The Italian, or rather Calabrese-speaking population of Calabria, call their preficæ—where they still have any—Reputatrici. Some remarkable songs have been collected in the commune of Pizzo, the place of dubious fame by whose peasants Murat was caught and betrayed. There is something Dantesque in the image of Death as 'nu gran levreri crouching in a mountain defile:
Joy, I saw death; Joy, I saw her yesterday; I beheld her in a narrow way, like unto a great greyhound, and I was very curious. "Death, whence comest thou?" "I am come from Germany, going thence to Count Roger. I have killed princes, counts, and cavaliers; and now I am come for a young maiden so that with me she may go".
Weep, mamma, weep for me, weep and never rest; weep for me Sunday, Easter, and Christmas Day; for no more wilt thou see thy daughter sit down at thy board to eat, and no more shalt thou await me.
One conclusion forced upon us incidentally by folk-dirges must seem strange when we remember how few are the cultured poetesses who have attained eminence—to wit, that with the unlettered multitude the poetic faculty is equally the property of women as of men.
In various parts of Italy the funerals of the poor are conducted exclusively by those of like sex with the dead—a custom of which I first took note at Varese in the year 1879. The funeral procession came up slowly by the shady paths near the lake; long before it appeared one could hear the sound of shrill voices chanting a litany. When it got near to the little church of S. Vittore, it was seen that only women followed the bier, which was carried by women. "Una povera donna morta in parto," said a peasant standing by, as she pointed to the coffin with a gesture of sympathy. The mourners had black shawls thrown over their heads and bore tapers. A sight yet stranger to unaccustomed eyes is the funeral of a child at Spezia. A number of little girls, none older than eleven or twelve, some as young as five, carry the small coffin to the cemetery. Some of the children hold candles; they are nicely dressed in their best frocks; the sun plays on their bare black or golden curls. They have the little serious look of children engaged in some business of work or play, but no look of gloom or sadness. The coffin is covered with a white pall on which lies a large nosegay. No priests or elder persons are there except one man, walking apart, who has to see that the children go the right way. About twenty children is the average number, but there may be sometimes a hundred. When they return, running across the grass between the road and the sea-wall, they tumble over one another in the scramble to snatch daisies from the ground.
It is still common in Lombardy to ring the bells d'allegrezza on the death of an infant, "because its soul goes straight to Paradise." This way of ringing, or, rather, chiming, consists in striking the bell with a clapper held in the hand, when a light, dancing sound is produced, something like that of hand-bells. On a high festa all the bells are used; for dead babies, only two. I have often heard the sad message sounding gaily from the belfry at Salò.
Were I sure that all these songs of the Last Parting would have for others the same interest that they have had for me, I should be tempted to add a study dedicated solely to the dirges of savage nations and of those nations whose civilization has not followed the same course as ours. I must, at all events, indicate the wonderfully strange and wild Polynesian "Death-talks" and "Evas" (dirges proper) collected by the Rev. W. W. Gill. The South Pacific Islanders say of the dying, "he is passing over the sea." Their dead set out in a canoe on a long and perilous voyage to the regions of the sun-setting. When they get there, alas!—when they reach the mysterious spirit-land, a horrid doom awaits them: children and old men and women—all, in short, who have not died in battle, are devoured by a dreadful deity, and perish for ever. But this fate does not overtake them immediately; for a time they remain in a shadowy intermediate state till their turn comes. The spirit-journey is described in a dirge for two little children, composed by their father about the year 1796:
"Thy god,[2] pet-child, is a bad one;
For thy body is attenuated;
This wasting sickness must end thy days.
Thy form, once so plump, now how changed!