Transcribed from the 1899 Elliot Stock edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

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THE
UNPUBLISHED LEGENDS
OF
VIRGIL.

COLLECTED BY
CHARLES GODFREY LELAND.

LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1899.

TO THE
SENATOR AND PROFESSOR
DOMENICO COMPARETTI,

AUTHOR OF
“VIRGIL IN THE MIDDLE AGES,”

THIS WORK IS DEDICATED
BY
CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

Florence, September, 1899.

PREFACE.

All classic scholars are familiar with the Legends of Virgil in the Middle Ages, in which the poet appears as a magician, the last and best collection of these being that which forms the second volume of “Virgilio nel Medio Aevo,” by Senator Professor Domenico Comparetti. But having conjectured that Dante must have made Virgil familiar to the people, and that many legends or traditions still remained to be collected, I applied myself to this task, with the result that in due time I gathered, or had gathered for me, about one hundred tales, of which only three or four had a plot in common with the old Neapolitan Virgilian stories, and even these contained original and very curious additional lore. One half of these traditions will be found in this work.

As these were nearly all taken down by a fortune-teller or witch among her kind—she being singularly well qualified by years of practice in finding and recording such recondite lore—they very naturally contain much more that is occult, strange and heathen, than can be found in the other tales. Thus, wherever there is opportunity, magical ceremonies are described and incantations given; in fact, the story is often only a mere frame, as it were, in which the picture or true subject is a lesson in sorcery.

But what is most remarkable and interesting in these traditions, as I have often had occasion to remark, is the fact that they embody a vast amount of old Etrusco-Roman minor mythology of the kind chronicled by Ovid, and incidentally touched on or quoted here and there by gossiping Latin writers, yet of which no record was ever made. I am sincerely persuaded that there was an immense repertory of this fairy, goblin, or witch religion believed in by the Roman people which was never written down, but of which a great deal was preserved by sorcerers, who are mostly at the same time story-tellers among themselves, and of this much may be found in this work. And I think no critic, however inclined to doubt he may be, will deny that there is in the old mythologists collateral evidence to prove what I have asserted.

It may be observed that in these Northern legends, Virgil is in most cases spoken of as a poet as well as magician, but that he is before all, benevolent and genial, a great sage invariably doing good, while always inspired with humour. Mr. Robinson Ellis has shrewdly observed that, in reading the Neapolitan tales of Virgil, “we are painfully struck with the absence, for the most part, of any imaginative element in them.” I would, however, suggest, that in these which I have gathered with no small pains—having devoted a great part of my time for several years to the task—there is no want of imagination, romance or humour.

Such are, in brief, the contents of this book. Sincerely trusting that the press and public may treat it as kindly as they did the “Etrusco-Roman Remains,” and “The Legends of Florence,” I await the verdict, which will probably determine whether I shall publish other Italian traditions, of which I have still a very large collection.

Charles Godfrey Leland.

Florence,
1899.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

“C’est bien raison que je vous compte des histoires de Virgille de Romme lequel en son temps, fis moult de merveilles.”—Les Faictz Merveilleux de Virgille. XVIth Century.

The reader is probably aware that during the Middle Ages, Virgil, who had always retained great fame as a poet, and who was kindly regarded as almost a Christian from a conjectured pious prophecy in his works, underwent the process of being made romantic and converted into a magician. How it all came to pass is admirably set forth by Professor Domenico Comparetti in his truly great work on “Virgil in the Middle Ages.” [0a]

During the twelfth century, and for some time after, many learned pilgrims or tourists from different parts of Europe, while in Italy, hearing from the people these tales, which had a great charm in an age when the marvellous formed the basis of nearly all literature, gave them to the world in different forms. And as the fame of Virgil as a poet was almost the first fact learned by those who studied Latin, legends relating to him spread far and wide. The Mantuan bard had been well-nigh deified by the Romans. “Silius Italicus used to celebrate his birthday every year, visiting his tomb as if it were a temple, and as a temple the Neapolitan Statius used to regard it.” [0b] And this reverence was preserved by the Christians, who even added to it a peculiar lore.

