The Garden of Love, or The King’s Daughter and the Wizard Count.
There was a Count of high degree,
All others far above;
He had a garden fair to see,
’Twas called the Garden of Love.“Now who is knocking at my gate?
Who is it that makes so free?”
“Oh, I am the daughter of the king,
And your garden I would see!”“Oh, come into my garden,
Fair daughter of the king!
Look well at all that’s growing,
But touch not anything!”She entered in the garden,
The princess young and fair,
She looked it all well over,
Yet nothing but trees were there.But every leaf was of silver,
The flowers of gold; in the grove
The fruits were gems and jewels
In the beautiful Garden of Love.She sat beneath the foliage,
The daughter of the king;
What shone in the path before her?
A beautiful diamond ring!She knew not that the County
Was a wizard wondrous wise;
She did not know that the diamond
Was the wizard in disguise.And when at night, fast sleeping,
The diamond ring she wore,
She never dreamed that her finger
Was bearing a young signor.Awakened by his kisses
As she heard the midnight ring,
There was the handsome wizard
By the daughter of the king.I ween she was well contented,
As many dames would be,
If they could be enchanted
With just such sorcery.To have not only a jewel,
But a husband, which is more,
All day a dazzling diamond,
And by night a bright signor!Who was it wrote this ballad
About this loving pair?
He was the Count and wizard
Who won the princess fair.
STORIES OF SAN MINIATO
“The picturesque height of San Miniato, now the great cemetery of the city which dominates the Arno from the south, has an especial religious and saintly interest. The grand Basilica, with its glittering ancient mosaic, shines amid the cypresses against the sky, and whether it gleams in the sunlight against the blue, or is cut in black on the primrose sky of twilight, it is equally imposing.”—“Echoes of Old Florence,” by Leader Scott.
To the old people of Florence, who still see visions and dream dreams, and behold the wind and the stars at noonday (which latter thing I have myself beheld), the very ancient convent of San Miniato, “the only one in Tuscany which has preserved the ancient form of the Roman basilica,” and the neighbourhood, are still a kind of Sleepy Hollow, where witches fly of nights more than elsewhere, where ghosts or folletti are most commonly seen, and where the orco and the nightmare and her whole ninefold disturb slumbers a bel agio at their easiest ease, as appears by the following narrative:
San Miniato fra le Torre.
“This is a place which not long ago was surrounded by towers, which were inhabited by many witches.
“Those who lived in the place often noticed by night in those towers, serpents, cats, small owls, and similar creatures, and they were alarmed by frequently seeing their infants die like candles blown out—struggere i bambini come candele; nor could they understand it; but those who believed in witchcraft, seeking in the children’s beds, often found threads woven together in forms like animals or garlands, and when mothers had left their children alone with the doors open, found their infants, on returning, in the fireplace under the ashes. And
at such times there was always found a strange cat in the room.
“And believing the cat to be a witch, they took it, and first tying the two hind-paws, cut off the fore-claws (zampe, claws or paws), and said:
“‘Fammi guarire
La mia creatura;
Altrimenti per te saranno
Pene e guai!’“‘Cure my child,
Or there shall be;
Trouble and sorrow
Enough for thee!’
“This happened once, and the next day the mother was sitting out of doors with her child, when she saw a woman who was her intimate friend at her window, and asked her if she would not wash for her her child’s clothes, since she herself was ill. But the other replied: ‘I cannot, for I have my hands badly cut.’
“Then the mother in a rage told this to other women whose children had been bewitched or died.
“Then all together seized the witch, and by beating her, aided with knives crossed, and whatever injuries they could think of, subdued her and drenched her under a tower with holy water. And the witch began to howl, not being able to endure this, and least of all the holy water!
“When all at once there came a mighty wind, which blew down the witch-tower, and carried away the witch, and killed all the uncanny animals which dwelt in the ruins. And unbelievers say that this was done by an earthquake; but this is not true, for the witches were really the cause (chagione) of its overthrow.
“And though many old things are destroyed and rebuilt, there are many cats still there which are assuredly witches.
“And in the houses thereabout people often perceive and see spirits, and if any one will go at night in the Piazza San Miniato fra le Torri, especially where those old things (chose vecche) were cleared away, he will see sparks of fire (faville di fuocho) break out, and then flames; and this signifies that some diabolical creature or animal is still confined there which needs relief (che a bisogna di bene), or that in that spot lies a treasure which requires to be discovered.”
I consider this as very interesting, because I most truthfully guarantee that this specimen of witch-lore was written in good faith and firm belief, and is not at all, like most of the tales gleaned or gathered now-a-days, taken from people who got them from others who perhaps only half believed in them. She who wrote it has no more doubt that witch-cats prowl, and that wild-fire hisses forth from evil spirits in durance pent ’neath the soil of San Miniato, than that the spirit of the Arno appears as “a small white hand pointing tremulously upwards.”
There is given in the Facetiæ of Piovano Arlotto, which is considered a truthful record of the adventures of its subject, a tale relative to San Miniato which cannot here be deemed out of place. It is as follows:
La Testa di San Miniato.
“There was in Florence a poor and learned gentleman—savio e da bene, who was a good friend of Piovano Arlotto, who was also good to him, since he had often aided the former with money, meal, and many other things, and indeed without such help he could hardly have fed his family; for he had fourteen sons and daughters, and though the proverb says Figliuoli, mioli, ’lenzuoli non sono mai troppi in una casa—there are never too many children, glasses, or linen sheets in a house, this good man found indeed that he had too many of the former.
“Now to help dire need, this gentleman tried to buy on credit two bales of cloth, one wherewith to clothe his family, and the other to sell in order to make some money. To do this, he needed some one to be his security, and he had recourse to Piovano Arlotto, who willingly agreed to pay the manufacturer in case the friend who gave his note could not meet it. Now he found that the manufacturer had sadly cheated the purchaser in the measure or quantity, fully one-half, as was also evident to many others; however, as matters stood, he was obliged to let it pass.
“As things were thus, the poor gentleman died and passed
away from this misera vita or sad life, and Piovano was in deep grief for his loss, and as much for the poor orphans.
“When the note fell due, the manufacturer went to Piovano Arlotto and asked for his money, saying that he only demanded what was justly due to him.
“And after a few days’ delay, he paid the man two-thirds of the sum, and ten florins for the time and trouble, and said he would not give a farthing more. Then the dealer begun to dun him, but he evaded every demand. Then the merchant employed a young man, eighteen years of age, who had not his equal in Florence to collect debts. And this youth set to work in earnest to get from the priest the sum of about twenty-eight gold florins, still due from the account.
“In a few days he had attacked Piovano a hundred times with the utmost impudence, in the market, in the public squares, on the streets at home, and in the church, without regard to persons present, at all times, and in every aggravating way, until the priest conceived a mortal hatred of the dun, and turned over in his head many ways to get rid of him.
“At last he went one day to the Abbot of San Miniato or Monte, and said to him: ‘Padre reverendo, I seek your paternal kindness to relieve a very distressing case in which I am concerned. I have a nephew who is possessed by the devil, one into whom an evil spirit has entered, and who has a monomania that I owe him money, and is always crying to me everywhere, ‘When are you going to pay me? I want twenty-eight florins.’ ’Tis a great pity, for he is a fine young man, and something really ought to be done to cure him. Now I know that the holy relic which you possess, the worthy head of the glorious and gracious San Miniato, has such a virtue, that, if it be once placed on the head of this poor youth, ’twill certainly cure him. Would you so contrive, in any way, to put it on him some time this week?’
“The Abbot answered, ‘Bring him when you will.’
“Piovano thanked him and said: ‘I will bring him on Saturday, but when he shall be here, I pray you be at the gate with seven or eight strong men, that he may not escape; for you know, holy father, that these demoniacs are accustomed to rage when they see relics and hear prayers, and it will be specially so with this poor youth, who is young and vigorous—yea, it may be that ’twill be necessary to give him sundry cuffs and kicks, so terrible is the power of Satan—
lupus esuriens. Do so, I pray, without fearing to hurt my feelings—nay, it would be a great pleasure to me, so heartily do I desire to see him cured.’
“The Abbot answered, ‘Bring him here, my son, and I will see that all is rightly done.’
“Piovano returned, saying to himself:
“‘Chi vuol giusta vendetta,
In Dio la metta.’
“‘Leave vengeance to the Lord, or to his ministers—videlicet, the monks of San Miniato. Which I will do.’
“On Friday he went to the merchant who had sold the cloth, and said: ‘As for this which I owe you, it is all rubbish. You cheated the man who gave you the note out of half the cloth—you know it, and I can prove it. However, to avoid further trouble and litigation, I am willing to pay all, but you must allow time for it. Dura cosa e l’aspettare—’tis hard to wait, but harder still to have nothing to wait for. The monks of San Miniato owe me for forty cords of wood, which is to be paid for at the end of two years, and then you shall have your money.’
“This sounded like ‘for ever and a day’ to the creditor, and in a rage he had recourse to his collector, who on Saturday morning went to San Miniato. When he arrived, he had to wait till the grand mass was over, to the great vexation of the young man, and meanwhile eight powerful monks with long staves had grouped themselves about the door, awaiting a little healthy exercise.
“And mass being over, the dun hastened up to the Abbot, who, taking him by the hand, said: ‘Oh, my son, put thy trust in God and in San Miniato the blessed; pray that he may take this evil conceit from thy head,’ and with this much more, till the young man grew impatient and said:
“‘Messer Abbot, to-day is Saturday, and no time for sermons. I have come to know what you are going to do about this debt of Piovano of twenty-eight florins, and when it will be paid?’
“Then the Abbot, hearing, as he expected, the demand for money, began to exhort and exorcise. And the youth began to abuse the Abbot with all kind of villanies, and finally turned to depart; but the Abbot caught him by the cloak, and there was a fight. Then came the eight monks, who seizing him, chastised him lustily, and bound him with cords, and
bearing him into the sacristy, sprinkled him with holy water, and incensed him indeed—and then set the holy head of San Miniato on his head—he thinking they were all mad as hatters. Then they exorcised the evil spirits in him—‘Maledicti! excommunicati et rebelles—sitis in pæna æternali nulla requies sit in vo-o-o-bis si statim non eritis obedientes, præceptis me-e-e-e-is!’—until the youth had to give in, and beg the Abbot’s pardon, and being released, fled as for dear life.
“But he met outside Piovano Arlotto, who said to him: ‘Thou hast had a dainty drubbing, my son, but there is plenty more where that came from—non v’e nè fin, ne fondo—there is neither end nor bottom to it. Now go to thy master, and say that if he goes further in this business he will fare worse than thou hast done.’
“The youth, returning to Florence, told the tale to his employer, and how Piovano Arlotto had declared if they dunned him any more he would do his best to have them drubbed to death. So they dropped the matter—like a hot shot.
“Everybody in Florence roared with laughter for seven days—sparsa la piacevolezza per Firenze, vi fu che ridere per setti giorni—that is to say, everybody laughed except one clothmaker and his collector, and if they smiled, ’twas sour and bitterly—the smile which does not rise above the throat—the merriment like German mourning grim. And as for the young man, he had to leave Florence, for all of whom he would collect money told him to go to—the monks of San Miniato!”
There was a curious custom, from which came a proverb, in reference to this monastery, which is thus narrated in that singular work, La Zucca del Doni Fiorentino (“The Pumpkin of Doni the Florentine”):
“There is a saying, E non terrebbe un cocomere all’erta—He could not catch a cucumber if thrown to him. Well, ye must know, my masters and gallant signors, that our Florentine youth in the season of cucumbers go to San Miniato, where there is a steep declivity, and when there, those who are above toss or roll them down to those below, while those below throw them up to those above, just as people play at toss-and-pitching oranges with girls at windows. So they keep it up, and it is considered a great shame and sign of feebleness (dapocaggine) not to be able to catch; and so in declining the company of a duffer one says: ‘I’ll have nothing to do with him—he isn’t able to catch a cucumber.’
“It is one of the popular legends of this place that a certain painter named Gallo di San Miniato was a terribly severe critic of the works of others, but was very considerate as regarded his own. And having this cast at him one day, and being asked how it was, he frankly replied: ‘I have but two eyes wherewith to see my own pictures, but I look at those of others with the hundred of Argus.’”
And indeed, as I record this, I cannot but think of a certain famous critic who is so vain and captious that one must needs say that his head, like a butterfly’s, is all full of little i’s.
“And this tale of two optics reminds me of the story of Messer Gismondo della Stufa, a Florentine of Miniato, who once said to some friends: ‘If I had devoted myself to letters, I should have been twice as learned as others, and yet ye cannot tell why.’ Then some guessed it would have been due to a good memory, while others suggested genius, but Messer Gismondo said: ‘You are not there yet, my children; it is because I am so confoundedly cross-eyed that I could have read in two books at once.’”
In the first legend which I narrated, the fall of the tower is attributed to witchcraft or evil spirits. In the very ancient frescoes of San Miniato there is one in which the devil causes a wall or tower to fall down and crush a young monk. What confirms the legend, or its antiquity, is that the original bell-tower of San Miniato actually fell down in 1499. The other then built was saved from a similar fate by the genius of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, who built a bank of earth to support it.
“Hæc fabula of the head of San Miniato,” wrote the immortal Flaxius on the proof, “teaches that he who would get round a priest in small trickery must arise uncommonly early—nay, in most cases ’twould be as well not to go to bed at all—especially when dunning is ‘on the tap.’ Concerning which word dun it is erroneously believed in England to have been derived from the name of a certain Joseph Dunn, who was an indefatigable collecting bailiff. But in very truth ’tis from the Italian donare, to give oneself up to anything with ardour—to stick to it; in accordance with which, donar guanto, or to give the glove, means to promise to pay or give security. And if any philologist differs from me in opinion as to this, why then—let him diff! Which magnanimously sounding conclusion, when translated according to the spirit of most who utter it, generally means:
“Let him be maledict, excommunicate, and damnated ad inferos—in sæcula sæculorum!—twice over!”
THE FRIAR’S HEAD OF SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE—THE LADY WHO CONFESSED FOR EVERYBODY—HOLY RELICS
“He who speaks from a window or a pulpit, or the top of a good name or any high place, should speak wisely, if he speak at all, unto those who pass.”
The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore “remounts,” as the Italians say, or can be traced back to 700 a.d., but it was enlarged and renewed by the architect Bueno in the twelfth century, and according to Pitré it was the germ of a new style of architecture which we find much refined (ringentilata) in Santa Maria del Fiore. “There were, regarding its bell-tower, which no longer exists, many tales and curious anecdotes, which might form a part of a fine collection of local legends.” There is still to-day on the wall above the little side-door facing the Via de’ Conti, a much worn head of stone, coming out of a round cornice, which is in all probability the one referred to in the following legend:
“There was once a condemned criminal being carried along to execution, and on the way passed before the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. One of the friars put his head out of a little round window, which was just large enough for it to pass through, and this was over the entrance on the lesser side of the church, facing the Via de’ Conti. As the condemned passed by the friar said:
“‘Date gli da bere, ’un morira mai.’
“‘Give him a drink and he never will die.’
“To which the condemned replied:
“‘E la testa di costì tu ’un la levrai’.
“‘And thy head shall stick where it is for aye.’
“And so it came to pass that they could not get the head of the friar back through the hole, so there he died. And some say that after they got the body out they carried his likeness in stone and put it there in the little round window, in remembrance of the event, while others think that it is the friar himself turned to stone—chi sa?”
The conception of a stone head having been that of a person petrified for punishment is of the kind which would spring up anywhere, quite independently of tradition or borrowing; hence it is found the world over. That ideas of the kind may be common, yet not in common, nor yet uncommon, is shown by the resemblance of the remark of the friar:
“Give him a drink and he never will die,”—
which was as much as to say that inebriation would cause him to forget his execution—to a verse of a song in “Jack Sheppard”:
“For nothing so calms,
Our dolorous qualms,
And nothing the transit to Tyburn beguiles,
So well as a drink from the bowl of Saint Giles.”
There is a merrier tale, however, of Santa Maria Maggiore, and one which is certainly far more likely to have occurred than this of the petrified pater. For it is told in the ancient Facetiæ that a certain Florentine nobleman, who was a jolly and reckless cavalier, had a wife who, for all her beauty, was bisbetica e cattiva, capricious and spiteful, malicious and mischievous, a daughter of the devil, if there ever was one, who, like all those of her kind, was very devout, and went every day to confession in Santa Maria Maggiore, where she confessed not only her own sins, but also those of all her neighbours. And as she dwelt with vast eloquence on the great wickedness of her husband—having a tongue which would serve to sweep out an oven, or even a worse place [150]—the priest
one day urged the husband to come to confession, thinking that it might lead to more harmony between the married couple. With which he complied; but when the priest asked him to tell what sins he had committed, the cavalier answered, “There is no need of it, Padre; you have heard them all from my wife many a time and oft, and with them a hundred times as many which I never dreamed of committing—including those of all Florence.”
It was in the first Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which stood on the site of the present, that San Zenobio in the fourth century had walled into the high altar an inestimable gift which he had received from the Pope. This was “the two bodies of the glorious martyrs Abdon and Sennen, who had been thrown unto wild beasts, which would not touch them, whereupon they were put to death by swords in the hands of viler human beasts.” I may remark by the way, adds the observant Flaxius, that relics have of late somewhat lost their value in Florence. I saw not long ago for sale a very large silver casket, stuffed full of the remains of the holiest saints, and the certificates of their authenticity, and I was offered the whole for the value of the silver in the casket—the relics being generously thrown in! And truly the mass of old bones, clay, splinters, nails, rags with blood, bits of wood, dried-up eyes, et cetera, was precisely like the Voodoo-box or conjuring bag of an old darkey in the United States. But then the latter was heathen! “That is a very different matter.”
BIANCONE, THE GIANT STATUE IN THE SIGNORIA
“Fons Florentinus.—In foro lympidas aquas fons effundit marmoreis figuris Neptuni et Faunorum ab Amanate confectis.”—Templum Naturæ Historicum. Henrici Kornmanni, a.d. 1614.
The most striking object in the most remarkable part of Florence is the colossal marble Neptune in the Fountain of the Signoria, by Ammanati, dating from 1575. He stands in a kind of car or box, drawn by horses which Murray declares “are exceedingly spirited.” They are indeed more so than he imagined, for according to popular belief, when the spirit seizes them and their driver, and the bronze statues round them, they all go careering off like mad beings over the congenial Arno, and even on to the Mediterranean! That is to say, that they did so on a time, till they were all petrified with their driver in the instant when they were bounding like the billows, which are typified by white horses.
Neptune has, however, lost his name for the multitude, who simply call him the Biancone, or Great White Man; and this is the legend (given to me in writing by a witch), by which he is popularly known:
Biancone, the God of the Arno.
“Biancone was a great and potent man, held in great respect for his grandeur and manly presence, a being of tremendous strength, and the true type of a magician, [152] he
being a wizard indeed. In those days there was much water in the Arno, [153] and Biancone passed over it in his car.
“There was then in the Arno a witch, a beautiful girl, the vera dea or true goddess of the river, in the form of an eel. And Biancone finding this fish every day as he drove forth in his chariot, spurned it away con cattivo garbo—with an ill grace. And one day when he had done this more contemptuously than usual, the eel in a rage declared she would be revenged, and sent to him a smaller eel. But Biancone crushed its head (le stiaccio il chapo).
“Then the eel appeared with a little branch of olive with berries, and said:
“‘Entro in questa carozza,
Dove si trove l’uomo,
L’uomo il più potente,
Che da tutti e temuto;
Ed e un uomo grande,
E grande, e ben vero;
Ma il gran dio del Arno,
Il potente Biancone,
Non sara il solo potente;
Vi sara una piccola pesce,
Una piccola anguilla;
Benche piccola la sia;
Fara vedere la sua potenza
Tu Bianconé, a mi,
Le magie, e siei mezzo stregone
Io una piccola anguillina,
Sono una vera fata,
E sono la Fata dell Arno,
Tu credevi d’essere
Il solo dio d’Arno,
Ma ci, no, io che sono
La regina, e la vera,
Vera dea qui del Arno.’“‘Lo, I enter in this chariot!
Where I find the man of power,
Who is feared by all before him,
And he is a mighty being,
Great he is, there’s no denying;
But the great god of the Arno,
The so powerful Biancone,
Is not all alone in power;
There’s a little fish or eel, who,
Though but little, has the power,
Mighty man, to make thee tremble!
Biancone, thou art only
Unto me as half a wizard;
I, a little eel of the Arno,
Am the fairy of the river;
Thou didst deem thyself its ruler;
I deny it—for I only
Am the queen and the true goddess—
The true goddess of the Arno.’
“Having said this, she touched with the twig of olive the little eel whom Biancone had killed, and repeated while touching it:
“‘Anguillina che dal Grande
Siei stata stiacciata,
Io con questo ramoscello
Ti faccio in vita tornare,
E al Grande, io, del Arno
Tutto il mio pensiero,
Tutto posso raccontare.’“‘I, little eel, who by the mighty
Man hast been to death delivered,
Do call thee back unto the living!
Wake thee with this twig of olive!
Now unto this Biancone,
Thou who art too of the Arno,
Shalt speak out thy mind and freely.’
“Then the little eel, resuscitated and influenced by the goddess of the Arno, said:
“‘Biancone, tu che siei
Il potente dio dell’ Arno,
L’anguilla discacciata,
Che tu ai discacciata,
E di te inamorata,
E di te più potente,
E se tu la discaccerai,
Ti giura la vendetta,
E si vendichera. . . .’“‘Biancone, Biancone!
Thou great spirit of the Arno,
Lo, the eel by thee despised
Turns again with love unto thee:
She surpasses thee in power;
If she is by thee rejected,
She will vow revenge upon thee,
And will be avengèd truly.’
“‘Io non voglio amar donne,
Sia pure d’una bellezza
Da fare a cecare,
Ma per me non mi fa niente,
Non voglio amare donne,
Sara per bellezza una
Gran persona, ma non vero,
Per potenza, per che più,
Più potente di me non
Vi e alcun . . . ’“‘I seek not the love of women.
Thou art of a dazzling beauty;
Unto that I am indifferent;
I seek not the love of ladies.
Thou may’st be full great in beauty,
Not in power, for in power
I shall ever be the greater.’
“Then the eel arose [155] and said:
“‘Biancone, or guardami,
Guarda mi bene perche più,
Non mi vedrai vedermi,
E se mi vedrai,
Non mi potrai toccare,
Dici che più potente
Di te non cé nessuno,
Ma sa io la prima,
Mia potenza e quella
Di vederti inamorato,
Di me vere inamorato,
Ma che ora sono io,
Che ti discaccio per la tua,
Al te si guardami mi vedi.’“‘Biancone, now regard me,
Look well at me now, for never,
Wilt thou ever more behold me,
Or if thou behold’st me, touch me,
And thou say’st that thou hast power,
And that none can rival with thee.
Thou shalt learn that I am stronger,
For I’ve power to make thee love me,
But ’tis I who now reject thee,
If thou doubtest—now behold me!’
