‘The Maiella is the great container of human toil,’ (Carlo Cattaneo)

In the late 19th century, the Italian government enacted laws which sold off common and ecclesiastical lands in order to create a ‘property-owning democracy.’ Over 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of land were redistributed, often in small scattered strips which made investment and improvement unprofitable. Those who could afford it, bought fertile land in the valleys, leaving the poorer peasants of Central Italy the cheaper but unproductive lands on the slopes of the Apennine Mountains. Many peasants, unable to grow sufficient amounts of cash-crops were often forced to sell their land in order to meet tax demands and/or interest payments. Furthermore, the state abolished traditional grazing rights on the unsold common land. Millions of households, who had relied on the access to the woods for fuel and pasture for their pigs and cattle, suffered real poverty.  Between 1880 and 1965, over one million Abruzzese fled to Brazil, Argentina, Canada and the United States to seek a better life. Today, there are more than four million Abruzzese living overseas, outnumbering those who remain in the region.

Terms explained;
Contadino translates as peasant. In Italy it refers to a rural social class and is not used in a derogatory way.
A tholos is a simple stone circular building with a conical roof, built by the contadini as simple summer house in which they stayed whilst working their high mountain fields. 

Dear Contadino
I sat inside your tholos for a while, high on the southern flanks of the Mother Mountain, sheltering from the heat of the midday sun - I hoped you wouldn’t mind. The shelf for the foods, the iron hook and the drilled hole in the stone mantel through which you hung a bag, have been untouched by time. Through the doorway, I saw your fields where grass and thistles grow rather than your grains and legumes. There too, stand the old fruit trees - cherries, apples and pears -  and they are as bounteous as you’d hoped they’d be. 

You’d still recognise this poetic landscape. The huge grass flanks of the Maiella mountain would be as familiar to you now as they were then. Above your ‘summer house’ and beyond the fields of grass, there are still the beech forests where you once grazed the family cow and collected your wood to fuel your fire. The great grey peaks of the mountain under the canopy of the blue sky are exactly as you would remember them. I wonder if in your time, the gullies and grey peaks were covered in snow at the end of May, as they are today? 

In the corner of your field, as in the corner of all the fields around here, stand the piles of stones like some prehistoric tumuli, which you made when clearing this harsh and beautiful land. The great walls which terrace your fields, still step up the mountains like a giant’s staircase. As I sit here surveying your work, I am humbled by the immensity of your labour! It is beyond belief in our modern age, that you and other contadini did all this, by hand.

The soil is so thin! There are cracks and fissures through it, and I can see in places, the rock underneath it, like bones seen through flesh. It did not reward your labours and toil well, I know. Years such as this one now, with the very little rain that we’ve had, would have meant the failure of your crops.

If you were with me here today sitting in the doorway of your tholos, you’d hear the familiar sound of bells ringing around the necks of the cattle, as they eat the crisp grass and drink from the troughs nearby. You’d still hear the waters of the mountain splashing into the nearby troughs and you’d hear the bark of the fierce Abruzzese dog as it protects the grazing cows. But you’d wonder at the stillness and the human silence, for these slopes are now mere memorials to your past endeavours. There is no singing, nor cursing, no laughing nor the gossip and tittle-tattle of the village being spread across the land. Old men recall the past as a happy time. Was it really so, when your bellies ached with hunger, when your back groaned with the weight of the stones, when your children died so young?

I’ve picked the ripe, red cherries which were swinging on the ends of their stalks in the gentle breeze. I hope you don’t mind. They are delicious - lightly spiced and not too sweet, even a little sour. They would not sell well in our shops. People want more today - a bigger, fatter, and sweeter fruit (and I would say tasteless too), than what your fields are producing. But for me they are a delight. I’ll make a cherry tart which we’ll share with our friends and neighbours. 

So I wanted you to know, that your fields and tholos are still here in good repair, and that the harvest of fruit at least, is as good as you might have wished. Of course I must thank you too, for this bounty which has filled my basket. We will feast well through the coming days. 

Wherever your bones lie, may they be in deserved rest. 

With best wishes

Julian
May 2022