Saint / folklore
Vendetta mourning ritual
A funeral rite of the Southern Italian interior in which the dead man’s mother mouths his wounds as a pledge of revenge.
In the book
When a man is killed in a vendetta his mother, if living, kisses and sucks at his wounds at the funeral — the kind of ‘Bronze-Age’ custom Lattarullo, ten miles away in Naples, knows nothing of.
Appears in 1 diary entry.
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February 12 1944Lewis reflects on the cultural gulf between cosmopolitan Naples and the archaic, vendetta-bound countryside just miles away, as seen through Lattarullo's ignorance of it.
when a man is killed in a vendetta, his mother, if living, kisses and sucks at his wounds at the funeral as a display of grief and desire for vengeance
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