CAMORRA

   The Camorra, the union of disputatious persons, is a secret society which for many years dominated Naples.  Originally, so far as can be traced, a league of prisoners formed for good fellowship and mutual aid, it gradually spread through many branches of Neapolitan society. 

   There was a grand master, whose name no one was supposed to know, and a court of judges, picked from the twelve branches of the league.  Each branch was composed of a number of semi-independent groups, politicians, blackmailers, smugglers, or thieves.  The judges met in secret and sentenced in secret.  

   Those who refused them obedience died, as a long list of unpunished murders testified. The old Cammoristi were helped, criminals in its ranks mysteriously escaped punishment ; and respectable citizens submitted to its blackmail rather than fight it.  It hung like a shadow over Naples.

From The Times, London, 13 March 1911.

INDIVIDUAL VOICES

Henry accompanied me back to school in the evening – but I recall nothing of the journey.  The light had gone out of the day.  Fortunately, as soon as I arrived, it was time to go to bed . . . . But I slept very badly that summer, and the trains, with their puffing and hooting, filled me more than ever with nostalgia. . . . I lay awake listening to them and to the croaking of the frogs, a sound new to me.  Even then I loved that music, ragged and of the mud, muddy yet so boastful and personal that, much more personal than in birdsong, one could detect individual voices . . . .

Osbert Sitwell, The Scarlet Tree, 1945

Twelve Hours of Frog Sound Effects In Stereo (Link)