These incidents, which I in many cases did not know, until after subsequent search in mythologies, were ancient, certainly could not have been invented by the very ignorant old women from whom they were gathered. And this brings me to the important consideration as to whether these stories are really authentic. A learned Italian professor very lately asked me how I could be sure that the common people did not palm off on me their own inventions as legends of Virgil. To which I replied that I would not be responsible for the antiquity or origin of a single tale. For, in the first place, any story of any sorcerer is often attributed to Virgil, so that in two or three instances which I have specially noted “a Virgil” means any magician. And very often I have myself told some story as a hint or suggestion, in order to give some idea as to what I wanted, or to revive the memory. But in all cases they have come back to me so changed, and with such strange fragments of classic lore of the most recondite kind added, that I had no scruple in giving them just for what they were worth, leaving it for critics to sift out the ancient from the modern, even as the eagles described by Sinbad the Sailor, brought back the legs of mutton with diamonds sticking to them. “You would not,” I said to the professor of classical lore, “reject newly-mined gold because it is encumbered with dross; and that there may be much dross in all which I have gathered I am sure; but there is gold in it all.”
The nursery peasant tales collected by Grimm and Crane, and many more, represent surface-diggings. Those who were first in the field had an easy time in gathering what thousands knew. But these finds are becoming exhausted, and the collector of the future must mine out of the rock, and seek for deeper traditions which have been sedulously concealed or kept secret. There are still many peasants who know this lore, though their number is very rapidly diminishing, and they are, as a rule, without exception, extremely averse to communicating it to anyone whom they know or think is not what I may call a fellow-heathen, or in true sympathy with them. I may give in illustration of this an incident which occurred recently as I write: Miss Roma Lister, who had an old Italian witch-nurse, still living in Rome (and who has contributed several of these tales of Virgil), who taught her something of the art “which none may name,” while walking with a priest near Calmaldoli, met with a man whom she knew had the reputation of being a stregone, or wizard. She asked him, sotto voce, if he knew the name of Tinia, one of the Etruscan gods, still remembered by a few, and who is described in the “Etrusco-Roman Remains.” He hastily replied in a whisper: “Yes, yes; and I know the incantation to him also—but don’t let the priest hear us.” At a subsequent meeting they interchanged confidences freely. Maddalena, whom I have chiefly employed to make collections among witches and others, has often told me how unwilling those who knew any witch-lore are to confess it, especially to ladies or gentlemen. One must literally conjure it out of them.
These tales of Virgil were collected in Florence, Volterra, Rocca-Casciano, Arezzo, Siena, and several places near it, and Rome. I have several not to be published, because they are so trifling, or so utterly confused and badly written, or “shocking,” that I could make nothing of them. In all, however, which I have collected, with one exception—which is manifestly a mere common fairy-tale arbitrarily attributed to the subject as a magus—Virgil appears as a great and very benevolent man. He aids the poor and suffering, has great sympathy for the weak and lowly, and is ever ready to reprove arrogance and defeat the plans of evil sorcerers. But while great and wise and dignified, he is very fond of a joke. Sometimes he boldly punishes and reproves the Emperor of Rome—anon he contrives some merry jest to amuse him. The general agreement of so many stories drawn from different sources as to this character is indeed remarkable.
As regards the general “value” of these Virgilian tales, and a vast number of others which I have collected, all of them turning on magic or occult motives, it is well worth mentioning that from one to three centuries ago a great number of tales very much resembling them were published by Grosius, Prætorius, and others, as at a later date the “Histoire des Fantômes et des Demons,” Paris, 1819, which work unquestionably supplied Washington Irving with the story of the Spectre Bridegroom, and another tale. [0c] In Italy, the writers of novella, such as Boccaccio, Bandello, Cinthio, and in fact nearly all of them, shook off and ridiculed all that was associated with barbarous superstitions and incantations, and yet in the “Metamorphosi” of Lorenzo Selva, Florence, 1591, and here and there in similar obscure works by writers not so painfully afflicted by “culture” and style as the leaders, there are witch and fairy-tales which might have come from very old women, and would be certainly recognised by them as familiar traditions. That these mysterious stories contained an immense amount of valuable old Latin classic lore and minor mythology, or that they were not altogether silly and useless, does not seem to have entered the head of any one Italian from Dante downward. Men like Straparola and Basile made, it is true, collections of merry tales to amuse, but that there was anything in them of solid traditional value never occurred to them. I mention the few and far-between witch-tales which are found in certain writers, because they are marvellously like those which I have given. Some of these, especially the later, are so elaborate or dramatic, or inspired with what seems to be literary culture, that many who are only familiar with simple fairy-tales might doubt whether the former are really traditional folklore of the people, or even of fortune-tellers. There is a curious fact, unnoted now, which will be deeply dwelt on in a future age when folklore and phases of culture will be far more broadly and deeply or genially considered than they are at present. This is, that among the masses in Italy there exists an extraordinary amount of a certain kind of culture allied to gross ignorance, as is amusingly illustrated in the commonest language, in which, even among the lowest peasants, one hears in every sentence some transformed or melted Latin word of three or four syllables, suggesting excess of culture—like unto which is the universal use of the sonnet and terzarime among the most ignorant.
