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A curious tradition that is changing... The Cricket Festival
[Susan Glasspool]
You may have already heard about the Cricket Festival and perhaps imagined it was the Italian version of that traditional game so popular in Britain.
It is instead a rather unusual festival that evolves or rather evolved around real live crickets or oversized grass-hoppers! Animal lovers can now take heart, for the live insects have since been replaced by imitations in terracotta though naturally sitting in the customary colourful cages.
This traditional feast and fair dates back to at least the 16th century and has always been held in the beautiful setting of the Park of the Cascine. Some people think that the festival was originally one of the rites of Spring and that the lively cricket, the symbol of well-being and joy, was chosen to represent convivial pleasures. Others instead believe that it stems from the idea that the cricket was blamed for the enormous damage they could wreak on crops. There were even cricket hunts to put them down when the insects had invaded and devastated the countryside. Rather like the locusts in Africa...
Over the years it became a family outing that involved catching the crickets and putting them in cages. Later it was easier still if they were caught directly by the vendors to sell at the Ascension fair.
This colourful festival is still held every year on Ascension Day though, as we said above, the crickets are now in terracotta and are sold directly in their cages at the market stalls, along with other souvenirs.
May 28th (Ascension Day),
8am-7pm.
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