“And then, instead of an eel, appeared a maid of dazzling
beauty, and Biancone sought to embrace her, but could not, and said:
“‘Contentami una volta
Sola, o dea dell’ Arno;
Lascia che ti abbraci
Una volta sola, o dea.’“‘For a single time content me,
Lovely goddess of the Arno;
Let me but for once embrace thee,
Yield to me I pray, O fairy!’
“But the goddess of the Arno replied:
“‘Una donna più potente
Di te, non si lascia
Vincere da uno superbo;
Tuo pari mi basta di
Far ti vedere, che c’e
Persona ancora di te
Più potente . . . Ora io
Mi voglio vendi care per che,
Tu mi ai discacciata,
Tante volte, ed ora invece
Tu saresti bene contento
Di abbraciarmi anche,
Anche or per una volta,
Ma no. Addio Biancone!’“‘A woman who has greater power
Than thine will surely not be conquered
Merely by pride in outward seeming,
But now, in brief, I will content me
By proving mine the greater power;
I seek to avenge myself upon thee,
Since of old thou didst despise me
Many times, but now wouldst gladly,
Though it were but for once, embrace me—
Farewell for ever, Biancone!’
“And Biancone fled, but he always bore the beautiful goddess in his mind, and could not forget her, so he too meditated a vengeance.
“But the vengeance of a woman strikes more powerfully than that of a man.
“One day when Biancone was passing over the Arno in his chariot, with all his attendants, he thought he saw the eel engaged in forming the basin of a fountain (vasca), and bear it away in a car, she herself being in it, [156] and it was covered
with glass; but in the time that he thought (or dreamed) that he saw this, the eel appeared and said:
“‘Il momenta della mia vendetta
E arrivato, e ti giuro
Giuro che la mia vendetta
E potente, or Turanna,
Mia regina delle Fate,
E dea dell Arno, commanda
Che questa carroza sprafondi,
E che tu e la tua servitu,
Non vi potrete salvare.’“‘Now the time to wreak my vengeance
Has arrived, and I swear thee
That my vengeance shall be fearful,
Very great, because my sovereign,
Turanna, queen of all the fairies,
Orders that thy chariot
Shall be firmly fixed for ever,
And that thou and all thy following
Never more canst hope for rescue.’
“Then she sang again:
“‘Confino i tuoi servitori,
Quelli che ti aiut avanno
A discacciar sui, o
Diventare della forma,
Mezze bestie, mezzi uomini,
E tu o Biancone,
Che tanto grande siei,
Ti confino a stare sempre,
Sempre ritto e non potrete
Mai ragionare, ne camminare
Solo quando sara luna,
Luna piena, passero io
Ti vedro, e mi vedrai,
Ma parlarmi non potrai.“‘Quando sara luna piena,
E che sara una notte,
Che sara mezza nuvola,
E mezza serena s’enderai,
Della tua carozza nei,
Nei momenti che la Luna
Resta sotto le nuvole,
E cosi potrei favellare,
Con tutte le statue, che ai
Attorno, allor tua carozza,
E col mio permesso potrai
Andare anche dai tuoi amici!’“‘I hereby compel thy servants,
Those who aided thee, to vanish,
Or take forms half brute, half human. [158]
As for thee, O Biancone!
Thou who art so tall and stately,
Thou shalt stand erect for ever,
Without power to speak or wander,
Only when the full moon shining
Falls upon thee, I will pass thee,
I shall see thee; thou will see me,
Without power to address me!“‘When the moon in full is shining,
Yet when clouds begin to gather;
Half in light and half in darkness,
Thou may’st only in the moment
When the moon is overclouded,
Leave thy chariot, and have converse
With the statues who are round thee,
Then thou may’st, by my permission,
Go among thy friends, then only.’”
I may here explain to the reader that this tale with its elaborate invocations is not current as here given among the people. Such forms and formulas are confined to the witches, who, as in all countries, are the keepers of mysterious traditions. All that is generally heard as regards this subject is, that when the full moon shines on Biancone at midnight, he becomes animated, and walks about the Signoria conversing with the other statues.
The Neptune was, with horses and all, produced by Bartolommeo Ammanati between 1564 and 1565. It has a certain merit of grandeur, but in lesser degree is like its neighbour Cacus, by Baccio Bandinelli, which Benvenuto Cellini justly regarded as resembling a mere bag of fat. When Michael Angelo saw the Neptune he exclaimed: “Ammanato! Ammanato! che bel blocco che hai sciupato!”—“Ammanato, what a fine block of marble thou hast spoiled!”
The Italians say that the satyr at the corner of the Palazzo Vecchio is a copy, because the original was stolen
one night in January in 1821, “and is now one of the finest bronzes in the British Museum of London.” It may be so; there was a great deal of fine stealing in those days. I suspect, however, that the truth is that as these images return to life now and then, the satyr availed himself of his revivification to set forth on his travels, and coming to London and finding good company in the British Museum, settled down there. But truly, when I think of the wanton and heartless destruction of beautiful and valuable old relics which has gone on of late years in Florence, to no earthly purpose, and to no profit whatever, I feel as if all the tales of such things being stolen or sold away to foreign museums were supremely silly, and as if it were all just so much saved from ruin—in case the tales are true.
“Hæc fabula docet,” wrote Flaxius, “a strange lesson. For as it was anciently forbidden to make images, because it was an imitation of God’s work; and secondly, because men believed that spirits would enter into them—even so doth it become all novel-writers, romancers, and poets, to take good heed how they portray satyrs, free-love nymphs, and all such deviltry, because they may be sure that into these models or types there will enter many a youthful soul, who will be led away thereby to madness and ruin. Which is, I take it, the most practical explanation for commandment, which hath been as yet set coram populo.”
THE RED GOBLIN OF THE BARGELLO
“Lord Foulis in his castle sat,
And beside him old Red-cap sly;
‘Now tell me, thou sprite, who art mickle of might,
The death which I shall die?’”—Scott’s Border Minstrelsy.
The Bargello has been truly described as one of the most interesting historical monuments of Florence, and it is a very picturesque type of a towered mediæval palace. It was partly burned down in 1322, and rebuilt in its present form by Neri di Fioravanti, after which it served as a prison. Restored, or modernised, it is now a museum. As I conjectured, there was some strange legend connected with it, and this was given to me as follows:
Il Folletto Rosso.
“The Red Goblin is a spirit who haunts the Bargello, or was there of old in the prisons, nelle carceri, and he always foretold to every prisoner what his sentence would be before it was pronounced.
“He always appeared in the cell of the condemned, and first lighting a candle, showed himself all clad in red, and said to the prisoner:
“‘Piangi, piangi, ma piangi forte,
E prepararti che e giunta
L’ora della tua morte.’“‘Weep, oh weep full many a tear;
Make ready; thy hour for death is near.’
“Then if the prisoner replied boldly:
“‘Anima chi siei!
Ti pregò di volermi aiutare
A liberarmi dalla morte!’“‘Spirit, whoe’er thou be,
I beg thee now for aid;
From death pray set me free!’
Then the goblin would burst into a laugh and say:
“‘Non piangere, ridi, ridi!
Ma ride sempre, e spera
Che io ti aiutera!’
“But if the prisoner had replied badly, or cursed, or said ‘Vai al diavolo!’ or ‘Che il diavolo ti porti!’—then there were heard dreadful sounds, such as frightened all the prisoners and assistants, and the goblin vanished crying:
“‘Woe, woe, and woe to thee!
For thou soon shalt punished be;
Away be led, to lose your head,
There is no hope for thee!’
“And after that the man might well despair. Yet the Red Goblin was a jolly sprite when not crossed, and made great sport for the prisoners, who all knew him. He went into every cell, and would tell wild tales, and relate to every one all that he, the prisoner, had done since he was a boy, and how he came to be locked up, and what would be the end of it, and told all this with such peals of laughter that the most unhappy were fain to laugh with him.
“Then the assistants and the director hearing such sounds, thought it was the prisoners rioting, but could not detect them. [161a] And the spirit relieved many innocent men from punishment, and especially visited those condemned to wear the iron collar or gogna, which was fastened to a post, but at the Bargello it was on the Campanile outside, in sight of all the people. [161b]
“Now there was a young man in the prison who was good at heart, and deeply repented that he had done wrong, and now feared that he indeed was in the power of Satan, and destined to be in prison for all this life and in inferno all the next.
“And when he was thus sunk in misery one night, he heard him, and was in great alarm, but it said, ‘Fear
not, for I am the protecting spirit of the prisoners in the Bargello, and have come to free thee; put thy trust in me and I will save thee!’
“Then he told the youth how he was to act, and bade him say certain things when examined, and follow closely all the goblin would whisper to him; but whether it was his fault or his failure, he missed every point and went wrong in his replies, the end being that he was condemned to prison for life. Truly it went to his heart to think that while he lived he should always see the sun looking like a chess-board, [162] and bitterly reflected on the proverb:
“‘Ne a torto nè a ragione,
Non ti lasciar metter prigione.’“‘Whether you’re right or wrong, my man,
Keep out of prison as long as you can.’
“But it went most bitterly to his heart to think that he had by his own stupidity and want of study lost the chance of freedom. And for some time the Red Goblin never came near him. But at last the prisoner heard him call, and then the spirit said, ‘Now thou see’st to what a pass thy neglect of my advice has brought thee. Truly il diavolo non ti tenterebbe—the devil takes no pains to tempt such a fool as thou, for he knows that he will get him without the trouble of asking. And yet I will give thee one more chance, and this time be thou wide awake and remember that a buona volontà, non manca facoltá—where there’s a will there’s a way.’
“Now there was a great lord and mighty man of the state who had been in the Bargello, and greatly comforted by the Red Goblin, who now went unto this Signore, speaking so well of the young man that the latter ere long had a new trial. And this time, I warrant you, he studied his case like a lawyer; for asino punto, convien che trottè—when an ass is goaded he must needs trot—and the end thereof was that he trotted out of prison, and thence into the world, and having learned repentance as well as the art of watching his wits and turning them to account, prospered mightily, and to his dying day never forgot to pray for the Red Goblin of the Bargello.”
There have been other spirits which haunted prisons; there was one in the Bastile, and the White Ladies of
Berlin and Parma are of their kind. This of the Bargello is certainly the household sprite with the red cap, in a short shirt, who was very well known to the Etruscans and Romans, and afterwards to the Germans, the Lutin of the French castles, the Robin Goodfellow of England, and the Domovoy of the Russians. His characteristics are reckless good nature mingled with mischief and revenge; but he is always, when not thwarted, at heart a bon garçon. Of the Bargello I have also the following anecdotes or correlative incidents:
Giorgio.
“Truly I will not swear that this is a story of the Bargello, for I am very particular as to truth, Signore, but I will swear that ’tis of a prison in Florence, and that when it happened the Bargello was the only prison there. And it runs thus: Giorgio, whoever he was, had killed a man, and as the law ran in his case, in those strange days, he could not be executed till he had confessed or owned the deed. And he would not confess.
“Now there was a lawyer, un notaio, ò chi che si fosse (or whoever he was), who declared that he would bring to pass with a trick what justice had not been able to do with torture. So going to the prison, he called for wine, and when they had drunk deep he cried heartily:
“‘Orsú, Giorgio, stiamo un poco allegri, cantiam qualche cosa’—‘Come now, Giorgio, let’s be merry and sing something!’
“‘Come ti piace’—‘As you please,’ quoth Master Giorgio. ‘You sing one line.’
“So the notary began, touching a lute:
“‘Giorgi hà morto l’huomo.’
“‘Giorgio once killed a man.’
“To which Giorgio, who was sharp as a razor, added:
“‘Così non canta Giorgio.’
“‘But it was not thus that Giorgio sang.’
“So it passed into a proverb, meaning as much as Così non dico io—I don’t say that; or Così non l’intendo io—I don’t see
it in that light. And so the notary found that you cannot see Verona from the top of every hill.
“And there is another story of a prisoner, who had long curling hair in the old Florentine style. Hair, Signore, like charity, may cover much sin. Now this man, after he had been a while in the Bargello, got his sentence, which was to have his ears cropped off. But when the boia or hangman came to do the job, he found that the man had had his ears cut off smooth long before. Whence came the proverb:
“‘Quel che havea mozzi gli orecchi,
E’ci sara de gli arreticati.’“‘He whose ears had been cut away,
Fooled another, or so they say.’
Which is a proverb to this day, when a man finds that somebody has been before him.
“And it may have been that Donatello, the great sculptor, was in the Bargello when he said, ‘E’rise a me ed io riso à lui’—‘He laughs at me, and I do laugh at him.’ Donatello was in quistione, or in trouble with the law, and in prison, for having killed one of his pupils. The Marquis di Ferrara asked him if he was guilty. But Donatello had already received from the Marquis a license to slay any one in self-defence, and so he made that answer.”
A Legend of the Bargello.
“One day a young man, who had been gaming and lost, threw some dirt at an image of the Virgin in one of the numerous shrines in the city, blaming her for his bad luck. He was observed by a boy, who reported it to the authorities, and was soon arrested. Having confessed that he did it in a rage at having lost, he was hanged the same night from one of the windows of the Bargello.” [164]
Thereby adding another ghost or folletto to those who already haunt the place. It should be noted that according to Italian witch-lore a ghost is never simply the spirit of the departed as he was, but a spirit transformed. A witch becomes a fata, good or bad, and all men something more than they were.
Among other small legends or tales in which the Bargello is referred to, I find the following, of which I must first mention that debito in Italian means not only debt but duty, and that fare un debito is not only to get into debt, but to do what is just, upright, and honourable.
“It happened once, long ago, that a certain good fellow was being escorted, truly not by a guard of honour, but by several bum-bailiffs, to the Bargello, and met a friend who asked him why he was in custody. To which he replied, ‘Other men are arrested and punished for crime or villainy, but I am treated thus for having acted honourably, per aver fatto il debito mio.’
“And it happened to this same man that after he had been entertained for a time at the public expense in that gran albergo, or great hotel, the Bargello, that the Council of Eight, or the public magistracy, gave him a hearing, and told him that he must promptly pay the debt which he owed, which was one of fifty scudi or crowns. To which he replied that he could not. Then the chief of the Eight said, ‘We will find out a way to make you pay it, be sure of that.’ To which he answered, ‘De gratia, Signore, while you are about it, then, make it a hundred, for I have great need just now of another fifty crowns.’”
Prisoners in the Bargello, as elsewhere, were subject to the most appalling injustice and cruelty. Thus we are told of Cosimo di Medici, when he was doing all in his power to assassinate or poison Piero Strozzi, that he was always very circumspect as regarded the venom, “and did not use it till he had studied the effects and doses on condemned prisoners in the Bargello.” But “condemned prisoners” here means doubtless those who were simply condemned to be made the subjects of such experiments, as may be supposed, when we learn that Cosimo obtained the recipe of making up a poison from Messer Apollino, secretary of Piero Luigi, by torturing him. It was thus they did in good old pious times. Poisoning, as a most familiar and frequent thing, even in England, did not pass
out of practice, even in politics, until that great beginning of a moral era, the Reformation.
“Hæc fabula docet,” wrote the good and wise Flaxius on the revise, “that as a Zoccolone friar is the best priest for a peasant, so even a buon diavolo, or jolly devil, or a boon blackguard who knows his men, is, perhaps, generally the best guide for certain kinds of rough sinners, often setting them aright in life where a holy saint would be inter sacrem et saxum, or in despair. As for poisoning, I fear that cup, far from passing away, is, under another form, passed round far more frequently now than it ever was. For François Villon declared that lying gossip, tittle-tattle, and second-hand slander were worse than poison (which simply kills the body), and this with infinite refinement prevails far more in modern society (being aided by newspapers) than it ever did of yore anywhere. This is the poison of the present day, which has more veneficæ to spread it than the Locustan or Borgian venoms ever found. Now for a merrier tale!”
“If all that’s written, talked or sunge
Must be of the follies of menne,
’Twere better that no one moved his tongue,
Or that none could use a penne.“Jog on, jog on the footpath-waye,
And cheerily jump the stile;
A merry heart goes all the daye,
A sad one tires in a mile!”
LEGENDS OF SAN LORENZO
the canon and the debtor, and the cats in the cloister
“Pazienza, paziendum!
Disse il diavolo a Sant Antonium.”“A scratching he heard and a horrible groan,
As of hundreds of cats with mollrowing and moan:
‘Oh!’ said he to himself, ‘sure the devil is come.’”—Mr. Jones and the Cats.
The celebrated Church of San Lorenzo is a grand museum of art, even among the many of its kind in Florence. It was originally a Roman Christian basilica, built by the matron Giuliana, which edifice was consecrated a.d. 373 by Saint Ambrose, and called the Basilica Ambrosiana. It was partially rebuilt by Brunelleschi in 1435, and completed with sad alteration, and finished by Antonio Manetti. As is well known, or has been made known by many great poets, it contains the grandest statuary by Michael Angelo in its monuments of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his uncle Giuliano.
This church served as a sanctuary in the olden time, and of this there is a tale told in the old collections of facetiæ, which, though trifling, is worth recalling as connected with it.
Il Debitore.
“Messer Paolo dell’ Ottonaio, a Canon of San Lorenzo in Florence, a cheerful and facetious man, found a certain citizen one of his friends, who had taken refuge as a debtor in the church; and the latter stood in sorrowful and pensive attitude, having in no wise the appearance of one who had found
a treasure, or who was going to be married, or to dine with the Duke, or anything of the kind.
“‘Man, what aileth thee?’ cried the Canon. ‘Has thy wife beaten thee, or the cat broken thy best crockery, or thy favourite housemaid run away?’
“‘What I have,’ replied the poor man, ‘is ten times worse than all that put together.’ And so, havendo caro di sfogarsi, being glad to relieve himself, he told Messer Paolo all his sorrows, wailing that his creditors, having taken all his property, threatened his person, swearing that they would put him in the Stinche, which was so horrible a prison that it was infamous even then all the world over as an inferno where every one confined at once became infermo, or a hell which made men ill, and that, being in despair, he would have taken his own life had he not come across a charming book on patience which had consoled him.
“Messer Paolo asked him whether the creditors had been paid in full.
“‘Alas, no!’ replied the debtor; ‘not one half; nor will they ever get the rest, for I have naught.’
“‘In that case,’ answered the Canon, ‘it seems to me that it is your creditors and not you who should read that charming book, since it is evident that, as they are to have nothing till the Greek Kalends, or on Saint Never’s day, that they must have patience whether they will or no.’
“Well, as the saying is, Pazienza vince scienza (Patience beats knowledge), and Chi ha pazienza vede le sue vendette (Wait long enough and you’ll get your revenges), the Canon got for the poor man money enough to make a composition with his creditors, and he, having expectations which they knew not of, compounded with them for five per cent., on conditions written, that he should pay all up ‘as he earned more money.’
“And so he was set free, and it befell on a day that some relation died and left him a fortune, whereupon his creditors summoned him to pay his old debts, which he refused to do. Then they cited him before the Council as a fraudulent debtor, but he replied by showing his quittance or agreement, and declared that he was only obliged to pay out of his earnings, and that he had inherited his money and not earned it. Whereupon there was great dispute, and one of the creditors who had shown himself most unfeeling and inhuman protested that to get money in any way whatever was to guadagnare (a gain by labour), since it was labour even to put it in one’s
pocket. Now, this man had a handsome wife, who, it was generally known, greatly enriched her husband by dishonouring him, at which he willingly winked.
“Whereupon the debtor asked the magistrate if an ox carried off a bundle of hay on his horns, which had by chance been stuck into it, he could be said to have earned it by honest labour? At which there was such a roar of laughter, and so many cries of ‘No! no! no!’ that the court went no further, and acquitted the culprit.”
There is an odd bit of folklore attached to this church. As may be supposed, and as I have frequently verified, “the idle repetition of vain words,” as the heathen do, or prayers in a language which people do not understand, generally lead to most ridiculous perversions of the unknown tongue. A popular specimen of this is the Salve Regina delle Ciane Fiorentine di San Lorenzo, or the “Salve Regina of the Florentine women of the lower class, as given in San Lorenzo.” Ciana is given by Barretti as a specially Florentine word.
La Salve Regina.
“Sarvia della Regina, dreco la Misericordia, vita d’un cieco, spezia nostra, sarvia tua, te chiamao esule, fili e vacche!
“Ate sospirao, i’ gemeo fetente in barca e lacrima la valle.
“L’ la eggo educata nostra, illons in tus.
“Misericordia se’ cieli e in ossi e coperte, e lesine benedette, frutti, ventri, tubi, novi, posti cocche, esilio e tende!
“O crema, o pia, o dorce virgola Maria!—Ammenne!”
This is perfectly in the spirit of the Middle Ages, of which so much is still found in the cheapest popular Italian literature. I have elsewhere mentioned that it was long before the Reformation, when the Church was at the height of her power, that blasphemies, travesties of religious services, and scathing sarcasms of monkish life reached their extreme, and were never equalled afterwards, even by Protestant satirists. The Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum of Hütten and Reuchlin was an
avowed caricature by an enemy. The revelations of monkish life by Boccaccio, Cintio, Arlotto, and a hundred other good Catholics, were a thousand times more damaging than the Epistolæ, because they were the unconscious betrayals of friends.
Since writing the foregoing, I have obtained the following, entitled, The Pater Noster of the Country People in the Old Market, or,
Il Pater Noster dei Beceri di Mercato.
“Pate nostro quisin celi sanctifice tuore nome tumme; avvenia regno tumme; fia te volunta stua, in celo en terra.
“Pane nostro cotediano da nobis sodie, e dimitti nobis debita nostra, sicutte ette nos dimittimus debitori nostri, sette ananossie in due casse, intenzione sedie nosse e mulo.—Amenne!”
There is, however, this great difference in the two prayers here given, that the Salve Regina is intended for a jest, while the paternoster is given as actually taken down from a ciana, and is rather a specimen of dialect than a jeu d’esprit. The following Ave Maria is also serious, and simply a curiosity of language:—
L’Ave Maria.
“Avemmaria grazia piena, dominò teco beneditta e frustris, e mulieri busse e benedetti fruttus ventris tui eiusse!
“Santa Maria Materdei, ora pro nobisse, pecatoribusse, tinche, tinona, mortis nostrisse.—Ammenne!”
These specimens of Italianised Latin are not so grotesque as some which were written out for me in all seriousness by a poor woman. A specimen of the latter is given in my work on “Etruscan-Roman Traditions.”
Last of all, there came to me a small tale of little value, save that it professes to account for the reason why so many cats have ever flourished and been nourished in
the cloister of San Lorenzo, these felines being, indeed, in a small way among the lions of Florence. It is as follows:—
I Gatti di San Lorenzo.
“In the cloisters of San Lorenzo there are many cats, and every evening people may be seen who go there to feed them, among whom are many old men and women. But these cats were long ago themselves human, that is to say, they were once all wizards and witches, who bear their present form for punishment of an evil deed.
“There was once a very wealthy and powerful family in Florence, at the head of which was a gentleman and lady who had an only daughter, in whom was all their love and hope. Among their servants in a higher position was an old woman, who was very vindictive and easily offended, so that she could brood over deadly revenge for years for the least affront, and she fancied she had a great many, because when she had neglected her duty at times she had been scolded by her mistress or master.
