Caulonia 2000 - Folklore e tradizioni - Extra-moenia festivity

In Calabria, the “fòcara”, the great bonfires which burn for the festivities of Santa Lucia, Christmas, New Year, the Epiphany, are very well known. At Savelli in the Sila Grande and in San Giovanni in Fiore, the fires are called “Foceri” while in Gioiosa Jonica, for the festivity of San Giovanni, there is a kind of propitiatory rite: a coupple of people, holding hands, must manage to jump across the burning coals in order to make their wish come true. However the most famous of all the bonfires are those in Fellini’s Amarcord and those captured among the pages of Cesare Pavese’s “La luna e i falò”. Pavese’s fire undergoes a lyrical transfiguration in as it becomes the link between present and past: it is the bonfire which, as a child, he saw lit by the farmers to summon rain and, with its ashes, fertilize the land and generate new fruitfulness; it was also the bonfire whichgave death to the life and young ideas of the youths of the Resistance. “At midday all was ashes. Last year there were still the signs, like the bed of a bonfire”.

Even the Caulonian bonfires had their differences: The SS Rosario bonfire was characteristic because at the end of it the most hard working of the faithful were repaid by eating chestnuts and corn on the cob (“paniculu”), cooked on the remaining embers. The Innacolata bonfire’s peculiarity was to be found in its hugeness and spectacularity. It enabled many a grandmother to fill her coal pan with hot embers and so stay warm in the face of the traditional coldness of the holy night. However, the queen of all Caulonian bonfires was the one built in honour of Santa Maria di Crochi. It consisted of a series of bonfires built on the hills above and around the “cannavata” of the Amusa river. It was so! Because, as opposed to the other two of our celebratory bonfires, those for Crochi were different bonfires for different areas which sometimes meant they entered into competition against eachother. Once they had lit their bonfires, each group would carry on revelling by descending towards the small church, in front of which, on the banks of the Amusa river, a larger bonfire was lit. Every faithful attendant would subsequently throw their own bundle or branch of wood onto this bonfire accompanying the gesture with cries of: “in groglia a Madonna i Crochi”.

The evening would not end unless the “u ciucciu” was made to dance and explode. “U ciucciu” was a funny donkey made by roughly woven canes and to which fireworks (frischiaredi, tric-trac, surfaroli and paper bombs) were tied. This donkey would bear the meaning, for us, similar to that of the chinese dragon and, in order to make it jump, a brave volunteer, running a certain risk, would cover himself with a very wet heavy sack, position himself beneath the donkey and, to the fast rhythm of a tarantella, would proceed to make it explode to the delight and applause of the laughing revellers. Thus the eve of the festivity would draw to an end and each family would retire to their “casede” to wait for the following days events.

The festivities in honour of the Madonna di Crochi were, for all our people, the classic extra-moenia festivities which, even today, witnesses the arrival of people from all the different localities of the huge Caulonian territory. One could compare the meaning of Crochi to us with a small scale Polsi, with all its characteristics. Crochi has been talked about for an extremely long time. One document, dating back to around 1669, found and published by Vincenzo Naymo, states: “...there is an ancient church belonging to the Reverend Agostinian Fathers known as Santa Maria dei Crochi, a refuge for the foresi in winter and known for the cold waters which slide past below it in summer and it is affiliated to the Reverend Agostinian Fathers of Castelvetere who keep a clergyman there who sometimes says mass for his devotion to live there”. A tradition, described by Prota, remembers how the Madonna appeared to a devotee and ordered him to build a temple to Her in this austere place. It is said that She herself uttered the sentence: “Hic habitatio mea est, et Ego protecto populi hujus civitatis ero”.

From Prota, we also learn that the ancient church was submerged by one of the swellings of the river and that the construction we see today was built at the end of the XIX century. A beautiful legend tells us about Crochi and the Madonna. It is said that one of the Carafa princes, feudal lord of our city, had a beautiful but mute daughter. The illustrious fathe, not admitting defeat by his daughter’s handicap, accompanied her on the back of a donkey to a hermit Father, who lived in a hermitage along the banks of the Amusa river. The prince very much hoped for a miracle and it seems that as the young princess came closer to destination, passing through the thick woods, caught her veil in the branches and got tangled up.