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.