Everybody Loves Lucy 'TIS
the year's midnight, and it is the
day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks; The sun is spent... ...Since she enjoys her long night's festival. Let me prepare towards her, and let me call This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is. —John
Donne, A Nocturnal Upon St.
Lucy's Day
|
St.
Lucy's Day is celebrated in Sweden and elsewhere in Scandinavia— indeed, in Scandinavian communities around the
world— on December 13, the day
of the winter solstice, the "year's and the day's
deep midnight" in the old Julian calendar. It is a
festival of light to mark the
beginning of the return of daylight and warmth as
the year progresses. (The name Lucy, itself, comes from the Latin
lux —light.)*1
The festival is named for St. Lucy —in Italian, Santa Lucia —a
martyred Roman Catholic saint from the fourth
century; she is the patron
saint of the city of Syracuse in Sicily and the
patron saint of the blind.
Readers
may know that Santa Lucia is also the
name of a popular Neapolitan
song about the area of that name in
Naples. In older literature, the quarter
used to be referred to as "a small fishing
village outside of Naples." Indeed, even in
recent material apparently prepared by
people who have never been there, it has
been called "a town near Naples." Nothing of
the sort; it is precisely the area across
from the famous Egg
Castle of Naples. That area, however,
is not what it used to be; the original
fishing port of Santa Lucia was filled in
and built over with fashionable hotels
around 1900 as part of the urban renewal of
the city known as the Risanamento.
The song, Santa Lucia, a delicate barcarole
besinging the charm of the area is one of the three
most popular Neapolitan songs in terms of worldwide
recognition. The other two are certainly 'O sole mio and Funiculì Funiculà, both of
well-established authorship. Santa Lucia is
a bit uncertain. Some sources credit Teodoro Cottrau
(1827–1879) for both melody and lyrics; others say
that he took an existing and anonymous traditional
melody and wrote lyrics to it in Neapolitan,
publishing it at Naples in 1849. He later translated the lyrics
into Italian, making it the first Neapolitan song to
be widely known in Italy. (This was before the great
wave of national and international fame of the
genre, which started in the 1880s with Funiculì
Funiculà.)*2
[audio & text to Santa Lucia here]
Back to Sweden. To celebrate St. Lucy's Day, it
is now traditional to sing the melody of the
Neapolitan song, Santa Lucia, with
appropriate Swedish lyrics. Although there
are various texts, a popular one says,
The
night treads heavily
around yards and dwellings
In
places unreached by sun,
the
shadows brood
Into
our dark house she comes,
bearing lighted candles,
Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.
How did a Catholic patron saint of Syracuse (see note 6, below) wind up being celebrated in modern secular (or at least Lutheran!) Stockholm? If you are thinking of 4th-century pilgrimages along the ancient and fabled Sicily-Sweden Silk & Lighted Candle Road, alas, the story is somewhat more mundane.*3 Within the centuries-old tradition of St. Lucy's in Sweden, the Neapolitan song, Santa Lucia, is recent. The melody was known to Swedish visitors in southern Italy in the 1800s. For example, Swedish author and feminist activist, Frederika Bremer (1801-1865), in Lifvet i gamla verlden (pub. Stockholm, 1860), writes from Ischia of the "authentic and beautiful barcarole, Santa Lucia." And Swedish writer, Viktor Rydberg, even includes the Italian text of the song in his Romerska sägner om apostlarna Petrus och Paulus from 1874.
Yet it wasn't until 1927 that the song went national in Sweden, when a Stockholm newspaper announced a national festival to pick —I hate to say it— a Miss Lucy for the entire nation and introduced the official song, the Santa Lucia melody with Swedish text by Arvid Rosen. Thus, the small-town rural celebration in which the eldest sister*4 arises early and dons her Lucy garb of white robe, red sash, and a wire crown covered with whortleberry-twigs with nine lighted candles fastened in it to go and then awaken the family and serve them breakfast, thus ushering in the Christmas season... well, all that has been urbanized a bit. There are still "home" Lucys and small town Lucys, yes, but there are also Lucys chosen by businesses and corporations, and there is a national Lucy, as well, chosen from regional winners of Lucy contests. (I don't know if the national Lucy weeps and promises to reduce global warming and work for world peace.)
