Sleep, my child, and lullaby.
Why dost weep? No father nigh.
Ah, my God! tears break his rest.
Darling, nestle to my breast,
Sleep, my child, and lullaby.
Very scant information is to be had regarding the Sicilian folk-poets of the past; with one exception their names and personalities have almost wholly slipped out of the memory of the people, and that exception is full three parts a myth. If you ask a Sicilian popolano who was the chief and master of all rustic poets, he will promptly answer, "Pietro Fullone;" and he will tell you a string of stories about the poetic quarry-workman, dissolute in youth, devout in old age, whose fame was as great as his fortune was small, and who addressed a troop of admiring strangers who had travelled to Palermo to visit him, and were surprised to find him in rags, in the following dignified strain:
Beneath these pilgrim weeds so coarse and worn
A heart may still be found of priceless worth.
The rose is ever coupled to the thorn.