Cultural Event
Beside a religious event the festival in Polsi is an important cultural event for local music and dance. Before the road to Polsi was constructed, people would walk for hours of even days. During the pilgrimage people would dance along stretches of the road. Women in particular might make the vow to dance along the route if they wanted to ask for a favour or to give thanks. According to the Calabrian writer Corrado Alvaro in his book ‘Calabria’ in 1931: “Girls thus dance along the entire route, and will be dancing night and day for the hours that they have specified in their vow, until they will collapse on the ground or need to lean on a wall while their feet are still moving.”
The festival of Polsi had nothing of the sadness of others where the sick and deformed met in search of pity and help. It was more a great religious bacchanal, a Dionysian feast, to which people flocked as to a giant picnic in the mountains, ate, perhaps prayed a little and especially where one danced, according to Francesco Perri in his book ‘Enough of Dreams’ from 1929. “Caravans came down from every point in the valley. The people sang and uttered short, loud cries of ‘Viva Maria’ and continually fired their guns. Among the crowds around the sanctuary and in the nearby wood the shooting was incessant …. And over all that multiple discordant din that boomed like the surf of the sea rose a mingled music of pipes, harmonicas, violins, guitars and Basque tambourines.”
Those who attended the festival remained by the sanctuary for a few days. People had to camp in the valley. The contemporary festival is very different. The long walk has almost disappeared and nobody dances on the way. People now drive to the sanctuary, mainly by truck – and the journey is accompanied by the sound of religious chants played by portable amplifiers. Most people now prefer to go back home after they have reached the church and completed their thanksgiving prayers – most attend the festival only on the day of the procession.
Read more about this topic: Sanctuary Of Our Lady Of Polsi
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