GHOST AND TREASURE STORIES AND FAMILY AND LOCAL TRADITIONS.
THE DEAD MAN IN THE OAK-TREE.[1]
There was a parcel of young fellows once who were a nuisance to everybody in Rome, for they were always at some mischievous tricks when it was nothing worse. But there was one of them who was not altogether so bad as the rest. For one thing, there was one practice of devotion he had never forgotten from the days when his mother taught him, and that was, to say a De Profundis whenever he saw a dead body carried past to burial. But what concerned his companions, was the fear lest he should some day perhaps take it into his head to reform, and in that case it was not impossible he might be led to give information against them.
At last they agreed that the best thing they could do was to put him out of the way. Quietly as their conspiracy was conducted, he saw there was something plotting, and determined to be out of reach of their murderous intentions; so he got up early one morning, and rode out of Rome.
On, on, on,[2] he went till he had left Rome many miles behind, and then he saw hanging in an oak-tree the body of a man all in pieces, among the branches.
For a moment he was overcome with horror at the sight; but, nevertheless, he did not forget his good practice of saying a De Profundis.
No sooner had he completed the psalm, than one by one the pieces came down from the tree and put themselves together, till a dead man stood before him, all complete. Gladly would he have spurred his horse on and got away from the horrible sight, but he was riveted to the spot, and durst not move, or scarcely take breath. But worse was in store, for now the dreadful apparition took hold of his bridle.
‘Fear nothing, young man!’ said the corpse, in a tone, which though meant to be kind, was so sepulchral that it thrilled the ear. ‘Only change places with me for a little space; you get up in the oak-tree, and lend your horse to me.’
The youth mechanically got off his horse, and climbed up into the tree, while the mangled corpse got on to the horse, and rode away back towards Rome. He had not been gone five minutes when he heard four shots[3] fired.
Looking from his elevation in the direction of the sound, he saw his four evil companions, who had just fired their pieces into the corpse which rode his horse, without making it sit a bit less erect than before. Then he saw them go stealthily up to the figure and look at it, and then run away, wild with terror.
As soon as they had turned their backs, the corpse turned the horse’s head round, and trotted back to the oak-tree.
‘Now, my son,’ said the corpse, alighting from the horse, ‘I have done you this good turn because you said a De Profundis for me; but such interpositions don’t befall a man every day. Turn over a new leaf, before a worse thing happens.’
Having said this, the dead body, piece by piece, replaced itself amid the branches of the oak-tree, where it had hung before.
The young man got on his horse again, penitent and thoughtful, and rode to a friary,[4] where, after spending an edifying life, he died a holy death.
[1] ‘Il Morto della Quercia.’ [↑]
[2] ‘Camminò, camminò, camminò;’ see note 6, p. 13. [↑]
[3] ‘Quattro arquebuzate.’ [↑]
[4] ‘Frateria,’ a popular word for a monastery. [↑]
THE DEAD MAN’S LETTER.[1]
There was a rich man, I cannot tell you how rich he was, who died and left all his great fortune to his son, palaces and houses, and farms and vineyards. The son entered into possession of all, and became a great man; but he never thought of having a mass said for the soul of his father, from whom he had received all.
There was also, about the same time, a poor man, who had hardly enough to keep body and soul together, and he went into a church to pray that he might have wherewithal to feed his children. So poor was he, that he said within himself, ‘None poorer than I can there be.’ As he said that, his eye lighted on the box where alms were gathered, that masses might be offered for the souls in Purgatory. ‘Yes,’ he said, then, ‘these are poorer than I,’ and he felt in his pocket for his single baiocco, and he put it in the alms box for the holy souls.[2]
As he came out, he saw a painone[3] standing before the door, as if in waiting for him; but as he was well-dressed, and looked rich, the poor man knew he could have no acquaintance with him, and would have passed on.
‘You have done me so much good, and now you don’t speak to me,’ said the stranger.
‘When did I thee much good?’ said the poor man bewildered.