“These tales,” says Comparetti, “originated in Naples, and thence spread into European literature, in the first instance, however, outside Italy. Their origin in Italy was entirely the work of the lower classes, and had nothing to do with poetry or literature; it was a popular superstition founded on local records connected with Virgil’s long residence in Naples, and the celebrity of his tomb in that city.”

This latter is a shrewd observation, for as the tomb is close by the mysterious grotto of Posilippo, which was always supposed to have been made by magic, it was natural that Virgil, who was famed for wisdom, should have been supposed to have wrought the miracle, and it may well be that this was really the very first, or the beginning of all the legends in question. These were “connected with certain localities, statues and monuments in the neighbourhood of Naples itself, to which Virgil was supposed to have given a magic power.” . . . Foreigners who visited Naples thus learned these legends, and they passed “even into Latin works of a learned nature.” So it resulted that from the twelfth century onward the fame of Virgil as a magician spread all over Europe. Among those who thus made of him a wonder-worker were Conrad von Querfurt, Gervase of Tilbury, Alexander Neckham, and John of Salisbury.

That these marvellous tales were localized in Naples, and there first applied to Virgil, may be freely admitted, but that they really originated or were first invented there will be claimed by no one familiar with older or Oriental legends. This has not escaped Senator Comparetti, who observes that wonders attributed long before to Apollonius of Tyana and others “are practically identical with those attributed in Naples to Virgil.” The idea of setting up the image of a fly to drive away flies, as Virgil did in one legend, is Babylonian, for in Lenormand’s Chaldæan Magic we are told that demons are driven away by their own images, and Baalzebub, as chief of flies, was probably the first honoured in this respect.

That is to say, that little by little and year by year the tales which had been told of other men in earlier times—magicians, sorcerers, and wizards wild—were remade and attributed to Virgil. The very first specimen of an ancient Italian novella, given by Roscoe, is a Virgilian legend, though the translator makes no mention of it. So in the “Pentamerone” of Giambattista Basile of Naples we find that most of the tales come from the East, and had been of old attributed to Buddha, or some other great man.

The Neapolitan stories of Virgil were spread far and wide, into almost every language in Europe; but they had their day, and now rank with black-letter literature, being republished still, but for scholars only. I had read most of them in my youth, and when the work of Senator Comparetti appeared, I was struck by the singular fact that there is next to nothing in all the vast amount of Virgilianæ which he quotes, which appears to have been gathered of late among the people at large. A great number of classic and mediæval names and characters are very familiar to the most ignorant Italians. How came it to pass that nothing is known of Virgil, who appears in the “Divina Commedia” as the guide, philosopher, and friend of Dante, whose works are read by all.

Inspired with this idea, I went to work and soon found that, as I had conjectured, there were still extant among the people a really great number of what may be called post-Virgilian legends, which possibly owe their existence, or popularity, to the Virgil of Dante. A very few of them are like certain of the old Neapolitan tales, but even these have been greatly changed in details. As might have been expected of Northern Italian narratives, they partake more of the nature of the novella or short romance, than of the nursery-tale or the mere anecdote, as given by the earlier writers. That is to say, there was, after Dante, among the people a kind of renaissance in the fame of Virgil as a magician. It is by a curious coincidence that, as Senator Comparetti admits, all the earlier legends of the bard were gathered and published by foreigners; so have these of later time been collected by one not to the country born.

One good reason why I obtained so many of these tales so readily is that they were gathered, like my “Florentine Legends” and “Etrusco-Roman Remains,” chiefly among witches or fortune-tellers, who, above all other people, preserve with very natural interest all that smacks of sorcery. It is the case in every country—among Red Indians, Hindus or Italians—that wherever there are families in which witchcraft is handed down from generation to generation there will be traditional tales in abundance, and those not of the common fairy-tale kind, but of a mysterious, marvellous nature. Now, that the narratives in this book contain—quite apart from any connection with Virgil—in almost every instance some curious traces of very ancient tradition, is perhaps to be admitted by all. Such is the description of Agamene, the Spirit of the Diamond, which is one of the oldest of Græco-Roman myths, and Pæonia, who kills or revives human beings by means of flowers, wherein she is the very counterpart of Minerva-Pæonia, who taught Esculapius, as mythology expressly states, “the power of flowers and herbs,” even as the statue Pæonia teaches Virgil. These are only two out of scores of instances, and they are to me, as they will be to every scholar, by far the most valuable part of my book.