“Now this old woman knew that death or disaster to the daughter would drive the parents mad; and so having recourse to witchcraft, she put into the drink of the young lady a decoction, the result of which was that she began to waste away, growing weaker and paler, without feeling any pain.
“Then her parents, in great fear, consulted the best physicians, who did no good, for indeed it was a case beyond their skill. And at last, beginning to believe that there was something unearthly in it all, they sent for an old woman who cured by occult art. [171] And when she came she looked steadily at the girl, then frowned and shook her head, and asked for a ribbon or cord, no matter what, so that it were one which the young lady had worn about her waist. With this she measured accurately the height of the patient from head to foot, and then the width from hand to hand, it being desirous that the arms be of equal length; but there was the disproportion of the thickness of a piece of money. Then the witch said:
“‘This is none of my affair as regards the cure. Your daughter is bewitched, and I can indeed make the witch appear, but to beat her and compel her to remove the spell depends on you alone.’
“Now they, suspecting the old servant, sent for her, but she had disappeared and could not be found. Then the doctress took a caldron, and put into it hot water and the undergarments of the girl and certain herbs, and boiled them all together, singing an incantation, and, taking a knife, sharpened it on the table, whetting it on the chemise of the young lady.
“Then the old servant woman appeared at the door, against her will, forced by the power of the spell, in an agony of rage and bitterness; but she was at once seized and beaten, whereupon she consented to unbewitch the girl, who speedily recovered.
“Now Florence was at that time fearfully afflicted with evil witches, who defied all authority, and spread disease and death far and wide; but this affair of the bewitched lady being made known, both priests and laymen rose up in wrath, and the sorceress fled for sanctuary to the cloisters of San Lorenzo.
“Then to save their lives the Strege made a compromise with the priests, and it was agreed that they should no longer live as witches, or do any harm, but all live and die as cats in the cloister, where they should be regularly fed, and exist in peace. Which agreement has been duly carried out to this day, and among these cats are many who were once witches in human form hundreds of years ago.”
This narrative is not so much a story as an account of the manner in which bewitchment is undone by another witch. The reader will find the incantations in the chapter entitled “The Spell of the Boiling Clothes,” in my work on “Etruscan-Roman Remains.” One of the most serious riots which has occurred in Milan for many years took place March 3, 1891, when the populace tortured terribly and tried to kill a witch, who had, it was believed, been detected by this spell.
“Hæc fabula docet,” adds the wise Flaxius, “this story suggests a reason why a certain kind of ladies of ecclesiastical proclivities are always called tabbies. And that there is something in it I can well believe, knowing one who, when she calls her rector or bishop ‘De-ar man!’ does so in a manner
which marvellously suggests the purring of a cat. And the manner in which the tabby pounces on the small birds, mice, and gold-fish of others—i.e., their peccadilloes, and small pets or pleasures, which in good faith do her no harm—seems like literally copying the feline—upon line. . . .
“Oh! ye who visit the cloister, and see the cats, think well on this legend, and especially on the deep identity of witches with tabbies!
“And for a moral, note that, with all their sins, what the witches and cats aimed at above all things was food, with which they have remained content, according to the exquisite lyric by the divine Shelley, p. 661, Dowden’s edition:—
“‘This poor little cat
Only wanted a rat,
To stuff out its own little maw,
And it were as good
Some people had such food
To make them hold their jaw.’”
LEGEND OF THE PIAZZA SAN BIAGIO
“For by diabolical art he assumed varied forms, even the human, and deceived people by many occult tricks.”—Fromann, Tractatus de Fascinatione, 1675.
This is a slight tale of light value, and not new, but it has assumed local colour, and may amuse the reader.
“It was a great art of witches and sorcerers of old to give a man or woman by art the appearance of another person, and this they called ‘drawing white lines with charcoal,’ and there is many a fine tale about it. Now it was about the time when Berta spun and owls wore silk cloaks that a Signore Nannincino lived in the old Piazza San Biagio. He had many small possessions in Florence, but the roast chickens of the supper, or his great piece, was an estate in the country called the Mula a Quinto, for which all his relations longed, like wolves for a fat sheep. And Nannincini, being sharp to a keen edge, and knowing how to lend water and borrow wine, had promised this estate in secret to everybody, and got from them many a gratification, and supped and dined with them for years, yet after this died without leaving a will.
“Then six of his relations assembled and resolved to secure the property, though they invoked the devil. And to aid them they took a certain scamp named Giano di Selva, who somewhat resembled the departed Nannincino, and he, calling in a witch of his acquaintance, was made by sorcery to look as much like the defunct as two beads of the same rosary. So Nannincino was removed and Giano put in his place, where he lay still for an hour, and then began to show signs of life. And after a time he called for a notary and began to make his will. First he left a house to one, and his sword to another, and so on, till it came to the Mula a Quinto.
“‘And who shall have the Mula a Quinto, dear good uncle?’ asked a nephew.
“‘That,’ replied the dying man, ‘I leave to my good friend, the only true friend I ever had, the noblest of men—’
“‘But what is his name?’ asked the nephew.
“‘Giano di Selva,’ gasped the dying man. And it was written down by the notary, and the will was signed, and the signer died immediately after. All their shaking could not revive him.
“The tale ends with these words: E così ingannati gli ingannatori, rimase Giano herede del podere—And thus the biters being bit, d’ye see, Giano took a handsome property.”
“And does his ghost still promenade the palace?”
“To oblige you, Signore, for this once—place a lei il comandare—it does. The ghost walks—always when the rent fails to come in, and there is no money in the treasury—cammina, cammina per un fil di spada—walks as straight as an acrobat on a rope. But I cannot give you a walking ghost of a rascal to every house, Signore. If all the knaves who made fortunes by trickery were to take to haunting our houses in Florence, they would have to lie ten in a bed, or live one hundred in a room, and ghosts, as you know, love to be alone. Mille grazie, Signore Carlo! This will keep our ghost from walking for a week.”
“Of which remark here made that ‘the ghost doth walk,’” comments the sage Flaxius, “when money is forbidden unto man (which is so commonly heard in theatrical circles when the weekly salary is not paid), I have no doubt that it comes from the many ancient legends which assign a jealous guardian sprite to every hoard. And thus in Spenser’s wondrous ‘Faerie Queene’ the marvellous stores in Mammon’s treasury, ‘embost with massy gold of glorious guifte,’ were watched by
“‘An ugly feend more fowle than dismall day;
The which with monstrous stalk behind him stept,
And ever as he went dew watch upon him kept.’
“The which quotation is in its turn otherwise curious since it gave, I doubt not, the original suggestion to Coleridge of the verse wherein mention is made in simile of one who walks in tear and dread, and dares not turn his head—
“‘For well he knows a griesly fiend
Doth close behind him tread.’
“‘More or less accurately, my masters, more or less.’ ‘’Tis sixty years since’—I read the original.”
THE SPIRIT OF THE PORTA SAN GALLO
“And both the undying fish that swim
Through Bowscale Tarn did wait on him:
The pair were servants of his eye
In their immortality;
They moved about in open sight,
To and fro, for his delight.”—Wordsworth, Poems of the Imagination.
The reader should never at once infer that a legend is recent because it is attached to a new place. Spirits and traditions are like the goblin of Norse tale, who moved with the family. The family changed its home to get rid of him, but on the way the elf popped his head out and remarked, “Wi flütten” (“We’re flitting” or moving). The ghost of Benjamin Franklin long haunted the library which he had founded in Philadelphia, and when the library or books were transferred to a new building, the ghost went with them and his statue. And in like manner the legend of the religious person, male or female, who is also a fish has travelled over many lands, till it came to the vasca or basin of the Porto San Gallo. Thus Leonard Vair, in his charming Trois Livres des Charmes, Sorcelages ou Enchantemens, Paris, 1583, tells us that “there is a cloister in Burgundy, by which there is a pond, and in this pond are as many fish as there be monks in the cloister. And when one of the fish swims on the surface of the water and beats with its tail, then one of the monks is ever ill.” But there is a mass of early Christian or un-Christian folklore which identifies “Catholic clergy-women” with fish, even as Quakers are identified in Philadelphia with shad. In Germany all maids just in
their teens are called Backfisch, that is, pan-fish or fritures, from their youth and liveliness, or delicacy. We may read in Friedrich that the fish is a common Christian symbol of immortality, which fully accounts for all legends of certain of them living for ever. The story which I have to tell is as follows:—
Lo Spirito della Vasca della Porta San Gallo.
“In this fountain-basin is found a pretty little fish, which is always there, and which no one can catch, because it always escapes with great lestezza or agility.
“And this is the queen of all the other fish, or else the Spirit of the Fountain.
“This spirit, while on earth, was a beautiful girl who loved an official, and he fell ill and was in the military hospital.
“The parents of the maid opposed her marriage with this official, though he was so much in love with her that it and anxiety had made him ill. Then the maid became a nun so that she might be near him in illness, and nurse him in his last moments, which indeed came to pass, for he died, nor did she long survive him.
“Then her mother, who had magic power (essendo stata una fata [177]), regretted having opposed her daughter’s love and that of the young man, since it had caused the death of both. And to amend this she so enchanted them that by night both became folletti or spirits haunting the hospital, while by day the maid becomes a little fish living in the fountain. But when seen by night she appears as a pretty little nun (una bella monachina), and goes to the hospital to nurse the invalids, for which she has, indeed, a passion. And if any one of them observes her, he feels better, but in that instant she vanishes, and is in the arms of her lover. But sometimes it happens that he becomes jealous of a patient, and then he vexes the poor man in every way, twitching off his covering, and playing him all kinds of spiteful tricks.”
It is otherwise narrated, in a more consistent, and certainly more traditionally truthful manner, that both
the lovers are fish by day and folletti by night. This brings the legend to close resemblance with the undying fish of Bowscale Tarn, recorded in Wordsworth’s beautiful song at the feast of Brougham Castle in the “Poems of the Imagination.”
“’Tis worth noting,” pens the observant Flaxius on this, “that in days of yore fish, feminines, and fascination were considered so inseparable that Dr. Johannes Christian Fromann wrote a chapter on this mystical trinity, observing that music was, as an attractor, connected with them, as shown by dolphins, syrens, Arions, and things of that sort. And he quoted—yea, in the holy Latin tongue—many instances of fishers who entice their finny prey by playing flutes:
“‘Which thing I doubted till I saw that Doubt
Pursued, its refutation oft begets,
When in America I once found out
That shad were caught by means of castin’ nets!’”
STORY OF THE PODESTÀ WHO WAS LONG ON HIS JOURNEY
a legend of the duomo
“Were I ten times as tedious, I would find it in my heart to bestow it all on you.”—Dogberry.
This little tale is told by the Florentine Poggio, who was born in 1380 and died in 1459, yet lived—in his well-known Facezie. But as it ever was and is a folk-story, independently of the great jester, I think it worthy of a place in this collection.
“There was once a podestà sent from Rome to govern Florence, and truly he was of that kind who to a farthing’s worth of sense have ten ducats’ value in self-conceit; for if vanity could have kept a man warm, he never would have had need to buy blankets. And this was most shown in his belief that he was a great orator, though he was so intolerably stupid and slow that his speeches were like the post-rider of Giordano, who in good weather sometimes got as far as five miles a day.
“Now he was to be inducted into office in the Cathedral, in the presence of the priori, or notables of the city of Florence, and so begun a discourse in which he first of all described how great a man he had been as senator in Rome, and what he had done, and what everybody else connected with him had done, and all the details of his departure from the Eternal City; and then depicted a banquet given to him at Sutro, and so went on, telling everything about everybody, till, after several hours of terribly tiresome discourse, he had got no farther than Siena.
“Now by this time, as Poggio words it, ‘This excessive length of wearisome narration had so exhausted his auditors that they began to fear that the entire day would be spent on
the road,’ and at last, as the shades of night began to fall, one who was present rose and said:
“‘Monsignore, I beg you to remember that it is growing late, and you must really get on a little faster in your journey, for if you are not in Florence to-day, the gates will be shut, and unless you get here in time you will not be allowed to enter, and thus you will miss being ordained, and cannot enter on your office.’
“Which having heard, the man of many words promptly concluded his speech by saying that he was really in Florence.”
Southey, in “The Doctor,” has narrated a number of instances of tedious discourse, but none, I think, quite equal to this.
There is a shadow under every lamp, a devil’s chapel close by every church, and even of the venerable and holy Duomo of Florence there are such tales as the following:
La Messa de’ Villani.
“If there is any faith to be put in old stories and ancient books, even the ladies and gentleman, to say nothing of priests, used such language in their ordinary conversation, in good old Medici times, as would not be heard among any but the lowest people now-a-days. Well, as the saying is:
“‘Ne di tempo, nè di Signoria,
Non ti dar malinconia.’“‘Fret not thyself for time long past away,
For weather, nor for what the great may say.’
“Well, it happened one morning in Florence that a gentil donna, who, I take it, was more donna than truly gentil, whatever her rank may have been, meeting at the door of the Duomo a very ordinary and rough figure of her acquaintance, who had only made himself look more vulgar by new and gaudy clothes, asked him as he came out:
“‘Is the Cads’ Mass [180] over already?’
“To which he, in nowise put out, promptly replied:
“‘Yes, Madonna, and that of the Demireps is just going to
begin; [181] only hurry, and you’ll be there in time with the rest of ’em!’
“And that lifted him to celebrity, for in those famous days a small joke often made a great reputation. Ah! Signore—a great many of us have been born into this world four hundred years too late—more’s the pity! However, the lady learned the truth of the old proverb, ‘Guardati del villan, quando hà la camicia bianca’—‘Look out for a vulgar fellow when he has a clean shirt on,’ for then he thinks himself fine enough to say anything saucy.
“And there is yet another story of the same sort, Signore; indeed, I think that while the world lasts there will always be a few of them left for steady customers, under the counter, like smuggled goods in Venice; and it is this: It befell once that a Florentine fell in love with a lady, who was like her mother, come il ramo al tronco s’assomiglia—‘as the bough to the tree, or very much worse than she ought to be;’ for the dear mamma was like the Porta San Niccolò, only not so well famed.
“However, the gentleman wedded her, never heeding the proverb:
“‘Let every wooer be afraid
To wed a maiden not a maid;
For sooner or later, as ’tis said,
She’ll turn again unto her trade.’
“However, in this case the proverb got the lie, for the lady after she was married behaved with great propriety, and yet was often reminded that she had better have repented before she sinned than after; for many would not speak to her, for all her wealth, till she was well convinced that Che profitta ravedersi dopo il fatto?
“‘When the deed has once been done,
What is the use of repenting, my son?’
“So it befell one morning that the poor soul was praying in the Cathedral or Duomo, as many another poor sinner had done before her (doubtless on the same spot), when a noble lady, who had never been found out in any naughtiness (some people are certainly very lucky in this world, Signore Carlo!), came by, and seeing the penitent, drew in her robe, turned up her nose, and retreated as if the other had the plague. To which the Magdalen replied, in a sad but firm voice, ‘Madonna,
you need not be afraid to touch me, for I assure you that the malady (of which I have, I trust, been thoroughly cured) attacks none save those who wish to have it.’”
When standing in the Cathedral, the visitor may remember that here Santo Crescenzio, who died in 424, once wrought a miracle, thus recorded in his “Life” of the fourteenth century:
“A poor man had come into the Cathedral and saw no light (i.e., was blind), and going to where Saint Crescentius was, implored him with great piety that he would cause the light to return unto him. And being moved to pity, he made the sign of the cross in the eyes of the blind man, and incontinently the light was restored unto him. Saint Crescentius did not wish this to be made known, and pretended to know nothing about it, but he could not conceal such miracles.”
Of which the immortal Flaxius remarks, that “it is singular that so many saints who wished to keep their miracles unknown had not the forethought to make silence a condition of cure. Also, that of all the wonder-working once effected by the holy men of the Church, the only gift now remaining to them is the miraculous power of changing sons and daughters into nephews and nieces; the which, as I am assured, is still as flourishing as ever, and permitted as a proof of transubstantiation.” Thus it is that simple heretics deride holy men. And Flaxius is, I bid ye note, a sinner, in whose antique, unsanctified derision I most assuredly do take no part, “it being in bad form in this our age to believe or disbelieve in anything,” and therefore in bad style to laugh at aught.
It may be worth recalling, when looking out on the Cathedral Square, that it was here that San Zenobio performed another great miracle, recorded in all his lives, but most briefly in the poetical one:
“Then did he raise an orphan from the dead,
The only son of a poor widow, he,
A cart with oxen passing o’er his head,
Died in the Duomo Square in misery;
But though all crushed, the Saint restored his life,
And, well and gay and bright as stars do shine,
He went to his mother, and the pious wife
Gave thanks to God for mercy all divine.”
Which being witnessed, says the Vita San Zenobii, all who were present began to sing, “Gloria tibi Domine qui mirabilia per servos tuos in nobis operari dignatus es, gloria sit tibi-i et laus in sæcu-la—sec-u-lo-o-o-rum, A-men.
Which, if they sung it as I heard it sung yesterday in the Cathedral of Siena, must have had an extremely soporific effect, lulling all others to sleep, and causing them to see beatific visions beyond all belief. I had in my boyhood a teacher named Professor Sears C. Walker, who was wont to tell how he had once heard in a rural New England village a church congregation sing:
“Before thy throne the angels bow-wow-wow-ow!”
But to hear the bow-wow in perfection, one must go to Rome. A pack in full cry or a chorus of owls is nothing to it. But let us pass on to a fresh story.
LEGENDS OF THE BOBOLI GARDENS: THE OLD GARDENER, AND THE TWO STATUES AND THE FAIRY
“He found such strange enchantment there,
In that garden sweet and rare,
Where night and day
The nightingales still sing their roundelay,
And plashing fountains ’neath the verdure play,
That for his life he could not thence away;
And even yet, though he hath long been dead,
’Tis said his spirit haunts the pleasant shade.”—The Ring of Charlemagne.
A great showman, as I have heard, once declared that in establishing a menagerie, one should have the indispensable lion, an obligato elephant, a requisite tiger, an essential camel, and imperative monkeys. One of the “indispensable lions” of Florence is the Boboli Gardens, joining the Pitti Palace, which, from their careful preservation in their original condition, give an admirable idea of what gardens were like in an age when far more was thought of them than now as places of habitual resort and enjoyment, and when they entered into all literature and life. Abraham à Santa Clara once wrote a discourse against gardens, as making life too happy or simple, basing his idea on the fact that sin originated in the Garden of Eden.
The Boboli Gardens were planned by Il Tribolo for Cosimo di Medici. The ground which they occupy is greatly varied, rising high in some places, from which very beautiful views of Florence, with its “walls and churches, palaces and towers,” may be seen. Of their
many attractions the guide-book remarks poetically in very nearly the following words:—
“Its long-embowered walks, like lengthened arbours,
Are well adapted to the summer’s sun;
While statues, terraces, and vases add
Still more unto its splendour. All around
We see attractive statues, and of these
A number really are restored antiques,
And many by good artists; best of all
Are four by mighty Michel Angelo,
Made for the second Julius, and meant
To decorate his tomb. You see them at
The angles of the grotto opposite
The entrance to the gardens. Of this grot
The famous Redi sang in verse grotesque:“Ye satyrs, in a trice
Leave your low jests and verses rough and hobbly,
And bring me a good fragment of the ice
Kept in the grotto of the Garden Boboli.
With nicks and picks
Of hammers and sticks,
Disintegrate it
And separate it,
Break it and split it,
Splinter and slit it!
Till at the end ’tis fairly ground and rolled
Into the finest powder, freezing cold.”
There are also, among the things worth seeing, the Venus by Giovanni of Boulogne (called di Bologna); the Apollo and Ceres by Baccio Bandinelli; the group of Paris carrying off Helen by V. de’ Rossi, and the old Roman fountain-bath and obelisk. The trees and flowers, shrubbery and boschetti, are charming; and if the reader often visits them, long sitting in the sylvan shade on sunny days, he will not fail to feel that strange enchantment which seems to haunt certain places, and people them with dreams, if not with elves.
The fascination of these dark arbours old, and of the antique gardens, has been recognised by many authors, and there are, I suppose, few visitors to Florence who have not felt it and recalled it years after in distant lands as one recalls a dream. Therefore, I read with interest
or sympathy the following, which, though amounting to nothing as a legend, is still valuable as setting forth the fascination of the place, and how it dates even from him who gave the Boboli Gardens their name:
Il Giardino Boboli.
“The Boboli Garden is the most beautiful in Europe.
“Boboli was the name of the farmer who cultivated the land before it was bought by Cosimo de’ Medici and his wife Eleanora.
“After he had sold the property he remained buried in grief, because he had an attachment for it such as some form for a dog or a cat. And so great was his love for it that it never left his mind, nor could he ever say amen to it; for on whatever subject he might discourse, it always came in like one who will not be kept out, and his refrain was, ‘Well, you’ll see that my place will become il nido degli amori (the nest of loves), and I myself after my death will never be absent from it.’ His friends tried to dissuade him from thinking so much of it, saying that he would end by being lunatic, but he persevered in it till he died.
“And it really came to pass as he said; for soon after his death, and ever since, many have on moonlight nights seen his spirit occupied in working in the gardens.”
The story is a pretty one, and it is strangely paralleled by one narrated in my own Memoirs of the old Penington mansion in Philadelphia, the gardens of which were haunted by a gentle ghost, a lady who had lived there in her life, and who was, after her death, often seen watering the flowers in them by moonlight. And thus do—
“printless footsteps fall
By the spots they loved before.”
The second legend which I recovered, relating to the Boboli Gardens, is as follows:
“There are in the Boboli Gardens two statues of two imprisoned kings, and it is said that every night a beautiful fairy of the grotto clad in white rises from the water, emerging perfectly dry, and converses with the captive kings for one hour, going alternately from one to the other, as if bearing mutual messages, and then returns to the grotto, gliding over the ground without touching the grass with her feet, and after this vanishes in the water.”
“This tale is, as I conceive,” writes the observant Flaxius, “an allegory, or, as Petrus Berchorius would have called it, a moralisation, the marrow whereof is as follows: The two captive kings are Labour and Capital, who have, indeed, been long enchained, evil tongues telling each that the other was his deadly foe, while the fairy is Wise Reform, who passes her time in consoling and reconciling them. And it shall come to pass that when the go-betweens or brokering mischief-makers are silenced, then the kings will be free and allied.”
“Then indeed, as you may see,
All the world will happy be!”
Vivat Sequenz! Now for the next story.
HOW LA VIA DELLA MOSCA GOT ITS NAME
“Puer—abige Muscas!”
—Cicero de Orat., 60.
The following story contains no new or original elements, as it is only an ordinary tale of transformation by witchcraft, but as it accounts for the origin of the name of a street in Florence I give it place:—
La Via della Mosca.
“This is the way that the Via della Mosca, or the Street of the Fly, got its name. There once dwelt in it, in a very old house, a family which, while of rank, were not very wealthy, and therefore lived in a retired manner. There were father, mother, and one daughter, who was wonderfully beautiful—un vero occhio di sole.
