an instant more he would have been crushed like a fly under a hammer. As for his two friends, they had broken arms and cut faces, bearing marks in memory of the day to the end of their lives.
“When the young Signore was without the door and looked for the ladies, they were gone, and a little boy, who was the only person present, declared that he had seen them, that they were wonderfully beautiful, and that, merrily laughing, they had jumped or gone down into the well.
“Therefore it was generally believed by all who heard the tale that it was the Fairies of the Well, or Fonte, who thus saved the life of the young Signore, who from that day honoured them more devoutly than ever; nor did his friends any longer doubt that there are spirits of air or earth, who, when treated with pious reverence, can confer benefits on their worshippers.
“‘For there are fairies all around
Everywhere, and elves abound
Even in our homes unseen:
They go wherever we have been,
And often by the fireside sit,
A-laughing gaily at our wit;
And when the ringing echo falls
Back from the ceiling or the walls,
’Tis not our voices to us thrown
In a reflection, but their own;
For they are near at every turn,
As he who watches soon may learn.’
“And the young Signore, to do honour to the fairies, because they had saved his life, put them one on either side of his coat-of-arms, as you may see by the shield which is on the house at the corner of the Via Calzaioli.”
The authenticity of this legend, is more than doubtful, because it exists elsewhere, as I have read it, being unable to give my authority; but unless my memory deceives me, it goes back to classic times, and may be found in some such work as that of Philostratus de Vita Apollonii or Grosius. Neither am I well assured, to judge from the source whence I had it, that it is current among the people, though no great measure of credulity is here required, since it may be laid down as a rule, with
rarest exception, that there is no old Roman tale of the kind which may not be unearthed with pains and patience among old Tuscan peasant women. However, the shield is still on the corner of the Via Calzaioli, albeit one of the nymphs on it has been knocked or worn away. Thus even fates must yield in time to fate.
I have in a note to another legend spoken of the instinct which seems to lead children or grown people to associate wells with indwelling fairies, to hear a voice in the echo, and see a face in the reflection in the still water. Keats has beautifully expressed it in “Endymion”:
“Some mouldered steps lead into this cool cell
Far as the slabbed margin of a well,
Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye
Right upward through the bushes to the sky. . . .
Upon a day when thus I watched . . . behold!
A wonder fair as any I have told—
The same bright face I tasted in my sleep
Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap
Through the cool depth. . . .
Or ’tis the cell of Echo, where she sits
And babbles thorough silence till her wits
Are gone in tender madness, and anon
Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone.”
“In which tale,” writes the immortal Flaxius, “there is a pretty allegory. Few there are who know why truth is said to be at the bottom of a well; but this I can indeed declare to you. For as a mirror was above all things an emblem of truth, because it shows all things exactly as they are, so the water in a well was, as many traditions prove, considered as a mirror, because looking into it we see our face, which we of course most commonly see in a glass, and this disk of shining water resembles in every way a hand-mirror. And for this reason a mirror was also regarded as expressing life itself, for which reason people so greatly fear to break them. So in the Latin, Velut in speculo, and in the Italian, Vero come un specchio—‘True as a mirror,’ we have the same idea. And a poet has written, ‘Mirrored as in a well,’ and many have re-echoed the same pretty fancy.