The girl obeyed; the onion spun round and rolled away; she followed it afar, till at last it stopped at a leaf on which was written “Cettardo.” And it was in this spot where the onion stopped that the town in after time was built, and where the girl found the leaf is now the municipal palace. And so, one by one, great buildings rose. Thus came the name and arms of Cettardo.
In due time the maid had a lover, and it was said that these two were the only ones who could go through the subterranean passage.
And it hath been, and may be still, proved that any person attempting this passage will after a few steps be suffocated, and can go no further.
If we compare this legend with other traditions, there can be little doubt that it is at least of Roman origin. The great veneration for the onion among the Egyptians—“Happy people,” wrote Juvenal, “to have gods growing in their gardens!”—which passed to the Romans, probably, in later days through the priests of Serapis and Isis, [206] and the many mysteries connected with it, fully account for its being chosen as the symbol of a city. Its traditions were greatly mingled and confused with those of the garlic and the leek, but it was above all other plants a protector against sorcery; that is, against all evil influence. Where onions could not help, nothing availed, or as it was expressed, bulbus nihil profuerit. It would appear from the conjectures of Nork (Andeutung eines Systemes der Mythologie, p. 125) that the onion was the sign or crest of the pyramid of Cheops, as it is of Cettardo.
It is, however, in the mention of a subterranean passage full of mephitic vapour, which seems to have no connection with the tale whatever, that the clue to the whole tradition may be found. The people wanting a name and a site for a city, receive them from a pythoness or sibyl, the two being identified in many legends. The grotto of the Sybil near Naples is approached by a long subterranean road, over which I have myself passed—being carried on the back of a strong peasant-guide. Just in the middle of the wet, winding cavern, I said: “You are a good horse.”
“I am particularly good at eating macaroni,” he replied, and stopped. This was equivalent to begging.
“Horses who talk need the spur,” I replied, giving him a gentle reminder with my heel. He laughed, and trotted on. However, he got his “macaroni.”
That the pythoness, or female oracle, was first intoxicated with the vapour of carbonic acid gas in a cavern, and that her utterances were recorded on leaves which blew about loosely and were then gathered and put together, is well known, and it is this, apparently, which is meant in this tale by the flying leaf bearing the name of Cettardo. Plutarch, in his “Treatise on Abandoned Oracles,” declares that “the terrestrial effluvium was the conductor of the god into the body of the Pythia.” As the vapours disappeared, the oracle became dumb, or, as Cicero expresses it:
“They ceased because this terrestrial virtue, which moved the soul of the Pythia by divine inspiration, disappeared in time, as we have seen rivers dried up or turned away into other beds.”
The onion was a symbol of fertility and increase of population, therefore it was well adapted to serve as a fetish for a new city. It was also among the Egyptians par eminence typical of the resurrection, so that no woman was buried without one. [207]