There are several very excellent and pleasant works on Old Florence, such as that portion devoted to it in the “Cities of Central Italy,” by A. J. C. Hare; the “Walks about Florence,” by the Sisters Horner; “Florentine Life,” by Scaife; and the more recent and admirable book by Leader Scott, which are all—I say it advisedly—indispensable for those who would really know something about a place which is unusually opulent in ancient, adventurous, or artistic associations. My book is, however, entirely different from these, and all which are exclusively taken from authentic records and books. My tales are, with a few exceptions, derived directly or indirectly from the people themselves—having been recorded in the local dialect—the exceptions being a few anecdotes racy of the soil, taken from antique jest-books and such bygone halfpenny literature as belonged to the multitude, and had its origin among them. These I could not, indeed, well omit, as they every one refer to some peculiar place in Florence. To these I must add several which remained obscurely in my memory, but which I did not record at the time of hearing or reading, not having then the intention of publishing such a book.
It has been well observed by Wordsworth that minor local legends sink more deeply into the soul than greater
histories, as is proved by the fact that romantic folk-lore spreads far and wide over the world, completely distancing in the race the records of mighty men and their deeds. The magic of Washington Irving has cast over the Catskills and the Hudson, by means of such tales, an indescribable fascination, even as Scott made of all Scotland a fairyland; for it is indisputable that a strange story, or one of wild or quaint adventure, or even of humour, goes further to fix a place in our memory than anything else can do. Therefore I have great hope that these fairy-tales of Florence, and strange fables of its fountains, palaces, and public places—as they are truly gathered from old wives, and bear in themselves unmistakable evidences of antiquity—will be of real use in impressing on many memories much which is worth retaining, and which would otherwise have been forgotten.
The manner in which these stories were collected was as follows:—In the year 1886 I made the acquaintance in Florence of a woman who was not only skilled in fortune-telling, but who inherited as a family gift from generations, skill in witchcraft—that is, a knowledge of mystical cures, the relieving people who were bewitched, the making amulets, and who had withal a memory stocked with a literally incredible number of tales and names of spirits, with the invocations to them, and strange rites and charms. She was a native of the Romagna Toscana, where there still lurks in the recesses of the mountains much antique Etrusco-Roman heathenism, though it is disappearing very rapidly. Maddalena—such was her name—soon began to communicate to me all her lore.
She could read and write, but beyond this never gave the least indication of having opened a book of any kind; albeit she had an immense library of folk-lore in her brain. When she could not recall a tale or incantation, she would go about among her extensive number of friends, and being perfectly familiar with every dialect, whether Neapolitan, Bolognese, Florentine, or Venetian, and the ways and manners of the poor, and especially of witches, who are the great repositories of legends, became in time wonderfully well skilled as a collector. Now, as the proverb says, “Take a thief to catch a thief,” so I found that to take a witch to catch witches, or detect their secrets, was an infallible means to acquire the arcana of sorcery. It was in this manner that I gathered a great part of the lore given in my “Etruscan-Roman Remains.” I however collected enough, in all conscience, from other sources, and verified it all sufficiently from classic writers, to fully test the honesty of my authorities.
The witches in Italy form a class who are the repositories of all the folk-lore; but, what is not at all generally known, they also keep as strict secrets an immense number of legends of their own, which have nothing in common with the nursery or popular tales, such as are commonly collected and published. The real witch-story is very often only a frame, so to speak, the real picture within it being the arcanum of a long scongiurazione or incantation, and what ingredients were used to work the charm. I have given numbers of these real witch-tales in my “Etruscan-Roman Remains,” and a few, such as “Orpheus and Eurydice,” “Intialo,” and “Il Moschone,” in this work.
Lady Vere de Vere, who has investigated witchcraft as
it exists in the Italian Tyrol, in an admirable article in La Rivista of Rome (June 1894)—which article has the only demerit of being too brief—tells us that “the Community of Italian Witches is regulated by laws, traditions, and customs of the most secret kind, possessing special recipes for sorcery,” which is perfectly true. Having been free of the community for years, I can speak from experience. The more occult and singular of their secrets are naturally not of a nature to be published, any more than are those of the Voodoos. Some of the milder sort may be found in the story of the “Moscone, or Great Fly,” in this work. The great secret for scholars is, however, that these pagans and heretics, who are the last who cling to a heathen creed out-worn in Europe—these outcast children of the Cainites, Ultra-Taborites, and similar ancient worshippers of the devil, are really the ones who possess the most valuable stores of folk-lore, that is to say, such as illustrate the first origins of the religious Idea, its development, and specially the evolution of the Opposition or Protestant principle.
As regards the many legends in this book which do not illustrate such serious research, it is but natural that witches, who love and live in the Curious, should have preserved more even of them than other people, and it was accordingly among her colleagues of the mystic spell that Maddalena found tales which would have been long sought for elsewhere, of which this book is a most convincing proof in itself; for while I had resolved on second thought to make it one of simple local tales, there still hangs over most—even of these—a dim, unholy air of sorcery, a witch aura, a lurid light, a something eerie
and uncanny, a restless hankering for the broom and the supernatural. Those tales are Maddalena’s every line—I pray thee, reader, not to make them mine. The spirit will always speak.