These incidents, which I in many cases did not know, until after subsequent search in mythologies, were ancient, certainly could not have been invented by the very ignorant old women from whom they were gathered. And this brings me to the important consideration as to whether these stories are really authentic. A learned Italian professor very lately asked me how I could be sure that the common people did not palm off on me their own inventions as legends of Virgil. To which I replied that I would not be responsible for the antiquity or origin of a single tale. For, in the first place, any story of any sorcerer is often attributed to Virgil, so that in two or three instances which I have specially noted “a Virgil” means any magician. And very often I have myself told some story as a hint or suggestion, in order to give some idea as to what I wanted, or to revive the memory. But in all cases they have come back to me so changed, and with such strange fragments of classic lore of the most recondite kind added, that I had no scruple in giving them just for what they were worth, leaving it for critics to sift out the ancient from the modern, even as the eagles described by Sinbad the Sailor, brought back the legs of mutton with diamonds sticking to them. “You would not,” I said to the professor of classical lore, “reject newly-mined gold because it is encumbered with dross; and that there may be much dross in all which I have gathered I am sure; but there is gold in it all.”

The nursery peasant tales collected by Grimm and Crane, and many more, represent surface-diggings. Those who were first in the field had an easy time in gathering what thousands knew. But these finds are becoming exhausted, and the collector of the future must mine out of the rock, and seek for deeper traditions which have been sedulously concealed or kept secret. There are still many peasants who know this lore, though their number is very rapidly diminishing, and they are, as a rule, without exception, extremely averse to communicating it to anyone whom they know or think is not what I may call a fellow-heathen, or in true sympathy with them. I may give in illustration of this an incident which occurred recently as I write: Miss Roma Lister, who had an old Italian witch-nurse, still living in Rome (and who has contributed several of these tales of Virgil), who taught her something of the art “which none may name,” while walking with a priest near Calmaldoli, met with a man whom she knew had the reputation of being a stregone, or wizard. She asked him, sotto voce, if he knew the name of Tinia, one of the Etruscan gods, still remembered by a few, and who is described in the “Etrusco-Roman Remains.” He hastily replied in a whisper: “Yes, yes; and I know the incantation to him also—but don’t let the priest hear us.” At a subsequent meeting they interchanged confidences freely. Maddalena, whom I have chiefly employed to make collections among witches and others, has often told me how unwilling those who knew any witch-lore are to confess it, especially to ladies or gentlemen. One must literally conjure it out of them.

These tales of Virgil were collected in Florence, Volterra, Rocca-Casciano, Arezzo, Siena, and several places near it, and Rome. I have several not to be published, because they are so trifling, or so utterly confused and badly written, or “shocking,” that I could make nothing of them. In all, however, which I have collected, with one exception—which is manifestly a mere common fairy-tale arbitrarily attributed to the subject as a magus—Virgil appears as a great and very benevolent man. He aids the poor and suffering, has great sympathy for the weak and lowly, and is ever ready to reprove arrogance and defeat the plans of evil sorcerers. But while great and wise and dignified, he is very fond of a joke. Sometimes he boldly punishes and reproves the Emperor of Rome—anon he contrives some merry jest to amuse him. The general agreement of so many stories drawn from different sources as to this character is indeed remarkable.