“And as the sun hath its shadow, so there was a living darkness in this family in a donna di servizio, a servant woman who had been many years with them, who had a daughter of her own, who was also a beauty of a kind, but as dark as the other was fair; the two were like day and night, and as they differed in face, so were they unlike in soul. For the young signora had not a fault in her; she would not have caused any one pain even to have her own way or please her vanity, and they say the devil will drop dead whenever he shall meet with such a woman as that. However, he never met with this young lady, I suppose, because he is living yet. And the young lady was so gentle of heart that she never said an ill word of any one, while the maid and her mother never opened their mouths save for gossip and slander. And she was so occupied with constant charity, and caring for poor children, and finding work for poor people, that she never thought about her own beauty at all, and when people told her that chi nasce bella,
nasce maritata (Whoever is born pretty is born to be married), she would reply, ‘Pretty or ugly, there are things more important in life than weddings.’
“And so far did she carry this, that she gave no heed at all to a very gallant and handsome yet good-hearted honourable wealthy young gentleman who lived in a palazzo opposite, and who, from watching and admiring her, had ended by falling desperately in love. So he made a proposal of marriage to her through her parents, but she replied (having had her mind, in truth, on other things) that she was too much taken up with other duties to properly care for a husband, and that her dowry was not sufficient to correspond to his wealth, however generous he might be in dispensing with one. And as she was as firm and determined as she was gentle and good, she resolutely kept him at arm’s length. But firmness is nothing against fate, and he ‘who runs away with nimble feet, in the war of love at last will beat.’ [189]
“Now, if she was indifferent to the young signore, the dark maid-servant was not, for she had fallen as much in love with him as an evil, selfish nature would permit her, and she planned and plotted with her mother by night and by day to bring about what she desired. Now, the old woman, unknown to all, was a witch, as all wicked women really are—they rot away with vanity and self-will and evil feelings till their hearts are like tinder or gunpowder, and then some day comes a spark of the devil’s fire, and they flash out into witches of some kind.
“The young signore had a great love for boating on the Arno, which was a deeper river in those days; he would often pass half the night in his boat. Now, the mother and daughter so contrived it that the young signorina should return very late on a certain night from visiting the poor, accompanied by the old woman. And when just in the middle of the Ponte Vecchio the mother gave a whistle, and lo! there came a sudden and terrible blast of wind, which lifted up the young lady and whirled her over the bridge into the rushing river underneath.
“But, as fate would have it, the young man was in his boat just below, and fortune fell down to him, as it were, from heaven; for seeing a form float or flit past him in the water and the darkness, he caught at it and drew it into the boat,
and truly Pilate’s wife was not so astonished when the roast capon rose up in the dish and crowed as was this boatman at finding what he had fished up out of the stream.
“There is a saying of a very unlucky contrary sort of man that casco in Arno ed arse (He fell in the Arno and burnt himself). But in this case, by luck, the falling of the young lady into the river caused her heart to burn with love, for so bravely and courteously and kindly did the young signore behave, conveying her promptly home without a sign of love-making or hint of the past, that she began to reconsider her refusal, and the end thereof was a betrothal, by which the mother and daughter were maddened to think that they had only hastened and aided what they had tried to prevent.
“Now, it is true that bad people put ten times as much strong will and hard work into their evil acts as good folk do into better deeds, because the latter think their cause will help itself along, while the sinners know perfectly well that they must help themselves or lose. So the witch only persevered the more, and at last she hit on this plan. With much devilish ado she enchanted a comb of thorns, so that whoever was combed with it would turn into a fly, and must remain one till the witch bade the victim assume his or her usual form.
“Then on the bridal morn the old woman offered to comb out the long golden locks of the young lady, and she did so, no other person being present, so she began her incantation:
“‘Earthly beauty fade away,
Maiden’s form no longer stay,
For a fly thou shalt become,
And as a busy insect hum,
Hum—hum—brum—brum!
Buzz-uz-uz about the room!“‘Ope thine eyes and spread thy wings,
Pass away to insect things.
Now the world will hate thee more
Than it ever loved before
When it hears thy ceaseless hum,
Buzz-uz-uz about the room!’
“And hearing this, the bride sank into a deep sleep, during which she changed into a fly, and so soared up to the ceiling and about the room, buzzing indeed.
“Now, with all her cleverness, the witch had missed a stitch in her sorcery, for she had not combed hard enough to draw blood, being afraid to wake the maid; hence it came to pass
that instead of a small common fly she became a very large and exquisitely beautiful one, with a head like gold, a silver body, and beautiful blue and silver wings like her bridal dress. And she was not confined to buzzing, for she had the power to sing one verse. However, when the change took place, the old woman rushed from the room screaming like mad, declaring that her young mistress was a witch who had turned into a fly as soon as she had touched her with a consecrated comb which had been dipped in holy water, and to this she added many lies, as that a witch to avoid the holy sacrament of marriage always changed her form, and that she had always suspected the signorina of being a witch ever since she had seen her fly in the wind over the Arno to the young signore.
“But when they went to look at the fly, and found it so large and beautiful, they were amazed, nor were they less astonished when they heard it begin to buzz with a most entrancing strangely sweet sound, and then sing:—
“‘Be ye not amazed that I
Am enchanted as a fly,
Evil witchcraft was around me,
Evil witches’ spells have bound me:
Now I am a fly I know,
But woe to her who made me so!’
“And when the young signore stretched out his hand, the fly came buzzing with joy and lighted like a bird on his finger, and this she did with great joy whenever any of the poor whom she had befriended came to see her, and so she behaved to all whom she had loved. And when it was observed that the fly had no fear of holy things, but seemed to love them, all believed in her song.
“Till one day the young signore, calling all the family and friends together, said: ‘This is certainly true, that she who was to have been my wife is here, turned into a fly. And as for her being a witch, ye can all see that she fears neither holy water nor a crucifix. But I believe that these women here, her nurse and daughter, have filled our ears with lies, and that the nurse herself is the sorceress who hath done the evil deed. Now, I propose that we take all three, the fly, the mother, and daughter, and hang the room with verbena, which I have provided, and sprinkle the three with much holy water, all of us making the castagna and jettatura, and see what will come of it.’
“Then the two witches began to scream and protest in a
rage, but as soon as they opened their mouths, holy water was dashed into their faces, whereat they howled more horribly than ever, and at last promised, if their lives should be spared in any manner, to tell the whole truth, and to disenchant the bride. Which they forthwith did.
“Then those present seized the witches, and said: ‘Your lives shall indeed be spared, but it is only just that ere ye go ye shall be as nicely combed, according to the proverb which says, “Comb me and I’ll comb thee!”’
“Said and done, but the combing this time drew blood, and the mother and daughter, shrinking smaller and smaller, flew away at last as two vile carrion-flies through the window.
“And as the story spread about Florence, every one came to see the house where this had happened, and so it was that the street got the name of the Via della Mosca or Fly Lane.”
There is a curious point in this story well worth noting. In it the sorceress lulls the maiden to sleep before transforming her, that is, causes her death before reviving her with a comb of thorns. Now, the thorn is a deep symbol of death—naturally enough from its dagger-like form—all over the world wherever it grows. As Schwenck writes:
“In the Germanic mythology the thorn is an emblem of death, as is the nearly allied long and deep slumber—the idea being that death kills with a sharp instrument which is called in the Edda the sleep-thorn, which belongs to Odin the god of death. It also occurs as a person in the Nibelungen Lied as Högni, Hagen, ‘the thorn who kills Siegfried.’ The tale of Dornröschen (the sleeping beauty), owes its origin to the sleep-thorn, which is, however, derived from the death-thorn, death being an eternal sleep.”
This is all true, and sleep is like death. But the soothing influence of a comb produces sleep quite apart from any association with death.
Apropos of flies, there is a saying, which is, like all new or eccentric sayings, or old and odd ones revived, called “American.” It is, “There are no flies on him,” or more vulgarly, “I ain’t got no flies on me,” and signifies
that the person thus exempt is so brisk and active, and “flies round” at such a rate, that no insect has an opportunity to alight on him. The same saying occurs in the Proverbi Italiani of Orlando Pescetti, Venice, 1618, Non si lascia posar le mosche addosso (He lets no flies light on him).
When I was a small boy in America, the general teaching to us was that it was cruel to kill flies, and I have heard it illustrated with a tale of an utterly depraved little girl of three years, who, addressing a poor fly which was buzzing in the window-pane, said:
“Do you love your Dod, ’ittle fy?”
“Do you want to see your Dod, ’ittle fy?”
“Well” (with a vicious jab of the finger), “you shall!”
And with the last word the soul of the fly had departed to settle its accounts in another world. Writing here in Siena, the most fly-accursed or Beelzebubbed town in Italy, on July 25th, being detained by illness, I love that little angel of a girl, and think with utter loathing and contempt of dear old Uncle Toby and his “Go—go, poor fly!” True, I agree with him to his second “go,” but there our sentiments diverge—the reader may complete the sentence for himself—out of Ernulphus!
On which the wise Flaxius comments as follows on the proof with his red pencil:
“It hath been observed by the learned that the speed of a fly, were he to make even a slight effort to go directly onwards, would be from seventy to eighty miles an hour, during which transit he would find far more attractive food, pleasanter places wherein to buzz about, and more beautiful views than he meets with in this humble room of mine, wherein I, from hour to hour, do with a towel rise and slay his kind. Oh, reader! how many men there are who, to soaring far and wide in life amid honeyed flowers and pleasant places, prefer to buzz about in short flights in little rooms where they can tease some one, and defile all they touch as domestic gossips do—but, ’tis enough! Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur!”
THE ROMAN VASE
a legend of bellosguardo
“From Tuscan Bellosguardo
Where Galileo stood at nights to take
The vision of the stars, we have found it hard,
Gazing upon the earth and heavens, to make
A choice of beauty.”—Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Bellosguardo is an eminence on a height, crowned with an ancient, castle-like monastery, from which there is a magnificent view of Florence. It is a haunted legendary spot; fate and witches sweep round its walls by night, while the cry of the civetta makes music for their aërial dance, and in the depths of the hill lie buried mystic treasures, or the relics of mysterious beings of the olden time, and the gnome of the rocks there has his dwelling in subterranean caves. Of this place I have the following legend from Maddalena:
Il Vaso Romano.
“There was, long ago, in the time of Duke Lorenzo di Medici, a young gardener, who was handsome, clever, and learned beyond the other men of his kind, a man given somewhat to witchcraft and mysteries of ancient days, for he had learned Latin of the monks and read books of history.
“And one day when he was working with his companions in the garden of Bellosguardo, taking out stones, they came to an old Roman vase, which the rest would fain have broken to pieces as a heathenish and foul thing, because there was carved on it the figure of a beautiful Pagan goddess, and it was full of the ashes of some dead person. But the young man suddenly felt a great passion, a desire to possess it, and
it seemed as if something said to him, ‘Con questo vaso ciè un mistero.’
“‘Mine own in truth that vase shall ever be,
For there is in it some strange mystery.’
“So he begged for it, and it was readily granted to him. And looking at it, he perceived that it was carved of fine marble, and that the figure on it was that of a beautiful nymph, or a Bellaria flying in the air, and there came from the ashes which it held a sweet odour of some perfume which was unknown to him. Now as he had, sentito ragionare tanto di fate, heard much talk of supernatural beings, so he reflected: ‘Some fata must have dwelt here in days of old, and she was here buried, and this vase is now as a body from which the spirit freely passes, therefore I will show it respect.’
“And so he hung round the neck of the vase a wreath of the most beautiful and fragrant roses, and draped a veil over it to shield it from dust, and set it up under cover in his own garden, and sang to it as follows:
“‘Vaso! o mio bel vaso!
Di rose ti ho contornato.
La rosa e un bel fior,
Più bello e il suo odor.”“‘Vase, oh lovely vase of mine!
With roses I thy neck entwine;
The rose is beautiful in bloom,
More beautiful its sweet perfume,
The finest rose above I place,
To give the whole a crowning grace,
As thou dost crown my dwelling-place
Another rose I hide within,
As thou so long hast hidden been,
Since Roman life in thee I see,
Rosa Romana thou shalt be!
And ever thus be called by me!
And as the rose in early spring
Rises to re-awakening,
Be it in garden, fair, or plain,
From death to blooming life again,
So rise, oh fairy of the flowers,
And seek again these shady bowers!
Come every morning to command
My flowers, and with thy tiny hand
Curve the green leaf and bend the bough,
And teach the blossoms how to blow;
But while you give them living care,
Do not neglect the gardener;
And as he saved your lovely urn,
I pray protect him too in turn,
Even as I this veil have twined,
To guard thee from the sun and wind:
Oh, Fairy of the Vase—to you,
As Queen of all the Fairies too,
And Goddess of the fairest flowers
In earthly fields or elfin bowers,
To thee with earnest heart I pray,
Grant me such favour as you may.’ [196]
“Then he saw slowly rising from the vase, little by little, a beautiful woman, who sang:
“‘Tell me what is thy desire,
Oh youth, and what dost thou require?
From realms afar I come to thee,
For thou indeed hast summoned me,
With such sweet love and gentleness,
That I in turn thy life would bless,
And aye thy fond protectress be.
What would’st thou, youth, I ask, of me?’
“And the young man replied:
“‘Fair lady, at a glance I knew,
Thy urn and felt thy spirit too,
And straight the yearning through me sped,
To raise thee from the living dead;
I felt thy spell upon my brow,
And loved thee as I love thee now.
Even as I loved unknown before,
And so shall love thee evermore,
And happiness enough ’twould be
If thou would’st ever live with me!’
“Then the spirit replied:
“‘A debt indeed to thee I owe,
And full reward will I bestow;
The roses which thou’st given me
With laurel well repaid shall be;
Without thy rose I had not risen
Again from this my earthly prison,
And as it raised me to the skies,
So by the laurel thou shalt rise!’
“‘Every evening at thy shrine
Fresh roses, lady, I will twine;
But tell me next what ’tis for fate
That I must do, or what await?’
“The fairy sang:
“‘A mighty mission, youth, indeed
Hast thou to fill, and that with speed,
Since it depends on thee to save
All Florence from a yawning grave,
From the worst form of blood and fire,
And sword and conflagration dire.
Thou dost the Duke Lorenzo know;
Straight to that mighty leader go!
The Chieftain of the Medici,
And tell him what I tell to thee,
That he is compassed all about
With armed enemies without,
Who soon will bold attack begin,
Linked to conspiracy within;
And bid him ere the two have crossed,
To rise in strength or all is lost,
Ring loud the storm-bell in alarms,
Summon all Florence straight to arms:
Lorenzo knows well what to do.
Take thou thy sword and battle too!
And in the fray I’ll look to thee:
Go forth, my friend, to victory.’
“Then the young man went to the Duke Lorenzo, and told him, with words of fire which bore conviction, of the great peril which threatened him. Then there was indeed alarming and arming, and a terrible battle all night long, in which the young man fought bravely, having been made captain of a company which turned the fight. And the Grand Duke, impressed by his genius and his valour, gave him an immense reward.
“So he rose in life, and became a gran signore, and one of the Council in Florence, and lord of Bellosguardo, and never neglected to twine every day a fresh wreath of roses round the Roman vase, and every evening he was visited by the fairy. And so it went on well with him till he died, and after that the spirit was seen no more. The witches say that the vase is, however, somewhere still in Florence, and that while it exists the city will prosper; but to call the fairy again it must be crowned with roses, and he who does so must pronounce with such faith as the gardener had, the same incantation.”
What is remarkable in the original text of this tale is the rudeness and crudeness of the language in which it is written, which is indeed so great that its real spirit or meaning might easily escape any one not familiar with such composition. But I believe that I have rendered it very faithfully.
There seems to be that, however, in Bellosguardo which inspires every poet. Two of the most beautiful passages in English literature, one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and another by Hawthorne, describe the views seen from it. The castle itself is deeply impressed on my memory, for during the past nine months I have never once raised my eyes from the table where I write without beholding it in full view before me across the Arno, even as I behold it now.
I cannot help observing that the mysterious sentiment which seized on the hero of this tale when he found his virgin relic, was marvellously like that which inspired Keats when he addressed his Ode to a Grecian Urn:
“Thou still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape?”
That which I have here given is truly a leaf-fringed legend, for it is bordered with the petals of roses and embalmed with their perfume, and one which in the hands of a great master might have been made into a really beautiful poem. It came near a very gay rhymer at least in the Duke Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose songs, which were a little more than free, and rather more loose than easy, were the delight and disgrace of his time. And yet I cannot help rejoicing to meet this magnificent patron of art and letters at so late a day in a purely popular tale. There are men of beauty who are also a joy for ever, as well as things, and Lorenzo was one of them.
It is worth noting that just as the fairy in this tale reveals to Lorenzo that Florence is threatened by enemies, just so it happened that unto Saint Zenobio, standing rapt in divine contemplation in his cavern, it was announced that the same city was about to be assailed by cruel barbarians, who, as Sigbert relates in his Chronicle of 407 a.d., were the two hundred thousand Goths led by Radagasio into Italy. But they were soon driven away by the Saint’s prayers and penitence. It would be curious if one legend had here passed into another:
“So visions in a vision live again,
And dreams in dreams are wondrously transfused;
Gold turning into grey as clouds do change,
And shifting hues as they assume new forms.”
Apropos of Saint Zenobio of Florence, I will here give something which should have been included with the legend of the Croce al Trebbio, but which I obtained too late for that purpose. It would appear from the Iscrizioni e Memorie di Firenze, by F. Bigazzi (1887), that the pillar of the cross was really erected to commemorate a victory over heretics, but that the cross itself was added by the Saints Ambrosio and Zenobio, “on account of a great mystery”—which mystery is, I believe, fully explained by the legend which I have given. The inscription when complete was as follows:
sanctus ambrosius cum sancto zenobio propter grande misterium
hunc crucem hic locaverunt. et in mcccxxxviii noviter die
10 augusti reconsecrata est p. d. m. francisc. flor.
episcopum una cum aliis episcopis m.
A slightly different reading is given by Brocchi (Vite de’ Santi fiorentini, 1742).
“Of which saint, be it observed,” writes Flaxius, “that there is in England a very large and widely extended family, or stirps, named Snobs, who may claim that by affinity of name to Zenobio they are lineally or collaterally his descendants, even as the Potts profess connection with Pozzo del Borgo. But as it is said of this family or gens that they are famed for laying claim to every shadow of a shade of gentility, it may be that there is truly no Zenobility about them. Truly there are a great many more people in this world who are proud of their ancestors, than there ever were ancestors who would have been proud of them. The number of whom is as the sands of the sea, or as Heine says, ‘more correctly speaking, as the mud on the shore.’
“‘The which, more eath it were for mortall wight,
To sell the sands or count the starres on hye;
Or ought more hard, then thinke to reckon right . . .
Which—for my Muse herselfe now tyred has,
Unto another tale I’ll overpas.’”
THE UNFORTUNATE PRIEST
a legend of la via dello scheletro
“Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight—Death the Skeleton,
And Time the Shadow.”—Wordsworth.“If God were half so cruel as His priests,
It would go hard, I ween, with all of us.”
I have elsewhere remarked that there is—chiefly about the Duomo—a group of small streets bearing the dismal names of Death, Hell, Purgatory, Limbo, Crucifixion, Our Lady of Coughing (delle Tosse), The (last) Rest of Old Age, Gallows Lane (Via della Forca), The Tombs, The Way of the Discontented, [201] Dire Need, Small Rags, Fag-End or Stump, Bad Payers, and finally, the Via dello Scheletro, or Skeleton Street. To which there belongs, as is appropriate, a melancholy legend.
La Via dello Scheletro.
“There once dwelt in what is now called the Street of the Skeleton a priest attached to the Cathedral, who was in every respect all that a good man of his calling and a true Christian should be, as he was pious, kind-hearted, and charitable, passing his life in seeking out the poor and teaching their children, often bringing cases of need and suffering to the knowledge of wealthier friends—which thing, were it more frequently done by all, would do more to put an end to poverty than anything else.
“‘But he who is in everything most human
May highest rise and yet the lowest fall;
And when a brave kind heart meets with the woman,
Our greatest duties seem extremely small,
And those which were the first became the least:
Even so it happened to this gentle priest.
“‘In the old dwelling where he had his home,
Which otherwise had been most drear and dull
At morn or eve did oft before him come
A girl as sweet as she was beautiful;
Full soon they learned that both in head and heart
Each was to each the very counterpart.
“‘There is in every soul of finer grain
A soul which is in self a soul apart,
Which to itself doth oft deep hid remain,
But leaps to life when Love awakes the heart.
Then as a vapour rises with the sun,
And blends with it, two souls pass into one.
“‘And so it came that he would sometimes kiss
Her lovely face, nor seemed it much to prove
That they in anything had done amiss.
Until, one night, there came the kiss of Love, [202]
Disguised in friendly seeming like the rest—
Alas! he drove an arrow to her breast.
“‘Then came the glow of passion—new to both—
The honeymoon of utter recklessness,
When the most righteous casts away his oath,
And all is lost in sweet forgetfulness,
And life is steeped in joy, without, within,
And rapture seems the sweeter for the sin.
“‘Then came in its due course the sad awaking
To life and its grim claims, and all around
They found, in cold grim truth, without mistaking,
These claims for them did terribly abound;
And the poor priest was brought into despair
To find at every turn a foe was there.
“‘To know our love is pure though passionate,
And have it judged as if both foul and base,
Doth seem to us the bitterness of fate;
Yet in the world it is the usual case.
By it all priests are judged—yea, every one—
Never as Jesus would Himself have done.
“‘Because the noblest love with passion rings,
Therefore men cry ’tis all mere sexual sense,
As if the rose and the dirt from which it springs
Were one because of the same elements:
Therefore ’tis true that, of all sins accurst,
Is Gossip, for it always tells the worst.
“‘So Gossip did its worst for these poor souls.
The bishop made the priest appear before him,
And, as a power who destiny controls,
Informed him clearly he had hell before him,
And if he would preserve the priestly stole, [203a]
Must leave his woman—or else lose his soul!
“‘Now had this man had money, or if he,
Like many of his calling, had been bold
With worldly air, then all this misery
Might have been ’scaped as one escapes the cold
By putting on a sheepskin, warm and fine;
But then hypocrisy was not his line.
“‘His love was now a mother, and the truth
Woke in him such a deep and earnest love,
That he would not have left her though in sooth
He had been summoned by the Power above;
And so the interdict was soon applied,
But on that day both child and mother died.
“‘She, poor weak thing, could not endure the strain,
So flickered out, and all within a day;
And then the priest, without apparent pain,
Began mysteriously to waste away,
And, shadow-like and silent as a mouse,
Men saw him steal into, or from, the house.
“‘And thinner still and paler yet he grew,
With every day some life from him seemed gone,
And all aghast, though living, men still knew
He had become a literal skeleton;
And so he died—in some world less severe
Than this to join the one he held so dear. [203b]
“‘Yet no one knew when ’twas he passed away
Out of that shadowy form and ’scaped life’s power,
For still ’twas seen beneath the moon’s pale ray,
Or gliding through the court at twilight hour.
But there it still is seen—and so it came
The Via del Scheletro got its name.’”
