Thirty-seven is 'o monaco, the monk. Of all the squares this is the one with the darkest documentation attached to it, and the documentation is first-hand.
Matilde Serao devoted a chapter of Il ventre di Napoli in 1884 to the city's lotto habit, and she reports the belief flatly: «Il monaco sa i numeri: questo è il domma». The monk knows the numbers; this is the dogma. If he refuses, it is because God has forbidden him to help sinners. If he gives them and they lose, the player's faith was defective.
- 37
- 'O monaco
- the monk
- Row 31–40 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
No source explains the number. The belief behind the figure is very well documented, which is a different and better thing.
Other things filed on 37
In Neapolitan life
Serao then describes what followed a monk who had given three numbers that came up. They would besiege him with gifts, masses and alms; send children and grandmothers to plead; wait outside the confessional and the convent door; beat him; hold him prisoner; and let him starve, so that at least in his agony he might give the numbers. «Sono cose accadute», she writes. These things have happened. Some monks had themselves transferred to another town and vanished, and the people said the Madonna had taken them away. Serao was making a case against the lotto, and this is the page where she stops being amused.
37 in the smorfia — frequently asked
Because nineteenth-century Naples believed monks knew the winning numbers. Serao records the belief as a dogma of the poor in 1884.
She was a Neapolitan journalist writing a book of reportage about her own city, and the chapter is an attack on the lottery rather than a celebration of it. It is the strongest single source on how the smorfia was actually used.