And, "_Ecco_," continued the _piffero_, bursting in before the
_zampogna_ could go on, and pointing to two stalwart youths of about
twenty-two or-three years of age, who at this moment came up the
street with their instruments,--"These are our two sons. He is
mine,"--indicating one with his reversed thumb; "and that other is
his,"--jerking his head towards his companion. "And they, too, are going
to play in company, as we do."

"For thirty-three years more, let us hope," said I.

"_Eh! speriamo_," (Let us hope so,) was the answer of the _piffero_, as
he showed all his teeth in the broadest of smiles. Then, with a motion
of his hand, he set both the young men going, he himself joining in,
straining out his cheeks, blowing all the breath of his body into the
little pipe, and running up and down the vents with a sliding finger,
until finally he brought up against a high, shrill note, to which he
gave the full force of his lungs, and, after holding it in loud blast
for a moment, startled us by breaking off, without gradation, into
a silence as sudden as if the music had snapped short off, like a
pipe-stem.

On further conversation with my _ciociari_, I found that they came
yearly from Sora, a town in the Abruzzi, about one hundred miles from
Rome, making the journey on foot, and picking up by the way whatever
trifle of copper they could. In this manner they travelled the whole
distance in five days, living upon onions, lettuce, oil, and black
bread. They were now singing the second _novena_ for _Natale_, and, if
one could judge from their manner and conversation, were quite content
with what they had earned. I invited them up into my room, and there
in the pleasantest way they stunned us with the noise of both their
instruments, to the great delight of the children and the astonishment
of the servants, for whom these common things had worn out their charm
by constant repetition. At my request, they repeated the words of the
_novena_ they had been singing, and I took them down from their lips.
After eliminating the wonderful _m-ms_ of the Neapolitan dialect, in
which all the words lay imbedded like shells in the sand, and supplying
some of the curious elisions with which those Abruzzi Procrusteans
recklessly cut away the polysyllables, so as to bring them within the
rythmic compass, they ran thus:--

"Verginella figlia di Sant' Anna,
Nella ventre portasti il buon Gesu.
Si parturisti sotto la capanna,
E dov' man