As regards the general “value” of these Virgilian tales, and a vast number of others which I have collected, all of them turning on magic or occult motives, it is well worth mentioning that from one to three centuries ago a great number of tales very much resembling them were published by Grosius, Prætorius, and others, as at a later date the “Histoire des Fantômes et des Demons,” Paris, 1819, which work unquestionably supplied Washington Irving with the story of the Spectre Bridegroom, and another tale. [0c] In Italy, the writers of novella, such as Boccaccio, Bandello, Cinthio, and in fact nearly all of them, shook off and ridiculed all that was associated with barbarous superstitions and incantations, and yet in the “Metamorphosi” of Lorenzo Selva, Florence, 1591, and here and there in similar obscure works by writers not so painfully afflicted by “culture” and style as the leaders, there are witch and fairy-tales which might have come from very old women, and would be certainly recognised by them as familiar traditions. That these mysterious stories contained an immense amount of valuable old Latin classic lore and minor mythology, or that they were not altogether silly and useless, does not seem to have entered the head of any one Italian from Dante downward. Men like Straparola and Basile made, it is true, collections of merry tales to amuse, but that there was anything in them of solid traditional value never occurred to them. I mention the few and far-between witch-tales which are found in certain writers, because they are marvellously like those which I have given. Some of these, especially the later, are so elaborate or dramatic, or inspired with what seems to be literary culture, that many who are only familiar with simple fairy-tales might doubt whether the former are really traditional folklore of the people, or even of fortune-tellers. There is a curious fact, unnoted now, which will be deeply dwelt on in a future age when folklore and phases of culture will be far more broadly and deeply or genially considered than they are at present. This is, that among the masses in Italy there exists an extraordinary amount of a certain kind of culture allied to gross ignorance, as is amusingly illustrated in the commonest language, in which, even among the lowest peasants, one hears in every sentence some transformed or melted Latin word of three or four syllables, suggesting excess of culture—like unto which is the universal use of the sonnet and terzarime among the most ignorant.

If there are any readers who find it strange that in these legends and traditions there are not only extraordinary but apparently incredible remains of culture, fragments of mythology and incantations, which pierce into the most mysterious depths of archæology, they would do well to remember that the same apparent paradox struck “Vernon Lee,” who treated it very fully in her “Euphorion,” in the chapters on the Outdoor Poetry of Italy. And among other things she thus remarks:

“Nothing can be too artificial or highflown for the Italian peasantry; its tales are all of kings, princesses, fairies, knights, winged horses, marvellous jewels . . . its songs, almost without exception, about love, constancy, moon, stars, flowers. Such things have not been degraded by familiarity and parody, as in the town; they retain for the country-folk the vague charm, like that of music, automatic and independent of thorough comprehension, of belonging to a sphere of the marvellous—hence they are repeated with almost religious servility.”

But it must be remembered that with elaborate poetic forms and fancies, which would be foreign or unintelligible, and certainly unsympathetic, even to the fairly well-educated citizen of England or America, there has been preserved to the very letter, especially in Tuscany, a mass of literature which, while resembling the romances of chivalry which Chaucer ridiculed, is far ruder; it even surpasses the Norse prose sagas in barbarism. The principal work of this kind is the “Reali di Francia,” which is reprinted every year, and which is at least a thousand years old. This work, and several like it, are the greatest literary curiosities or anomalies of the age. In them we are hurried from battle to battle, from carnage to carnage, with rude interludes of love and magic, as if even the Middle Age had never existed. The “Nibelungen Lied” and “Heldenbuch” are by comparison to them refined and modern.

Can the reader imagine this as existing in combination with the literary relics of the Renaissance and many strangely-refined forms of speech? Just so among the youngest children in Florence one sees gestures and glances and hears phrases which would seem to have been peculiar to grown-up people in some bygone stage of society. It is really necessary to bear all this in mind when reading the legends which I have collected, for they present the contradictions of barbarism and culture, of old Latin traditions and crass ignorance, as I have never seen them even imagined by students of culture.

And here I would remark, as allied to this subject, that folklore is as yet far from being understood in all its fulness. In France, for example, no scholar seems to have got beyond the idea that it consists entirely of traditions populaires, necessarily ancient. In England we have advanced further, but we are still far from realizing that with every day there springs up and grows among the masses that which in days to come will be deeply interesting, as expressing the spirit of the age. This accretive folklore is just as valuable as any—or will be so—and it should be gathered and studied, no matter what its origin may be. So of this book of mine, I express the conviction that it contains many tales which have, since the days of Dante, and many perhaps very recently, been attached to the name of Virgil, yet do not consider them less interesting than those collected in the twelfth century by Gervais of Tilbury, Neckham, and others. In fact, these here given actually contain far more ancient and curious traditional matter, because they have not been abridged or filed down by literary mediæval Latinists into mere plots or anecdotes as contracted as the “variants” of a modern folklorist. The older writers, and many of the modern, regarded as ugly excrescence all that did not belong, firstly, to scholarship or “style”; secondly, to the fact or subject in hand. Thus, Lorenzo Selva gives a witch story with six incantations, which are far more interesting than all the washy poetry in his book, but is so ashamed of having done so, that he states in a marginal note that he has only preserved them to give an idea of “the silliness of all such iniquitous trash”—the “iniquitous trash” in question being evidently of Etrusco-Roman origin, to judge from form and similarity to other ancient spells. In these later Virgilian tales there has been no scruple, either as regards literary elegance or piety, to prevent the chronicler from giving them just as they were told, the “sinful and silly” incantations, when they occurred, being faithfully retained, with all that can give an idea of the true spirit of the whole. The mean fear of appearing to be vulgar, or credulous, or not literally “genteel,” has caused thousands of such writers to suppress traditions worth far more than all they ever penned.