There is not a word of all this which is “Protestant invention,” for though I have poetised or written up a very rude text, the narrative is strictly as I received it. There is one point in it worth noticing, that it is a matter of very general conviction in Italy that in such matters of Church discipline as are involved in this story, it is the small flies who are caught in the web, while the great ones burst buzzing through it without harm, or that the weak and poor (who are very often those with the best hearts and principles) are most cruelly punished, where a bold, sensual, vulgar frate makes light of and easily escapes all accusations.
There is something sadly and strangely affecting in the conception of a simply good and loving nature borne down by the crush of the world and misapplied morality—or clerical celibacy—into total wretchedness—a diamond dissolved to air. One in reading this seems to hear the sad words of one who thought his own name was written in water:
“I am a shadow now, alas! alas!
Upon the skirts of human nature dwelling
Alone. I chant alone the holy mass,
While little signs of life are round me kneeling,
And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,
And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,
Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me,
And thou art distant in Humanity!”
THE MYSTERIOUS FIG-TREE
a legend of the via del fico
“In every plant lie marvellous mysteries,
In every flower there is a dream divine;
The fig-tree bears the measure of a life,
And, as it leaves or fruits, our lives do pass,
And all things in each other subtly blend.”“Ha chiappato il fico—ficum capit.”—Old Proverbs.
“Quidam itidem medium digitum ostendunt, idque in Hispania adhuc dicitur fieri, et Fica appellator, hic illudendi actus, de quo Eryc. Puteanus, loc. cit., p. 70.”—Curiosus Amuletorum Spectator, D. Wolf, 1692.
The following tale is, for reasons which I will subsequently explain, one of the most remarkable which I have collected:
La Via del Fico.
“There stood formerly in the Via del Fico a very ancient palace with a garden, in which there grew a fig-tree which was said to have grown of itself, or without ever having been planted. This tree bore much fruit of great beauty.
“But however proud the owner of the tree was of its beauty, or however much he might desire to have its fruit, something always strangely occurred to prevent its being enjoyed. For when any one was about to pluck it, there suddenly appeared a great black dog, who, seizing men or women by their garments, dragged them away, beginning to howl and bay. [205] And then they hurried away and let the figs alone, in order to make the dog cease his terrible unearthly baying; for it is believed to be an omen of death when a dog utters such sounds, it being
such a presage of disaster as when a civetta or small owl hoots on the roof.
“However, it sometimes happened that the dog did not come, but those who took and ate the figs fared just as badly all the same. For they soon began to feel ill and suffer dire pains, and when they had gone into their bedrooms and laid down, there always entered a beautiful girl clad in white, who began to whirl round (a girarsi) or spin, making all the time a great buzzing sound, until horror came over them, which when she perceived, she vanished.
“And many tried also to lop off boughs from the fig-tree, but they were found the second night replaced by a perfect new growth with fully ripe fruit. And it was not the least marvel of the tree that it was always in full leaf, with abundance of ripe figs on it, even in winter, when there was snow on the ground.
“One day men digging in the garden found a tablet of stone or metal on which was inscribed:
“‘Il fico rispettate
E non la toccate,’
E non cercate
Neppure mangiarne.’“‘Respect the tree, and let it be,
From branch to root, nor touch its fruit!
Of itself the tree did grow,
From a dog who long ago,
Enchanted by the fairies’ power,
Was buried here in mystic hour;
Therefore we bid you let it stand,
And if you follow the command
You will be happy all your days,
But woe to him who disobeys!’
“Now, the owner of the palazzo and garden was a man who had no faith in old legends, or love for such mysteries as these, and so he said, ‘It is time to put an end to all this superstition, and I am determined to at once see whether all my prosperity depends on a fig-tree; so do you cut it down and tear it up, root and branch, utterly.’
“This was at once done by the labourers, but, while doing so, they heard sounds as of wailing and great lamenting in the earth beneath them. And when they, astonished, asked the signore to listen to the voices, he replied, ‘Away with your superstitions; we will see this time whether the tree will grow or return again.’
“Truly it did not return, but passed away for ever, and with it all the property and prosperity of the lord. For in time he had to sell all he had, and, losing what he got, died in poverty. Then those who had to go in the street where his palace had been would say, ‘Andiamo nella Via del Fico,’ just as they say, ‘Andar per la Via de’ Carri,’ but meaning to ‘go in the way of what is worthless or poverty-stricken,’ and so it was that the street came by its name.”
This strange tale, which is evidently of great antiquity, and deeply inspired with real witch tradition, has, indeed, nothing in common with the pretty fairy stories which are so generally presented as constituting the whole of popular narrative folklore. It was not made nor intended to serve as a pleasing tale for youth, but to embody certain ideas which the witch-teacher explained to the pupil. The first of these is, that the fig-tree planted under certain circumstances became a kind of Luck of Eden Hall to its possessor. This story comes from the Etruscan-Roman land, where traditions have been preserved with incredible fidelity. In the olden time Tarquin the Elder planted a fig-tree in a public place in Rome, and it was a matter of common faith that this tree would flourish for ever if undisturbed, and that on it depended the prosperity and preservation of the city. [207] And in India, the motherland of Greek and Roman mythology, it was believed that whenever one of certain ancient fig-trees died, that the reigning family would pass away. The opinion was widely spread that the fig-tree was above all others the one of life and destiny. In the Bagvatgeta, Krishna says of himself: “I am the spirit, the beginning, the middle, and the end of creation. I am as the Aswatha (pipal or Indian fig) among trees.” Hence it came that many Christians believed that the Tree of Life in Eden was not an apple but a fig-tree. The traditions which establish the fig-tree as being above all others one on
whose existence that of individuals, families, and states depended, are extremely numerous and varied. “It was,” remarks Alt, “not only a symbol of fertility, but an emblem of ever-renewed and never-extinguished vitality, and one of eternity, the resurrection, and of the transmigration of the soul.” On the celebrated altar in Ghent, the Tree of Life is represented as a fig-tree (Menzel, Christliche Symbolik, i. 277). This universal belief explains why the fig-tree determines the duration and destiny of lives and families.
It may have struck the reader as singular that those who eat of the forbidden figs are punished by the visit of a beautiful girl who whirls around with a buzzing sound till they are overcome by awe. Here be it noted first of all, that the fig, like the pear, is exactly the shape of a top, even the stem representing the peg. Now, in ancient Latin witchlore or sorcery, extraordinary magic power, or even sanctity, was attached to everything which made a humming or buzzing sound. It was supposed, when properly made, with certain incantations or instruments, to be capable of throwing people into a trance. Chief among these instruments was the top. Thus Horace begs Crattidia to stop the enchantment of the buzzing top (Ode xv. Book v.).
On this subject I find the following in Diavoli e Streghe, by Dr. A. Zangolini, 1864:
“The rombo [208] is an instrument not unlike the trottola or peg-top of our boys, called in Latin turbo, and in common language also paléo. It was believed that with it in witchcraft a lover could have his head turned with passion, or that he would be turned at will while it spun. The same held true of other disks (tee-totums) of wood, iron, or copper.”
This idea was extended to the hum of spinning-wheels, which aided the conception of the Fates, and the thread
of life, to the buzzing of bees and flies, and many other variations of such sounds. Mr. Andrew Lang has in an admirable paper shown that the bull-roarer has been regarded as so sacred among certain savages that women, or the profane, were not allowed to touch it. A bull-roarer is so easily constructed, that it is remarkable how few people are familiar with it. Take a common stick, say six inches in length, tie a cord three feet long to one end, and, grasping the other, whirl it round, with the result of astonishing all to whom it is not familiar by its sound:
“First it is but a gentle hum,
Like bird-song warbling in the trees,
Then like a torrent it doth foam,
And then a wild and roaring breeze.”
When vigorously spun, it may be heard of a calm evening for a mile, and its effect is then indescribably—I will not say, as most novelists here would, “weird,” for I do not know that it prophesies anything, but it is certainly most suggestive of something mysterious.
Therefore the bayadere, with her spinning pas seul and buzzing romore, who appears to the eater of the figs, is the magic top in person, her form being taken from the fig. The connection of the enchanted dog with the tree is not so clear, but it may be observed that there is a vast mass of tradition which makes the black dog a chthonic, that is, a subterranean or under-earthly symbol, and that in this story he comes out of the earth. This animal was a special favourite of Hecate-Diana of the world below, the queen of all the witches.
There is a vast quantity of folklore in reference to the fig as an emblem of fertility, reproduction, and sensual affinity, and, on the other side, of its being an emblem often used in proverbs to express the very contrary, or trifling value, worthlessness, and poverty. Thus, the barren fig-tree of the New Testament had a deep signification to all who were familiar with these poetic and
mystic “correspondences.” The reader has probably observed that in this story there is, as in a parable, a strong intimation of symbolism, or as if more were meant than meets the ear.
“Remains to be said,” that the putting the thumb between the index and middle finger, which was regarded with awe by the Romans as driving away evil spirits, was called “making the fig,” or far la castagna, to make the chestnut—in Latin, medium ostendere digitum. The same sign as the fig to drive away devils became a deadly insult when made at any one, as if he were a wizard and accursed. It had also a jeering and indecent meaning. It has been said that the fig, as a synonym for anything worthless, originated from the great abundance and cheapness of the fruit in Greece, but this is very unsatisfactory, since it would apply as well to olives or grain.
“This tale doth teach,” notes the learned Flaxius, “as regards the folklore of the black dog, that in this life most things are good or bad, as we take them. For the black dog, Monsieur, of Cornelius Agrippa (like that in Faust) was a demon, albeit his pupil, Wierus, records that he himself knew the animal well, but never supposed there was aught of the goblin in it. And this same Wierus has mentioned (loc. cit., p. m. 325), that one of the things which most terrify the devil and all his gang is the blood of a black dog splashed on the wall. So in ancient symbolism death meant life, the two being correlative, and in witchcraft the spell of the frog and many more are meant to do deadly harm, or great good, according to the way in which they are worked. Wherein lies an immense moral lesson for ye all. Remember, children—
“‘There is no passion, vice, or crime,
Which truly, closely understood,
Does not, in the full course of time,
Do far less harm than good.’”
IL PALAZZO FERONI
showing how it got its name from a fairy
“Ah me! what perils do environ
The man who meddles with cold iron!
Thus sang great Butler long ago,
In Hudibras, as all men know;
But in this story you will see
How Iron was sold by irony.”
One of the most picturesque mediæval palaces in Florence is that of the Feroni, and its architectural beauty is greatly enhanced by its fine situation at the head of the Tornabuoni on the Piazza della Trinità, with the magnificent column of the Medicis just before its gate. According to Italian authority, “this palace may be called, after those of the Prætorio (i.e., Bargello) and the Signoria, the most characteristic building of its epoch in Florence. It is said to have been built by Arnolfo di Cambio. It once belonged to the Spini, from whom it passed to the Feroni.” When I was in Florence in 1846–47, this palace was the best hotel in Florence, and the one in which I lived. There have been great “restorations” in the city since that time, but very few which have not been most discreditably and foolishly conducted, even to the utter destruction of all that was truly interesting in them; as, for instance, “the house of Dante, torn down within a few years to be rebuilt, so that now not one stone rests upon another of the original;” and “Santa Maria Novella, where the usual monkish hatred of everything not rococo and trashy has shown itself by destroying beautiful work of earlier times, or selling it to the Kensington Museum,
setting up a barbarously gilt gingerbread high altar, and daubing the handsome Gothic sacristy with gaudy colours.” To which the author of Murray’s “Guide-Book for Central Italy” adds, that “perhaps on the whole list of ecclesiastical restorations there does not exist a more deplorable instance of monastic vandalism than has been perpetrated here by the architect Romoli”—a remark which falls unfortunately very far short of the truth. Such ruin is wrought everywhere at present; witness the beautiful Fonte Gaja, “the masterpiece of Jacopo della Quercia in Siena (1402), which, since the change of Government, was not ‘restored,’ but totally destroyed and carted away, a miserable modern copy having been recently set up in its place” (Hare, “Cities of Central Italy”), all of which was probably done to “make a job” for a favoured builder. “But what can you expect,” adds a friend, “in a country where it is common to cover a beautiful dry stone wall with plaster, and then paint it over to resemble the original stone,” because, as I was naïvely told, “the rough stone itself looks too cheap”? Anybody who has lived long in Italy can add infinitely to such instances. The Palazzo Feroni has, however, suffered so little, for a wonder, from restoration, and still really looks so genuinely old, that it deserves special mention, and may serve as an excuse for my remarks on the manner in which ancient works are destroyed so con amore by monks and modern municipalities. I may here note that this building is, in a sense, the common rendezvous for all the visitors to Florence, chiefly English and Americans, since in it are the very large circulating library and reading-rooms of Vieusseux. [212]
There is, of course, a legend attached to the Palazzo Feroni, and it is as follows:
“The Signore Pietro, who afterwards received the name Feroni, was a very rich man, and yet hated by the poor, on whom he bestowed nothing, and not much liked by his equals, though he gave them costly entertainments; for there was in all the man and in his character something inconsistent and contradictory, or of corna contra croce—‘the horns against the cross,’ as the proverb hath it, which made it so that one never knew where to have him:
“‘Un, al monte, e l’altro al pian,
Quel che, è oggi, non è doman.’“‘On the hill in joy, in the dale in sorrow—
One thing to-day, and another to-morrow.’
“For to take him at every point, there was something to count off. Thus in all the city there was no one—according to his own declaration—who was
Richer or more prosperous,
Or who had enjoyed a better education,
Or who had such remarkable general knowledge of everything taking place,
Or more of a distinguished courtier,
Or one with such a train of dependants, and people of all kinds running after him,
Or more generally accomplished,
Or better looking—
“And finally, no one so physically strong, as he was accustomed to boast to everybody on first acquaintance, and give them proofs of it—he having heard somewhere that ‘physical force makes a deeper impression than courtesy.’ But all these fine gifts failed to inspire respect (and here was another puzzle in his nature), either because he was so tremendously vain that he looked down on all mortals as so many insects, and all pretty much alike as compared to himself, or else from a foolish carelessness and want of respect, he made himself quite as familiar with trivial people as with anybody. [213]
“One evening the Signore Pietro gave a grand ball in his palace, and as the guests came in—the beauty and grace and
courtly style of all Italy in its golden time—he half closed his eyes, lazily looking at the brilliant swarm of human butterflies and walking flowers, despising while admiring them, though if he had been asked to give a reason for his contempt he would have been puzzled, not having any great amount of self-respect for himself. And they spun round and round in the dance. . . .
“When all at once he saw among the guests a lady, unknown to him, of such striking and singular appearance as to rouse him promptly from his idle thought. She was indeed wonderfully beautiful, but what was very noticeable was her absolutely ivory white complexion, which hardly seemed human, her profuse black silken hair; and most of all her unearthly large jet-black eyes, of incredible brilliancy, with such a strange expression as neither the Signore Pietro nor any one else present had ever seen before. There was a power in them, a kind of basilisk-fascination allied to angelic sweetness—fire and ice . . . ostra e tramontan—a hot and cold wind.
“The Signore Pietro, with his prompt tact, made the lady’s paleness a pretence for addressing her. ‘Did she feel ill—everything in the house was at her disposition—
“‘Servants, carpets, chairs and tables,
Kitchen, pantry, hall and stables,
Everything above or under;
All my present earthly plunder,
All too small for such a wonder.’
“The lady, with a smile and a glance in which there was not the slightest trace of being startled or abashed, replied:
“‘’Tis not worth while your house to rifle,
O mio Signor, for such a trifle.
’Tis but a slight indisposition,
For which I’ll rest, by your permission.’
“The Signore Pietro, as an improvisatore, was delighted with such a ready answer, and remarking that he was something of a doctor, begged permission to bring a soothing cordial, admirable for the nerves, which he hoped to have the honour of placing directly in that fairy-like hand. . . . The Signore vanished to seek the calmante.
“The guests had begun by this time to notice this lady, and from her extremely strange appearance they gathered round her, expecting at first to have some sport in listening to,
or quizzing, an eccentric or a character. But they changed their mind as they came to consider her—some feeling an awe as if she were a fata, and all being finally convinced that whoever she was she had come there to sell somebody amazingly cheap, nor did they feel quite assured that they themselves were not included in the bargain.
“The Signore Pietro returned with the soothing cordial; he had evidently not drunk any of it himself while on the errand, for there was a massive chased iron table inlaid with gold and silver in his way, and the mighty lord with an angry blow from his giant arm, like one from a blacksmith’s No. 1 hammer, broke it, adding an artisan-like oath, and knocked it over. Flirtation had begun.
“‘Did you hurt yourself, Signore?’ asked the lady amiably.
“‘Not I, indeed,’ he replied proudly. ‘A Stone is my name, but it ought to have been Iron, lady, for I am hard as nails, a regular Ferrone or big man of iron, and all my ancestors were Ferroni too; ah! we are a strong lot—at your service!’ Saying this he handed the cup to the lady, who drank the potion, and then, instead of giving the goblet back to the Signore Pietro, as he expected, meaning to gallantly drink off les doux restes, she beckoned with her finger and an upward scoop of her hand to the table, which was lying disconsolately on its back with its legs upwards, like a trussed chicken waiting to be carved, when lo! at the signal it jumped up and came walking to her like a Christian, its legs moving most humanly, and yet all present were appalled at the sight, and the Signore gasped—
“‘I believe the devil’s in it!’
“The lady composedly placed the draught on the table and smiled benevolently. There was something in that angelic smile which made the Signore feel as if he had been made game of. In a rage he rushed at the table, which reared up on its hind legs and showed fight with its forepaws, on which there were massy round iron balls, as on the other extremities. Truly it was a desperate battle, and both combatants covered themselves with dust and glory. Now the table would put a ball well in, and the Signore would counter, or, as I may say, cannon or cannon-ball it off; and then they would grapple and roll over and over till the Signora called them to time. At last the lord wrenched all the cannon-balls off from the table, which first, making a jump to the ceiling, came down in its usual position, while the balls began dancing on it like mad.
“At such a sight all present roared with laughter, and it was observed that the lady, no longer pale, flushed with merriment like a rose. As for Signore Pietro he was red as a beet, and heaved out that he had been canzonato or quizzed.
“‘Truly yes,’ replied the lady; ‘but henceforth you shall have a name, for to do you justice you are as hard as iron, and Iron you shall be called—Big Iron Ferrone—and cannon-balls shall be your coat-of-arms, in sæcula sæculorum. By edict of the Queen of the Fairies!’
“Now at this all the love in the Signore Pietro concentrated itself in his heart, passed into his tongue, and caused him to burst forth in song in the following ottava, while the music accompanied:
“‘Quando vedo le femmine rammone,
Mi sento andare il cuore in convulsione,
Hanno certe facette vispe e sane,
Da fare entrare in sen la tentazione,
Oh donnina! Non siate disumana!
Di Pietro abbiate compassione!
Scusante la modestia se l’e troppo
Di questi personali non sene poppo.’“‘When I behold thy all too lovely features,
I feel my heart in soft convulsions heaving,
Thou art the most entrancing of all creatures,
I tell you so in sooth, without deceiving,
In fact there is no beauty which can beat yours;
And Pietro loves you, lady, past believing;
In breasts like cannon-balls there’s naught to blame;
But oh! I hope your heart’s not like the same!’
“But as this exquisite poem concluded with an immense sigh, there appeared before them a golden and pearl car, in which the fairy entered, and rising sailed away through a great hole in the ceiling, which opened before and closed behind her, Signore Pietro remaining a bocca aperta, gaping with opened jaws, till all was o’er.
“‘Well!’ exclaimed the master, ‘she gave me the slip, but we have had a jolly evening of it, and I’m the first man who ever fought an iron table, and I’ve got a good idea. My name is now Feroni—the Big Iron Man—ladies and gentlemen, please remember, and cannon-balls are in my coat-of-arms!’”
I have naturally taken some liberty as regards mere text in translating this tale, in order to render the
better the spirit of the original; but not so much as may be supposed, and spirit and words are, on the whole, accurately rendered.
The reader is not to suppose that there are any traces of true history in this fairy tale. I am very greatly indebted to Miss Wyndham of Florence (who has herself made collections in folk-lore), for investigating this subject of the Feroni family, with the following result—it being premised that it had occurred to the lady that the “cannon-balls” or Medicean pills, or pawnbroker’s sign, whatever it was, had been attributed by mistake to the Feroni. Miss Wyndham, after consulting with authority, found that the Feroni themselves had not the balls, but, owing probably to transfer of property, there is found on their palaces the Alessandri shield, on which the upper half and lower left quarter contain the Medici spheres. She also sent me this extract from the old work, Marietta di Ricci:
“The Feroni family, originally named from Balducci da Vinci, and of peasant origin, owes its fortune to Francesco, son of Baldo di Paolo di Ferone, a dyer of Empoli. Going as a merchant to Holland, he accumulated a large fortune. Made known to Cosimo III. (just called to the Grand Duchy) by his travels, he was called to Florence. In 1673 he was made citizen of Florence, in 1674 he was elected senator, and in 1681 appointed Marquis of Bellavista. He left a colossal fortune, which has been kept up by his heirs to the present day. His grandson Guiseppe was made cardinal in 1753.
“Their arms are an arm mailed in iron, holding a sword, and above it a golden lily in a blue field.”
This extract is interesting, as showing how a family could rise by industry and wealth, even in one generation, by the work of a single man, to the highest honours in Florence. And it is very remarkable that some impression of the origin of this vigorous artisan and merchant, of peasant stock, is evident in the tale. He is there clever
and strong, but vulgar and familiar, so that he was not personally liked. He remains standing open-mouthed, like a comic actor, when the fairy vanishes. In fact the whole tale suggests the elements of a humorous melodrama or operetta, a bourgeois gentilhomme.
“And should it come to pass that any read
This tale in Viesseux, his library,
In the Feroni palace, let them think
That, even in the rooms where they do read,
The things which I have told once came to pass—
Even so the echo ever haunts the shrine!”
LA VIA DELLE BELLE DONNE
“The church of San Gaetano, on the left of the Via Tornabuoni, faces the Palazzo Antinori, built by Giuliano di San Gallo. Opposite is the Via delle Belle Donne, a name, says Leigh Hunt, which it is a sort of tune to pronounce.”—Hare, Cities of Central Italy.
The name of this place is suggestive of a story of some kind, but it was a long time before I obtained the following relative to the Street of Pretty Women:
“In the Via delle Belle Donne there was a very large old house in which were many lodgers, male and female, who, according to their slender means, had two rooms for a family. Among these were many very pretty girls, some of them seamstresses, others corset-makers, some milliners, all employed in shops, who worked all day and then went out in the evening to carry their sewing to the maggazini. And it was from them that the street got its name, for it became so much the fashion to go and look at them that young men would say, ‘Andiamo nella Via delle Belle Donne,’—‘Let us go to the Street of the Pretty Women;’ so it has been so-called to this day.
