Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1875 — The Bursting of the Car. [ARTICLE]

The Bursting of the Car.

An Italian correspondent of the Newark Advertiser writes: Of all the ceremonies of Holy Week the Scoppio del Carro (“bursting of the car”) is of most interest to the Tuscan peasant. On Saturday morning a tower-like car, trimmed with'gilt and colored paper, and drawn by four white oxen gayly decked with flowers, stands between the Duomo and the Baptistery. The great central doors of the cathedral are thrown wide open; in front of the altar under the dome is placed a pillar, from the top of which a rope passes down the nave and out to the great triumphal car in the piazza before the church. Ou this rope and close to the pillar is a white dove. At twelve o’clock the bell of the Campanile breaks the spell which for forty-eight hours has rested on every church bell in the city, and lollowing in its wake come peals fronr nil the tongues which have been keeping silent because Christ is dead. (There is a law’ which imposes a fine ot ten scudi— ten dollars in gold—upon any church whose bell strikes before that of the cathedral tower.) At the first stroke the dove—an ingenious piece of fireworks—comes whizzing down the rope and out to the Carro , where it ignites the hidden trains of powder, and again w’hizzes back into the church. Explosions from the car follow’ each other in rapid succession, the air- is full of flying bits of paper and the smell of powder, and thousands of people are looking on with breath less interest, because, as the dove flies on Holy Saturday, so shall be the olive, the vine and the chestnut harvests for the coming autumn. But this year the cpntadino will dig and plant with little faith, for the dove, returning through the church, fell about midway, *and, although the fireworks in the car exploded most satisfactorily, the omen will rest heavily on the hearts of the credulous peasantry. The oxen, the car and the crowd passed down the Via Proconsolo and halted on a corner. Another dove wms sent from the palace of the Pazzi family—with whom this custom originated—down to the car, and the whole ceremony was repeated.