‘Even now,’ said the stranger; for in reality he was no painone, but one of the holy souls who had taken that form, and he alluded to the poor man’s last coin, of which he had deprived himself in charity.
‘I cannot think to what your Excellency[4] alludes,’ replied the poor man.
‘Nevertheless it is true,’ returned the painone; ‘and now I will ask you to do me another favour. Will you take this letter to such and such a palace?’ and he gave him the exact address. ‘When you get there, you must insist on giving it into the hands of the master of the house himself. Never mind how many times you are refused, do not go away till you have given it to the master himself.’
‘Never fear, your Excellency,’ answered the poor man, ‘I’ll deliver it right.’
When he reached the palace, it was just as the painone had seemed to expect it would be. First the porter came forward with his cocked hat and his gilt knobbed stick, with the coloured cord twisted over it all the way down, and asked him whither he was going.
‘To Count so-and-so,’ answered the poor man.
‘All right! give it here,’ said the splendid porter.
‘By no means, my orders were to consign it to the count himself.’
‘Go in and try,’ answered the porter. ‘But you may as well save yourself the stairs; they won’t let such as you in to the count.’
‘I must follow orders,’ said the poor man, and passed on.
At the door of the apartment a liveried servant came to open.
‘What do you want up here? if you have brought anything, why didn’t you leave it with the porter?’
‘Because my orders are to give this letter into the count’s own hands,’ answered the poor man.
‘A likely matter I shall call the “Signor Conte” out, and to such as you! Give here, and don’t talk nonsense.’
‘No! into the count’s own hands must I give it.’
‘Don’t be afraid; I’ve lived here these thirty years, and no message for the “Signor Conte” ever went wrong that passed through my hands. Yours isn’t more precious than the rest, I suppose.’
‘I know nothing about that, but I must follow orders.’
‘And so must I, and I know my place too well to call out the “Signor Conte” to the like of you.’
The altercation brought out the valet.
‘This fellow expects the “Signor Conte” to come to the door to take in his letters himself,’ said the lackey, laughing disdainfully. ‘What’s to be done with the poor animal?’
‘Give here, good man,’ said the valet, patronisingly not paying much heed to the remarks of the servant; ‘I am the “Signor Conte’s” own body servant, and giving it to me is the same as giving it to himself.’
‘Maybe,’ answered the poor man, ‘but I’m too simple to understand how one man can be the same as another. My orders are to give it to the count alone, and to the count alone I must give it.’
‘Take it from him, and turn him out,’ said the valet, with supreme disdain, and the lackey was not slow to take advantage of the permission. The poor man, however, would not yield his trust, and the scuffle that ensued brought the count himself out to learn the reason of so much noise.
The letter was now soon delivered. The count started when he saw the handwriting, and was impelled to tear the letter open at once, so much did its appearance seem to surprise him.
‘Who gave you the letter?’ he exclaimed, in an excited manner, as soon as he had rapidly devoured its contents.
‘I cannot tell, I never saw the person before,’ replied the poor man.
‘Would you know him again?’ inquired the count.
‘Oh, most undoubtedly!’ answered the poor man; ‘he said such strange things to me that I looked hard at him.’
‘Then come this way,’ said the count; and he led him into a large hall, round which were hung many portraits in frames. ‘Do you see one among these portraits that at all resembles him?’ he said, when he had given him time to look round the walls.
‘Yes, that is he!’ said the poor man, unhesitatingly, pointing to the portrait of the count’s father, from whom he had inherited such great wealth, and for whom he had never given the alms of a single mass.
‘Then there is no doubt it was himself,’ said the count. ‘In this letter he tells me that you of your poverty have done for him what I with all my wealth have never done,’ he added in a tone of compunction. ‘For you have given alms for the repose of his soul, which I never have; therefore he bids me now take you and all your family into the palace to live with me, and to share all I have with you.’
After that he made the man and all his family come to live in the palace, as his father directed, and he was abundantly provided for the rest of his life.
