he costume of the _Compagnia de' Bianchi_, a society or religious order
whose function it was to attend and console prisoners condemned to death.
A scaffold was erected in a public square; the old woman mounted it, and
two mock executioners proceeded, amid a storm of huzzas and hand-clapping,
to saw through her neck, or rather through a bladder of blood which had
been previously fitted to it. The blood gushed out and the old woman
pretended to swoon and die. The last of these mock executions took place
in 1737.(657) In Florence, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
the Old Woman was represented by a figure stuffed with walnuts and dried
figs and fastened to the top of a ladder. At Mid-Lent this effigy was sawn
through the middle under the _Loggie_ of the Mercato Nuovo, and as the
dried fruits tumbled out they were scrambled for by the crowd. A trace of
the custom is still to be seen in the practice, observed by urchins, of
secretly pinning paper ladders to the shoulders of women of the lower
classes who happen to shew themselves in the streets on the morning of
Mid-Lent.(658) A similar custom is observed by urchins in Rome; and at
Naples on the first of April boys cut strips of cloth into the shape of
saws, smear them with gypsum, and strike passers-by with their "saws" on
the back, thus imprinting the figure of a saw upon their clothes.(659) At
Montalto, in Calabria, boys go about at Mid-Lent with little saws made of
cane and jeer at old people, who therefore generally stay indoors on that
day. The Calabrian women meet together at this time and feast on figs,
chestnuts, honey, and so forth; this they call "Sawing the Old Woman"--a
reminiscence probably of a custom like the old Florentine one.(660) In
Lombardy the Thursday of Mid-Lent is known as the Day of the Old Wives
(_il giorno delle vecchie_). The children run about crying out for the
oldest woman, whom they wish to burn; and failing to possess themselves of
the original, they make a puppet representing her, which in the evening is
consumed on a bo