Genovese (M'nguc Muzzet'). According to Domenico there used to be a secret passage running under the street in Gambatesa from the Castle to the Church of the Purgatorio and the Municipio. Today the way is closed because years ago the owners of the houses in the street divided the secret tunnel in order to make underground cantine out of it.
Domenico said that in the part of the passage way he owns, there are still old pile d'olio ("stone vats for storing olive oil", dialect expression). These are actually big pots made out of a single stone (The size of the pot depends on the size of the stone) used to keep oil during the year; the oil must be kept cool or it will turn rancid. The pots are not made of tufo, which would not be strong enough, but of limestone.
Il Dovere ("Duty")
When la miseria ("poverty") was everywhere, doveri ("duties") and favori ("favors") were super important, as a kind of social welfare. But today when we all have everything (and maybe more than everything), often we think that we don't need other people ...
Two things were important in Gambatesa: fare un favore ("to do a favor") and fare un dovere ("to do one's duty"). Fare un dovere was stronger than fare un favore. Il dovere was more about the family, il favore more about friends and colleagues.
Il dovere is something you must do. Il favore is something you ought to do, but don't have to do.
Il favore ("a favor"). I give you something. I don't ask you for money for it, but later if I need something I hope that you will help me. It is a kind of moral duty among friends, but it is not compulsory to give the favore back.
Il dovere ("duty") is much stronger. People are expecting doveri (among the family for example or among compari). If you don't do it you are going to be criticized and it looks like a moral failure.
Il dovere was a relation you had with your relatives. An example:
"The Old Man and the Stone", a legend from Gambatesa
A long time ago (once upon the time if you prefer) there was an old man living with his son's family. It was usual in those days for one of the children to take care of the parents in their old age (with some compensation, of course, a farm or more land than the other children got). But the old man grew older and older and it became quite difficult to take care of him.
One day the son decided to get rid of the old man. He decided to put his father on his shoulders and to climb up the mountain in order to leave his father up in the mountain and let him die there. But the way to the top was long and the father was heavy. So the son stopped at a place where there was a big stone on which he could set his father down (as if the old man were a sack that would be easier to pick up from the stone than if he were lying on the ground), so that the son could take a rest and then put his father back on his shoulders and go on. When the son arrived at the top, he dropped his father there and went back to the village.
After many years the son grew old and one day his own son had to take care of him.
He grew older and older and one day his son put him on his shoulders and climbed up the mountain. The old man didn't know what the purpose of this little passeggiata ("walk") was and several times he asked his son, but the son did not answer. After a while they arrived at the big stone and the son put his father on the stone in order to take a little rest. And then the old man remembered ... and he said to his son: pur'i pusai a tate ngop'a sta prete (anche io posai mio padre su questa pietra, "I too set my father upon this stone"). Then his son realized what had happened with his father and grandfather, and ashamed and scared (to have one day in his old age to be seated by his son on the same stone), he put his father on his shoulders and went back to the village. He took care of his father until the last day.
[Note: in America (Camden)
["The old people used to tell us a lot of stories like that when I was a girl, about how the way you treat your mother will be the way your children will treat you," Vittoria Valente said. The idea is ancient, for this saying is attributed to Thales of Miletus (fl. 585 B.C.):
Whatever provision thou hast made for thy parents, the same must thou expect from thy children. (Diog. L. i, 37)
[At Christmas and Easter you had to visit all your close relatives (and there were a lot of these -- aunts, uncles, grandparents), including those who were in the cemetery. For a young child this was a great happiness, but for the older children and for the grown ups who had married into the family, these visits were sometimes more like work than "holidays". But that did not matter; it was something you had to do.
[That was for the holidays. But where death was involved, the obligation to the family was greatly extended. You had to attend the viewings of all of your cousins and their families. For example, you had to attend the viewing of the father of your mother's sister's daughter's husband, someone you had never met or heard of before he died. You had to go, for your mother's sake, for your aunt's sake, and finally for your first cousin's sake.
[Not to have attended a viewing -- or a wedding or a baby's baptism, if you were invited -- would have put a black mark beside your name forever. Someone would mention your name, and someone else would comment, "He did not come when [so-and-so] died."
[Nieces and nephews were expected to help their unmarried aunts and uncles as well as their grandparents. You had to do favors for them, but these "favors" were in fact doveri: if you did not do them, then people did not think well of you, and you did not think well of yourself either. It was like being respectful and deferential toward your older family relations, regardless of whether or not you liked them or even thought well of them as human beings.
[For the most part, things are not that way anymore, even where death is concerned. The "I have to go" has been replaced by "I don't feel like going". It did not used to matter how we felt; it was our duty to go and so we went. But now.... Perhaps the young people of today, who see themselves as enjoying lives free of traditional obligations, will one day find themselves to be a whole generation of old people left on the mountain alone.]
[Old Age for Italians
[Vittoria Valente: a vecchiaia (She said the expression in dialect). She said "the old people were always saying this". Both in Gambatesa and in Camden, old people would tell the young, "Don't get old", because when you grow old you become weak and ill.]
