[8] ‘Novena,’ a short service, with or without a sermon, said for nine days before some great festival, in preparation for it. [↑]
[9] ‘Pianella,’ a sandal, or slipper without a heel. ‘In those days they used to wear such things instead of shoes,’ commented the old lady as she told the tale. [↑]
[10] ‘Botte,’ a very large wine-barrel of a certain measure. [↑]
[11] Here called ‘buona figlia,’ ‘good daughter.’ There did not seem any reason for this designation. Possibly the narrator had forgotten some incident of the story, introducing it. [↑]
[12] That the cellar should be, as thus appears, on the ground-floor, is very characteristic of Rome, though there are, of course, plenty of underground cellars too; but the one is properly ‘cantino’ and ‘canova,’ and the other ‘grottino.’ The distinction is, however, not very rigidly observed in common parlance. To have an underground cellar is so far a specialité, that it has been taken to be a sufficiently distinctive attribute to supply the sign or title to those inns which possess it. Rufini gives examples of above a dozen thus called ‘Del Grottino.’ [↑]
[13] The ground-floor being used as a cellar, the family lives upstairs. This is a very common arrangement. [↑]
[14] The reader who has not access to a better rendering of this beautiful legend will find one I have given from Bopp, in ‘Sagas from the Far East,’ pp. 402–3; but Mr. Ralston gives us a Russian version, in which a doll or puppet is the agent instead of the cow (pp. 150–9). It is true, on the other hand, that he has (p. 115) another rather different story, in which a cow also gives good gifts; and mentions others at p. 260. In a story of the Italian Tirol, ‘Le due Sorelle,’ which I shall have occasion to notice later, a cow has also a supernatural part to play, somewhat like that of Vaccarella; only there she acts at the bidding of a fairy, not of her own motion. [↑]
GIUSEPPE L’EBREO.
‘Do you know the story of Giuseppe l’Ebreo?’