and on Palm Sunday.
During fasts the people do not sing, a custom observed strictly on the
islands. Three days before Ascension Day the crosses are taken out of
the churches and fastened to poles ten or twelve feet high, with
fluttering banners; these days are therefore called "Cross" days. The
village girls make garlands to hang from the ends of the crosses. They
are then carried in procession round the village and over the fields;
when a spring is reached it is surrounded, the priest reads the gospel,
and blesses the water and the people with the cross. On Ascension Day,
or the day before, a procession with the cross goes through the village,
and every house is blessed. In the coast-strip, on the eve of "Cross
Day," there is a frugal supper; on the day itself, a dinner. Before
both, the master of the house cuts a piece of bread from the "Kreuzlaib"
(a large round loaf with a cross marked in the centre), and sticks in it
a taper which he has lighted with a brand from the hearth. All pray
before it for their dead, cross themselves, and sit down to table. Later
in the meal the master rises with a glass of wine, soaks a bit of bread
in it, and, with the traditional formula, "I to thee, bread and wine;
thou to me, health and joy," extinguishes the taper with the morsel.
Then he drinks to all, and they to him. The great piece of bread, into
which the taper was stuck, is given to the first beggar who comes by.
They provide much more than enough for the guests, as the custom is on
those days to feed the poor in villages and towns. Unless the family is
in mourning, drinking songs are sung suitable to the guests, of whatever
position.

Fires are lighted on the eve of S. Stephen's Day, and also on New Year's
Day and Epiphany, as well as on the morning of S. John the Baptist's
Day, when the people jump over the midsummer fires and cry: "From one S.
Giovanni to another, may aching feet be far from me!" On New Year's Day
the children get an apple or an orange from the mother, and go to the
father, asking him to silver it; he sticks a ten-kreuzer piece or two
into it, and they go on to friends and relations with the same request.

Every village has its church (some have three or even more), every
hilltop has its sanctuary, and each island its holy place. In Cattaro,
till the beginning of the nineteenth century, churches and convents
occupied a third of the area within the walls, and each nobleman had his
private chapel in his villa