My friend Angela Swedberg introduced me to fellow beadworker Al Zammataro, who recently attended the annual festival of Sant'Alfio in Sicily. The story and photos he shared with me are unbelievable and should be quite an eyeful for those of you interested in unusual horse adornment!! The full set of photos follows in the rest of the post.
Al tells me the festival may have pre-Roman origins (not uncommon with European folk festivals) but is now centered around honoring the deaths of three early Christian martyrs - Saints Alfio, Filadelfo and Cirino - who were captured by the Romans in 251 AD, imprisoned in the village where the festival is now held, and executed on May 10, 253.
The holiday is celebrated by a gathering of pilgrims on the evening of May 9th in nearby towns. Barefoot men dressed only in white shorts and red ribbons carry heavy torches on their shoulders.
More relevant to this blog, locals bring ornate horse carts pulled by even more ornately adorned horses.The adornment on these carts and harnesses is frankly mind-blowing. I've never seen anything like it.
Take a look at the detail on the gray draft horse's breast collar:
Each cart carries a traditional band of musicians.The carts themselves are painted, carved or otherwise adorned:
All night the participants begin the long walk up to the Sanctuary (photo above) of Sant'Alfio (the distance being as much as 20 miles), and as the penitents and horse carts arrive at dawn, celebrations are held in the plaza in front of the Sanctuary.
After the morning celebrations, a more party-like atmosphere develops. Some participants get rides home on the horse carts. Others spend the day feasting, drinking and frolicking in the streets.
Al also says there is a legend that in the cave where the three martyrs were imprisoned, one can see hoof prints on the walls. It is said these were left by a winged horse - this is perhaps some remnant of more ancient myths from the region.
Angela Swedberg pointed out to me how some of the horse ornaments are reminiscent of Native American horse ornament - perhaps through the bringing of Mediterranean traditions to the New World?
I also see some overlap with the type of adornment seen in Egypt and India - perhaps because of cultural sharing across the ancient Silk Road and other trade routes, though the enormous feather plumes are quite distinctive, as far as I have ever seen. This photo shows how tall the plumes are:
Many thanks to Angela for passing this along to me, and to Al for sharing his wonderful photos and the story about the festival.
They have a parade of carts in Touramina Sicily as well. Not sure of date, but it is held every year. When I was stationed there in the early 1990's I met a man who rode on one of the traditional carts and played a flute thing, he was very good with it, and in high demand as a passenger. He would play along the whole route.It seems the quality of horses has improved slightly since then. One problem with Sicily is that they dont have a lot of pasture or land devoted to hay, so owning a horse there is very expensive. In Catania there was (not sure if still there) a government stud with many breeds of stallions for the people to use. They had a very good Arabian stud, and several breeds that are not very well known to the US. The Murguese is a very nice breed, reminded me of a Morgan. There was another breed, which I do not remember the name of, that was similar but the size of a tall carriage horse. Dark bay. Not a Cleaveland Bay, much more rough than those. They said it was a Sicilian breed.
Posted by: Bonnie J Bishop | September 25, 2011 at 09:55 AM
Fantastic!
Posted by: Corujalinda | October 02, 2010 at 02:14 PM
The carts for sale in the flea markets are not originals.
There are only six or seven old teachers able to realize that wagons according to the tradition.
I personally know the owners of some wagons in the pics: the carved one (one of the most recent) has been paid 30.000 € (38.000,00 dollars).
Posted by: Al Zammataro | July 14, 2010 at 08:35 AM
I showed these images to artist friends who have spent a lot of time in Italy, and they said they used to see these carts for sale in the flea markets back in the day. Now of course they are wondering why they never bought one.
Posted by: Robin Rosenthal | July 13, 2010 at 07:49 PM
WOW!! That's cool! Some serious plumage going on. Seems it would be tricky to balance it! So intricate & beautiful though..thank you for sharing.
Posted by: Sarah | July 12, 2010 at 10:45 AM
I wonder HOW the horses carry that stuff, though I know they can from what you have told me about horses. The pictures are spectacular and inspiring. Nice addition to your blog.
Posted by: Fran Boness | July 06, 2010 at 05:48 PM
Wow, this is outrageously wonderful. Reminds me just a little bit of some of the decoration I've seen on the Marwari horses in India, but to the tenth power. I sure would LOVE to go to this festival someday.
Posted by: Robin Rosenthal | July 06, 2010 at 03:07 PM