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.