[‘I know one of that kind,’ interposed one sitting by. ‘Will you hear it? But mine is true, mine is a real fact, and happened no longer ago than last October;’ and he told me the very names and address of the people concerned with the greatest particularity; this was in January 1873.]
[1] ‘La Lettera del Morto.’ [↑]
[2] ‘Bussola,’ a box for alms, &c. [↑]
[3] ‘Painone,’ ‘Paino’; a sneering way of naming a well-dressed person. ‘Painone,’ augmentative of the same. [↑]
[4] ‘Sua Eccellenza.’ The cant form of address of the Roman beggar. [↑]
THE WHITE SOUL.[1]
The people he had named were a husband and wife, shopkeepers, with a good business. They had taken in a woman, a widow, as they thought, to board with them for life.[2]
The first night after she came the wife suddenly woke up the husband, saying:—
‘What is it that kneels at the foot of the bed? surely it is a white soul.’
‘I see nothing,’ said the husband; ‘go to sleep!’
The wife said no more, but the next night it was the same thing, and the next, and the next; and she described so sincerely what she saw, and with so much earnestness, that the husband could have no doubt that what she said was true. And as he saw it disturbed her rest, and made her ill, he said:—
‘If it comes again, to-night, we will conjure it.’
It had been going on almost a month (I told you it happened in October), and it was just the night of All Souls’ day[3] that he happened to say this.
That night, again, the wife woke him with a start—
‘There it is,’ she said, ‘the white soul; it kneels at the foot of the bed.’
The husband said nothing, but following the direction of his wife’s hand, he solemnly bid the apparition depart, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity and the Madonna.
Though he had seen nothing, he, too, now heard a voice, and the voice said that it was her father whom the wife had seen; that it was not well that they should have in the house the woman whom they had taken in to board, for that it was on her account he was now suffering penance. ‘Think of this,’ he said, finally, ‘for I cannot stay to tell you more; for it is the hour of prayer.’[4]
The lighting up of a masked ball could not be compared to the brightness[5] which filled the room as the spirit disappeared. And this the husband saw well, though he had not seen the soul.
The husband and wife thought a good deal of what they had heard; they had never known before of the father’s intimacy with this woman, but they inquired, and found it was even so.
Then the man took into his head to go to one of these new people, what do they call it? spiritismo, magnetismo,[6] or whatever it is. He made them call up the spirit of his wife’s father, and he asked if it was he who had appeared at night in the bedroom all the month through, and he said, ‘yes, that it was.’ And he asked him about all the particulars, and he confirmed them all. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘if indeed it was you, give me some sign to-night;’ and he said he would.
There was a ruler in the chest of drawers in the bedroom, and all through the night there were knocks; now on the ceiling, now on the floor, now on the walls, as if given with that ruler, and we know those ‘spiritismo’ people say the spirits make themselves understood by knocking.
After that, they sent away their boarder, though at considerable pecuniary loss.
[‘I know a story like that,’ said the first man, ‘and a true one too; it happened in 1848 or 1849.’]