“And when they sallied forth they were at once surrounded or joined by young men, who sought their company with views more or less honourable, as is usual. Among these there was a very handsome and wealthy signore named Adolfo, who was so much admired that he might have had his choice of all these belles, but he had fixed his mind on one, a beautiful blonde, who was, indeed, the fairest among them all. She had large black eyes, with quick glances, beautiful light hair in masses, and was always dressed simply, yet with natural elegance. She had long avoided making acquaintance among men, and she now shunned Adolfo; but at last he succeeded, after many difficulties, in becoming acquainted, and finally won her heart—the end of it all being the old story of a poor girl ruined by a gay and great signor, left a mother, and then abandoned.
“For four years she lived alone, by her work, with her child, who grew up to be a very beautiful boy. Then he, noting that other children had parents, asked her continually, ‘Mamma, where is my papa?’
“He gave her no rest, and at last she went to Adolfo and asked him what he would do for their child.
“He laughed at her, and said, ‘Nothing. That folly is all over. Begone!’
“Then, in a wild passion of rage at seeing her child so despised, she stabbed him to the heart, and escaped unseen and undiscovered.
“Then, when the boy asked her again:
“‘Cara madre, cara madre,
Dove e lo mio padre?’“‘Mother dear, tell to me
Where may my father be?’
“She replied:
“‘Darling son, thy sire is dead,
Lying in an earthen bed;
Dead he ever will remain,
By my dagger he was slain.
Had he but been kind to thee,
Living still he yet would be;
Other sorrows I forgave,
With my dirk I dug his grave. [220]
This is but a commonplace story, yet it is such as finds more currency among the people, and particularly among girls, than many a better one. There is a strong touch of nature, and especially of Italian nature, in the concluding lines.
THE WIZARD WITH RED TEETH
“And dost thou fear to greet
The Dead with me. They graced our wedding sweet.”—Moore, The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.
The following ballad may be classed as Florentine, since it was in Florence that I heard it sung, but it is not attached to any particular place. It is one of those compositions which are either sung or simply recited, and quite as often intoned in a manner which is neither singing nor speaking. In such chant, when a rhyme happens to fall in by chance, the utmost is made of it by dwelling on the word or drawling it out. Sometimes, as in the following, there are verses of four lines each, but only the concluding line of every verse rhymes, i.e., with the preceding last line of the previous stanza:
Il Streghone coi Denti Rossi.
“C’era un gran signore
Che una bella figlia aveva,
Far la felice lo credeva,
Col far la maritar.
“‘Babbo, no’voglio marito,
Prendo uno soltanto,
Se si uomo coi dente rossi,
Di famelo trovar.’
“‘Figlia, non e possibile
A me mi strazzi il cuor
Avanti di morire
Vo farti tranquillo il cuor.’
“Un giorno allor comparvi,
Un giovane assai bello,
E denti rossi li teneva,
La sua figlia, Amelia,
‘Mi dica dove ella.’
“‘Io lo vo sposare,
E con me la vo’ portare.’
‘Dimmi dove la porti,
Giovane sconosciuto,
La mia figlia no ti rifiuto,
Coi denti rossi lo vuol sposar?’
“Sposa la siora Amelia,
E se la porta via.
La casa dove sia,
Questo poi non lo sa.
“La porta in una capanna,
Di foglie, legno, e fieno,
‘Ortello fa sapere,
Se vuoi saper chi sono.
“‘Io sono un’ streghone,
Te’l giuro in verita,
La notte a mezzanotte
Io ti faccio levar.
“‘Ti porto al camposanto,
A sotterar i morti;
E se tu vuoi mangiar,
Quel sangue, bella mia,
Tu l’ai da succiar.’
“La giovana disperata,
Piange, grida e si dispera,
Ma rimedio più non v’era
Anche lei una strega,
Toccava diventar.”
Translation.
“There was a grand signore
Who had a daughter fair;
He longed to see her happy,
And wished that she were wed.
“‘Oh, father! I would not marry,
I have vowed to have for my husband
One with teeth as red as coral.
Oh! find him for me,’ she said.
“‘My daughter, it is not possible,
You wring and pain my heart.
Ere I die and pass away
I would fain be at peace,’ said he.
“One day there appeared before her
A knight of goodly seeming,
His teeth were red as coral.
Said the beautiful Amelia,
‘There is the spouse for me.’
“‘I will marry her,’ said the knight,
‘And bear her with me away.’
‘Tell me where wilt thou take her,
Thou strange and unknown man.
I do not refuse her to thee,
But whither wilt thou roam?’
“He married fair Amelia,
And carried her far away.
“Where is the house thou dwell’st in?
And say where is thy home?’
“He took her to a cabin,
All leaves and sticks and hay,
‘My true name is Ortello.
To-night, at the hour of midnight,
I will carry thee away.
“‘I will bear thee to the graveyard
To dig up the newly dead;
Then if thou hast thirst or hunger
Thou mayst suck the blood of the corpses,’
To her the Sorcerer said.
“She wept in desperate sorrow,
She wrung her lily hand,
But she was lost for ever,
And in the witches’ band.”
This was, and is, a very rude ballad; its moral appears to be that feminine caprice and disregard of parental love must be punished. It is very remarkable as having to perfection that Northern or German element which Goethe detected in a Neapolitan witch-song given in his Italian journey. [224] It has also in spirit, and somewhat strangely in form, that which characterises one of Heine’s most singular songs. It impresses me, as I was only yesterday impressed in the Duomo of Siena at finding, among the wood-carvings in the choir, Lombard grotesques which were markedly Teutonic, having in them no trace of anything Italian.
“Quaint mysteries of goblins and strange things,
We scarce know what—half animal half vine,
And beauteous face upon a toad, from which
Outshoots a serpent’s tail—the Manicore,
A mixture grim of all things odd and wild,
The fairy-witch-like song of German eld.”
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
“Wherever beauty dwells,
In gulf or aerie mountains or deep dells,
Thou pointest out the way, and straight ’tis won,
Thou leddest Orpheus through the gleams of death.”—Keats.
“Silvestres homines sacer interpres que Deorum
Cædibus et victu deterruit Orpheus.
Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque Leones.”—Horace.
It may have happened to the reader, in his travels, to trace in some majestic mountain-land, amid rocky ravines, that which was, perhaps, in prehistoric times a terrible torrent or a roaring river. I mean, indeed, such a furious flood as is now unknown on earth, one which tore away the highest hills like trifles, melting them in a minute to broad alluvials, and ground up the grandest granite cliffs to gravel-dust, even as a mighty mill grates grain to flour.
You trace the course of the ancient river which when young vaulted the valley, which it had made, on either side with overhanging precipices, which now bend like silent mourners over its grave. And it seems to be dead and buried for ever.
Yet it may chance that, looking more deeply into its course to see if, perhaps, some flakes of antique gold are not to be found in the bed of the old water-course, you hear deep in some rocky crevice far below, and out of sight, the merry gurgle or voice-like murmur of a spring or unseen rivulet which indicates that the river of ancient days is not quite lost in the land. Unsuspected, like the
sapphire serpent of Eastern legend, that diamond-clear rivulet has wound its mysterious course deep in the earth for ages, and, following its sound, you may come to some place where it again leaps forth into sunlight—little, indeed, yet ever beautiful. It is almost touching to see that diminished rill creeping timidly round the feet of giant boulders which it once rent in sport from the mighty rocks, and rolled into what were for it in its whilom power, mere marbles. It is small now, and very obscure, yet it lives and is ever beautiful.
Such a stream, which I traced yesterday in an ancient gorge in the heart of the Apennines, where the grey tower of Rocca looks down on the mysterious Ponte del Diavolo of the twelfth century—the most picturesque bridge in Italy—forcibly reminds me of the human stream of old tradition which once, as marvellous mythology or grand religion, roared and often raged over all this region, driving before it, and rending away, all the mighty rocks of human will, now tearing down and anon forming stupendous cliffs of observances, and vast monoliths of legend and faith. Such were the Etruscan and early Roman cults, which drove before them and engulfed irresistibly all the institutions of their time, and then disappeared so utterly that men now believe that the only remaining record of their existence is in their tombs or rocky relics of strange monuments.
But by bending low to earth, or seeking among the people, we may hear the murmur of a hidden stream of legend and song which, small and shrunken as it may be, is still the veritable river of the olden time. Many such streams are running in many lands, and that full openly on the earth’s surface, but this to which I specially refer is strangely occult and deeply hidden, for to find it we must seek among the strege and stregoni, or witches and sorcerers, who retain as dark secrets of their own, marvellous relics of the myths of the early ages. These are,
in many cases, so strangely quaint and beautiful that they would seem to have kept something of an original perfume which has utterly perished in the dried flowers of tradition preserved in books, or even by poets.
This seems to me to be the case with the incantation to Orpheus, which is now before me, written in rude dialect, which indicates, so to speak, the depth of the earth from which it was taken. I had asked the woman who gave it to me whether she knew such a name as that of Orpheus or Orfeo, as connected with music. This was the reply which I received:
Orfeo.
Scongiurazione a Orfeo per suonare bene uno Zuffolo. This is the invocation to Orpheus for him who would fain become a good player on the shepherd’s pipe. [227]
Scongiurazione.
“Ogni giorno io mi metto
Questo zuffolo a suonare,
Per poterlo bene inparare,
E a preso dei maestri
Per potermi fare insegnare,
Ma non so come mi fare,
Nella testa non mi vuole entrare,
A che partito mi devo apigliare:
Io non so come mi fare;
Ma tu Orfeo che siei tanto chapace
Per lo zuffolo, e il violino,
Suoni bene pur lo organino,
La chitarra e il mandolino,
La gran cassa, il trombone,
Suoni bene lo clarino,
E non ’ce uno strumento
Che tu Orfeo tu non sia
Chapace di bene suonare,
Per la musicha siei molto bravo,
E tu ai ogni potenza,
Che da diavoli siei protetto,
Dunque insegnami come fare,
Questo zuffolo va scongiurare,
Per poter bene suonare,
Questo zuffolo lo prendo,
Sotto terra io lo metto,
E tre giorni ce lo fo stare,
A fine che tu Orfeo,
Bene tu me lo facci a suonare;
Che tanto siei amante
Di suonare sarai amante,
Pur d’insegnare per quanto
Ai soferto la tua Auradice,
Dal inferno non potere levare,
Ma vollo lei a preghare,
Che ti aiuti questo zuffolo volere suonare,
E tu che sempre e di musicha,
Siei chapace che fino
Le bestie ti vengono ascoltare,
Orfeo! Orfeo! ti prego;
Orfeo! volermi insegnare
Questo zuffolo bene suonare,
E appena suonero,
Il maestro musicho Orfeo ringraziero,
E a tutti sempre faro,
Sapere a chi mi a dato,
Questo talento che le stato,
Orfeo dal inferno lo scongiurato,
E per la musicha o tanto,
Pasione al mio zuffolo a dato,
Lezione e lo zuffolo e un strumento
Che ne son tanto inamorato
Che dai miei vecchi era molto ramentato,
E sempre mi dicevano,
Se dinparar lo non siei chapace,
Orfeo devi scongiurare;
E cosi io faro,
E Orfeo preghero!”
“Every day I try, and yet
I cannot play the flageolet;
Many masters I have sought,
Naught I learned from all they taught;
I am dull, ’tis very true,
And I know not what to do
In this strait, unless it be,
Great Orpheus, to come to thee;
Thou who the greatest skill didst win,
On flageolet and violin,
Who play’st the organ, pealing far,
The mandolin and the guitar,
Thou wak’st the clarion’s stirring tone,
The rattling drum and loud trombone;
On earth there is no instrument,
Whate’er it be, to mortals sent,
Enchanting every sense away,
Which thou, O Orpheus! canst not play;
Great must thy skill in music be,
Since even the demons favour thee;
And since on this my heart is set,
Enchant, I pray, this flageolet,
And that its tones may sweetly sound,
I bury it beneath the ground;
Three days shall it lie hidden thus,
Till thou, O mighty Orpheus!
Shalt wake in it by magic spell
The music which thou lov’st so well.
I conjure thee by all the woe
Which grieved thy soul so long ago!
And pain, when thy Auradice
From the dark realm thou couldst not free,
To grant me of thy mighty will
That I may play this pipe with skill,
Even as thou hast played before;
For, as the story runs, of yore,
Whenever thou didst wake its sound,
The forest beasts came raptured round.
Orpheus! Orpheus! I pray,
Orpheus! teach me how to play!
And when sweet music forth I bring,
On every chord thy name shall ring,
And every air which charms shall be
A hymn of thanks, great lord, to thee!
And unto all I’ll make it known,
I owe it all to thee alone,
And of the wondrous skill I’ll tell,
Which mighty Orpheus won from hell.
And by the music, and the power,
Of passion in me, from this hour
Henceforth in this sweet instrument
I shall be ever well content;
For now, I do remember well,
What ’twas my father oft would tell,
That all who would learn music thus
Must conjure mighty Orpheus,
Even as I have done to-day,
So I to him will ever pray.”
To which the manuscript adds in prose:
“Thus the peasants do when they do not succeed in playing the shepherd’s pipe, which they esteem beyond any other instrument.”
To any one who fully feels and understands what is meant to be conveyed by this incantation—and a great deal is expressed by passionate singing and a deep thrilling intonation which the text does not give—my translation will appear to be quite accurate. But, in any case, no scholar or poet can deny that there is in it a strange depth of classic feeling, or of old Roman romance, not strained at second-hand through books, but evidently drawn from rude antiquity, which is as fresh in its ring as it is marvellous.
It may be observed as exquisitely curious that in this incantation the peasant who wishes to become a skilled performer on the flageolet buries it for three days in the ground, invoking Orpheus by what the spirit suffered in losing Eurydice, and subsequently distinctly declaring
that he won or conjured his great musical power from Hades, which means that by the penance and loss, and his braving the terrors of the Inferno, he gained skill. This is a mighty element of the myth in all its forms, in all ages, in every country. The burying the instrument for three days probably typifies the three days during which Orpheus was in hell.
It may be observed that Eurydice has become Auradice in the incantation, in which there is probably an intimation of Aura, a light wind or zephyr. Air is so naturally associated with music. This, by a very singular coincidence, yet certainly due to mere chance, recalls the invocation to the Spirit of the Air, given by Bulwer in “The Last Days of Pompeii”:
“Spectre of the viewless air,
Hear the blind Thessalian’s prayer,
By Erichtho’s art that shed
Dews of life when life was fled,
By lone Ithaca’s wise king,
Who could wake the crystal spring
To the voice of prophecy
By the lost Eurydice!
Summoned from the shadowy throng,
At the muse-son’s magic song:
Come, wild Demon of the Air,
Answer to thy votary’s prayer.”
It is indeed very remarkable that in the call to the God of Music, who is in certain wise a spirit of the air, as in that to the Spirit of the Air himself, both are invoked:
“By the lost Eurydice!”
If it could be shown that Bulwer owed this poem and allusion to any ancient work or tradition, I should be tempted to believe that the popular invocation was derived from some source in common with the latter. There is indeed a quaint naïve drollery in the word Auradice—“Air-tell!” or “Air-declare!” which adapts it better to the spirit of Bulwer’s poem, in which the air is begged to
tell something, than to the Orphean or Orphic spell. It may be that the Orphic oracles were heard in the voice of the wind, apropos of which latter there is a strange Italian legend and an incantation to be addressed to all such mystic voices of the night, which almost seems re-echoed in “Lucia”:
“Verrano a te sull’ aure,
I miei sospiri ardenti,
Udrai nell mar che mormora
L’eco de miei lamenti!”
It is worth observing that this tradition, though derived from the Romagna, was given to me in Florence, and that one of the sculptures on the Campanile represents Orpheus playing the pipe to wild beasts. It is said that in the Middle Ages the walls of churches were the picture-books of the people, where they learned all they knew of Bible legends, but not unfrequently gathered many strange tales from other sources. The sculptors frequently chose of their own will scenes or subjects which were well known to the multitude, who would naturally be pleased with the picturing what they liked, and it may be that Orpheus was familiar then to all. In any case, the finding him in a witch incantation is singularly in accordance with the bas-relief of the Cathedral of Florence, which again fits in marvellously well with Byron’s verse:
“Florence! whom I will love as well
As ever yet was said or sung,
Since Orpheus sang his spouse from hell,
Whilst thou art fair and I am young.“Sweet Florence! those were pleasant times,
When worlds were staked for ladies’ eyes.
Had bards as many realms as rhymes,
Thy charms might raise new Antonies!”
True it is that this Florence seems to have had dazzling eyes and ringlets curled; and it is on the other hand not true that Orpheus sang his spouse from hell—he only
tried to do it. And it is worth noting that one of the commonest halfpenny pamphlets sold in Florence, which is to be found at every public stand, is a poem called “Orpheus and Eurydice.” This fact alone renders it less singular that such classical incantations should exist.
The early Christians, notwithstanding their antipathy to heathen symbols, retained with love that of Orpheus. Orpheus was represented as a gentle youth, charming-wild beasts with the music of the pipe, or as surrounded by them and sheep; hence he was, like the Good Shepherd, the favourite type of Christ. He had also gone down into shadowy Hades, and returned to be sacrificed by the heathen, unto whose rites he would not conform.
Miss Roma Lister found traces of Orpheus among the peasantry about Rome, in a pretty tradition. They say that there is a spirit who, when he plays the zufolo or flageolet to flocks, attracts them by his music and keeps them quiet.
“Now there were certain shepherd families and their flocks together in a place, and it was agreed that every night by turns, each family should guard the flocks of all the rest. But it was observed that one mysterious family all turned in and went to sleep when their turn came to watch, and yet every morning every sheep was in its place. Then it was found that this family had a spirit who played the zufolo, and herded the flock by means of his music.”
The name is wanting, but Orpheus was there. The survival of the soul of Orpheus in the zufolo or pipe, and in the sprite, reveals the mystic legend which indicates his existing to other times. In this it is said that his head after death predicted to Cyrus the Persian monarch that he too would be killed by a woman (Consule Leonic, de var. histor., lib. i. cap. 17; de Orphei Tumulo in monte Olympo, &c., cited by Kornmann de Miraculis Mortuorum, cap. 19). The legend of Orpheus, or of a living wife returning from another world to visit an afflicted
husband, passed to other lands, as may be seen in a book by Georgius Sabinus, in Notis ad Metamorp. Ovidii, lib. x. de descensu Orphei ad Inferos, in which he tells how a Bavarian lady, after being buried, was so moved by her husband’s grief that she came to life again, and lived with him for many years, semper tamen fuisse tristem ac pallidem—but was always sad and pale. However, they got on very well together for a long time, till one evening post vesperi potum—after he had taken his evening drink—being somewhat angry at the housemaid, he scolded her with unseemly words. Now it was the condition of his wife’s coming back to life and remaining with him that he was never to utter an improper expression (ut que deinceps ipse abstineret blasphemis conviciandi verbis). And when the wife heard her husband swear, she disappeared, soul and body, and that in such a hurry that her dress (which was certainly of fine old stiff brocade) was found standing up, and her shoes under it. A similar legend, equally authentic, may be found in the “Breitmann Ballads,” a work, I believe, by an American author. On which subject the learned Flaxius remarks that “if all the men who swear after their evening refreshments were to lose their wives, widowers would become a drug in the market.”
Of the connection between aura as air, and as an air in music, I have something curious to note. Since the foregoing was written I bought in Florence a large wooden cup, it may be of the eleventh century or earlier, known as a misura, or measure for grain, formerly called a modio, in Latin modus, which word has the double meaning of measure for objects solid or liquid, and also for music. Therefore there are on the wooden measure four female figures, each holding a musical instrument, and all with their garments blowing in one direction, as in a high wind, doubtless to signify aura, Italian aria, air or melody. These madonnas of the four modes are rudely but very
gracefully sketched by a bold master-hand. They represent, in fact, Eurydice quadrupled.
There is a spirit known in the Toscana Romagna as Turabug. He is the guardian of the reeds or canes, or belongs to them like the ancient Syrinx. There is a curious ceremony and two invocations referring to him. Ivy and rue are specially sacred to him. One of these two invocations is solely in reference to playing the zufolo, partly that the applicant may be inspired to play well, and secondly, because the spirit is supposed to be attracted by the sound of the instrument. The very ancient and beautiful idea that divinities are invoked or attracted by music, is still found in the use of the organ in churches.
A large portion of the foregoing on Orpheus formed, with “Intialo,” the subject of a paper by me in Italian, which was read in the Collegio Romana at Rome at the first meeting of the Italian Societa Nazionale per le Tradizioni Popolari Italiani, in November 1893. Of which society I may here mention that it is under the special patronage of her Majesty Margherita the Queen of Italy, who is herself a zealous and accomplished folklorist and collector—“special patronage” meaning here not being a mere figurehead, but first officer—and that the president is Count Angelo de Gubernatis.
I believe that the establishment of this society will contribute vastly to shake in Italy the old-fashioned belief that to be a person of the most respectable learning it is quite sufficient to be thoroughly acquainted with a few “classic” writers, be they Latin, French, or Italian, and that it is almost a crime to read anything which does not directly serve as a model or a copy whereby to “refine our style.” As regards which the whole world is now entering on a new renaissance, the conflict between the stylists and the more liberally enlightened having already begun.
But Orpheus, with the ecclesiastical witch-doctors, was soon turned into a diabolical sorcerer; and Leloyer writes of him: “He was the greatest wizard who ever lived, and his writings boil over with praises of devils and filthy loves of gods and mortals, . . . who were all only devils and witches.”
That Eve brought death and sin into the world by eating one apple, or a fig, or orange, or Chinese nectarine, or the fruit of the banana tree, or a pear, a peach, or everything pomological, if we are to believe all translators of the Bible, coincides strongly with the fact that Eurydice was lost for tasting a pomegranate. “Of the precise graft of the espalier of Eden,” says the author of the ‘Ingoldsby Legends,’ “Sanchoniathon, Manetho, and Berosus are undecided; the best informed Talmudists have, however . . . pronounced it a Ribstone pippin,” Eve being a rib. The ancients were happy in being certain that their apple was one of Granada.
“Hæc fabula docet,” writes our Flaxius, “that mysteries abound in every myth. Now, whether Orpheus was literally the first man who ever went to hell for a woman I know not, but well I ween that he was not the last, as the majority of French novelists of the present day are chiefly busy in proving, very little, as it seems to me, either to the credit of their country or of themselves. But there are others who read in this tale a dark and mysterious forewarning to the effect that ladies à la mode who fall in love with Italian musicians or music-masters, and especially those who let themselves and their fortunes be sifflées (especially the fortunes), should not be astonished when the fate of Eurydice befalls them. Pass on, beloved, to another tale!
“‘Walk on, amid these mysteries strange and old,
The strangest of them all is yet to come!’”
INTIALO
the spirit of the haunting shadow
“O ombra che dalla luce siei uscita,
Misuri il passo al Sole, all’uom la vita.”“Umbram suam mètuere.”
“Badate.
La vostra ombra vi avrà fatto paura.”—Filippo Pananti.
“There is a feeling which, perhaps, all have felt at times; . . . it is a strong and shuddering impression which Coleridge has embodied in his own dark and supernatural verse that Something not of earth is behind us—that if we turned our gaze backward we should behold that which would make the heart as a bolt of ice, and the eye shrivel and parch within its socket. And so intense is the fancy, that when we turn, and all is void, from that very void we could shape a spectre as fearful as the image our terror had foredrawn.”—Bulwer, The Disowned.
