Snails and Carnations

— While witches spin about their fires on the chilly Brocken, the Romans turn out for a gay carousal in the open spaces around the Lateran, and hold a nocturnal feast as fantastic as the fabled pageants of the East. In ancient times, Midsummer Eve was spent in vigil and prayer, to ward off the witches and evil spirits who might, on this night, disfigure and maim sleeping mortals. Tradition says that two gaunt female forms wander ever in the heavy shadows of the hoary basilica, murmuring two never answered questions. One asks, “Wherefore didst thou do it?” to which the younger mournfully retaliates, “ Why didst thou command it ? ” And these two, Herodias and her daughter, are foremost of the witches who haunt the 23d of June.

From the swift-descending southern twilight until four o’clock in the morning, the streets and roads leading to St. John Lateran are thronged with crowds of all classes, on foot and in carriages, but it is mostly to the poorer folk that this festa is dear. Lanterns and extra lights are swung out along the ways, and every wineshop is thrown open with a wealth of illumination and sound that turns the dingy little dens into concentrations of merriment and good cheer. A burr of guitars, a tinkle of mandolins, the wandering notes from a concertina, give that delicious sense of comradeship with the people which is possible only under the open sky. You turn the corner of the Lateran, at last, and a brilliant scene reveals itself : the leafy avenue leading to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which formerly lent mystery and Rembrandtesque gloom to the sight, is now leveled to the ground, but night veils the hideous modern tenements in the background, and St. John’s stained façade is still limned against the dark vault overhead ; away off into illimitable space stretches a flashing, flaring tract of lanterns, torches, candles, lamps, and gas jets, only confined on the right hand by the dark girdle of the city wall and battlemented gate, over which a full rising moon sheds her benevolent, serene radiance. On either hand of the evermoving throng are long lines of booths and stands, decked, piled, massed, with more carnations than you have ever read of, thought of, dreamed of, making a veritable apotheosis of the rich flower which exhales in its luxuriant fragrance all the charm of Roman summers. Where can such riches come from ? Has some sudden magic wand changed all viler things into this crimson, snowy, and rosy fringed beauty? With the scent of carnations is mingled that of lavender, tied up into countless neat cones for the linen presses of good housewives ; and sheaves of the same herb are thrust in among the gorgeous pinks, like gentle, faded old spinsters standing amid luscious, glowing young belles. When I hear strangers speak with contempt of the “garliceating Italians,” I wonder whether they know what a really decorative plant garlic is, growing up on its tall slender stem into a delicately shaded lilac bloom. It is a faithful charm to ward off witches, so on St. John’s Eve bunches of garlic, five or six feet high, frame in the bowery stands, and purchasers wave their green lances gayly over the heads of the crowd. The place is resonant with cries of cockade and jumble venders, toys which cackle (offered in stentorian tones by the salesman as “American hens ”), earthenware bells, fitful music, and young laughter ; and the air is laden with the strange aroma of mingled garlic, resin, carnations, tallow, lavender, and flaming oil lamps. After the long flower lane you come to a vast area closely set with tents, booths, and shanties, where all the world goes for supper. In these temporary taverns there is rare feasting on roast kid, frogs, salads, coffee, and ices, but most of all on the great dish of the night-stewed snails, the modern substitute for the Baptist’s locusts. Big green bowls are heaped high with the shining brown shells, which have been cooked in oil, and the wine flows fast and free. This is cooking for the plebs ; pretentious people have their snails more daintily fried and boiled without the shells, at home. Over these booths are familiar, and sometimes rhymed, invitations to the passers-by, as well as exaggerated eulogies on the good wine within. At every few yards stand deal tables upon which are stretched out enormous roasted pigs spitted on long poles ; most popular, to judge by the rapid way their brown juicy flanks are sliced off by the dealer.

Not being an orthodox Roman, you do not succeed in swallowing more than two or three snails, sup instead on the roast kid, salad, and Frascati wine which need no apprenticeship, and turn your face homewards ere the moon has yielded to the sun. As you pass, the Colosseum is deserted and still, for the Romans no longer go there with brooms, as their grandfathers did, to give passing witches a shove and a fling ; the witches of our modern day, it is said, have abandoned their besoms to ride instead on telegraph wires. As you climb your steep stair, you stumble over a broom and a dish of salt, set there by some old woman who hopes the dread dames, tarrying to number the straws and count the grains, will be overtaken by the approach of dawn. You drop to sleep, your thoughts a medley of broken legs, garnet blooms, and seething snails, while the little children across the vicolo are dreaming of the customary gift they will carry their godmother on this day of St. John, first baptizer, and patron of all godparents.