United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I used to be entertained with a variety of them; especially when we were in Italy. If any of the pifferari went by, she would imitate the drone of their bagpipes in a manner irresistibly comic. And if she saw a peasant-girl dancing, she forthwith went through the performance to the life."
Whoever has passed the month of December in Rome will remember to have been awakened from his morning-dreams by the gay notes of the pifferari playing in the streets below, before the shrines of the Madonna and Bambino, and the strains of one set of performers will scarcely have ceased, before the distant notes of another set of pilgrims will be heard to continue the well-known novena.
The rider exchanges lively salutations and sarcasms with the by-standers in his way, and perhaps brushes against the bagpipers who bray constantly in those hilly defiles. They are in Neapolitan costume, these pifferari, and have their legs incomprehensibly tied up in the stockings and garters affected by the peasantry of the provinces, and wear brave red sashes about their waists.
Peter's to the time when he first sang in public. Christmas passed by, thank heaven the municipality has driven away those most detestable pifferari who played on their discordant bagpipes at every corner for a fortnight, and nearly drove me erazy, and the Befana, as we call the Epiphany in Rome, was gone, with its gay racket, and the night fair in the Piazza Navona, and the days for Nino's first appearance drew near.
The pifferari are by no means the only street-musicians in Rome, though they take the city by storm at Christmas. Every day under my window comes a band of four or five, who play airs and concerted pieces from the operas, and a precious work they make of it sometimes! Not only do the instruments go very badly together, but the parts they play are not arranged for them.
The popular instrument in the Basque and Northern provinces is the bagpipe, and the dances are quite different from those of the other parts of Spain. The zortico zorisco, or "evolution of eight," is danced to sound of tambourines, fifes, and a kind of flageolet el silbato, resembling the rude instruments of the Roman Pifferari probably of the same origin.
But as we walked home through the moonlit streets, full of people hurrying in and out of the churches, of the pifferari with their cloaks and pipes black and white nuns brown monks lines of scarlet seminarists, and the like, he suddenly broke out with the prayer of the First Christmas Mass I must give it in English, for I have forgotten the Latin: "O God, who didst cause this most holy Night to be illumined by the rising of the true Light, we beseech Thee that we who know on earth the secret shining of His splendour may win in Heaven His eternal joys."
A scamp of a boy left his sport to come and beat time with a stick on the stone step before them; several children clustered near; and two or three women, with rosy infants in their arms, also paused to listen and sympathize. At last the playing ceased. The pifferari took up their hats and looked smilingly round at us. "Where do you come from?" I asked.
Word Of The Day