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They have placed beside the Madonna’s altar lighted tapers which glimmer feebly in a shaft of strong sunlight that falls through a rent in the curtain overhead. For what purpose, we wonder, have these candles been bought out of a scanty store! Are they burning on behalf of some sailor-boy now being tossed upon the ocean? Or are they offered to obtain some boon more selfish and less pathetic?
A flight of steps zigzagging up the rocky hill-side connects the building with the high road below; whilst a narrow pathway, leading between stone walls and now passing beneath dark mysterious archways, wherein the lamps burning before the Madonna’s shrines afford a welcome light even at midday, descends by steep gradients from the garden above into the main piazza of the little city.
And beyond this, the rosemary was likewise permitted to put forth masses of flowers of the Madonna’s own colour of blue, concerning which a tradition—Celtic, not Italian—avers that on Christmas morning upon every plant of rosemary will be found by those who care to seek them expanded blooms in honour of St Joseph, the Virgin and the Holy Child.
Very tastefully decorated are many of the Madonna’s little sanctuaries in or near the orange groves, when the arrival of the zampognari is considered imminent.
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