Figlioul mio ricco, savio e gentil;
Dov' andastú jersera?"
"When I come to look at it," adds Camillo, "this is too long; it ought to have been the first to be sung"—alluding, of course, to the song, not to the sample.
Later in the same century, the ballad mentioned above had the honour of being cited before a more polite audience than that which was probably in the habit of listening to the blind Florentine. On the 24th of September 1656, Canon Lorenzo Panciatichi reminded his fellow-academicians of the Crusca of what he called "a fine observation" that had been made regarding the song:
"Dov' andastú a cena figlioul mio
Ricco, savio, e gentile?"
The observation (continued the Canon) turned on the answer the son makes to the mother when she asks him what his sweetheart gave him for supper. "She gave me," says the son, "un' anguilla arrosto cotta nel pentolin dell' olio." The idea of a roasted eel cooked in an oil pipkin offended the academical sense of the fitness of things; it had therefore been proposed to say instead that the eel was hashed:
"Madonna Madre,
Il cuore stá male,
Per un anguilla in guazzetto."