In walking through the town, you find here and there bits of middle-age architecture, which have escaped ruin; here a door, there a window, of graceful design, built around with the rough masonwork for which Segni is noted in later days; but the greater number of the houses are constructed in the rudest manner, indicating the poverty and ignorance of the majority of the inhabitants. It is, however, a decent poverty, for, to the credit of the town be it spoken, there was not, when Caper was there, a professional beggar, excepting the friars, in or around it.
Taking the first streetif a rough road winding around the top of the mountain, and but four or five feet wide, may be called soCaper saw at the doors of the houses, standing chatting to each other, many old women, their white hair flying in every direction, who, as they talked, knitted stockings; or, with distaff in hand, twirled the spindle, making flax into thread for spinning, or wool into woof and web for weaving. Hearing a shuttle, he looked in at an open door, and found a young girl busily weaving a heavy blue cloth at a queer old loom; not far from her, an elderly woman was weaving flax thread into coarse, heavy linen goods. Passing along, he heard the whir of millstones, and, entering a house, saw a girl working one of the handmills of the country; on a stand, where there was a stone basin, the girl turned in the wheat; another stone, fitting exactly in the basin, was attached to the ceiling by a long pole; catching hold of this, she gave the stone a rotary motion, grinding the wheat very fairly.
Suddenly Caper saw in the back part of the room a woman, holding what seemed a large, red-headed caterpillar, without any fuzz on it; she was evidently nourishing it in the way represented in that famous painting 'The Roman Daughter,' thus proving that it was a baby. Its resemblance to the caterpillar arose from the way it was swathed: around all the Segnian infants they wind a strip of knit or woven cloth, about eight feet long and four inches wide, fairly mummifying them; then, to crown the work, they put on their little bullet heads, a scarlet cap with brilliant flowers and ribbons, making the poor babies resemble anything but Christian productions. In a neighboring town they hang their babies up in a wicker basket, resembling the birch-bark contrivances for our Indian papooses.
Continuing his walk, our artist next came to where they were building a house; and its future occupant, who was a man of some enterprise and action, told Caper, with a long face, that he almost despaired of seeing it completed: the harvest came, and almost every workman went off to the wheat fields, leaving the house unfinished until they were ready to recommence work on it, well knowing that there were no other ones in the town able to do their labor; however, those who mixed mortar, carried tiles, and stone, and plaster, were hard at work. These laborers were girls of from twelve to sixteen years old, and one or two of them, spite of dirt and hard labor, were really handsome, with bright, intelligent countenances. They earned one paul (ten cents) each a day, and seemed contented and happy, joking with each other and laughing heartily nearly all the time. Probably our Chippewa Indians would think twice before they set the young women of their tribe to hod-carrying as a livelihood; but then the Chippewas are savages. The hods carried by these girls on their heads were flat, wooden trays, square at each end: once poised on the head, they balanced themselves, and were carried around without a fall. This carrying on the head, by the women, from an eight-gallon barrel of wine down to a sickle or pocket handkerchief, helps to give them their straight forms and fine carriage of head, neck, and shoulders.
Napoleon the First, in breaking down most of the feudal customs of the Papal States, should be regarded by the poor inhabitants as one of their greatest benefactors; still, many a remnant of the middle ages remains firmly marked in the habits of the country people. Even now the inhabitants of the Campagna live, not in isolated houses, but in small towns built around the once protecting castle or powerful monastery, where, in times past, they fled, when attacked in the fields by the followers of some house inimical to the one under whose protection they lived. Follow the entire Campagna, from Rome to Naples, by way of Frosinone, and you will see the ruins of watch towers, built to warn the workmen in the fields of the approaching enemy. Thus, in Segni, although the fields cultured by the inhabitants, lay miles away at the foot of the mountain, yet every day seven eighths of the 5,000 inhabitants walked from four to six miles or more down the mountains to the scene of their daily labors, returning the same distance at sunset. Often and often Caper saw the mother, unable to leave the infant at home, carry it in a basket on her head to the far-away fields, bringing it back at night with the additional burden of corn shelled or wheat garnered in the field. Trotting along gayly at her side, you may be sure, was the ever-present black pig, with a long string wound around his body, by which he is attached to some tree or stone as soon as he reaches the fields, and thus prevented from rooting where he should not root. The day's labor of his mistress finished, she unties him, wraps the string around his body, and he follows her up to the town with the docility of a well-trained dog.
It is the women, too, who daily walk four or five miles up the mountain for their supply of firewood. Arriving at the forest of the commune, they collect split wood and fagots, tying them into round bundles, a yard long, and two or three feet in diameter, and return to Segni, carrying this small woodpile all the way on their heads. It is the women, too, who bring water from the fountains for their household use, in A copper vessels (conche) holding from two to three gallons: these are placed on the head, and carried self-balancing sometimes for long distances. At a fair held at Frosinone, Caper once saw several women, each one carrying on her head two of these conche filled with water, one balanced on the other; and this for half a mile up a steep road, from the fountain at the foot of the mountain, to the town above.
The women, too, do their fair share of harvesting; they cut the wheat with sickles; then, after it is cut, separate the grains from the stalk by rubbing a handful of stalks with a small piece of wood in which a series of iron rings are placed, making a rude rasp; collecting the grains, they then carry them from the fields, sifting them at their leisure in a large round sieve, suspended from a triangle of long poles; then, on a breezy day, you may see them standing over a large cloth, holding a double handful of wheat high above their heads, and letting it fall: the wind blows away the chaff, and the clean grain falls on the outspread cloth.
In the autumn, when the men are employed in the vintage, comes the chestnut season; and then the women, who are not busy in the vineyard, and who regard it as a frolic, go for miles up in the mountains, collecting the nuts, large as our horse chestnuts. They form no small part of the winter stock of food for the mountaineers, while the refuse nuts are used to fatten the pet pig. We can have but small conception of the primeval look these chestnut woods wear, the trees growing to an enormous size, many a one being ten to twelve feet in diameter. The weather is glorious during this season: clear, bright, and buoyantly refreshing, blow the autumn winds; and as Caper, day after day, wandered among the old trees, now helping an old woman to fill a sack with the brown nuts, now clubbing the chestnuts from the trees for a young girl, he, too, voted chestnut gathering a rare good time. Far off, and now near, the girls were singing their quaint wild songs. Thus heard, the rondinella sounds well: it is of the woods and deserts; strange, barbaric, oriental, bacchantic, what you please, save dawdling drawing-room and piano-ic.