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It was in the social and working life of the family that Italian speakers of
Daylesford revealed their tme essence as 'settlers'. A stronger sense of ethnic identity
was expressed through freer use of their language and return to a more traditional
life-style. While anglicised words, such as folis (foolish) and mariagio (marriage),'*
entered their vocabulary, in the family home husbands and wives could converse in
their native dialects and expose their children to its use. At family gatherings,
traditional songs and stories could be heard. Working cooperatively, households could
grow, prepare and store traditional foods, and live in homes which reflected the
architectural styles of their homeland. As has already been noted (and will be
discussed further in the Home and Family section), many were constmcted from local
stone with features and adaptations typical of a peasant life-style. Reintroduced into
community life was the festa, not in the traditional form of the magical rituals or
fertility rites tied to the seasons of the agricultural year, but as religious or community
gatherings, serving to reinforce ethnic identity. Along with the countless weddings,
christenings, funerals and saints' feast-days, which brought families together, were the
annual grape harvests and bullboar-maiang activities. In the work place, Italian
speakers felt free to speak in their own dialects, the English-speaking customer, or
costum^^ as he or she came to be known, entering their foreign world in order to
trade. OveraU, the identity of the Daylesford settler was not an individual identity but a
group identity, the core of which was the family.
As 'settlers', the Italian speakers had learned from the experience of being
'scouts'. Later they would be able to pass on 'a stock of knowledge and
understanding which could be drawn upon in the constmction of a recognisable
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