An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia by Seward Desmond & Mountgarret Susan

Author:Seward, Desmond & Mountgarret, Susan [Seward, Desmond]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Puglia, Apulia
ISBN: 9781907973765
Publisher: Haus Publishing
Published: 2013-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

I visited many of the grottoes, and not without danger, because at the least false step, I could have fallen from the precipice and dashed myself on the rocks below; and in clambering up I could not but tremble at the thought that thousands and thousands of people for many, many years were exposed to a similar danger.

He paints a picture of unutterable degradation, of hideous, filthy savages, the women so liable to commit crimes that the prisons were always overflowing. He attributes it to bad landlords, bad government, bad roads, bad sanitation – and bad health. Under-nourished and deformed, crazy enough to believe unquestioningly in werewolves and incubi, they were completely under the thumb of the ignorant clergy whom they thought could protect them from such horrors, and led a life no better than the animals with whom they shared their cave. Often it was an abandoned laura – Diehl describes the Cripta di Cascione as being used as a stable.

“It is not difficult to see in the summer many men and women, so-called Tarantolati, covered with wine-shoots and red ribbons, dancing continuously in the street with no one to stop them,” de Salis comments, citing other forms of madness at Matera:

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