‘What do you know about burning witches in mezzo alla Piazza? I thought such things were never done in Rome?’ I observed one day to one who ended a story thus. ‘Who said the story took place in Rome?’ was the ready reply. I received the same reply to the same observation from another, with the addition of ‘There was something about a king and a queen in the story and in other stories I have told you, and we never had a king or a queen of Rome—the one may belong to the same country as the other. Who knows what sort of a country such stories come from!’ A third answered, ‘No; I don’t believe witches were ever burnt by law in Rome; I have always heard say that our laws were less fierce than those of some other countries; but I can quite fancy that if the people found a witch doing such things as I have told you, they would burn her all by themselves, law or no law.’
Of course I have no pretension that my researches have been exhaustive, nor have I been, properly speaking, searching for superstitions, but in a good deal of intercourse with the uneducated, I have certainly come across less of superstitious beliefs in Rome than collectors of Folklore seem to have met in other countries. The saying exists,
Giorno di Venere,
Giorno di Marte,
Non si sposa,
E non si parte.[12]
But I have seldom heard the lines quoted without the addition of, ‘But I don’t believe in such things;’ and a reference to the column of marriage announcements in the ‘Times’ will show that the prejudice against marrying in the month of May is, to say the least, quite as strong among our own most highly-educated classes.
It is not altogether uncommon at the Parochial Mass, to hear along with banns of marriage and other announcements, a warning pronounced against such and such a person whom private counsel has failed to deter from ‘dabbling in black arts;’ but from the observations which I have had the opportunity of making such persons find their dupes chiefly among the dissolute and non-believing. I know a very consistently religious woman, and also singularly intelligent, who appeared to have a salutary contempt for certain practices in which her husband, a worthless fellow, who had long ago abandoned her and his religion together, indulged. ‘He actually believes,’ she told me one day, ‘that if you go out and stand on a cross road—not merely where two roads happen to cross each other, but where they actually make a perfect cross—and if at the stroke of mezzogiorno in punto, you call the Devil he is bound to come to you.’
‘He always kept a bag of particular herbs,’ I heard from her another time, ‘hung up over the door, all shred into the finest bits. As he was very angry if I touched them, I one day said, “Why do you want that bundle of herbs kept just there?” and then he told me that it was because no witch could pass under them without first having to count all the minute bits, and that though it was true she might do so by her arts without taking them down and handling them, it was yet so difficult when they were shred into such an infinite number that it was the best preservative possible against evil influences.’