[2] ‘A vitalizia’ is an agreement by which persons pay a sum down and are taken in to board for the rest of their lives. [↑]
[3] ‘La Festa dei Morti,’ November 2. [↑]
[4] ‘Chè è ora dell’ orazione.’ I give this very quaint idea in the words in which it was told to me. [↑]
[5] ‘Era altro che un festino, il chiarore.’ The lighting up of a theatre for a public masqued ball would naturally be the highest impression of brightness for a poor man in Rome. ‘Altro che’ is his favourite word in the sense of ‘no comparison.’ ‘Altro!’ alone stands for ‘I should think so!’ ‘Isn’t it indeed!’ &c. [↑]
[6] Since the invasion of September 1870, Rome has been placarded with announcements of mediums who may be consulted on every possible occasion. I give the whole story as it was told me, but I have, of course, no means of knowing how the séance was conducted, and there is every likelihood the man would be so full of the strange occurrence that he would begin by letting out all on which he came to it to seek confirmation. The introduction of these mediums has been welcomed as supplying the means of gratifying that craving after the supernatural which was denied them under the former administration. ‘Witchcraft was forbidden by the former law, therefore we may suppose it was wrong,’ reason the less intelligent and those who wish to be deceived; ‘spiritismo is allowed by the law which rules us to-day, therefore we may suppose it is right;’ and thus we are beginning to see here what Cantù had written of other parts of Italy and Europe: ‘But who will feel the courage to contemn the follies of another age when he sees the absurd credulity of our own, which upon similar manifestations founds other theories.... Recent writers on the subject (see in particular, Allan Kardec, ‘Le Spiritisme à sa plus simple expression,’ ‘Le Livre des esprits,’ &c.), themselves acknowledge that the oracles and pythonesses of old, and the genii, sorcerers, and magicians of later ages, were the predecessors of these mediums. We have therefore come back to that which we ridicule in our ancestors.’ [↑]
THE WHITE SERPENT.[1]
My story is also of a husband and wife, but they were peasants, and lived outside the gates.
‘It is so cold to-night,’ said the husband to the wife, as they went to bed, ‘we shall freeze if we have another night like it. We must contrive to wake before it is light, and go and get some wood somewhere before we go to work, to make a fire to-morrow night.’
So they woke very early, before it was light, and went out to get wood.[2] The husband stood up in the tree, and the wife down below in a ditch, or hole. As she stood there she saw a great white serpent glide past her. ‘Look, look!’ she cried to her husband; ‘see that great white serpent; surely there is something unnatural about it!’
‘A white serpent!’ answered her husband; ‘what nonsense! Who ever heard of such a thing as a white serpent!’
‘There it goes, then,’ said the wife; ‘you can see it for yourself.’
‘I see nothing of the kind,’ said the husband. ‘There are no serpents about Rome this many a long year; and as for a white one, such a thing doesn’t exist.’
While he spoke the serpent went through a hole in the ground. As the husband was so positive, the wife said no more, but they gathered up the wood and went home.
In the night, however, the wife had a dream. She saw an Augustinian friar, long since dead, standing before her, who said ‘Angela! (that was indeed her name) if you would do me a favour listen to me. Did you see a white serpent this morning?’
‘Yes,’ she answered; ‘that I did, though my husband said there was no such thing as a white serpent in existence.’
‘Well, if you would do me a pleasure, go back to the place where you saw the white serpent go in—not where he came out, but where you saw him go into the earth. Dig about that place, and, when you have dug a pretty good hole, a dead man will start up;[3] but don’t be afraid, he can’t hurt you, and won’t want to hurt you. Take no notice of him, and go on digging, and no harm will come to you; you have nothing to be afraid of. If you dig on you will come to a heap of money. Take some of the biggest pieces of gold and carry them to St. Peter’s, and take some of the smaller pieces and carry them to S. Agostino,[4] and let masses be said for that dead man. But you must tell no one alive anything about it.’
The woman was much too frightened to do what the friar had said, but she managed to keep the story to herself, though it made her look so anxious her husband could not help noticing something.
The next night the friar came again, and said the same words, only he added: ‘If you are so frightened, Angela, you may take with you for company a little boy, but he must not be over seven, nor under six; and what you do you must tell no one. But you have nothing to fear, for if you do as I have said no one can harm you.’
For all his assurances, however, she could not make up her mind to go, nor this day could she even keep the story from her husband, for it weighed upon her mind. When he heard the story he said, ‘I’ll go with you.’
‘Ah! if you’ll go, then I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘But how will it be? The friar was so particular that I should tell no one, evil may happen if I take another with me.’
‘If there is nothing in the story, there’s nothing to fear,’ said the husband; ‘and, if the story is true, there is a heap of money to reward one for a little fear; so let’s go. Besides, if you think any harm will happen to you for taking me, I can stand on the top of the bank while you go down to the hole, and it can’t be said properly that I’m there, while I shall yet be by to give you courage and help you if anything happens.’
