In the early morning, almost all the year round the women may be seen sitting before their doors undoing and doing up again this long abundant hair. The chief part of their domestic work they perform out in the sunshine; one thing only, but that the most important of all, has to be done in the house--the never finished task of weaving the clothes of the family. From earliest girlhood to past middle age the Sicilian women spend many hours every day at the loom. A woman of eighty, Rosa Cataldi of Borgetto, made the noble boast to Salomone-Marino: "I have clothed with stuff woven by my hands from fourteen to fifty years, myself, my brothers, my children, and their children." A girl who cannot, or will not, weave is not likely to find a husband. As they ply the shuttle, the women hardly cease from singing, and many, and excellent also, are the songs composed in praise of the active workers. The girl, not yet affianced, who is weaving perhaps her modest marriage clothes, may hear, coming up from the street, the first avowal of love: Ciuri d'aranci. Bedda, tu tessi e tessennu mi vinci; Bedda, tu canti, e lu me' cori chianci. It has been said that love begins with sweetness and ends in bitterness. What a fine world it would be were Brown Death the only agent in the bitter end of love! It is not so. Rusidda, who dies, is possibly more fortunate than Rusidda who is married. When bride and bridegroom return from the marriage rite, the husband sometimes solemnly strikes his wife in presence of the assembled guests as a sign of his henceforth unlimited authority. The symbol has but too great appropriateness. Even in what may be called a happy marriage, there is a formality akin to estrangement, once the knot is tied. Husband and wife say "voi" to each other, talking to a third person, they speak of one another as "he" and "she," as "mio cristiano," and "mia cristiana," never as "my husband" and "my wife." The wife sits down to table with the husband, but she scrupulously waits for him to begin first, and takes tiny mouthfuls as if she were ashamed of eating before him. Then, if the husband be out of humour, or if he thinks that the wife does not work hard enough (an "enough" which can never be reached), the nuptial blow is repeated in sad and miserable earnest. The woman will not even weep; she bears all in silence, saying meekly afterwards, "We women are always in the wrong, the husband is the husband, he has a right even to kill us since we live by him." These things have been recorded by one who loves the Sicilian peasant, and who has defended him against many unfounded charges. A hard case it would be for wedded Rusidda if she had not her songs and the sun to console her.