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The zampognari are in fact as much of a national institution with the Neapolitans at Christmastide as are the waits or carol-singers in our own country, so that to the majority of these people Natale senza zampogna e cennamella would seem no true Christmas at all.
"Eh!" said the piffero, showing all his teeth, and shrugging his shoulders good-naturedly, while the other echoed the pantomime. "Dal Regno" for so the Abruzzi peasants call the kingdom of Naples. "And do you come every year?" "Sì, Signore. To this the old zampogna bent his head on one side, and said, assentingly, "Eh! per trenta tre anni."
Sometimes, when he could not play fast enough to satisfy his eagerness, he ran his finger up and down the vents. Then, suddenly lowering his instrument, he would scream, in a strong peasant-voice, verse after verse of the novena, to the accompaniment of the zampogna.
And, "Ecco," continued the piffero, bursting in before the zampogna could go on, and pointing to two stalwart youths of about twenty-two or-three years of age, who at this moment came up the street with their instruments, "These are our two sons. He is mine," indicating one with his reversed thumb; "and that other is his," jerking his head towards his companion.
These fellows come in pairs, one only, properly speaking, being the zampognaro, for it is he who carries the zampogna or classical bag-pipe of Southern Italy, whilst his companion is the cennamellaro, so called from his ear-splitting instrument, the cennamella, a species of primitive flute.
Sometimes they stray "as far away as Paris is," and, wandering about in that gay capital, like children at a fair, play in the streets for chance sous, or stand as models to artists, who, having once been to Rome, hear with a longing Rome-sickness the old characteristic sounds of the piffero and zampogna.
This morning, as I was going out for a walk round the walls, two admirable specimens of the pifferari were performing the novena before a shrine at the corner of the street. The player of the zampogna was an old man, with a sad, but very amiable face, who droned out the bass and treble in a most earnest and deprecatory manner.
The pifferari always go in couples, one playing on the zampogna, or bagpipe, the bass and treble accompaniment, and the other on the piffero, or pastoral pipe, which carries the air; and for the month before Christmas the sound of their instruments resounds through the streets of Rome, wherever there is a shrine, whether at the corners of the streets, in the depths of the shops, down little lanes, in the centre of the Corso, in the interior courts of the palaces, or on the stairways of private houses.
The zampogna may be described as first cousin to the historic bag-pipes of Caledonia, for the sounds emitted strongly resemble the traditional “skirling” of the pipes; but no Scotchman even could pretend to delight in the shrill notes of the cennamella.
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