In ancient times, the religious sentiment that animated the Apulian sailors was very strong.
Simple and naive people, who put all their faith in God and in the Madonna, every hope that flourished in their hearts, had profound devotion to their patron saints, and invoked them in happy moments of life and in sad and perilous ones. The sailor, when he got up early, made the sign of the cross and murmured some prayers learned from childhood.
He did the same at the end of the day, when he heard the Angelus Dei ring or when tired from the hard work he had to fall asleep; in the hours of rest he often thought of his deceased and quietly recited some prayers in their suffrage and also on Sundays in church, listening to mass, he repeated the paternoster or the Ave Maria, albeit in a bizarre way transformed as an ignorant person could remember them. In moments of danger or storms he turned his thoughts to the Eternal, to the patron saints and murmured words of faith and devotion, he recommended himself to their mercy.
It was very difficult to extract from the mouth of a sailor one of the prayers he recited on different occasions. If his soul was closed to expressing the affections of the heart, it was to imagine how he was more reluctant to communicate the prayers he addressed to God or to the Saints; he is modest and reserved, he jealously guards his religious feelings and beliefs deep in his chest, and feared contaminating them, failing in his duties as a Christian, if he manifested them to others.
The people of the sea were less cultured than the farmers and craftsmen, and although they had great faith, they were poor in imagination. Living from a small age away from the family and the social life of the village, not attending it except in the brief hours of church holidays, they did not have the possibility of learning many prayers and were unable to understand them completely. Therefore, they repeated the few prayers they heard as children from their mothers or sisters, those who learned from old work colleagues when they were travelling, are very rare.
However, with a painstaking work Imbriani (author of many books on Apulian and non-Apulian traditions) managed to collect a conspicuous number which, while not shining for the beauty of concepts, contain a feeling of true devotion and pure religious faith.
SAN NICOLA and the Sea
The fishermen of Bari thus invoke the great miracle worker of Mira (San Nicola)
In his naive faith the fisherman asks the Holy Help to escape the dangers of storms and to deserve God's forgiveness, when he will call him from this life of pain and suffering, before his court.
Sanda Nicola, so big
Ca resurrect the Sanda Manne
Pe' l'opre bbone ca séme faciéste.
Thank you for me to Jesus Christ.
J'obbre bbone you cheered.
Trè Princepe liberaste.
'Na vidue chenzelaste.
Three resurrected maidens.
The storms seemed to calm down
The marenare ajetaste.
And you tonight, Santa Nicole.
Ngé à da la fa la grazzie.
E nge à da gives na bbòna nine.
The unknown author the prodigy of the manna, which flows from the bones of the Saint jealously preserved in the crypt of his temple in Bari, and the miracle of the resurrection of the three young men, who had been killed, quartered and reduced to pieces by a perfidious innkeeper.
… and in Rodi Garganico?
Instead, the sailors of Rodi Gargano recite this prayer to the Virgin
Chiu of light, sky and earth.
You, Marie, yes the cchiù bbèlle.
Plus the Holy Trinity.
Thank you, Sande Marie.
You have the riggina of them thanks.
Tiene la mène tanta putènde.
Hello lu polepe, hello la ggènde.
Praise Saint Joseph.
Ca la glorie 'n wait for them.
Pardon it, you great queen.
Stella di cièle and luminande.
Who wants thanks, Ddie se 'nghine
That the Sande are our friends.
Open arms evening and morning.
Who goes candanne lu resarie,
Lu says there is great devotion.
Lu dimonie has lost his victories.
E marie se va n gèle 'n glorie
It is a somewhat confused chant, with messy concepts, but the believer does not pay too much attention to logic, when he is animated by faith, and often couples prayer for the Eternal with that for the virgin, for Saint Joseph or for other protectors. A pagan and deistic root remains in Puglia.
Molfetta replies…
The fishermen of Molfetta, who are very devoted to the virgin of the Martyrs, who celebrate the eighth of September, and after carrying the beautiful simulacrum for a long stretch of sea on two boats decorated with flagpoles and oriflames, carry it barefoot and half-naked, on the backs up to the cathedral, they sing this prayer:
Most Holy Madonnas of the Martere.
You are the omnipotent Matre de God.
Help them, dear sinner.
And forgive us, our Lords
An almost childish soul can be seen in these outbursts of the fishermen, a synthesis between fear of dying and religious beliefs, more similar to wanting to ward off bad luck than to wanting to abandon oneself to worship.
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