Readers
may
know
that
Santa
Lucia is also the name of a popular
Neapolitan song
about the area of that name in Naples. In
older literature, the quarter used to be
referred to as "a small fishing village
outside of Naples." Indeed, even in recent
material apparently prepared by people who
have never been there, it has been called "a
town near Naples." Nothing of the sort; it
is precisely the area across from the famous
Egg Castle of Naples.
That area, however, is not what it used to
be; the original fishing port of Santa Lucia
was filled in and built over with
fashionable hotels around 1900 as part of
the urban renewal of the city known as the Risanamento. The
song,
Santa
Lucia, a delicate barcarole
besinging the charm of the area is one of
the three most popular Neapolitan songs in
terms of worldwide recognition. The other
two are certainly 'O sole mio
and Funiculì
Funiculà, both of
well-established authorship. Santa Lucia
is a bit uncertain. Some sources credit
Teodoro Cottrau (1827–1879) as having
composed the melody and written the lyrics;
others say that he took an existing and
anonymous traditional melody and wrote
lyrics to it in Neapolitan, publishing it at
Naples in 1849. He later translated the
lyrics into Italian, making it the first
Neapolitan song to be widely known in Italy.
(This was before the great wave of national
and international fame of the genre, which
started in the 1880s with
Funiculì
Funiculà.)*2 Back
to
Sweden.
To celebrate St. Lucy's Day, it is now
traditional to sing the melody of the
Neapolitan song, Santa Lucia, with
appropriate Swedish lyrics. Although there
are various texts, a popular one says, The night
treads heavily How did a Catholic patron saint of Syracuse wind up being celebrated in modern secular (or at least Lutheran!) Stockholm? If you are thinking of 4th-century pilgrimages along the ancient and fabled Sicily-Sweden Silk & Lighted Candle Road, alas, the story is somewhat more mundane.*3 Within the centuries-old tradition of St. Lucy's in Sweden, the Neapolitan song, Santa Lucia, is recent. The melody was known to Swedish visitors in southern Italy in the 1800s. For example, Swedish author and feminist activist, Frederika Bremer (1801-1865), in Lifvet i gamla verlden (pub. Stockholm, 1860), writes from Ischia of the "authentic and beautiful barcarole, Santa Lucia." And Swedish writer, Viktor Rydberg, even includes the Italian text of the song in his Romerska sägner om apostlarna Petrus och Paulus from 1874. Yet it wasn't until 1927 that the song went national in Sweden, when a Stockholm newspaper announced a national festival to pick—I hate to say it—a sort of Miss Lucy for the entire nation and introduced the official song, the Santa Lucia melody with Swedish text by Arvid Rosen. Thus, the small-town rural celebration in which the eldest sister*4 arises early and dons her Lucy garb of white robe, red sash, and a wire crown covered with whortleberry-twigs with nine lighted candles fastened in it to go and then awaken the family and serve them breakfast, thus ushering in the Christmas season—all that has been urbanized a bit. There are still "home" Lucys and small town Lucys, yes, but there are also Lucys chosen by businesses and corporations, and there is a national Lucy, as well, chosen from regional winners of Lucy contests. (I don't know if the national Lucy weeps and promises to reduce global warming and to work for world peace.)
1. The name may be more complex.
Agneta Lilja of Södertörn University
College in Sweden speaks of "...the Swedish legend
of Lucia as Adam’s first wife...[a demon of
sorts]...Thus the name may be associated with both lux (light) and
Lucifer..." (retrieved
here on 18 Nov 2009). And even worse. Lussi is also the name of a female personage in pre-Christian Scandinavian mythology. Her night, Lussinatta, was celebrated at the winter solstice. The similarity between Lussi and Lucy requires little comment. It is probably a strong coincidence—if you believe in them—that the name vaguely resembles Lillith, Adam's first wife in Hebrew mythology according to some Rabbinic literature. (^to text) 2. Roberto
Murolo, the most noted 20th-century scholar of
the Neapolitan song has a slightly different
version of the history of the song: "No one
knows the real author of the dialect verses
that Cossavich translated into Italian and
that became famous. They say that Cottrau
wrote the music." (in Antologia della
Canzone Partenopea. notes to Santa Lucia,
vol. 2, ms AI 77070, released by Durium.)
The precise identity of
"Cossavich" is obscure. It may be Mario Cossavich, an
enlistee in 1860 in the battles of the Italian risorgimento, a
time at which other sources say that Cottrau
translated the text into standard Italian. Cossavich
reference (retrieved from
here.) (^to text) 3. It is important to distinguish
between the presence of the St. Lucy tradition in
Sweden and the presence of the song, Santa
Lucia. Swedish veneration of St. Lucy is not
mundane, though it is not clear exactly how she
wound up in Sweden. Swedish mariners who had
traveled to Italy might have brought back the
tradition as long ago as the year 1000, or possibly
it has to do with St. Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373),
well-known in Naples as Santa Brigida;
she may have received papal consent (from Pope Urban
V) to found her own religious order in Sweden,
arguing that the already existing and strong
veneration of Santa Lucia justified a further
religious order. (Younger readers—under 500 years of age—should
note that this was before the Protestant
Reformation.) (^to text) 4. Obviously,
Lucy has traditionally been a girl, but The Local, Sweden's
News in English from Dec. 12, 2008
reports that in spite of Sweden's staunchly liberal
and egalitarian stance in most social matters,
Swedes can still be traditional when it comes to St.
Lucy. In 2008, in at least two schools, the duly
elected Lucys were denied the crown of Lucyhood
because they were males. |
St.
Lucy's
Day is celebrated in Sweden and elsewhere in
Scandinavia