Then he led her to the form of an angel clad in a rose-coloured garb, and, kneeling before it, said:
“O tu angelo del paradiso!
Ma benche puro e innocente sei stato
In questa terra confinata
Per salvare tua madre de suoi peccati,
Ma anche nel altro mondo
Ne fa sempre di peggio,
E per questo sarai liberato te
E confinata nel tuo posto,
La compagna e complice
Di tua madre la Beghina
La Beghina di Arezzo.
Vai tu angelo beato!
Da l’angelo custode!
E dilli che invochi
Lo spirito che di la ha piu comando,
E potenza di volere salvare
L’anima di quel giovane,
Che la Beghina le ha venduta
E cosi tu tu sarai in pace!”“Oh, thou angel of Paradise!
Yet who, though pure and ever innocent,
Hast been enchanted on this earth
(Confined in the form which thou wearest),
To save thy mother for her sins;
Yet even in another world
She will ever be worse.
Therefore thou shalt now be freed,
And thy mother and her accomplice
Be enchanted in thy place.
The Beghina of Arezzo,
Go, thou blessed angel,
To the angel who guards thee!
Bid him invoke the spirit who has most power
To save the soul of that youth
Whom the Beghina has sold;
Thus shalt thou be in peace.”
At that instant there was heard a clap of thunder, the sound of a roaring storm, and there fell down before them two human beings like two corpses, yet not dead, and these were La Beghina and her companion witch.
Then there entered a grand sun-ray, which flashed in light upon the angel whom Virgil had summoned. And it said:
“The youth is saved, and whoever doeth good shall find good even in another world. Farewell; I too am saved!”
Then the Beghina and her companion began to spit fire and flame, and they were condemned to wander for ever, without resting, from one town to another, ever possessed with a mad desire to do evil, but without the ability, for Virgil had taken the power from them.
This story seemed to me in the original, after more than one reading, so confused and high-flown, that I was on the point of rejecting it, when a friend who had also perused it persuaded me that, under all its dialectic mis-spellings, barbarous divisions of words, and manifest omissions (as, for instance, what became of the Sieur Buridan of the Italian Tour de Nesle, who was so nearly drowned), there was a legend which was manifestly the mangled version of a far better original. Therefore I have translated it very faithfully, and would specify that there was from me no suggestion or hint of any kind, but that it is entirely of the people.
Firstly, it may be observed that the long-continued, deliberately-contrived hypocrisy of the Beghina, as well as the Red Indian-like vindictiveness of the hero, is perfectly Italian or natural. The construction of secret passages and hiding-places in buildings is almost common even to-day. The idea of a holy spirit who undergoes a penance, confinata, or enchanted and imprisoned in a statue to redeem her mother, is also finely conceived, as is the final statement that the Beghina and her mysterious accomplice, who is so abruptly introduced, are condemned to wander for ever, tormented with a desire to do evil which they are unable to satisfy.
The Beghina is an incarnation of hypocrisy, deceit, lust and treachery. The four symbols for these were the serpent, wren, chameleon, and goose—the latter because a certain Athenian named Lampon was wont to swear “by the goose!” and then break his oath. Possibly the origin of the saying “He is sound upon the goose” is derived from this.
But I sometimes think that to decide between tradition or borrowing and independent creation is beyond the folklore of the present day.