1. The
name may be more complex. Agneta Lilja of Södertörn
University College in Sweden speaks of "...the
Swedish legend of Lucia as Adam’s first wife...[a
demon of sorts]...Thus the name may be associated
with both lux
(light) and Lucifer... ."
And even
worse. Lussi
is also the name of a female personage in
pre-Christian Scandinavian mythology. Her night, Lussinatta, was
celebrated at the winter solstice. The similarity
between Lussi
and Lucy
requires little comment. It is probably a strong
coincidence
—if you believe in those things— that the name vaguely
resembles Lillith,
Adam's first wife in Hebrew mythology
according to some Rabbinic literature.
(^to
text)
2.
Roberto Murolo, the most noted 20th-century
scholar of the Neapolitan song has a slightly
different version of the history of the song:
"No one knows the real author of the dialect
verses that Cossavich translated into Italian
and that became famous. They say that Cottrau
wrote the music." (in Antologia della
Canzone Partenopea. notes to Santa Lucia,
vol. 2, ms AI 77070, released by Durium.)
The
precise identity of "Cossavich" is obscure. It may be Mario
Cossavich, an enlistee in 1860 in the battles of the
Italian risorgimento,
a time at which other sources say that Cottrau
translated the text into standard Italian. (^to text)
3. It is
important to distinguish between the presence of the
St. Lucy tradition in Sweden and the presence of the
song, Santa
Lucia. Swedish veneration of St. Lucy is not
mundane, though it is not clear exactly how she
wound up in Sweden. Swedish mariners who had
traveled to Italy might have brought back the
tradition as long ago as the year 1000, or possibly
it has to do with St. Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373),
well-known in Naples as Santa Brigida;
she may have received papal consent (from Pope Urban
V) to found her own religious order in Sweden,
arguing that the already existing and strong
veneration of Santa Lucia justified a further
religious order. (Younger readers —under 500 years of age—
should note that this was before the Protestant
Reformation.) (^to text)
4.
Obviously, Lucy has traditionally been a
girl, but The
Local, Sweden's News in English from
Dec. 12, 2008 reports that in spite of Sweden's
staunchly liberal and egalitarian stance in most
social matters, Swedes can still be traditional when
it comes to St. Lucy. In 2008, in at least two
schools, the duly elected Lucys were denied the
crown of Lucyhood because they were males.
5. This note added in January 2021 in connection with the gift-giving day
(Jan 6th) of the Befana in
Italy. Actually, in some places there is an
early gift-giving day in the year-end season,
December 13, the feast day of Santa Lucia. Her
remains are in Venice, but there are other areas
where the devotion to her is very strong —Syracuse
on Sicily, for example. In various places she
thus leads a month-long parade of gifts for the
kids. That is not the case in Naples, although
it might have been! That is, there is a
well-known section of Naples called Santa Lucia
and a famous Neapolitan song by that name — but the once
important church of
Santa Lucia a Mare (on the sea) had to be
rebuilt after war-time destruction. It is no
longer the "monument" church it used to be. This is a
link to that story.
6. Finally —
but really first of all —
The saint, herself, was a very real person, more
precisely known as Lucia of Syracuse (283-304)
because she was born in Syracuse on the island
of Sicily. She died there as well, a martyr to
emperor Diocletian's infamous persecution of
Christians. The closer you get to Sicily the
more likely you are to hear her referred to as
"Santa Lucia of Syracuse." Although her mortal
remains are interred in Venice, "the
headquarters" of her devotees is still the
Church of Santa Lucia of the Sepulcher in
Syracuse.
(^to text)
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