The pine typified a new birth, according to Friedrich; this was because it was evergreen, and therefore sacred as immortal to Cybele. Thus Ovid (“Metamorphoses,” x. 103) writes, “Pinus grata deum matri.” The French Layard, in the new “Annales de l’Institut Archæologique,” vol. xix., has emphatically indicated the connection of the pine-cone with the cult of Venus, and as a reproductive symbol. It is in this sense clearly set forth in the Italian or Sienese legend, where the pine-cone planted in the earth grows up as the girl with golden locks. This is very probably indeed the relic of an old Roman mythical tale or poem.
The golden pine-cone appears in other tales. Wolf (“Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie,” vol. i., p. 297) says that in Franconia there were once three travelling Handwerksburschen, or craftsmen, who met with a beautiful lady, who when asked for alms gave to each a pine-cone from a tree. Two of them threw the gifts away, but the third found his changed to solid gold. In order to make an amulet which is kept in the house, pine-cones are often gilded in Italy. I have seen them here in Florence, and very pretty ornaments they make.
VIRGIL’S MAGIC LOOM.
“I heard a loom at work, and thus it spoke,
As though its clatter like a metre woke,
And echoed in my mind like an old song,
Rising while growing dimmer e’en like smoke.“And thus it spoke, ‘God is a loom like me,
His chiefest weaving is Humanity,
And man and woman are the warp and woof,
Which make a mingling light of mystery.’”The Loom: C. G. L.
Gega was a girl of fifteen years of age, and without parents or friends, with nothing in the world but eyes to weep and arms to work. Yet she had this luck, that an old woman who was a fellow-lodger in the place where she lived, [172] moved by compassion, took the girl to live with her, though all she had was a very small room, in which was a poor bed and a little loom, so crazy-looking and old that it seemed impossible to work with it.
Nunzia, [173] for such was the old woman’s name, took Gega indeed as a daughter, and taught her to weave, which was a good trade in those days, and in that place where few practised it. So it came to pass that they made money, which was laid by. [This was no great wonder, for the old loom had a strange enchantment in it, by which marvellous work could be produced.]
The old woman very often bade Gega take great care of the loom, and the girl could not understand why Nunzia thought so much of it, since it seemed to her to be like any other. [For it never appeared strange to her that when she wove the cloth seemed to almost come of itself—a great deal for a little thread—and that its quality or kind improved as she applied herself to work, for in her ignorance she believed that this was the way with all weaving.]
At last the old Mamma Nunzia died, and Gega, left alone, began to make acquaintances and friends with other girls who came to visit her. Among these was one named Ermelinda, who was at heart as treacherous and rapacious as she was shrewd, yet one withal who, what with her beauty and deceitful airs, knew how to flatter and persuade to perfection, so that she could make a simple girl like Gega believe that the moon was a pewter plate, or a black fly white.
Now, the first time that she and several others, who were all weavers, saw Gega at work, they were greatly amazed, for the cloth seemed to come of itself from a wretched old loom which appeared to be incapable of making anything, and it was so fine and even, and had such a gloss that it looked like silk.
“How wonderful! One would say it was silk!” cried a girl.