The resemblance and the relation of the shadow to the body is so strangely like that of the body to the soul, that it is very possible that it first suggested the latter. It is born of light, yet is in itself a portion of the mystery of darkness; it is the facsimile of man in every outline, but in outline alone; filled in with uniform sombre tint, it imitates our every action as if in mockery, which of itself suggests a goblin or sprite, while in it all there is something of self, darkling and dream-like, yet never leaving us. It is only evident in brightest hours, like a skeleton at an Egyptian feast, and it has neither more nor less resemblance to man than the latter. Hence it came that the strange “dwellers by the Nile” actually
loved both shade and death by association, and so it happened that
“Full many a time
They seemed half in love with easeful Death;
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,”
while they made of the cool shadow a portion of the soul itself, or rather one of the seven or eight entities of which man consisted, these being—Khat, a body; Ba, the spirit; Khon, the intelligence; Khaïbit, the shadow; Ren, the name; Ka, eternal vitality; Ab, the heart; and Sahn, the mask or mummy.
It is extremely interesting to consider, in connection with this Egyptian doctrine, the fact, illustrated by every writer on Etruscan antiquity, that these ancient dwellers in Italy, when they represented the departed, or the dead, as living again on a tomb, added to the name of the deceased the word Hinthial. This I once believed meant simply a ghost or spirit. I had no other association with the name.
I inquired for a long time if there was any such name as Hintial for a ghost among the people, and could not find it. At last my chief agent succeeded in getting from sources to me unknown, but, as in all cases, partly from natives of the Toscana Romagna, or Volterra, and at different times, very full information regarding this mysterious being, which I combine as follows:
Intialo.
“This is a spirit in human form who shows himself in any shadow, [238] and diverts himself by inspiring terror in a sorcerer, or in any one who has committed a crime. He causes a fearful shadow to be ever present to the man, and addresses him thus:
“Vile—tu non potrai
Avere mai bene—avrai
Sempre la mia ombra
In tua presenza, e saro
Vendicato . . . [239]
“Tu non potrai giammai
Essere solo, che l’ombra
Mia ovunque andrai
Ti seguira: tu non potrai
Essere mai solo, tu sarai
Sempre in mio potere!
“Al mio incantesimo non avrai
Ne pace ne bene, al mio
Incanto tu tremerai,
Te e tutta la casa dove ti troverai,
Se sei in mezzo alla strada,
Tu tremerai—
Te e tutta la terra!
“Al mio volere tu andrai
Come cane alla pagliaio,
Alla voce del suo maestro;
Tu me vorrai
Vedere, e non mi vedrai,
Mi sentirai—
Vedrai sola la tua ombra.
“Tu sei cattivo e scelerato,
Tu sei avelenato,
Nel cuore e nell anima,
E più bene non avrai,
Sei avelenato nel cuore,
E nell anima, vai,
Tu siei maladetto;
E il spirito sempre ti seguira
Ovunque tu vada!”
The Demon to the Sorcerer.
“Wretch! long lost in wickedness,
Thou shalt ne’er have happiness;
Though to distant lands thou’lt flee,
Still my shadow thou shalt see,
And I will revengèd be.
“Solitude thou ne’er shalt know,
Where thou goest my shade shall go,
And wherever thou mayst fly
Still the shadow will be by—
Ne’er alone at any hour,
And for ever in my power.
“By my spell thou ne’er shalt know
Peace or joy on earth below,
At my charm a deadly fear
Shall seize on all men standing near;
Thou shalt tremble in thy home,
Or if thou abroad shouldst roam,
Shivering with fear thou’lt be,
And the earth shall shake with thee.
“At my bidding thou must stir,
And hasten as the vilest cur
Must hasten when his master calls,
And leave his straw amid the stalls;
And if thou wouldst gaze on me,
Still my form thou shalt not see;
Thou shalt feel when I am here,
Feel me in thy deadly fear,
Yet only see thy shadow near.
“Thou art vile and wicked too,
Thou art poisoned through and through;
In thy heart and in thy soul,
Cursedness is in the whole,
In thy soul and in thy heart,
Poison steeped in every part.
Cursed ever! now, depart!
Yet wherever thou shalt flee
I will ever follow thee!
“Then this man will be in terror, and he will ever see the shadow before him by day and by night, and thus he will have no peace, and yet this is all the time the spirit of Intialo.
“Now, when he is thus tormented for some past misdeed, and he feels himself haunted, as it were, by the shadow of the one whom he has wronged, when he finds at last that he is not pursued, indeed, by it, but by Intialo, then he shall repeat the Exorcism:
Scongiurazione di Intialo.
“Intialo! Intialo! che quando
Una persona ai preso,
O per seguitare le ingombri
Le ingombri sempre la cammina.
“Intialo! Intialo! se libero
Il passo mi lascerai meglio
Per te sara, se non mi verrai
Lasciare ti faccio sapere
Tu sarai sempre in mio potere.
“Intialo! Intialo! ti faccio sapere,
Se metto in opera
La mia scongiurazione,
Non ti lasciero più bene avere,
E ogni mi a chiamata
Ti faro correre
Come chane al pagliaio.
“Intialo! Intialo!
Ti faccio sapere
Che tu pensi a fare
Il tuo dovere,
Se ancora mi viene a tormentare
Muso di porco tu possa diventare.
“Intialo! Intialo!
Tu siei furbo e maligno,
Ma io me ne infischio,
Perche io sono di te,
Molto più maligno.
“Intialo! Intialo! ti prego
Di non mi più tormentare
Se vuoi aver bene,
Se no ti acquisterai
Delle pene—e questo sara
Il tuo guadagno.
“Intialo! Intialo!
Con tutta la tua furberia,
Non sai ancora
Che io son protetto
Da una bella stregha
Che mi adora.
“Intialo! Intialo!
Se più ne vuoi sapere
Vieni sta sera,
Vièni a mezza notte,
Viene di dove sei,
Te lo faro vedere,
Vieno sotto ’quel noce
E tu lo vedrai.
“Intialo! Intialo!
La mezza notte in punto,
Noi l’abbiamo,
E ti vedo (vedro) appogiato
Al noce che credi di vedere,
Vedere l’ombra mia,
E vedi l’ombra tua stessa!
“Intialo! Intialo!
Dentro al mio seno
Quattro cose tengo,
Che mi fanno vedere,
E non son veduto,
Ellera, pane,
Sale e ruta,
E la mia buona fortuna.
“Intialo! Intialo!
Non ti voglio dire,
Perche io voglio
Andare a dormire;
Ma solo ti ho fatto
Ti ho fatto vedere
Che non son’ in poter tuo,
Ma tu siei in mio potere.”
The Exorcism of Intialo.
“Intialo! it is known
When thou followest any one,
Be the victim whom he may,
Thou art ever in his way.
“Intialo—hear! if free
Thou wilt leave the road to me,
Better for thee shall it be;
If thou wilt not, from this hour
I will hold thee in my power.
“Intialo! thou shalt learn
That I’m wizard in my turn;
All the power of sorcery
So about thee I will throw—
All around, above, below—
That thou shalt accursed be,
Held in fear and agony,
And as a dog shalt follow me.
“Intialo! thou shalt know
What thou art ere thou canst go;
If thou comest here again
To torment or give me pain,
As thou’dst make a dog of me,
I will make a swine of thee.
“Intialo! sorry cheat,
Filled with hate from head to feet,
Be malignant if you will,
I am more malignant still.
“Intialo! for thy sake
I pray thee no more trouble take
To torment me, for thy gain
Will only be thy greater pain,
For so cursed thou shalt be
That I needs must pity thee.
“Intialo! now, confess
That with all thy craftiness
Thou didst not know what now I tell,
That I am protected well
By a lovely witch, and she
Is mightier far, O fiend! than thee.
“Intialo! ere we go,
If thou more of me wouldst know,
Come at midnight—I shall be
’Neath the witches’ walnut tree,
And what I shall make thee see
I trow will be enough for thee.
“Intialo! in that hour
Thou shalt truly feel my power,
And when thou at last shalt ween
That on the witches’ tree I lean,
Then to thee it shall be known
That my shadow is thine own.
“Intialo! everywhere
With me magic charms I bear,
Ivy, bread and salt and rue,
And with them my fortune too.
“Intialo! hence away,
Unto thee no more I’ll say;
Now I fain would go to sleep,
See that thou this warning keep.
I am not in power of thine,
But thou truly art in mine.”
I had the belief, derived from several writers, that Hinthial in Etruscan meant simply a ghost or revenant—the apparition of some one dead. But on mentioning my
discovery of this legend to Professor Milani, the Director of the Archæological Museum in Florence, and the first of Etruscan scholars, he astonished me by declaring that he believed the word signified a shadow, and that its real meaning in its full significance had apparently been marvellously preserved in this witch-tradition. Too little is known as yet of the old Etruscan language to decide with certainty as to anything in it, but should this opinion of Professor Milani be sustained, it will appear that at least one word of the mysterious tongue has existed till now in popular tradition.
There will be very few of my readers who will not be struck, as I was, with the remarkable resemblance of the terrible curse uttered by Intialo to the invocation in Byron’s tragedy of “Manfred.” It is like it in form, spirit, and, in many places, even in the very words. That there was, however, no knowledge of the English poem by the Italian witch-poet, and therefore no imitation, is plain from intrinsic evidence. As the question is interesting, I will here give the Incantation from “Manfred”:
Incantation.
“When the moon is on the wave,
And the glow-worm in the grass,
And the meteor on the grave,
And the wisp on the morass;
When the falling stars are shooting,
And the answered owls are hooting,
And the silent leaves are still
In the shadow of the hill,
Shall my soul be upon thine
With a power and with a sign.
“Though thy slumber may be deep,
Yet thy spirit shall not sleep;
There are shades which shall not vanish,
There are thoughts thou canst not banish;
By a power to thee unknown
Thou canst never be alone;
Thou art wrapt as with a shroud,
Thou art gathered in a cloud,
And for ever shalt thou dwell
In the spirit of this spell.
“Though thou see’st me not pass by,
Thou shalt feel me with thine eye,
As a thing that, though unseen,
Must be near thee, and hath been;
And when in that secret dread
Thou hast turned around thy head,
Thou shalt marvel I am not
As thy shadow on the spot,
And the power which thou dost feel
Shall be what thou must conceal.
“And a magic voice and verse
Hath baptized thee with a curse,
And a spirit of the air
Hath begirt thee with a snare;
In the wind there is a voice
Shall forbid thee to rejoice;
And to thee shall night deny
All the quiet of her sky;
And the day shall have a sun
Which shall make thee wish it done.
“From thy false tears I did distil
An essence which hath strength to kill;
From thy own heart I then did wring
The black blood in its blackest spring;
From thy own smile I snatched the snake,
For there it coiled as in a brake;
From thy own lip I drew the charm
Which gave all these their chiefest harm;
In proving every poison known,
I found the strongest was thine own.
“By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
By thy unfathomed depths of guile,
By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul’s hypocrisy,
By the perfection of thine art,
Which passed for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others’ pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee, and compel
Thyself to be thy proper hell!
“And on thy head I pour the vial
Which doth devote thee to this trial;
Not to slumber, nor to die,
Shall be in thy destiny,
Though thy death shall still seem near
To thy wish, but as a fear;
Lo! the spell now works around thee,
And the clankless chain hath bound thee:
O’er thy heart and brain together
Hath the word been passed—now wither!”
The Italian poem forms, in its first and second parts, a drama as complete as that of “Manfred,” and, as I hope to render clear, one more consistent to the leading idea, or, as critics were wont to say, “more coherent in the unities.” This idea in the one, as in the other, is that of a powerful sorcerer assailed by a fiend in the form of remorse, and that with the most aggravating and insulting terms of contempt. In “Manfred” the persecutor tells his victim that he shall be his own hell, for that of all poisons his own evil heart is the worst. The Italian, more direct and less metaphysical still, alludes, in the accusation by the spirit, to no other punishment save that of conscience, and declares the magician to be poisoned through and through in himself:
“Tu sei cattivo e scelerato,
Tu sei avvelenato
Nel cuore e nell anima,”
and bids him go forth to be for ever pursued by the avenger.
Byron’s poem is entirely based on sorcery, and is intended to set forth the tremendous mental struggles of a
mind which has risen above mankind with supernatural power, which assails him with remorse. In the first place he simply goes to sleep; in the grand finale he resists, like Don Juan, or, as the saying is, “dies game”—“only this, and nothing more”—leaving all idea of an end, object, moral, or system, entirely in the dark. “Manfred” is merely dramatic for the sake of stage effect, and only excellent in impressing us with the artistic skill of the author. Its key is art for the sake of art, and effect on anybody, no matter who. Within this limit it is most admirable.
In both the Italian and English poems the one persecuted makes his strong point of departure from the discovery or knowledge that the persecuted is not one whom he has injured, but simply a mocking and tormenting sprite. Thus the former text declares that when he finds he is pursued simply by Intialo, the shadow, which we may here translate “his own imagination,” he rallies with a tremendous counter-curse in which far more is meant than meets the eye. The grand mission of the magus or sorcerer in all the occult lore of all antiquity, whether he appear as Buddha or any other man of men, is to conquer all enemies by tremendous power won by penance or by iron will. A favourite means of tormenting the enemy or fiend is to awaken the conscience of the magician, or, what is the same thing, to tempt him to sin, as Satan did Christ. But even conscience loses its power when we feel that the foe is exaggerating our sins, and only urging them for torment’s sake, and especially when these sins are of a kind which from a certain standpoint or code, are not sins at all.
And here we are brought to a subject so strange and witch-like that it is difficult to discuss or make clear. It is evident enough in “Manfred” that the great crime was the hero’s forbidden love for his sister Astarte. This it is which crushes him. But it does not appear from the
Italian (save to those deeply learned in the darker secrets of sorcery) why or how it is that the one persecuted so suddenly revives and defies the spirit, turning, as it were, his own power against him. In explaining this, I do not in the least conjecture, guess, or infer anything; I give the explanation as it was understood by the narrator, and as confirmed by other legends and traditions. It is this:
Michelet, in La Sorciére, which amid much lunacy or folly contains many truths and ingenious perceptions, has explained that the witchcraft of the Middle Ages was a kind of mad despairing revolt against the wrongs of society, of feudalism, and the Church. It was in very truth the precursor of Protestantism. Under the name of religion conscience had been abused, and artificial sins, dooming to hell, been created out of every trifle, and out of almost every form of natural instincts. The reaction from this (which was a kind of nihilism or anarchy), was to declare the antithetic excess of free will. One of the forms of this revolt was the belief that the greatest sorcerers were born (ex filio et matre) from the nearest relations, and that to dare and violate all such ties was to conquer by daring will the greatest power. It was the strongest defiance of the morality taught by the Church, therefore one of the highest qualifications for an iron-willed magician. It is specially pointed out in the legend of Diana that she began by such a sin, and so came to be queen of the witches; and the same idea of entire emancipation or illumination, or freedom from all ties, is the first step to the absolute free will which constitutes the very basis of all magic. This, which is repugnant to humanity, was actually exalted by the Persian Magi to a duty or religious principle, and it was the same in Egypt as regarded “first families.” The sorcerer pursued by Intialo bases all his power to resist on the mere fact that he is beloved by a beautiful witch. This is the Astarte of the
Italian drama, or a sister—the terrible tie which shows that a man is above conscience, and free from all fear of the powers that be, whether of earth or air. By it his triumph is complete. He surmounts the accusation of being without morals by utterly denying their existence from a higher or illuminated point of view. The magus claims to rank with the gods, and if a divinity creates mankind as his children, and then has a child by a woman, he is in the same state as the sorcerer, according to wizards.
If any reproach attaches to the employment of such an element in poetry, then Byron and Shelley are far more to blame than the Italian witch-poet, who veiled his allusion with much greater care than they did, and who had the vast excuse of sincere belief, while their highest aim was mere art. The wizard-poet has his heart in this faith, as in a religion, and he is one with his hero. Manfred is at best only a broken-down magician who presents a few boldly dramatic daring traits—the Italian sorcerer, who is far more defiant and fearless, conquers. “I am more malignant than thou art,” is a terrible utterance; so is the tone of affected pity for the baffled tormentor, in which we detect a shade of sarcasm based on overwhelming triumph. This feeling, be it observed, progresses, crescendo forte, gradually and very artistically, from the first verse to the last. Intialo has threatened to make the victim a sorry cur who comes at a call; the sorcerer replies that he will make “a swine’s snout” of Intialo. Finally, he dares the fiend to meet him at midnight at the great Witches’ Sabbat, at the dread walnut-tree of Benevento. Here the threats reach an ingenious and terrible climax, though the form in which they are expressed is only quite clear to the initiated. The sorcerer says, “When thou thinkest that thou see’st my shadow thou wilt behold thine own,” or in other words, “You who have sought to torment me by a shadow shall
yourself be mocked by finding that you are only mine.” This climax of daring the fiend to meet him at Benevento, at the tremendous and terrible rendezvous of all the devils, witches, and sorcerers, and then and there trying conclusions with him in delusion and magic, or a strife of shadows, while leaning against the awful tree itself, which is the central point of the Italian Domdaniel, is magnificently imagined.
In Goethe’s “Faust,” as in Byron’s “Manfred,” the hero is a magician, but he is not in either true to the name or character. The great magus of early ages, even like the black Voodoo of America, had it clearly before him all the time that his mission or business, above all things, was to develop an indomitable will superior to that of men or spirits. Every point is gained by force, or by will and penance. In real sorcery there is no such thing as a pact with a devil, and becoming his slave after a time. This is a purely later-Roman invention, a result of the adoption of the mixture of Jewish monotheism and Persian dualism, which formed the Catholic Church. In Goethe’s “Faust” we have the greatest weakness, and an extreme confusion of character. The conclusion of the tale is contradictory or absurd, and the difficulty is solved with the aid of a Deus ex machina. The hero is a sorcerer, and there is not a trace of true sorcery or magianism or tremendous will and work in the whole drama. Beautiful things are said and done, but, take it for all in all, it is a grand promenade which leads to nothing. [251]
In the Italian legend, brief and rude as it is, there appears a tremendous power worked out with great consistency. The demon or spirit, intent on causing remorse or despair (ad affretare il rimorso), threatens the sorcerer with terrible maledictions. And these words, if we regard
their real meaning and spirit, have never been surpassed in any poem.
And we should note here that the Italian sorcerer who subdues the devil by simple will and pluck is no Manfred or Faust drawn from the religious spirit of the Middle Ages. He belongs to the Etruscan age, or to that of the ancient Magi; he meets malediction with malediction, spell with spell, curse with curse, injury with injury, sarcasm and jeer with the same; he insults the devil, calling him his slave:
“Perche io sono di te—molto più maligno.”
Until in the end they change parts, and the demon becomes the one tormented. Therefore there is in this legend, with all its rudeness, a conception which is so grand, as regards setting forth the possible power of man, and the eritis sicut deus of modern science, that it is in unity and fulness far beyond any variant of the same subject.
That this is of great antiquity is clear, for out of this enchanted forest of Italian witchcraft and mystical sorcery there never yet came anything, great or small, which was not at least of the bronze, if not of the neolithic age.
Truly, when the chief character in a tradition of the old Etruscan land bears an Etruscan name, or that of a shadow called a shadow, we may well conclude that it is not of yesterday. So all things rise and bloom and pass away here on this earth to winter and decay, and are as phantoms which
“Come like shadows, so depart.”
For a last word, “Manfred” and “Faust” are only works of art, intended to “interest” or amuse or charm the reader, and as such they are great. They are simply dramas or show-pieces, which also give a high idea of the artistic skill of their writers. “Intialo” sets forth the great idea of the true sorcerer, in which they both fail, and carries
it out logically to a tremendous triumph. It is the very quintessence of all heresies, and of the first great heresy, eritis sicut deus.
There will not be wanting one or two critics of the low kind who take their hints from the disavowals of the author to declare that his book is just what it is not, who will write that I think I have discovered a better poet than Keats in Marietta Pery, and a far greater than Goethe or Byron in the unknown author of the invocation to “Intialo.” But all that I truly mean is that the former is nearer to old tradition, and more succinct than the English bard—“only this and nothing more”—while in “Intialo” we have given, as no one ever expressed it, the true ideal of the magician who, overcoming all qualms of conscience, whether innate or suggested, and trampling under foot all moral human conventions, rises to will, and victory over all enemies, especially the demons of the threshold. As a poem, I no more claim special merit for it than I would for Marietta’s; [253] indeed, to the very considerable number of “highly cultivated” people who only perceive poetry in form and style, and cannot find it in the grandest conceptions unless they are elegantly expressed, what I have given in this connection will not appear as poetry at all.
CAIN AND HIS WORSHIPPERS
the spell of the mirror—the invocation to cain—the witch-history of cain and abel
“Rusticus in Luna
Quem sarcina deprimit una,
Monstrat per spinas
Nulli prodesse rapinas.”—Alexander Neckham, a.d. 1157.
This is, for reasons which I will explain anon, one of the most curious traditions which have been preserved by the Tuscan peasantry. I had made inquiry whether any conjuring by the aid of a mirror existed—“only this and nothing more”—when, some time after, I received the following:
La Scongiurazione dello Specchio.
When one wishes to enchant a lover.
“Go at midnight when there is a fine full moon, and take a small mirror, which must be kept in a box of a fine red colour, and at each of the four corners of the box put a candle with a pin, or with a pin in its point, and observe that two of the pins must have red heads, and two black, and form a cross, and note that every candle must have two tassels hanging from it, one red and one black.
“And within the box first of all put a good layer of coarse salt, and form on the salt a ring or wreath of incense, and in the middle of this a cross of cummin, and above all put the small mirror. Then take the photograph of your lover, but not the real photograph but the negative, because it must be on a plate of glass (lastra di vetro). Then take some hairs of
the lover and join them to the photograph (sono uniti dalla parte del quore), and then take a fine sprig of rue.
“And with all this nicely arranged in the box, take a boat and sail out to sea; and if a woman works the spell she must take three men with her only, and if a man three women and no other person. And they must go forth at an instant when the moon shines brightly (risplende bene) on the mirror. Then hold the left hand over the mirror, and hold up the rue with the right. Then repeat the following: [255]
Incantesimo.
“Luna! Luna! Luna!
Tu che siei tanto bella!
E nel tuo cerchio rachiude
Un si pessimo sogetto
Rachiude Chaino che per gelosia
Uccise il proprio fratello.
“Ed io che per la gelosia
Del mio amante non ho potuto
Ne bere e ne mangiare,
Ne colle amiche
Non posso conversare,
Io l’amo tanto, tanto,
E non sono corrisposta,
Quanto lo vorrei e per la sua
La sua fredezza io ne sono
Tanto gelosa non so qual’ malarono
Quale malarono io commetterei,
Vado a letto non passo riposare,
Mi viene visioni che
Il mio amante mi debba ingannare.
“Luna, Luna, mia bella Luna!
