[328] The books which I have consulted on this branch of vernacular poetry are (1) Tommaseo, Canti popolari toscani, corsi, illirici e greci, Venezia, 1841. (2) Tigri, Canti popolari toscani, Firenze, 1869. (3) Pitré, Canti popolari siciliani, and Studi di poesia popolare, Palermo, 1870-1872. (4) D'Ancona, La Poesia popolare italiana, Livorno, 1878. (5) Rubieri, Storia della poesia popolare italiana, Firenze, 1877. Also numerous collections of local songs, of which a good list is furnished in D'Ancona's work just cited. Bolza's edition of Comasque poetry, Dal Medico's of Venetian, Ferraro's of Canti Monferrini (district of Montferrat), Vigo's of Sicilian, together with Imbriani's of Southern and Marcoaldo's of Central dialects, deserve to be specially cited. The literature in question is already voluminous, and bids fair to receive considerable additions.

[329] I take this example at random from Blessig's Römische Ritornelle (Leipzig, 1860), p. 48:

Flower of Pomegranate tree!
Your name, O my fair one, is written in heaven;
My name it is writ on the waves of the sea.

[330] The term Villotta or Vilota is special, I believe, to Venice and the Friuli. D'Ancona identifies it with Rispetto, Rubieri with Stornello. But it has the character of a quatrain, and seems therefore more properly to belong to the former.

[331] Tigri, p. 123. Translated by me thus:

Ah, when will dawn that blissful day
When I shall softly mount your stair,
Your brothers meet me on the way,
And one by one I greet them there!
When comes the day, my staff, my strength,
To call your mother mine at length?
When will the day come, love of mine,
I shall be yours and you be mine!

[332] Pitrè, vol. i. p. 185. Translated by me thus, with an alteration in the last couplet:

When thou wert born, O beaming star!
Three holy angels flew to earth;
The three kings from the East afar
Brought gold and jewels of great worth;
Three eagles on wings light as air
Bore the news East and West and North.
O jewel fair, O jewel rare,
So glad was heaven to greet thy birth.

[333] Dalmedico, Canti Ven. p. 69:

Many there are who when they hear me sing,
Cry: There goes one whose joy runs o'er in song!
But I pray God to give me succoring;
For when I sing, 'tis then I grieve full strong.