Another interesting ceremony, la Festa della Nouvena, took place nine days previous. The peasantry and shepherds from Abruzzo, Calabria, and Apulia, upon this anniversary, come from the mountains in their sheepskin dresses, playing on their various instruments, some on the Zampogna, (a kind of bagpipe,) others on the Colascione. This instrument is the common one in the Neapolitan dominions, and is something like a guitar, having however only two strings, tuned fifths to each other. These shepherds visit all the churches, and play their famous pastorale there, and at all the principal noblemen's houses. During Christmas the processions are to be seen, in which they perform ; amongst their pageantry they have moveable stages, the machinery connected with which is admirable, representing the birth of our Saviour, the Virgin, &c. all as large as life. The expense of some of these processions is enormous ; and the " properties," as they would be theatrically called, are constantly left in families as heirlooms.