Blessing the Animals (Benedizione degli animali)
St. Anthony of Padua is invoked for the protection of donkeys and horses (June 13th).
Blessing the animals -- not anymore in Gambatesa. They bake St. Anthony biscuits for that day now. What do they look like? Angelo does not know. Maybe like very large taralli or like amaretti. -- There aren't that may kinds of biscuits in Gambatesa.
From the first chapter of Ignazio Silone's The Seed Beneath the Snow (tr. Frances Frenaye, 1942):
The old priest, clad in surplice and stole, with the aspergill in his hand, gave his blessing to the animals [when] they passed in front of the church.
Some of the donkeys [...] were decked with colored ribbons on their heads [...]. But these cheap [decorations], borrowed from the hope chests of girls looking forward to marriage, did not conceal the essentially workaday aspect of the poor beasts: the scratches and scars on their backs, their swollen shoulders, their bellies either drooping or enlarged and hanging like those of cows, but without cows' milk, the cracks at their shins and all the other marks of the everyday life they shared with the peasants.
A horse lived and worked for about fifteen years and was fed hay and bran mixed with beans. A donkey was not as strong as a horse but it lasted twenty-five or thirty years, and it lived only on straw and water. (ibid.)
There is a large stairway that leads up to the Church of S. Bartolomeo Ap. from Corso Roma. But the animals are no longer brought there, if that was where they were brought, to be commended to St. Anthony's protection. The donkeys and the peasants have disappeared from Gambatesa.
2003 Addition
Sant'Antonio [di Padova] ("Saint Anthony of Padua") was a special day in Gambatesa, with the blessing of the animals. They used to put blankets on the mules and donkeys and then put children on them. One year in the 1950s or '60s they had 120 donkeys.
There are still 2 or 3 horses in Gambatesa. Angelo gave a copy of the photograph of the Italian cowboys to one of the horsemen, because this fellow likes to dress up like an American cowboy. He will have a wall poster made of it.
Sagra dell'uva - La Madonna del Rosario (Grape Festival - Our Lady of the Rosary, first Sunday of October)
On the first Sunday of October, before the vineyards were harvested, the Gambatesans used to offer (and still do) grapes to the Church, as a present to honor the Virgin Mary.
The aim was to collect as many grapes as possible in order to have money to celebrate the Feast of the Our Lady of the Rosary. If a lot of money could be collected Gambatesa could afford a music band plus a singer from another village. If not the Gambatesa band was asked to play during the evening. Every family used to offer grapes: from one or two kilograms (2 or 4 pounds) to ten or fifteen kg. (20 or 30 lbs.) depending on the size of each family's vineyard.
The day began with a procession in the village. The statue of Our Lady of the Rosary (La Madonna del Rosario) was -- and still is -- used for the procession.
The children were leading the way carrying small baskets with a colored ribbon fixed at each handle of the basket and going around the neck in order to help them to carry the basket during the procession.
Behind the children came i pachiane (but the final "e" is silent). These were girls in the traditional Gambatesan costume worn probably by women in Gambatesa during the Nineteenth Century. The pachiane were carrying bigger baskets with grapes, and if a pachiane's basket was not full people used to put grapes in it.
Part of the grapes were collected by Ze Giuvann' Ciufell' who was the person in charge of the organization of the day. This was from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. He used to come with his donkey. Two tenazz' ("barrels used for the wine harvest made out of wood") were fixed on his donkey.
Once the procession finished Ze Giuvann' ("Zio Giovanni") used to sell the grapes in front of the church at Largo del Castello. Whoever needed grapes -- or wanted to give money for the celebration -- used to buy some there.
A small concerto called a concertino (and often a singer was invited) used to be given during the evening on the Villa (Largo Fontana).
Notes: the straw baskets used to collect the grapes were woven in Gambatesa during the winter. Luca Valente, like the other Gambatesans, had a workshop where he used to make all his tools for agriculture during the winter when there was not so much to do; and he used to make his own straw baskets at this time too. The statue of Our Lady of the Rosary is kept in the Church of S. Bartolomeo. Ap.; they do not use not the statue of Our Lady of Victory for this day.
The Dialect Spoken in Gambatesa
Besides spelling differences with Italian, the dialect uses its own definite articles. The Italian il pane, for example, is u pan' in the dialect. And the Italian la pizza is a pizz' in the dialect.
u = il
a = la
For the Italian plural articles i and le, the dialect uses i for both.
There is no gli in the dialect; it may be replaced by a l'. For example, the Italian gli uomini is a l'omm'ne in dialect.
There is no standard spelling for dialect words; they are written as they sound to the hearer. For example, where Angelo Abiuso hears u paes' (Italian il paese), Robert Angelo hears u baes'; Angelo's native language is French, whereas Robert's is English. Robert hears a bizz' where Angelo hears a pizz'. Angelo: "When I try to write in dialect I use a "French spelling". What does that mean? My Italian friends spell dialect words in a different way than I do: I don't use the same combination of letters they use."