I write this in the belief that all my critics will admit that in these, as in my “Florentine Legends” and “Etrusco-Roman Remains,” I have really recovered and recorded a great deal of valuable ancient tradition. Also that what was preserved to us of ancient Etruscan or Græco-Latin lore regarding the minor gods and sylvan deities, goblins, etc., by classic writers is very trifling indeed compared to the immense quantity which existed, and that a great deal of it may still be found among the peasantry, especially among wizards and witches, is unquestionable. That I have secured some of this in my books is, I trust, true; future critics will winnow it all out, and separate the wheat from the chaff.

I have entitled this work “The Unpublished Legends of Virgil,” which may be called a contradiction in terms, since it is now given in type. But it is the only succinct title of which I can think which expresses its real nature, and separates it from the earlier collections of such tales, the latest of which was issued by Mr. D. Nutt.

And, finally, I would remark with some hesitation in advancing so strange an idea, that in all the legends which I have gathered, I find persistence in a very rude and earlier faith, which the Græco-Roman religion and Christianity itself, instead of destroying, seem to have simply strengthened. Indeed, there are remote villages in Italy in which Catholicism in sober truth has come down to sorcery, or gradually conformed to it, not only in form, but in spirit; from which I conclude that, till science pur et simple shall be all-prevalent, the oldest and lowest cults will exist among those whose minds are adapted to them. And as Edward Clodd, the President of the Folklore Society, has clearly shown, [0d] there are thousands, even among the highly-educated in Europe, who really belong to these old believers.

There will come a day, and that not very far off, when the last traces of these strange semi-spiritual-romantic or classic traditions will have vanished from the people, and then what has been recorded will be sought for and studied with keenest interest, and conclusions drawn from it of which we have no conception. To some of us they are even now only as

“Departing sunbeams, loth to stop,
Still smiling on the mountain-top.”

To the vast majority even of the somewhat educated world, collecting such lore is like sending frigates to watch eclipses and North Pole explorations, and the digging up old skulls in Neanderthals—that is, a mere fond waste of money and study to no really useful purpose. There is a law of evolution which is so strictly and persistently carried out, that it would seem as if the mocking devil, who, according to the Buddhists, is the real head of the Universe, had it in his mind to jeer mankind thereby—and it is that the work of man in the past shall perish rapidly, and those who seek vestigia rerum shall have as little material as possible, even as dreams flit. So the strife goes ever on, chiefly aided by the ignorant, who “take no interest” in the past; and so it will be for some time to come. I have often observed that in Italy, as in all countries, children and peasants take pleasure in destroying old vases and the like, even when they could sell them at a profit; and there is something of the same spirit among all people regarding things which they do not understand. Blessed are they who do something in their generation to teach to the many the true value of all which conduces to culture or science! Blessed be they who save up anything for the future, “and they shall be blest” by wiser men to come! The primeval savages who heaped up vast koken middens, or thousands of tons of oyster-shells and bones, did not know that they were writing history; but they did it. Perhaps the wisest of us will be as savages to those who are to come, as they in turn will be to later men.

THE STORY OF ROMOLO AND REMOLO.

“In quei buon tempi, ne i primi principii del Mondo, dicon li Poeti che gli uomini e le Bestie facevano tutti una medesima vita. . . . E che sia il vero ch’ eglino s’ impastassino del feroce, como loro, e s’ incorporassino, leggete di Romolo e Remulo i quali si pascevon di latte di lupa. Ecco già che divennero in opera lupi ingordissimi, e voraci.”—La Zucca del Doni Fiorentino, 1607.

There was of old a King who had a beautiful wife, and also two children, twins, who were exactly alike. This King was named Romo and his wife Roma, and the children were called Romolo and Remolo.