If there are any readers who find it strange that in these legends and traditions there are not only extraordinary but apparently incredible remains of culture, fragments of mythology and incantations, which pierce into the most mysterious depths of archæology, they would do well to remember that the same apparent paradox struck “Vernon Lee,” who treated it very fully in her “Euphorion,” in the chapters on the Outdoor Poetry of Italy. And among other things she thus remarks:
“Nothing can be too artificial or highflown for the Italian peasantry; its tales are all of kings, princesses, fairies, knights, winged horses, marvellous jewels . . . its songs, almost without exception, about love, constancy, moon, stars, flowers. Such things have not been degraded by familiarity and parody, as in the town; they retain for the country-folk the vague charm, like that of music, automatic and independent of thorough comprehension, of belonging to a sphere of the marvellous—hence they are repeated with almost religious servility.”
But it must be remembered that with elaborate poetic forms and fancies, which would be foreign or unintelligible, and certainly unsympathetic, even to the fairly well-educated citizen of England or America, there has been preserved to the very letter, especially in Tuscany, a mass of literature which, while resembling the romances of chivalry which Chaucer ridiculed, is far ruder; it even surpasses the Norse prose sagas in barbarism. The principal work of this kind is the “Reali di Francia,” which is reprinted every year, and which is at least a thousand years old. This work, and several like it, are the greatest literary curiosities or anomalies of the age. In them we are hurried from battle to battle, from carnage to carnage, with rude interludes of love and magic, as if even the Middle Age had never existed. The “Nibelungen Lied” and “Heldenbuch” are by comparison to them refined and modern.
Can the reader imagine this as existing in combination with the literary relics of the Renaissance and many strangely-refined forms of speech? Just so among the youngest children in Florence one sees gestures and glances and hears phrases which would seem to have been peculiar to grown-up people in some bygone stage of society. It is really necessary to bear all this in mind when reading the legends which I have collected, for they present the contradictions of barbarism and culture, of old Latin traditions and crass ignorance, as I have never seen them even imagined by students of culture.
And here I would remark, as allied to this subject, that folklore is as yet far from being understood in all its fulness. In France, for example, no scholar seems to have got beyond the idea that it consists entirely of traditions populaires, necessarily ancient. In England we have advanced further, but we are still far from realizing that with every day there springs up and grows among the masses that which in days to come will be deeply interesting, as expressing the spirit of the age. This accretive folklore is just as valuable as any—or will be so—and it should be gathered and studied, no matter what its origin may be. So of this book of mine, I express the conviction that it contains many tales which have, since the days of Dante, and many perhaps very recently, been attached to the name of Virgil, yet do not consider them less interesting than those collected in the twelfth century by Gervais of Tilbury, Neckham, and others. In fact, these here given actually contain far more ancient and curious traditional matter, because they have not been abridged or filed down by literary mediæval Latinists into mere plots or anecdotes as contracted as the “variants” of a modern folklorist. The older writers, and many of the modern, regarded as ugly excrescence all that did not belong, firstly, to scholarship or “style”; secondly, to the fact or subject in hand. Thus, Lorenzo Selva gives a witch story with six incantations, which are far more interesting than all the washy poetry in his book, but is so ashamed of having done so, that he states in a marginal note that he has only preserved them to give an idea of “the silliness of all such iniquitous trash”—the “iniquitous trash” in question being evidently of Etrusco-Roman origin, to judge from form and similarity to other ancient spells. In these later Virgilian tales there has been no scruple, either as regards literary elegance or piety, to prevent the chronicler from giving them just as they were told, the “sinful and silly” incantations, when they occurred, being faithfully retained, with all that can give an idea of the true spirit of the whole. The mean fear of appearing to be vulgar, or credulous, or not literally “genteel,” has caused thousands of such writers to suppress traditions worth far more than all they ever penned.
I write this in the belief that all my critics will admit that in these, as in my “Florentine Legends” and “Etrusco-Roman Remains,” I have really recovered and recorded a great deal of valuable ancient tradition. Also that what was preserved to us of ancient Etruscan or Græco-Latin lore regarding the minor gods and sylvan deities, goblins, etc., by classic writers is very trifling indeed compared to the immense quantity which existed, and that a great deal of it may still be found among the peasantry, especially among wizards and witches, is unquestionable. That I have secured some of this in my books is, I trust, true; future critics will winnow it all out, and separate the wheat from the chaff.