Robert Angelo: I hear "b" in place of "p" as a sound shift characteristic of the dialect. The Italian "p" becomes "b" in the dialect, just as the Italian "c" become "g", e.g. the Italian name Nicola becomes Nigol' in dialect; piacce becomes biagg', and capisce becomes gabisc'; la casa becomes a gaz. Also, the Italian "t" becomes "d" in the dialect, so that Gambatesa becomes Gambades'. Un poco di becomes un boga d', and cinque pezzi becomes cingue betts ("five bits" -- i.e. five dollars, the amount my grandmother always asked my grandfather for when she needed to go the grocery store at the circle; she herself gave it an English language plural).
The root of a dialect word is not always easy to find in the Italian language. For example, Angelo writes that the very old dialect word for a flour sifter, u pullice, is not derived from the Italian word pulire (meaning "to clean").
2005 Note
But now Angelo Abiuso is not sure about a pizz', because maybe what he is hearing (and speaks) is the modern dialect and a bizz' belongs to the old dialect.
In the dialect, the endings of words are dropped. And so, when uneducated people try to speak "proper Italian" (parlare pulito), they add final vowels to words. But they are often the wrong vowels. They also for example replace all the letters "b" with "p", even where "b" is correct; for example, gamba becomes gampa [like uneducated people in England pronouncing the beginning "h" of "honour", afraid of being thought common for "dropping their h's"].
Michele Fuschino's diary is half-Italian, half-dialect. But it gives a good example of the way Molisani used to talk years ago. But today old people still talk (more or less) like that. Maybe a little bit better thanks to television.
The Last Special Day of the Year - Saint Lucy's Fair
The last special day in Gambatesa's year is the Fiera di Santa Lucia ("Saint Lucy's Fair") on 24 October. This is a market day in Gambatesa -- like a European market from the Middle Ages -- when you can buy everything imaginable. It is held outdoors, in the avenue named Viale Vittorio Veneto . You can by "everything" at the market, shoes, bed sheets, furniture, tools, food, animals, books ...
Saint Lucy's Day (Festa di Santa Lucia) is December 13th, but nothing special is done that day.
Pilgrimage
However, people from Gambatesa used to go on a pilgrimage on the 2nd Sunday in May to a holy place dedicated to Santa Lucia. This chapel is between the villages of Sepino and Sassinoro, just across the border from southeastern Molise in Campania. Angelo's mother went to this church on foot when she was 16 years old. And then she couldn't walk for a week afterwards, because it was about a 60 kilometer (36 mile) walk. There were more than fifteen people who went; only a few of them were young; the oldest was 50. They left in the morning at 4 AM and arrived in the evening at sunset. They had to sleep on the ground outside, because there was no hostel at the chapel. But people also used to go in trucks; people who owned trucks in Gambatesa used to take people from the village to the Chapel of Santa Lucia for that day.
The first special day in Gambatesa's year is Saint Joseph's Day (Festa di San Giuseppe), March 19th.
Asides
In Gambatesa cantaloup(e) is not called cantalupo; it is called melone di pane ("bread melon"). Why? Angelo thinks this is because the flesh of the cantaloup is much firmer than the flesh of watermelon (melone di acqua). Both these fruits are very popular in Gambatesa, as they are in southern New Jersey.
Every five years Maria Vittoria d'Alessandro (1874-1955) used to have the dress that she wanted to be buried in re-made for her, so that she would always be prepared. Old people in Gambatesa still do the same.
a beza du cagia
The dialect name for the grating cheese for macaroni they made in Gambatesa was a beza du cagia; one round of this cheese, about the width of large outstretched hand, would just be called un formaggio in Italian. The cheese is made from sheep or goat or cow's milk -- whichever you happen to have. The one from sheep's milk has a very strong flavor. The outside, the rind of the cheese, was heavily salted (but they do not add salt to the milk and rennet when they make the cheese).
La Peschiera
A covered well is called a peschiera in the dialect of Gambatesa. There is a place called La Peschiera near the southwest entrance to the village of Gambatesa; look on the old military map of the territory of Gambatesa at 6 o'clock.
There are other covered wells in Gambatesa. There is one in front of The Chapel of Our Lady of Victory, and there is another in the side of Gambatesa's Municipal Park, la Villa.
Related Pages:
• More Notes about Gambatesa's old way of Life, which was farming life, including "When Wheat was Like Gold".
• Easter in Gambatesa, from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.
• St. Joseph's Day (La festa di San Giuseppe), March 19th, in Gambatesa.
• The Christmas Zampognaro ("bagpipe-player"), and the visits of the mountain shepherds to Gambatesa.
The URL of this Web page: https://www.roangelo.net/valente/miscgamb.html
Last revised: 8 June 2012 : 2012-06-08 by Robert [Wesley] Angelo.
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