Now, it came to pass that the Queen and her twins, both as yet sucklings (ancora poppanti), were besieged in a castle when the King was far away. The enemy had sworn to kill the whole royal family and to extirpate the kingly race.

Now, when the Queen was in sore distress, seeing death close upon her, there came to her a wizard, who said:

“There is only one way by which you can save your life and that of your babes. I can change you all three into lupi manari, or were-wolves, and thus in the form of wolves you may escape.”

Then the Queen had the power to become a she-wolf or a human being at her will, and it was the same with the children. So they fled away, and lived in the woods for seven years; and the boys grew up like young giants, as strong as six common children. And the Queen became more beautiful than ever, for she lived under a spell.

One day the King was hunting in the forest, when he found himself alone, and surrounded by such a flock of raging wolves that his life was in great danger, when all at once there came a very beautiful woman, who seemed to have great power over the beasts, as if she were their queen, for they obeyed her and retreated. Then the King recognised in her his lost wife. So they returned with the twins to their castle, but the King did not know that his wife and children were themselves were-wolves.

One day the same enemy who had sought to kill the Queen seven years before, of which the King knew nothing, came to the castle pretending to be a friend, and was kindly treated. But when the Queen and her two sons beheld him, they flew at him as if they were mad, and tore him to pieces before all the Court, and began to devour him like raging wolves. Yet still the King did not know the whole truth.

Then a brother of the King who was thus slain gathered an army and besieged Romo, who found himself in great danger. One evening he said:

“There is danger within the walls,
The sound of enemies without,
The sun set in blood,
To-morrow it may rise to death.
Would that I had more warriors to fight!
Two hundred fierce and bold;
Two hundred would save us all,
Three hundred would give us full victory.”

The Queen said nothing, but that night she stole secretly out of the castle with her sons, and when alone they began to howl, and soon all the were-wolves in the country assembled. So the Queen returned with three hundred men, so fierce and wild that they looked like devils.

They were strange in every way, and talked or howled among themselves in a horrible language, which, however, the Queen and her sons seemed to understand. And in the first battle Romo gained a great victory. And it was observed that the three hundred men ate the dead. However, the King was well pleased to conquer.

When Romolo and Remolo were grown up to be men they learned that in a land not far away were two Princesses named Sabina and Sabinella, who were the two most beautiful, and also the strongest, maidens in the world. And it was also made known that he who would win either must come and conquer her in fight and carry her away by main strength.

So Romolo and Remolo went to their city, and on an appointed day the two Princesses appeared in the public place, ready for the combat. But Romolo advanced with his brother riding on his shoulders, pick-back, sulle spalle, as boys do, and, catching up Sabina with one hand and Sabinella with the other, he ran away like the wind—so rapidly that he soon distanced all pursuers. And when Romolo was tired, Remolo took his place, carrying the sisters and bearing his brother. And Romolo made a song on it:

“Up and down the mountain,
Over the fields and through the rivulets,
Over gray rocks and green grass,
I saw a strange beast run;
It had three bodies and three heads,
Six arms and six legs,
Yet did it never run on more than two.
Read the riddle rightly, if you can.”

The two brothers wished to build a new and great city of their own. They went to a certain goddess, who told them:

“The city which ye hope to build will be
The greatest ever seen in Italy;
Above all others it will tower sublime,
And rule the world in a far future time;
But know that at the first, ere it can rise,
It calls for blood and human sacrifice.
I know not where the choice or fate doth lie,
But of ye two the one must surely die.”

Now, men were greatly wanting for this city, because in those days there were but few in the land. Then the brothers assembled many wolves, bears, foxes, and all wild beasts, and by their power changed them into men. And they did it thus: A sorcerer took an ox and enchanted it, and slew it, and sang over it a magic song, and left it in an enchanted place. Then the wolves and other wild beasts came by night to the great stone of the sacrifice, by a running stream. A god beheld it. They ate the meat—they became men. These were the first Romans.

Last of all came a serpent with a gold crown—the Queen of the Serpents. She ate of the meat and became the most beautiful woman in the world. She was a great magician. Thus she became the goddess of the city, and dwelt in the tower of the temple. And her name was Venus. She was like a star.