Che tanto bella siei e ben’ risplende,
Ti prego volere pregare per me
Chaino che per gelosia
Uccise il proprio fratello,
Ed io vorrei punire il mio amante,
Ma non farlo morire
Ma pero farlo soffrire,
Che non abbia mai bene
Ne giorno, ne notte,
Non possa ne bene ne mangiare.
E la notte non possa riposare,
E Chaino col suo fascio,
Suo fascio, di pruini,
Il mio amante dal su’letto
Puo le fare, alzare
E alla casa mia
Farlo presto ritornare!
“Chaino! Chaino! Chaino!
Per tre volte io ti chiamo.
Ti chiamo ad alta voce,
In un punto dove si trova,
Soltanto che cielo e aqua,
E le due mie compagne.
“Chaino! per la gelosia
Che provarti tu per il tuo fratello!
Provo io per il mio amante,
E vorrei a me farlo ritornare,
Per non allontanarsi mai più.
“Tu che dal alto del cielo
Tutto vedi—questa scatola
E bene preparata e tutte e quattro
Le candele o accese, tu puoi guardare,
Puoi guardare questo specchio,
E se tre parole pronunzierai
Tutti i pruini che ai
Nell’ fascio delle legne che adosso,
Sempre porti potrai,
Potrai farli passare
Nel corpo, e nel cuore
Del mio amante,
Che non possa dormire e sia
Costretto a vestirsi,
E venire a casa mia,
Per non andarsene mai più.
“Con questo ramo di ruta
Lo bagno nel mare,
E bagno le mie due compagne
Che pronunzierrano queste parole
Tale [secondo il nome] colla ai uta
Di Chaino vai dalla tua amante
Per non lasciarla mai più.
“Se questa grazia mi fai
Fai alzare un forte vento,
E poi spengere le candele.
Chaino! Chaino! Chaino!”
The Invocation.
“Moon! O moon! O moon!
Thou who art always fair,
Yet holdest in thy ring
One of such evil name,
Because thou holdest Cain;
Cain who from jealousy
His own born brother slew.
“I too through jealousy
Of one whom I still love
Can neither drink nor eat,
Nor even talk with friends,
I love so much—so much—
Yet am not loved again
As I would fain be loved.
Through his indifference I
So jealous have become,
I do not know what sin
I would not now commit;
I cannot sleep at night
For dreams in which I see
Him faithless unto me.
“Moon, moon, O beauteous moon!
As thou art fair and bright,
I pray thee, pray for me;
Cain who from jealousy
Slew his own brother born,
As I would punish well
The one whom I yet love,
Yet would not cause his death,
So may he suffer thus:
May suffering be his lot
By day as in the night,
May he not eat or drink,
Nor may he sleep at night!
“May Cain who bears the bunch
Upon his back, of thorns,
Stand by my lover’s bed,
And make him rise from sleep
And hasten to my home.
“O Cain! O Cain! O Cain!
Three times I call to thee,
Call with my loudest voice,
Just as I find myself
Between the sea and sky,
And my two friends with me.
“Cain, by the jealousy
Which once thy brother caused,
And which I now endure,
For him whom still I love,
Make love return to me
And never leave me more.
“Thou who from heaven on high
Seest all things, here behold
This casket well prepared!
The mystic tapers four
All lighted, look on them!
Then in this mirror look.
Then if thou wilt but speak
Three words—then all the thorns
Which on thy back thou bear’st,
All in a bundle bound,
Will pass into the life,
The body and the heart
Of him whom yet I love,
So that he sleep no more,
And be compelled to rise,
Compelled to clothe himself,
And hasten to my home,
Never to leave me more.
“Now, with this branch of rue,
Which I dip in the sea,
I sprinkle both my friends,
That they may speak these words:
That ---, [259a] by the aid
Of Cain shalt seek thy love,
And never leave her more.
“If thou wilt grant me this,
Cause a high wind to blow,
Extinguishing the lights.
O Cain! O Cain! O Cain!”
Before proceeding further, I would explain that the use of a photograph, which must be a negative on glass, instead of being, as was suggested to me, a modern interpolation, is, strangely enough, a proof of the antiquity of the rite. In the old time, a picture or portrait painted in transparent colour on glass was held up to the moon that its rays might pass through it and enchant the subject. And among the Romans, when one had a portrait of any one cut on diaphanous stone, it was used in the same way. I had in my possession once such a portrait-gem, [259b] and a fine needle-hole had been bored through the right eye so as to blind the original of the likeness. And I had a friend who lived in Russia, who discovered that a person who hated him had obtained his photograph, and pricked holes with a very fine needle in the eyes to blind him. The negative of a photograph on glass would very naturally occur as a substitute for a picture. But what is most important is that this mention of the translucent negative proves fully that the whole ceremony, in its
minutest detail, has actually been preserved to this day, and that the incantation, long as it is, exists as I have given it, since every line in it corresponds to the rite. And as I know that it was gathered by a witch and fortune-teller among others, and carefully compared and collated, I am sure that it is authentic and traditional.
Fifty pages are devoted by the Rev. T. Harley in his “Moon Lore” to the subject of the Man in the Moon, and since the book appeared in 1885 there have been great additions to the subject. This human being is declared by myths found in India, and especially among the Oriental gypsies, in Ireland, Borneo, Greenland, and South America, to be a man who is punished by imprisonment above for incest with his sister the sun. As he wanders for ever over the heavens, just as gypsies wander on earth, they claim him for their ancestor, and declare that Zin-gan (or gypsy) is derived from two words meaning sun and moon. Kam, the sun, has been varied to kan, and in gypsy the moon is called chone, which is also t-chen, chin, or sin. But the point lies in this, that Cain was condemned to be a “a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth,” which gives much apparent strength to the idea that Cain, whether Shemitic or Aryan, was, for a great crime, or as chief of sinners, imprisoned in the moon.
This sufferer, in different legends, has been represented as a Sabbath-breaker, as Judas Iscariot, as Isaac, and many more transgressors, almost always with a bunch or bush of thorns, for which there has been literally no real explanation whatever. This I will now investigate, and, I think, clearly explain.
Dante in two places speaks of the Man in the Moon as Cain, and as if it were a very popular legend (Inferno, xx. 123):
“Ma vienne omai che già tiene ’l confine
D’ambedue gli emisperi, e tocca l’onda
Sotto Sibilia, Caino e le spine
E gia iernotte fu la Luna tonda.”“But now he comes who doth the borders hold
Of the two hemispheres, and drive the waves
Under the sibyl, Cain, with many thorns.
And yesternight the moon was round and full;
Take care that it may never do thee harm
At any time when in the gloomy wood.”
This twentieth canto is devoted to the sorcerers in hell, and ends with allusion to the full moon, the sibyl, and Cain, as allied to witchcraft, prediction, and sin. When the moon is full it is also “high tides” with the witches, now as of yore:
“Full moon, high sea,
Great man shalt thou be:
Red dawning, cloudy sky,
Bloody death shalt thou die.”
Dante again mentions Cain in the moon, in the Paradiso, ii. 50:
“Ma ditemi, che con li segni lui
Dio questo corpo, che laggiuso in terra
Fan di Cain favoleggiare altrui?”“But tell me now what are the gloomy marks
Upon this body, which down there on earth
Make people tell so many tales of Cain?”
To which Beatrice replies by a mysterious physical explanation of the phenomenon, advising him to take three mirrors and observe how the moon is reflected from one to the other, and that in this manner the formal principio, or first creative power, passes from light to darkness. The reader will here remember that with the witches the mirror is specially devoted to conjuring Cain.
It is worth noting that a spechietto, or small looking-glass, was specially (Barretti) “a little mirror placed at the bottom of a jewel casket.”
I would now note that the thorns which Cain carries signify, not only in modern Italian, but in old Roman sorcery, the sting of hatred and of jealousy. It is a most apparent and natural simile, and is found from the crown of thorns on Christ to the Voodoo sorcery in Western
America. Miss Mary Owen knew a black girl in Missouri who, as a proof of being Christianised, threw away the thorn which she kept as a fetish to injure an enemy. But in early times the thorn was universally known as symbolical of sin, just as Cain was regarded as the first real sinner. Therefore the two were united. Menzel tells us in his Christliche Symbolik (Part I. p. 206) that it is a legend that “there were no thorns before the Fall; they first grew with sin, therefore thorns are a symbol of the sorrow or pain which came from sin.” Of all of which there is a mass of old German myths and legends, which I spare the reader, for I have endeavoured in this comment to avoid useless myth-mongering in order to clearly set forth the connection between Cain, his thorns, and the moon.
That the conjuring the moon with a mirror is very ancient indeed appears from the legend drawn from classic sources, which is thus set forth in “A Pleasant Comedie called Summer’s Last Will and Testament. Written by Thomas Nash. London, 1600”:
“In laying thus the blame upon the Moone
Thou imitat’st subtill Pythagoras,
Who what he would the People should beleeve,
The same he wrote with blood upon a Glasse,
And turned it opposite ’gainst the New Moone,
Whose Beames, reflecting on it with full force,
Shew’d all those lines to them that stood behinde,
Most pleynly writ in circle of the Moone,
And then he said: ‘Not I, but the newe Moone
Fair Cynthia persuades you this and that.’”
In the “Clouds” of Aristophanes the same idea is made into a jest, in which Strepsiades thus addresses Socrates:
“Strepsiades. If I were to buy a Thessalian witch, and then draw down the moon by night, and then shut her up in a round helmet-case like a mirror, and then keep watching her—
Socrates. What good would that do you, then?
Strepsiades. What! If the moon were not to rise any more anywhere, I should not pay the interest.
Socrates. Because what?
Strepsiades. Because the money is lent on interest.” [262]
These instances could be multiplied. What I have given are enough to show the antiquity of the conjuration; and I also venture to declare that any Italian scholar who is familiar with these formulas of sorcery will admit that, making all due allowance for transmission among peasants, the language, or words, or turns of expression in this incantation denote great antiquity.
The next paper or tradition on the subject of Cain, which, as every phrase in it indicates, was taken down from an old dame who at first slowly recalled forgotten sentences, will be to many more interesting, and to all much more amusing than the first. It once happened that an old gypsy in England began to tell me the story of the ghostly baker of Stonehenge and the seven loaves, but, suddenly pausing, he said: “What’s the use of telling that to you who have read it all in the Bible?” There is, however, this trifling difference, that I am not sure that my Italian witch friends knew that Cain and Abel are in the Bible at all. The Red Indian doctor, whose knowledge of the Old Testament was limited to its being good to cure neuralgia, was far beyond the contadini as regards familiarity with “the efficacy of the Scripture.”
This is the witch-tale as written word by word:
Abele e Chaino.
“They were two brothers. Abel greatly loved Cain, but Cain did not love so much the brother Abel.
“Cain had no great will to work.
“Abel, however, on the contrary, was greatly disposed (si ingegnava) to labour, because he had found it profitable. He was industrious in all, and at last became a grazier (mercante di manzi).
“And Cain also, being moved by jealousy (per astia), wished to become a grazier, but the wheel did not turn for him as it did for Abel.
“And Cain also was a good man, and set himself contentedly to work, believing that he could become as rich as his brother, but he did not succeed in this, for which reason he became so envious of Abel that it resulted in tremendous hate, and he swore to be revenged.
“Cain often visited his brother, and once said to him, ‘Abel, thou art rich and I am poor; give me the half of thy wealth, since thou wishest me so well!’
“Then Abel replied: ‘If I give thee a sum which thou thyself couldst gain by industry, thou shouldst still labour as I do, and I will give thee nothing, since, if thou wilt work as I do, thou wilt become as rich.’
“One day there were together Cain, Abel, and a merchant, whose name I forget. And one told that he had seen in a dream seven fat oxen and seven lean. And the merchant, who was an astrologer or wizard, explained that the seven fat oxen meant seven years of abundance, and the seven lean as many years of famine.
“And so it came to pass as he foretold—seven years of plenty and seven of famine.
“And Cain, hearing this, thought: ‘During the seven years of plenty Abel will lay by a great store, and then I will slay him, and possess myself of all his goods, and thus I will take care of myself, and my brother will be dead.’
“Now, Cain greatly loved God; he was good towards God, more so than Abel, because Abel, having become rich, never spoke more unto the Lord; and Abel would gladly have become a wizard himself.
“Then Cain began to think how he could slay Abel and become a merchant in his place, and so went forth to cut wood.
“One day he called his brother Abel, and said to him: ‘Thou art so rich, while I am poor, and all my work avails me little.’ And with that he gave Abel a blow with a knife, and dressed himself in his garments, and took a bundle of thorns on his back, and thus clad he took Abel’s place as merchant, believing that no one would recognise him as Cain.
“And while thus buying and selling he met the merchant-wizard who had foretold the seven years of famine and of abundance. And he said, ‘Oh, good day, Abel,’ to make Cain believe that he was not discovered. But the oxen who were present all began to chant in chorus:
“‘Non chiamate questo, Abele!
E Chaino, non lo vedete,
Per la gola della monete
Il fratello ammazato,
E dei suoi panni e vestito.
O Chaino or siei chiamato
Alla presenza del gran Dio,
Che a morte ti ’a condannato
Che di richezza eri assetato.’
“‘Do not call that person Abel;
It is Cain, do you not see it?
Cain who, for the greed of money,
Treacherously slew his brother,
And then clad him in his garments.
Now, O Cain! thou wilt be summoned
Speedily unto the presence
Of the Lord, who has condemned thee
Unto death for thy great avarice.’
“Cain came before God.
“‘O gran Dio di clemenza
Voi che siete grande, buono,
Velo chiedo a voi perdone,
Per il bene vi ho valuto,
Un instante vi ho dimenticato
Ma ne sono molto pentito,
Di aver ammazato
Abele il fratello mio.’
“‘O great God of endless mercy,
Thou who art so good and mighty,
Grant, I pray thee, grant me pardon
For the good I did while living!
Truly once, but for an instant,
I forgot myself, but deeply
I since then have long repented
That I slew my brother Abel.’
“But God replied: [265]
“A punishment thou shalt have because thou didst slay thy brother from a desire to become rich. Likewise thou didst meddle with witchcraft and sorceries, as did thy brother. And Abel made much money and was very rich, because he did not love God, but sorcerers. Albeit, ever good he never
did evil things, and many good, wherefore God pardoned him. But thou shalt not be pardoned because thou didst imbrue thy lands in human blood, and, what is worse, in thy own brother’s blood.
“The punishment which I inflict is this:
“The thorns [266] which thou didst put upon thy brother are now for thee.
“Thou shalt be imprisoned in the moon, and from that place shalt behold the good and the evil of all mankind.
“And the bundle of thorns shall never leave thee, and every time when any one shall conjure thee, the thorns shall sting thee cruelly; they shall draw thy blood.
“And thus shalt thou be compelled to do that which shall be required of thee by the sorcerers or by conjuring, and if they ask of thee that which thou wilt not give, then the thorns shall goad thee until the sorceries shall cease.”
This is clearly enough no common popular nursery tale, such as make up collections of Tuscan tales or popular legends, gathered from pious or picturesque peasants. Through it all runs a deep current of dark heresy, the deliberate contravention of accepted Scripture, and chiefly the spell of sorcery and deadly witchcraft. It is a perfect and curious specimen of a kind of forbidden literature which was common during the Middle Ages, and which is now extremely rare. This literature or lore was the predecessor of Protestantism, and was the rock on which it was based.
There have always been in the world since time began certain good people whose taste or fate it was to be invariably on the wrong side, or in the opposition; like the Irishman just landed from a ship in America, who, being asked how he would vote, replied, “Against the Government, of course, whatever it is,” they are always at war with the powers that be. With Jupiter they would have opposed the Titans; with Prometheus, Jupiter;
as early Christians they would have rebelled against the Pagans, and as heretics, Orientalised Templars, Vaudois, illuminati, sorcerers, and witches, they would have undermined the Church, never perceiving that its system or doctrine was, au fond, fetish, like their own. Among these rebels it was long the rule to regard those gods or men who were specially reviled by their foes or oppressors as calumniated. Even Satan was to them “the puir deil;” according to the Taborites, an oppressed elder brother of Christ, or a kind of Man in an Iron Mask kept out of his rights by Jehovah the XIV. These discontented ones deified all who had been devilled, found out that Jezebel had been a femme incomprise, and the Scarlet Woman only an interesting highly-coloured variant of the ancient hoary myth of Mademoiselle or Miss Salina the Innocent. When Judas was mentioned, they solemnly remarked that there was a great deal to be said on both sides of that question; while others believed that Ananias and Sapphira had been badly sat upon, and deserved to be worshipped as saints of appropriation—a cult, by the way, the secret observance of which has by no means died out at the present day—several great men being regarded in Paris as its last great high priests.
The Cainites, as known by that name to the Church, were a Gnostic sect of the second century, and are first mentioned by Irenæus, who connects them with the Valentinians, of whom I thought but yesterday when I saw in a church a sarcophagus warranted to contain the corpse of St. Valentine. They believed that Cain derived his existence from the supreme power, but Abel from the inferior, and that in this respect he was the first of a line which included Esau, Korah, the dwellers in Sodom and Gomorrah, the worshippers of Ashtoreth-Mylitta, or the boundless sensualists, the sorcerers, and witches.
Considering what human nature is, and its instincts to opposition, we can see that there must have been naturally
a sect who regarded Cain as a misjudged martyr. Abel appeared to them as the prosperous well-to-do bourgeois, high in favour with the Lord, a man with flocks, while Cain was a tiller of the ground, a poor peasant out of favour. It must be admitted that in the Book of Genesis, in the history of the first murder, we are much reminded of the high priest Chalcas in La Belle Helene, where he exclaims, “Trop de fleurs!” and expresses a preference for cattle. It is the old story of the socialists and anarchists, which is ever new.
The witches and sorcerers of early times were a widely spread class who had retained the beliefs and traditions of heathenism with all its license and romance and charm of the forbidden. At their head were the Promethean Templars, at their tail all the ignorance and superstition of the time, and in their ranks every one who was oppressed or injured either by the nobility or the Church. They were treated with indescribable cruelty, in most cases worse than beasts of burden, for they were outraged in all their feelings, not at intervals for punishment, but habitually by custom, and they revenged themselves by secret orgies and fancied devil-worship, and occult ties, and stupendous sins, or what they fancied were such. I can seriously conceive—what no writer seems to have considered—that there must have been an immense satisfaction in selling or giving one’s self to the devil, or to any power which was at war with their oppressors. So they went by night, at the full moon, and sacrificed to Diana, or “later on” to Satan, and danced and rebelled. It is very well worth noting that we have all our accounts of sorcerers and heretics from Catholic priests, who had every earthly reason for misrepresenting them, and did so. In the vast amount of ancient witchcraft still surviving in Italy there is not much anti-Christianity, but a great deal of early heathenism. Diana, not Satan, is still the real head of the witches. The Italian witch, as the priest Grillandus said,
stole oil to make a love-charm. [269] But she did not, and does not say, as he declared, in doing so, “I renounce Christ.” There the priest plainly lied. The whole history of the witch mania is an ecclesiastical falsehood, in which such lies were subtly grafted on the truth. But in due time the Church, and the Protestants with them, created a Satanic witchcraft of their own, and it is this after-growth which is now regarded as witchcraft in truth.
Cain-worshippers and witches seem to have been all in the same boat. I think it very likely that in these two traditions which I have given we have a remnant of the actual literature of the Cainites, that Gnostic-revived and mystical sect of the Middle Ages. But I doubt not that its true origin is far older than Christianity, and lost in earliest time.
One last remark. We are told in the tale that Abel, having become rich, “cut” the Lord, or would speak to him no longer. I suppose that he dropped the synagogue and Yom kippur, and became a Reformirter, and his children in due time Goyim. Also that he wanted to become a wizard, which may be a hint that he was “no conjuror.” But it is seriously a proof of the naïveté, and consequent probable antiquity of the tale, that these details are not “wrote sarcastic,” nor intended for humour. And it is also interesting to observe how impartially the narrator declares that Cain was “a good man,” and how he, in pleading his own cause before the Lord, insists that in killing Abel he only inadvertently forgot himself for an instant. One almost expects to hear him promise that he will not do it again.
It is a striking proof of the antiquity of this tradition
of Cain, as I have given it, that the witch or wizard sympathy for the first murderer is in it unmistakable. The sending Cain to the moon, instead of hell, is understood to be a mitigation of his sentence. In his work on magicians and witches, a.d. 1707, Goldschmidt devotes many pages to set forth what was believed by all the learned of his time, that Cain was the father of all the wizards, and his children, the Cainites, the creators of the Gaber, fire-idolators, Cabiri, magic soothsaying, and so forth. So the tradition lived on, utterly forgotten by all good people, and yet it is to me so quaint as to be almost touching to find it still existing, a fragment of an old creed outworn here among poor witches in Florence.
“Sacher Masoch,” a Galician novelist, informs us in a romance, “The Legacy of Cain,” that the Cainites still exist in Russia, and that their religion is represented by the following charming creed:
“Satan is the master of the world; therefore it is a sin to belong to Church or State, and marriage is also a capital sin. Six things constitute the legacy of Cain: Love, Property, Government, War, and Death. Such was the legacy of Cain, who was condemned to be a wanderer and a fugitive on earth.”
I have another apparently very ancient conjuration of a mirror, in two parts. It is of the blackest witchcraft, of the most secret kind, and is only intended to injure an enemy.
From an article in La Rivista delle Tradizione Popolare of July 1894, by F. Montuori, I learn that in a little work by San Prato on “Cain and the Thorns according to Dante and Popular Tradition,” Ancona, 1881, which I have not seen, the history of Cain is given much as told by Maddalena. What is chiefly interesting in the version of Maddalena is, however, wanting in all the folklore on the subject collected by others; it is the manifest trace of Cainism, of sympathy with the first murder, and in its heresy. This opens for us a far wider field of research
and valuable historical information than the rather trivial fact that Cain is simply the Man in the Moon.
Merk in Die Sitten und Gebräuche der Deutschen, gives (p. 644), from Wolf, a strange legend which is nearly allied to Moon worship by witches, and the mirror:
“There was a man in Kortryk who was called Klare Mone (bright moon), and he got his name from this. One night when sleeping on his balcony he heard many women’s voices sweetly singing. They held goblets [there is some confusion here with gläserne Pfannen or glass panes in the roof from which the man looked; I infer that the witches drank from “glass pans,” i.e., metallic mirrors], and as they drank they sang:
“‘We are drinking the sweetest of earthly wine,
For we drink of the clear and bright moonshine.’“But as the man approached them, ‘with a club to beat or kill them, all vanished.’”
“Which fable teaches,” as the wise Flaxius notes, “what indeed this whole book tends to show—that few people know or heed what witches ever really were. Now, that this boor wished to slay the sorceresses with a club, for drinking moonshine, is only what the whole world is doing to all who have different ideas from ours as to what constitutes enjoyment. So in all history, under all creeds, even unto this day, people have been clubbed, hung, tortured, and baked alive, or sent to Coventry for the crime of drinking moonshine!”
And so this volume ends, oh reader mine!
“So the visions flee,
So the dreams depart;
And the sad reality,
Now must act its part.”
Ite, lector benevole,
Ite, missa est.