Such are the principal legends connected with this curious ceremony, and we are constrained to say that we believe that one is as fabulous as another. The explanation of the custom is really this.
The rite of striking the new fire was observed at Florence, as elsewhere, from an early date, but the communication of the new fire from the newly-ignited candle was both a long affair, and occasioned noise, struggle and inconvenience. Accordingly—partly to save the church from being the scene of an unseemly scramble, and partly to make the communication of the fire an easy matter to a large number of persons at once—an ingenious contrivance was made, whereby a dove should carry the flame from the choir of the cathedral, above the reach of the people, who therefore could not scuffle and scramble for it, to the market-place outside, where it ignited a bonfire, to which all the people could apply their candles and torches. After a while the real intention was forgotten, and the bonfire was converted into a great exhibition of fireworks in the daytime.
The whole ceremony has a somewhat childish character, but then it dates back to a period when all men were children; and it serves, if rightly understood, to link us with the past, and enables us to measure the distance we have trodden since those ages when fire was one of the most difficult things to be re-acquired, if once lost, and the preservation of fire and the striking of fire were matters of extreme importance, and were after a while reserved to a sacred class.[22]
VI.
Umbrellas.
Some years ago I happened to be at that most picturesque old city of Würzburg on a showery May market-day. The window of my hotel commanded the square. The moment that the first sprinkle came over the busy scene of market women and chafferers, the whole square suddenly flowered like a vast garden. Every woman at her stall expanded an enormous umbrella, and these umbrellas were of every dye—crimson, blue, green, chocolate, and—yes, there was even one of marigold yellow, under which the huckstress crouched as beneath a mighty inverted eschscholtzia. Nor were these umbrellas all selfs, as horticulturists describe monotoned pansies; for some were surrounded with a perfect rainbow of coloured lines as a border; and others were wreathed about with a pattern of many-hued flowers. Presently, out came the May sun, and, presto, every umbrella was closed and folded and laid aside: the flower garden had resolved itself into a swarm of busy marketers.
On reaching Innsbruck, I lighted on an umbrella-maker’s shop under one of the arcades near the Golden Roof of Frederick with the Empty Pockets. I saw suspended before the vault in which the man dwelt or did business, umbrellas the exact reproductions of what I had seen at Würzburg—red, green, brown, blue, even white—lined with pink, like mushrooms: and for the sum of about fifteen shillings I became the happy possessor of one of these articles, which I proceed to describe. The covering was of a brilliant red, and imprinted round it was a wreath of flowers and foliage, white, yellow, blue, and green; around the ferule also was a smaller wreath similar in colour and character. This cover was stretched on canes, such canes as are well known in schools; and the canes were distended by twisted brass strainers, rising out of a sliding tube of elaborately hammered brass, through which passed the stick of the umbrella. The whole, when expanded, measured nearly five feet, and was not extraordinarily heavy, nothing like the weight of a gig-umbrella. Walking under it was like walking about in a tent, taking the tent with one; and walking under it in the rain filled one with sanguine hopes that the day was about to mend, so surrounded was one with a warm and cheerful glow. On a hot climb over a pass, when I spread this shelter above my head against the sun, I felt that I must appear to the shepherds on the high pastures like a migratory Alpine rose.
I met with no inconvenience whatever from my umbrella till I reached Heidelberg on my way home, and innocently walked with it under my arm in the Castle gardens on Sunday afternoon. Then I found that it provoked attention and excited astonishment. Such an umbrella had its social level, and that level was the market-place, not the Castle gardens; it was sufferable as spread over an old woman vending sauerkraut, but not as carried furled in the hand of a respectably dressed gentleman. So much comment did my umbrella occasion that it annoyed me, spoiled the pleasure of my walk, and I accepted the offer of a friend to relieve me of it. He took my umbrella and thrust it up his back under his coat, and with crossed arms to the rear, hugged it to his spine. But even so it was not to escape observation, for the black handle, crooked, appeared below his coat, a fact to which I was aroused as I dropped behind my friend, by the exclamations of a nursemaid: “Ach Tausend! the Herr has a curly tail!” and then of a Professor, who, beckoning some students to him, said: “Let us catch him—the Missing Link, homo caudatus.”
On reaching England, the great scarlet-crimson (it was neither exactly one nor exactly the other) umbrella was consigned to the stand in the hall. Those were not the days when ladies spread red parasols above their bonnets, and had sunshades to match their gowns: in those days all parasols were brown or black; consequently the innovation of a red umbrella would be too great, too startling for me to attempt. But one morning—it was that on which the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh made their entry into London after their marriage—I started early to drive to the station and go to town and join the sightseers. It may be in the recollection of those who were out that day that snow fell. Early in the morning in the country there was a good deal of snow, so much, that I thought I might safely take my Tyrolese umbrella to cover me in my gig. I intended to furl it before I reached the station and such places where men do congregate. It was remarkable that although the snow spoiled the picturesque effect of the procession in Regent’s Street by making the redcoats draw on their overcoats, it induced me to unfurl my marvellous red travelling tent—which is an instance, may be, of the compensation there is in nature.