‘That way, I don’t mind it,’ answered the wife; and they went out together to the place, the husband, as he had said, standing by on a bank, and the wife creeping down into a hole. They took also two donkeys with them to bring away the treasure.
At the first stroke of the woman’s spade there came such lugubrious cries that she was frightened into running away.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the husband; ‘cries don’t hurt!’ So the woman began digging again, and then there came out cries again worse than before, and the noise of rattling of chains, dreadful to hear. So terrified was the woman that she swooned away.
The husband then went down into the hole with what water he could find to bring her to herself, but the moment he got into the hole the spirits set upon him and beat him so that he had great livid marks all over.
After that neither of them had the heart to go back to try it again.
But the woman was in the habit of going to confession to one of the Augustinian fathers, and she told him all. The fathers sent and had the place dug up all about, and thought they had proved there was nothing there; but for all that, it generally happens that when a thing like that has to be done, it must be done by the person who is sent, and anybody else but that person trying it proves nothing at all.
One thing is certain, that when those horrid assassins[5] hide a heap of money they put a dead man’s body at the entrance of the hole where they hide it, and say to it, ‘Thou be on guard till one of such a name, be it Teresa, be it Angela, be it Pietro, comes;’ and no one else going can be of any use, for it may be a hundred years before the coincidence can happen of a person just of the right name lighting on the spot—perhaps never.
‘Yes, yes! that’s a fact; that is not old wives’ nonsense,’[6] was the chorus which greeted this enunciation.[7]
[‘I, too, know a fact of that kind which most certainly happened, for I know Maria Grazia to whom it happened well, before she went to live at Velletri,’ said one of them.]
[1] ‘La serpe bianca;’ ‘serpe’ is of both genders, but is most commonly used in the feminine as in the common saying ‘allevarsi la serpe in seno,’ to nurture a serpent in one’s bosom. [↑]
[2] ‘Per far legna.’ ‘Fare’ is brought in on all occasions. Bazzarini gives 59 closely printed columns of instances of its various uses; here it means to cut wood for burning; ‘legno’ is wood; ‘legna,’ wood for burning. [↑]
[4] S. Agostino is the favourite with the people of all the churches of Rome. [↑]
[5] ‘Brutti assassini.’ In a country where the cultus of ‘il bello’ has been so well understood, ‘ugly’ has naturally come to be used as a term of deepest reproach. [↑]
[6] ‘Si, si, questo è positivo, non è donnicciolara, è positivo.’ [↑]
[7] This kind of spell seems analogous to one of which a curious account is preserved by Menghi (Compendio dell’Arte Essorcista, lib. ii. cap. xl.), which I quote, because it has a local connexion with Rome, and there are not many such. An inhabitant of Dachono in Bohemia, he says, brought his son, a priest, to Rome in the Pontificate of Pius II. (1458–64) to be exorcised, as all relief failed in his own country; a woman whom he had reproved for her bad life had bewitched him, adding, ‘that the spell (maldicio) was imposed on him by her under a certain tree, and if it was not removed in the same way, he could not otherwise be set free; and she would not reveal under what tree it was.’ The spell acted upon him only at such times as he was about to exercise his sacred ministry, and then it impeded his actions, forced him to put his tongue out at the cross, &c. &c. ‘The more earnest the devotion with which I strive to give myself to prayer,’ he said, ‘so much the more cruelly the devil rends me’ (mi lacera). In St. Peter’s, the narrator goes on to say, is a column brought from the Temple of Solomon, by means of which many possessed persons have been liberated, because our Lord had leant against it when teaching there, and it was thought that this might be sufficiently potent to represent the fatal tree. He was brought to it, however, in vain. Being tied to it, and asked to point out the spot where Christ had touched it, the spirit which possessed him replied by making him bite it on a certain spot with his teeth and say, ‘Qui stette, qui stette,’ (here He stood) in Italian, although he did not know a word of the language, and was obliged to inquire what the words he had uttered meant. But the spell, nevertheless, was not got rid of thus. It was then understood that the spirit must be of that kind of which Christ had said ‘he goeth not out except by prayer and fasting;’ and a pious and venerable bishop, taking compassion on the man, devoted himself to prayer and fasting for him all through Lent; and thus he was delivered and sent back to his own country rejoicing. [↑]
THE PROCESSION OF VELLETRI.
