Cabuannu

Ceremonial bread that in Noragugume, a town in the Marghine (a historic region with a rich baking tradition), was prepared on the occasion of New Year's Eve. It was the gift, rich in symbolic-ritual values, reserved by the owners to their respective workers, shepherds or farmers. The one with the three-dimensional representation - or more simplified, depending on the traditionally installed technique and the skill of the bread maker - of the enclosure for the flock (sa mandra) with the figure of the shepherd and the animals was intended for shepherds. For the farmers, on the other hand, a cabuànnu was reserved with the farmyard (s'arzola) and the yoke of the oxen. The purpose of this bread was highly propitiatory, as it aimed at ritually promoting the success of the working year. Such a symbolic ritualization of optimism is very understandable in the new season of the New Year, full not only of expectations, but above all of fears related to the unknowns of nature on which the outcome of the working year largely depended.

(Cover image: 'Cabuannu'. ISRE)

Update

26/1/2025 - 22:41