The mother-in-law took the pine-cone and placed it on a mantelpiece, as such curious or odd things are generally disposed of. And when her son returned she contrived in so many ways and with craft to calumniate his wife that the poor lady was ere long imprisoned in a tower.
But a strange thing now happened, for every night the pine-cone, unseen by all, left like a living thing its place on the chimney-piece and wandered over the castle, returning at five o’clock to its place, but ever going just below the lady’s window, where it sang:
“O cara madre mia!
Luce degli occhi miei!
Cessa quel pianto,
E non farmi più soffrir!”“O mother, darling mother,
Light of my eyes, I pray
That thou wilt cease thy weeping,
So mine may pass away.”
Yet, after he had shut his wife up in the tower, Constanzo had not an instant’s peace of mind. Therefore, to be assured, he one day went to consult the great magician Virgil. And having told all that had happened, the wise man said:
“Thou hast imprisoned thy wife, she who is pure and true, in a tower, and all on the lying words and slanders of that vile witch your mother. And thou hast suffered bitterly, and well deserved it, as all do who are weak enough to believe evil reports of a single witness; for who is there who may not lie, especially among women, when they are jealous and full of revenge? Now do thou set free thy wife (and bid her come to me and I will teach her what to do).”
So the count obeyed.
Then the mother took the pine-cone and threw it up three times into the air, singing:
“Pina, mia bella pina!
Dei pini tu sei regina!
Dei pini sei prottetrice,
D’ un pino pianta la radice!
E torna una fanciulla bella
Come un occhio
Di sole in braccio
A tuo padre
Ed a tua madre!“Pine, the fairest ever seen,
Of all cones thou art the queen!
Guarding them in sun or shade,
And ’tis granted that, when planted,
Thou shalt be a charming maid,
Ever sweet and ever true
To thy sire and mother too.”
And this was done, and the cone forthwith grew up a fair maid, who was the joy of her parents’ life. But the people in a rage seized on the old witch, who was covered with a coat of pitch and burned alive in the public square.
This legend was gathered in and sent to me from Siena. As a narrative it is a fairy-tale of the most commonplace description, its incidents being found in many others. But so far as the pine-cone is concerned it is of great originality, and retains remarkable relics of old Latin lore. The pine-tree was a favourite of Cybele, and it was consecrated to Silvanus, who is still known and has a cult in the mountains of the Romagna Toscana. This rural deity often bore a pine-cone in his hand. Propertius also assigns the pine to Pan. The cone was pre-eminently a phallic emblem, therefore specially holy; in this sense it was placed on the staff borne by the specially initiated to Bacchus. It was incredibly popular as an amulet, on account of its supposed magical virtues, therefore no one object is more frequently produced in ancient art. A modern writer, observing this, and not being able to account for it, very feebly attributes it to the fact that the object is so common that it is naturally used for a model. “Artists,” he says, “in fact prefer to use what comes ready to hand, and to copy such plants as are ever under their eye.” So writes the great dilettante Caylus, forgetting that a thousand objects quite as suitable to decoration as the pine-cone, and quite as common, were not used at all.