Ten is 'e fasule, the beans. There is a neat circularity here that nobody planned: dried beans are what Neapolitan families traditionally use to cover the called numbers on a tombola card, alongside chickpeas, lentils, pasta and the shells left over from the Christmas Eve dinner. The counter is itself a figure on the board it counts.
Whether that is why beans took 10, no source says, and the honest answer is that a bean is also just the cheapest thing in a southern kitchen.
- 10
- 'E fasule
- the beans
- Row 1–10 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
Unrecorded. The tombola-counter link is a pleasing coincidence rather than an attested derivation.
Other things filed on 10
In Neapolitan life
Ten is where you can watch the smorfia still moving. Modern Neapolitan lists put Maradona on this number: Diego Maradona played for Napoli from 1984 to 1991 in the number 10 shirt, which the club afterwards retired in his honour. A figure that entered the grid within living memory now sits beside beans and a cannon, and nobody appears to mind.
10 in the smorfia — frequently asked
The same kind. Beans, chickpeas, lentils or bits of pasta cover the numbers on a cartella. Nobody has shown that this is why the figure sits at 10, but the two are certainly the same bean.
He wore the number 10 for Napoli between 1984 and 1991, and the club later retired the shirt in his honour. Modern smorfia lists absorbed him, because the tradition has never stopped taking on new images.