“Passing away, passing away,
Well do I remember the day.”
Meanwhile the true Antonuccio, who was present, began to remember what had taken place. Then the puppet Marietta sang again:
“Dost thou remember how I was the church,
And thou of it becam’st the sacristan?”
He answered:
“Passing away, passing away,
Well do I remember the day.”“Dost thou remember how I was a garden,
And how thou didst become its gardener?”“Passing away, passing away,
Well do I now remember the day.”“Dost thou remember how I was a fountain,
And thou a pigeon flying over it?”“Passing away, passing away,
Well do I now remember the day.”“Dost thou remember, Antonuccio,
How ’twas my mother laid a curse on me,
And how she said before she went away—
When Antonuccio kisses his mother
He’ll forget Marietta and every other?’”“Passing away, passing away,
Well do I now remember the day.”
Then Antonuccio himself remembered it all, and rising from the table, ran from the house to where Marietta dwelt—and married her.
This story, adds Miss Lister, is somewhat abbreviated, since in the original the puppet Marietta, for the edification of all assembled, repeats the whole story.
It will be at once observed that there is in all this no special reference to Virgil as a character, as he appears in other legends, the reason being that the old woman who narrated it simply understood by the word Virgilio any magician of any kind. So in another tale a youth exclaims, “Art thou what is called a Virgil?” This is curious as indicating that the word has become generic in Italian folk-lore. But Virgil is even here, as elsewhere on the whole, a man of kind heart. He has had his garden robbed and his daughter stolen, but he displays at all times a kindly feeling to Antonuccio. It is his wife, the witch, who shows all the spite.
Nor is this, like the rest, a witch-story which belongs entirely to esoteric, unholy, or secret lore, specially embodying instruction and an incantation. It is a mere nursery legend, the commonest of Italian fairy-tales, to be found in all collections in whole or in part. It is spread all over Europe, and has found its way through Canadian-French to the Red Indians of North America—apropos of which I would remind a certain very clever reviewer and learned folk-lorist that because many French tales are found among the Algonkin tribes, it does not follow, as he really intimates, that the said Redskins have no other traditions.
But even in this version there are classic traces. The cleaning out of the Augean stables by Hercules is one, and the spell of oblivion another.