Ancient traditions of Euganei Hills

The culture and the popular traditions, expressions of the rustic world, have completely disappeared today for the changes induced by the industrialisation and by the urbanization. New cultures and new techniques of cultivation have changed deeply the landscape from which there have disappeared the ditches, the hedges, the baulatura *, the capezzagne *, the plantings*.

*La baulatura, in agriculture, is a convex outline that realise itself on the surface of the ground, with slopes of the order of 1/2 for thousand of the fields.

* The capezzagna or cavedagna is an unpaved service road to the cultivated plots of land. It is an unproductive but functional surface to the management of the cultures.

* The plantings are a whole of the plants cultivated according to an order: a planting vine. Definition and meaning of the term planted.

The scattered settlements have been left in favour of more and more wide and congested centres where the individual loses the connection with the own roots and finds difficult to orientate consciously the own existence. An ancient way of living and of working, of thinking and of speaking, of referring to the nature and the society has gone unfortunately lost between the indifference of the one who is unaware of the fact that our past is not only that written document in the history books, but he includes the popular traditions broadcast orally by a generation to other one for centuries. So it is urgent and indispensable a research for the whole territory to rediscover and to reassess all that still remains of a world from which we come and that keeps our original identity.

The popular culture Between the most original creations of the popular culture there are a proverbs, riddles, singsongs, nonsense rhymes, lullaby, tongue twister, the counts, the games, the singings. The proverbs were a way to broadcast the values the knowledge and the experiences of the past generations. The counts were used at the beginning of the game for the draw of the participants, it was sometimes remainders of magic formulas, of ancient exorcisms or memories of facts that had taken root in the collective memory. The street singers were tramps who were sounding a rough tool and it was reciting nonsense rhymes asking for the charity. The countrymen had a very big catalogue of singings and of compositions with loving and satiric content. Some singings were putting aside memory of historical events of the faraway past.

The popular medicine The diet of the farmers, done almost exclusively from maize, was exposing them to the pellagra for vitamins want, besides the unhealthy habitations were favouring rising up of fevers, while epidemics of smallpox, typhus and cholera were beating down periodically and tragically on the population. Only in rare cases it was turning to the doctor, generally here he was taking care of himself according to the experience of the old men, using above all the grasses in several shapes: infusions, bankrupt, “cataplasmi”, ointments, often associated with the play of formulas and with magic practices. The grasses had to be picked up in the propitious season and that harvesting was considered particularly effective to Saint Giovanni on June 24, especially if still wetting of dew.

The rural kitchen  At the end of 800 the daily middle consumption of the countryman was based on flour of corn, of vegetables, of legumes. In spite of the poverty, the women were arranging the poor ingredients in tasty prescriptions like soups, bigoli pasta, gnocchi, tripes, livers, little birds, mushrooms and above all the polenta, the principal food of the countryman. Besides to fight the hunger there were mixtures with stale bread and milk, or with broth of cotechino and flour of corn united with sugar, pine-kernels, raisin, figs, apples. To Santa Lucia on December 13, the mazin was arriving with the knives and the machine to grind and to sack the meat of pork of which nothing was lost (blood, fat, bones and bristles). In the same day the geese were put in onto to keep them.

Popular Fantasy The popular tradition was rich in fantastic personages by the magic powers between which the Massariol a small sprite completely dressed in red, unpredictable and spiteful, who was behaving above all in night, was taking the word and the sense out, it was making losing the persons in the woods and was able to be transformed into thousand shapes. Not all the his actions were bad, he was teaching the men to treat also of the cattle, the techniques to work the milk and to obtain butter and cheese. In night, in the woods and in the meadows of mountain, it was possible to feel barking furiously of the Catha selvarega, the infernal hunt that was leaving macabre human remains the one who had the courage of challenging it, while close to the watercourses of the cloths that the Vane, Fade, Stringhe, Guane, washing in the night. The witches were generally old, ugly, poor women dressed in black that they had made a pact with the devil and they made cruelties for cruelty, envy or revenge. We know that from the most faraway times, the people were loving to be gathered to listen to histories about old women, but nobody took the trouble to transcribe them. The popular fairy was trasmitted orally and to capture and to hold awake the attention of the public, the narrator was using also the gesture, the expression of the face, the tone of the voice and the rhythm of the speech, all not reproducible elements in the written drafting. The texts destined to the oral broadcasting lose much of their efficaciousness when they are brought back integrally and musts be translated therefore in literaly shape to enter into the written tradition.

The dialect The rustic culture was using only the dialect and was ignoring the Italian, language of the “siori”. The venetian, rich above all on the lexical, rough plan, musical and elegant in city, was for centuries also the state language for Serene Highness, beforehand that in 1500s was prevailing the intention of using the Tuscan. The dialect was also a tool of art for poets and playwrights, as for example by Leonardo Giustinian al Ruzante, to Goldoni. Even so the dialect remains a spoken language expression of the culture of the subordinate classes.

The cycle of the life The rustic society was based on the patriarchal family where the youth and the women had a subordinate list. The women had to hold a respectful attitude and to observe the rules like to eat standing up after served the men seat at the table. The popular culture was strongly misogynous and she was considering the egoist, gossipy, half-witted women, even if their contribution to the familiar economy was fundamental, in fact the task was their of attending to the children, to the house, to the vegetable garden, to the farmyard animals and to the circumstance also of the work in the fields. On the other side it was not alternative if not to adapt to the lists assigned by the tradition and to live a life equal to their fathers, marked by the principal stops of birth, marriage, death that they were celebrated by particular rites.