EXTRAORDINARY MARRIAGE CUSTOM.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1211, 27 November 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

EXTRAORDINARY MARRIAGE CUSTOM.

That Pagan traditions and customs yet linger in Southern Italy, was illustrated in a recent criminal trial in Naples. About a year ago Caroline Gurguillo, one of the belles of Sorrento, was married to a sailor named Giuseppe Esposito. According to the custom of the country’ the bridegroom is bound on the morning following the marriage to pay a visit to the house of his mother-in-law, and of this custom the newly-mated Giuseppe Esposito was duly reminded by his relatives and friends. For some reason or other the churlish groom declined to comply’ with the established usage, and a whole fortnight elapsed without his having made the required call. By this time the mother-in-law had become fearfully exasperated ; the honor of her family, she asserted, had been outraged, and that honour she called upon her son, for her sake and his own and that of his sister, to avenge. So the son, Vicenzo Gurguillo, went to his sister !s house and waited for the sailor husband. Esposito, when he came home, offered him a hearty welcome, and l ade him stay to dinner ; but the vindictive Vincenzo drew a knife, and throwing 1 imself on his brother-in-law, stabbed him to the heart. Criminal proceedings in Italy are very dilatory, and it is only after the expiration of twelve months that Vincenzo Gurguillo has been sentenced to hard labor for life, and his mother to three years’ “seclusion.’’ Clerical influence is powerless to suppress the custom, the non-observance of which led to this shocking act of assassination. The usage is one of the oldest in .Magna Gracia, ami obtained in Greece itself thousands of years ago. “On another day, the apaulra perhaps the second after the marriage the bridegroom left his wife to live apart at his father-in-law’s, and the bride invested him with a garment called the “ apaulisteria.” This matrimonial custom has been so far modified as to make the mother-in-law the titular recipient of the bridegroom’s visit, but there can be no doubt that the observance for disobeying which Giuseppe Esposito lost hi ; life is the antique Greek custom translated in “ choice Italian.”