Maria Grazia lived in a convent of nuns at Velletri, and did their errands for them. One night one of the nuns who was ill got much worse towards night, and the factor[1] not being there, the Superior called up Maria Grazia and said to her,—‘Maria Grazia, Sister Maria such a one[2] is so very bad that I must get you to go and call the provost to her. I’m sorry to send you out so late, but I fear she won’t last till morning.’
Maria Grazia couldn’t say nay to such an errand, and off she set by a clear moonlight to go to the house of the provost, which was a good step off and out of the town. All went well till Maria Grazia had left the houses behind her, but she was no sooner in the open country than she saw a great procession of white-robed priests and acolytes bearing torches coming towards her, chanting solemnly. ‘What a fine procession!’ thought Maria Grazia; ‘I must hasten on to see it. But what can it be for at this time of night?’
Still she never doubted it was a real procession till she got quite close, and then, to her surprise, the procession parted in two to let her go through the midst, which a real procession would never have done.
You may believe that she was frightened as she passed right through the midst of those beings who must have belonged to the other world, dazed as she was with the unearthly light of the flaring torches; it seemed as if it would last for ever. But it did come to an end at last, and then she was so frightened she didn’t know what to do. Her legs trembled too much to carry her on further from home, and if she turned back there would be that dreadful procession again. Curiosity prompted her to turn her head, in spite of her fears; and what gave her almost more alarm than seeing the procession was the fact that it was no longer to be seen. What could have become of it in the midst of the open field? Then the fear of the good nun dying without the sacraments through her faint-heartedness stirred her, but in vain she tried to pluck up courage. ‘Oh!’ she thought, ‘if there were only some one going the same road, then I shouldn’t mind!’
She had hardly formed the wish when she saw a peasant coming along over the very spot where the procession had passed out of sight. ‘Now it’s all right,’ she said; for by the light of the moon he seemed a very respectable steady-looking peasant.
‘What did you think of that procession, good man,’ said Maria Grazia; ‘for it must have passed close by you, too?’
The peasant continued coming towards her, but said nothing.
‘Didn’t it frighten you? It did me; and I don’t think I could have moved from the spot if you hadn’t come up. I’ve got to go to the provost’s house, to fetch him to a dying nun; it’s only a step off this road, will you mind walking with me till I get there?’
The peasant continued walking towards her, but answered nothing.
‘Maybe you’re afraid of me, as I was of the procession, that you don’t speak,’ continued Maria Grazia; ‘but I am not a spirit. I am Maria Grazia, servant in such and such a convent at Velletri.’
But still the peasant said nothing.
‘What a very odd man!’ thought Maria Grazia. ‘But as he seems to be going my way he’ll answer the purpose of company whether he speaks or not.’ And she walked on without fear till she came to the provost’s house, the peasant always keeping beside her but never speaking. Arrived at the provost’s gate she turned round to salute and thank him, and he was nowhere to be seen. He too had disappeared! He too was a spirit!
When the archpriest came he had his nephew and his servant to go with him, and they carried torches of straw,[3] for it seems in that part of the country they use straw torches; so she went back in good company.
And Maria Grazia told me that herself.
[1] ‘Fattore,’ an agent; a man who attends to the business and pecuniary affairs of a convent. [↑]
[2] ‘Suora Maria tale.’ Mary being such a favourite name, it has to be generally qualified by a second name being appended to it by way of distinction. [↑]