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which can be determined if a numerical comparison is made with even the recent past. An even
more rapid process of disintegration looms over the “work songs”, for many of the old trades for
which these songs were used have now disappeared. This is the case, to a considerable extent, of
the salt worker songs of Trapani, since the old salt mounds are now a barren expanse of land and
in substitution of which are new salt production techniques have been adopted even in the few
that are still in operation. The songs we have recorded are fragments of the memory of an old salt
worker and will vanish with him. The same fate is reserved for the threshing songs, since the
traditional Sicilian method of threshing wheat by means of mules has all but disappeared. The
ever declining number of tuna-fishing rings in Sicily underscores the fact that the songs we have
recently recorded during the mattanza (tuna-killing round) at Favignana is one of the last
testimonies of a time-span which is very important in the context of Sicilian culture. More
conspicuous, however, is the survival of other songs, which are not specifically related to work
and can therefore be transmitted and revived, albeit with changes from one milieu to another.
This is the case of some of the peasant songs, which are still popular in various versions among
cart-drivers and housewives.

In the explanatory notes an attempt has been made to illustrate the relation between the song and
the context in which it lives, as well as the reasons for its survival or its rapid decline.

The songs collected in this recording were recorded from 1969 through 1974, during a research
program sponsored by the Institute of Folk Traditions of the University of Palermo (Sicily) and
by the Folk studio, Palermo.

Written by Elsa Guggino

PEASANT SONGS

1.THRESHING SONG

This song in cadenced rhythm is sung during the pisatura, which is the traditional method of
threshing wheat on the threshing floor. Sheaves of wheat are strewn across a specially prepared
area from the center of which a peasant guides one or more mules on the end of a cable as they
circle around the floor, treading the scattered wheat. The songs serve to incite the animals, to
break the tedious monotony of the movements, and to establish a work-rhythm. In both
expression and content these songs posses a formal, unitary structure, but they do not have
terminal consistency insofar as their rhythms scansion, schema and dissertative content and
duration are connected with the work at hand, which varies according to the time required for it.
Nor could it be otherwise, since these songs derive their meaning and in a more immediate
manner than in any other cultural form – from their function, i.e., from an extra –textural
stimulus.

Let us praise and give thanks/to the most holy and divine sacrament/and you beautiful horse wake
up/can’t you see it’s not time for sleeping/it’s time to work, horse/grind, grind/contented heart/the
heart is content/the mind is content/with you.

Recorded at Corleone (Palermo) on July 26, 1971, by Elsa Guggino and Gaetano Pagano, during
actual threshing work.

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