Then Romolo and Remolo wished to know which of them was to die to save the city. And both desired it. Then they resolved to take an immense stone and cast it one at the other. So Remolo picked it up and cast it at his brother, and all who beheld it thought he must be slain. But Romolo caught it in his hands and threw it back; yet Remolo caught it easily. But in that instant his foot slipped, and he fell backward over the Tarpeian Rock, and so he perished. This is an old story.

And thus it was that Rome was built.

[Now, it was in this city, or near by, that in after-time Virgil was born, who in his day did such wonders. But the first wonder of all was the manner of his birth. For Virgil was the glory of Rome, and the greatest poet and sorcerer ever known therein.]

It did not occur to me to include this tale among the Virgilian legends, but finding that the compiler of “Virgilius the Sorcerer” (1893) has begun with a legend of Romulus and Remus, I have done the same, having one by me. As the giant said to the storytelling ram, “There is nothing like beginning at the commencement.”

HOW VIRGIL WAS BORN.

“And truly this aurum potabile, or drinkable gold, is a marvellous thing, for it worketh wonders to sustain human life, removing all disorders, and ’tis said that it will revive the dead.”—Phil. Ulstadt: Cælum Philosophorum, seu Liber de Secretis.

“And there be magic mirrors in which we may see the forms of our enemies, and the like, battalions for battle, and sieges, and all such things.”—Peter Goldschmid: The Witch and Wizard’s Advocate overthrown (1705).

There was once in an old temple in Rome a great man, a very learned Signore. His name was Virgilio, or Virgil. He was a magician, but very good in all things to all men; he had a kind heart, and was ever a friend to the poor.

Virgil was as brave and fearless as he was good. And he was a famous poet—his songs were sung all over Italy. Some say that he was the son of a fairy (fata), and that his father was a King of the magicians; others declared that his mother was the most beautiful woman in the whole world, and that her name was Elena (Helen), and his father was a spirit. And how it came about was thus:

When all the great lords and princes were in love with the beautiful Elena, she replied that she would marry no one, having a great dread of bearing children. She would not become a mother. And to avoid further wooing and pursuing she shut herself up in a tower, and believed herself to be in safety, because it was far without the walls of Rome. And the door to it was walled up, so that no one could enter it. But the god Jove (Giove) entered; he did so by changing himself into many small pieces of gilded paper (gold-leaf), which came down into the tower like a shower.

The beautiful Helen held in her hand a cup of wine, and many of the bits of gold-leaf fell into it.

“How pretty it looks!” said Helen. “It would be a pity to throw it away. The gold does not change the wine. If I drink the gold I shall enjoy good health and ever preserve my beauty.”

But hardly had Helen drunk the wine, before she felt a strange thrill in all her body, a marvellous rapture, a change of her whole being, followed by complete exhaustion. And in time she found herself with child, and cursed the moment when she drank the wine. And to her in this way was born Virgil, who had in his forehead a most beautiful star of gold. Three fairies aided at his birth; the Queen of the Fairies cradled him in a cradle made of roses. She made a fire of twigs of laurel; it crackled loudly. To the crackling of twigs of laurel he was born. His mother felt no pain. The three each gave him a blessing; the wind as it blew into the window wished him good fortune; the light of the stars, and the lamp and the fire, who are all spirits, gave him glory and song. He was born fair and strong and beautiful; all who saw him wondered.

Then it happened, when Virgil was fourteen years old, that one day in summer he went to an old solitary temple, all ruined and deserted, and therein he laid down to sleep. But ere he had closed his eyes he heard a sound as of a voice lamenting, and it said:

“Alas! I am a prisoner!
Will no one set me free?
If any man can do it,
Full happy shall he be.”

Then Virgil said:

“Tell me who thou art and where thou art.”

And the voice answered:

“I am a spirit,
Imprisoned in a vase
Under the stone
Which is beneath thy head.”

Then Virgil lifted the stone and found a vase, which was closed; and he opened it, and there came forth a beautiful spirit, who told him that there was also in the vase a book of magic and necromancy (magia e gramanzia).

