The Heir of Nerito, a hamlet in the municipality of Crognaleto located between the springs of the Vomano River and the Monti della Laga, is an itinerant ritual held on Shrove Tuesday during Carnival. It reenacts the public presentation of the firstborn male child, a form of secular “baptism” performed by masked participants and costumed figures in front of the homes of the families involved, after processing through the streets and alleyways of the village. The eccentric procession, structured around a sequence of codified actions carried out by its protagonists, takes on the characteristics of an implicit initiation and a rite of passage, marking the social birth of firstborn sons as continuers of the lineage and full members of the community that welcomes them.

Anthropologist Elisabetta D’Ambrosio, who was the first to undertake a detailed reconstruction and analysis of the Nerito festival complex—previously unstudied—identified a ritual structure aimed at the “re-foundation of social relationships and the relationship between space and community”. According to her observations in the late 2000s, the Carnival procession included: the Sower, the man who scatters ash; the Poet, riding a mule; the Bishop at his side; the Mammina (midwife figure) on the other side of the Poet; the Bovini (human “oxen”), two young men dressed as cattle who stage sudden escapes; the Bifolco (ploughman), who drives the plough (perticara, a traditional wooden plough) pulled by the Bovini; the Bifolco’s Assistants, responsible for retrieving the Bovini when they break free; and the Table Guards. Field research conducted in 2019 and 2026, together with the analysis of archival materials from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, reveals a ritual structure subject to continuous micro-variations, reflecting both the creative dimension of Carnival and the year-by-year changes within the community. Additional figures appear and disappear—such as the Witch, the Sheikh, the Friars, the Cow, the Devil, and the Nun—while a horse has replaced the mule; nevertheless, the meaning of the ceremony and the overall structure of the ritual remain substantially unchanged.

The multifaceted procession, accompanied by the organetto (ddu bbottë, a traditional diatonic accordion), advances in a caricatural yet purposeful manner, aware of performing an action awaited by the entire community that follows it. Preceded by the scattering of ash as a good omen, it stops at every household where a Heir is present—the firstborn male child recently born, depending on availability, given the current demographic decline. Here, the family entrusts the child to the Mammina, who places him in the arms of the Poet, who seats him on the pack saddle in front of him. “As the Poet cannot dismount from the mule for the entire duration of the ritual,” notes Elisabetta D’Ambrosio, “so the celebrated children must not touch the ground […] until the Poet has completed his recitation”. This recitation, known as the sunatë (ritual recitation), is addressed to the child through the pianotë (written divinatory script), a sheet of verses composed in the local dialect by Renato Savini, who has long been responsible for drafting them. The “baptism”—the public naming of the Heir—is accomplished through the attribution of a nickname serving as a social identifier linked to the history of the family, “the lineage,” whose particular stories are evoked in the texts and declaimed by the Poet, often in satirical and irreverent tones. At the end, the Bishop delivers his “blessing” with wine, pronouncing formulas that are not entirely religious. According to Elisabetta D’Ambrosio, the Mammina, the Bishop, and the Poet “represent different and complementary types of birth”, respectively biological, spiritual, and social. However, the presence of the Bishop also “recalls the medieval Carnival tradition of the mock bishop, particularly that of the episcopello, the ‘little bishop,’ celebrated on 6 December during the Feast of the Holy Innocents as part of the Feast of Fools”. After offering the Poet a glass of wine and some food, a refreshment prepared by the child’s family is shared among all those present; afterwards, the procession resumes its swaying journey. At times, the Bovini suddenly break free from the yoke, running through the alleys or across the surrounding countryside, only to be recaptured by the Assistants who support the Bifolco and returned to pulling the plough toward the next house, until evening falls and the ritual action reaches its completion at the final stop along the route.

Drawing on the fundamental studies of anthropologist Giovanni Kezich on European Carnival, comparable ceremonial complexes emerge on the horizon, in which elements shared with the Heir of Nerito can be recognised, testifying to the deep connection between Carnival and ritual ploughing of ancient origin. These often feature pairs of “young bulls” subjected to “acts of forced domestication and satirical domination” by peasant performers, accompanied by sowers and cross-dressed figures dressed as old women who lead the processions across English, Slovenian, and Balkan countryside, Alpine mountains, and the hills of southern Italy, engaging in house-to-house rounds of good-luck offerings tied to cyclical renewal.