by Filomena Stancati

Popular traditions are the spiritual heritage of our people, or as Vincenzo Dorsa, a 19th century Cosentine man-of-letters used to say, they are “the archive of peoples.” Their preservation and study, besides being a source of popular culture, allows us to understand the evolution of our civilization across the ages and across the generations. The mark of popular tradition is found in all fields of human activity. Nicastro possesses a rich heritage of such traditions, which in their diversity have been and continue to be an expression of the soul of our people.

In our customs, beliefs, legends, proverbs, as in the manner of speaking that we hear on our annual holidays, or in carrying out chores in the home or on the farm, there remain certain indelible and unmistakable imprints of our most authentic traditions. Despite the progress of civilization, the influx of modern communication and the improvement in the quality of life, these traditions characterize a past age and they bring us back to the origins of our cultural identity.

A pacchiana and a tammarru from Nicastro on the day of their wedding.
Stancati private collection.

Although in the past we had no lack of artisans, workers and, to a lesser degree, professionals and land-owners, most of our population made its living from the land. For this reason, the farming class was for the most part the repository of ancient peasant traditions, which it passed down from one generation to another, and which came to be respected as divine laws and precepts from their forefathers. These traditions imposed themselves on the entire population by means of inevitable social contacts and through an array of economic, moral, religious, and civil factors, which have always conditioned the life of our community, as happens among all the other people of the world. The general improvement of economic conditions and the leveling of social classes after the second world war impelled an advancement that swept away many of the habits that were rooted in past generations, which had been so customary and had formed part of the daily life of our people, but are now lost.

The traditional Nicastro costume of the “pacchiana", brightly colored, worn with pride by our peasant women, has by now almost entirely disappeared, except in some scattered cases involving old people who never gave it up and have continued to consider themselves as members of that subordinate class whose lot through life has been to serve and depend on others with a spirit of resignation while rejecting any possibility of social redemption. Regarding the characteristic male costume, it is now unknown and no one has been found using it since the middle of the century, except among folklore groups.