eir thick, black, dishevelled hair covering their
sunburnt brows, blowing away on their instruments or pausing to sing
their _novena_, they form a picture which every artist desires to paint.
Their dress is common to nearly all the peasantry of the Abruzzi, and,
worn and tattered as it often is, it has a richness and harmony of tint
which no new clothes could ever have, and for which the costumes of the
shops and regular models offer a poor substitute. It is the old story
again. The new and clean is not so paintable, not so picturesque, as the
tarnished and soiled. The worn blue of the cloak is softened by the dull
gray of the threads beneath,--patches of various colors are often let
into the jacket or breeches,--the hat is lustreless from age, and rusty
as an old wall,--and the first vivid red of the waistcoat is toned by
constant use to a purely pictorial hue. Besides, the true _pifferaro_
wears his costume as if it belonged to him and had always been worn by
him,--so that it has none of that got-up look which spoils everything.
From the sandals and corded leggings, which, in the Neapolitan dialect,
are termed _cioce_, the _pifferari_ are often called _ciociari_.

Their Christmas pilgrimages are by no means prompted by purely religious
motives, though, undoubtedly, such considerations have some weight with
them, the common peasantry being a religiously inclined people, and
often making pilgrimages simply from a sense of duty and propriety. But
in these wanderings to Rome, their principal object is to earn a little
money to support them during the winter months, when their "occupation
is gone." As they are hired in Rome by the owners of the various houses
adorned with a Madonna-shrine (of which there are over fifteen hundred
in the city) to play before them at the rate of a paul or so for each
full _novena_, and as they can easily play before thirty or forty a day,
they often return, if their luck is good, with a tolerable little sum
in their pockets. Besides this, they often stand as models, if they are
good-looking fellows, and thus add to their store; and then again, the
_forestieri_ (for, as the ancient Romans called strangers _barbari_,
so their descendants call them _foresters_, wood-men, wild-men)
occasionally drop _baiocchi_ and pauls into their hats, still further to
increase it.

Sometimes it is a father and son who play together, but oftener two old
friends who make the pilgrimage in pairs. This morning, as