“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.