strange voices and sounds until such time as the offender should betake himself to the Palazzo della Cavolaia, and there, standing before the bronze image, should ask his pardon.
“And if it pleased the Diavolino, he forgave them, and they had peace; but if it did not, they were pursued by the double mocking voice which made dialogue or sang duets over all their sins and follies and disgraces. And whether they stayed at home or went abroad, the voices were ever about them, crying aloud or tittering and whispering or hissing, so that they had no rest by day or night; and this is what befell all who spoke ill of the Diavolino del Canto dei Diavoli.”
The saint mentioned in this story was certainly Pietro Martire or Peter the Martyrer, better deserving the name of murderer, who, preaching at the very corner where the bronze imp was afterwards placed, declared that he beheld the devil, and promptly exorcised him. There can be little doubt that the image was placed there to commemorate this probably “pious fraud.”
It is only since I wrote all this that I learned that there were formerly two of these devils, one having been stolen not many years ago. This verifies to some extent the consistency of the author of the legend, “The Devil of the Mercato Vecchio,” who says there were four.
There is a very amusing and curious trait of character manifested in the conclusion of this story which might escape the reader’s attention were it not indicated. It is the vindication of the “puir deil,” and the very evident desire to prove that he was led astray by love, and that even the higher spirit could not take away all his power. Here I recognise beyond all question the witch, the fortune-teller and sorceress, who prefers Cain to Abel, and sings invocations to the former, and to Diana as the dark queen of the Strege, and always takes sides with the heretic and sinner and magian and goblin. It is the last working of the true spirit of ancient heathenism, for the fortune-tellers, and especially those of the mountains, all come of families who have been regarded as enemies
by the Church during all the Middle Ages, and who are probably real and direct descendants of Canidia and her contemporaries, for where this thing is in a family it never dies out. I have a great many traditions in which the hand of the heathen witch and the worship of “him who has been wronged” and banished to darkness, is as evident as it is here.
“Which indeed seems to show,” comments the learned Flaxius, “that if the devil is never quite so black as he is painted, yet, on the other hand, he is so far from being of a pure white—as the jolly George Sand boys, such as Heine and Co., thought—that it is hard to make him out of any lighter hue than mud and verdigris mixed. In medio tutissimus ibis. ’Tis also to be especially noted, that in this legend—as in Shelley’s poem—the Devil appears as a meddling wretch who is interested in small things, and above all, as given to gossip:
“The Devil sat down in London town
Before earth’s morning ray,
With a favourite imp he began to chat,
On religion, and scandal, and this and that,
Until the dawn of day.”
SEEING THAT ALL WAS RIGHT
a legend of the porta a san nicolò
“God keep us from the devil’s lackies,
Who are the aggravating jackies,
Who to the letter execute
An order and exactly do’t,
Or else, with fancy free and bold,
Do twice as much as they are told,
And when reproved, cry bravely, ‘Oh!
I thought you’d like it so and so.’
From all such, wheresoe’er they be,
Libera nos, Domine!’