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Professional Mourners

Professional Mourners image
Parent Issue
Day
4
Month
October
Year
1895
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

In the Italian quarterl found myseli the other day in a home whioh had been darkened by a doublé misfortune. A little Italian boy had fallen f rom a fire escape to the street and been instantly killed. His widowed mother, when she came npon the body of her son, went mad with grief and attempted to take her owu life. She was taken to the hospital. The boy 's body lay npon a table, and a blazing candelabrnm stood at its head. At the side the boy 's foster father and his wife knelt ín prayer. Seated abont the room was a group of women chanting an Italian death wail. One of the women raised her face, and her quavering voice fllled the room : "Happiness has departed fromns foreverl" And the others droned the refrain : "Forever!" "He will never be absent from our thoughts!" "Never from our thoughts 1" And so on, strophe and antistrophe, the chief wailer leading and the choras echoing the dismal refrain. It was a sight and a sound to move even the tardy sensibilities of a reporter. Such scènes are not uncommon in the Italian quarter, thongh they seldom come under the eye of visitors. The professional mourner is an institution in sorne of the provinoes of soathern Italy. She - the office belongs entirely to the softer sex - is analogous to the Irish "keener, " but with the difference that her wail is more musical than weird, whereas the "keener" is weird, piercing - almost anything but musioal. The Italian wailers - they are called "prefiche" in their native tongue - are doubtless descendants of the professional mourners of ancient Bome. They are most common, and their office is most clearly defincd in the provinces of Abrnzzo and Calabria and in Sicily. There they are regularly retained and rewarded with a fee. In other provinces a relative of the afflicted family may assuine the office and lead the chorus, or the function may beof awholly miscellaneous character, all the moarners joinins in a song of

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News