In fact, Beffana is the Italian bugbear of naughty children; and it is no wonder that this strange embodiment of the gift-bringing day should not be followed as a Christian name, though the masculine form, Epiphanius, once belonged to a Father, born near Mount Olympus, in whose honour is named Capa Pifani, a headland on that coast, and from whom Epifanio sometimes is found at Rome.
The other form of the name of the day, Theophania, has been much more in favour; indeed, in the days of Christine de Pisane, the feast-day was called la Tiphaïne.
Theophano was a name in common use among the Byzantine ladies, and we hear of many princesses so called—one of whom married the German Emperor, Otho II., in 962, and was then called Théophania. Probably she made the name known in Western Europe, but it is curious that its chief home in the form of Tiphaïne, was in Armorica, whence, as the grumbling rhyme of the Englishman, after the Conquest, declared,
“William de Coningsby,
Came out of Brittany,
With his wife Tiffany,
And his maid Manfas,
And his dog Hardigras.”
Tiffany took up her abode in England, and left her progeny. The name occurs in an old Devon register, within the last two hundred years, but seems now extinct.
The high-spirited wife of Bertrand du Guesclin, was either Theophanie, or Epiphanie Ragueuel, but was commonly called Tiphaïne la Fée, on account of the mysterious wisdom by which she was able to predict to her husband his lucky and unlucky days—only he never studied her tablets till the disaster had happened. Could she have first acquired her curious title through some report of her namesake, the Fairy Beffana? In a Cornish register I find Epiphany in 1672; Tiffany in 1682.