“Therein wilt thou find all secrets
Which thou desirest to obtain,
To make what thou wilt into gold,
To make the dead speak,
To make them come before thee,
To go invisibly where thou wilt,
To become a great poet.
Thou wilt learn the lost secret
How to become great and beautiful;
Thou wilt rediscover the mystery
Of predicting what is to take place;
Yea, to win fortune in every game.”

By the vase was a magic wand, the most powerful ever known. And from that day Virgil, who had been as small as a dwarf, became a tall, stately, very handsome man.

This was his first great work: he made a mirror wherein one could see all that was going on in any country in the world, in any city, as well into any house as anywhere. Keeping the mirror hidden (beneath his cloak), he went to the Emperor. And because he was a very handsome man, well dressed, and also by the aid of the mirror, he was permitted to go into the hall where the Emperor sat. And, conversing with him, the Emperor was so pleased that he spoke more familiarly and confidentially than he was wont to do with his best friends; at which the courtiers who were present were angry with jealousy.

Turning to Virgil, the Emperor said:

“I would give a thousand gold crowns to know just what the Turks are doing now, and if they mean to make war on me.”

Virgil replied:

“If your Highness will go into another room, I can show in secret what the Turks are now doing.”

“But how you can make me see what the Turks are doing is more than I can understand,” replied the Emperor. “However, let us go, if it be only to see what fancy thou hast in thy head.”

Then the Emperor rose, and giving his arm to Virgil, went to a room apart, where the magician showed and explained to him (per filo e per segna) all that the Turks were about. And the Emperor was amazed at seeing clearly what Virgil had promised to show. Then he gave to Virgil the thousand crowns with his own hand, and was ever from that day his friend. And so Virgil rose in the world.

In this tale there is as quaint and naïve a mixture of traditions and ideas as one could desire. The fair Helen, in her tower of Troy, becomes Danae visited by Jupiter, and as the narrator had certainly seen Dantzic Golden Water, or some other cordial with gold-leaf in it, the story of the shower is changed into aureated wine. It is evident that the one who recast the legend endeavoured to make this incident intelligible. All the rest is mediæval. “Gold,” says Helen, “will preserve my beauty.” Thus the aurum potabile of the alchemists was supposed to do the same as Paracelsus declared.

We all recognise a great idea when put into elaborate form by a skilled artist, but to perceive it as a diamond in the rough and recognise its value is apparently given to few. It is true that those few may themselves be neither poets nor geniuses—just as the Hottentot who can find or discern diamonds may be no lapidary or jeweller. What I would say is, that such ideas or motives abound in this Italian witch-lore to a strange extent.

Thus, the making Virgil a son of Jupiter by a Helen-Danae is a flight of mythologic invention, far surpassing in boldness anything given in the Neapolitan legends of the poet. Thomas Carlyle and Vernon Lee have expressed with great skill great admiration of the idea that Faust begat with the fair Helen the Renaissance. It was indeed a magnificent conception, but in very truth this fathering of Virgil, the grand type of poetry and magic, and of all earthly wisdom, by Jupiter on Helen-Danae is far superior to it in every way. For Virgil to the legend-maker represented the Gothic or Middle Ages in all their beauty and exuberance, their varied learning and splendid adventure, far more perfectly than did the mere vulgar juggler and thaumaturgist Faust, as the latter appears in every legend until Goethe transfigured him. And, strangely enough, the Virgilian cyclus, as I have given it, is as much of the Renaissance as it is classic or mediæval. The Medicis are in it to the life. In very truth it was Virgil, and not Faust, who was the typical magician par éminence after Apollonius, some of whose legends he, in fact, inherited. And Virgil has come to us with a traditional character as marked and peculiar as any in Shakespeare—which Faust did not. He has passed through the ages not only as a magus and poet, but as a personality, and a very remarkable one.

There is another very curious, and, indeed, great idea lurking in these witch-Virgilian legends, especially set forth in this of the birth and continued in all. It is that there is in them a cryptic, latent heathenism, a sincere, lingering love of the old gods, and especially of the dii minores, of fate or fays, and fauns and fairies, of spirits of the air and of rivers and fountains, an adoration of Diana as the moon-queen of the witches, and a far greater familiarity with incantations than prayers, or more love of sorceries than sacraments. Whenever it can be done, even as a post-scriptum, we have a conjuration or spell, as if the tale had awakened in the mind of the narrator a feeling of piety towards “the old religion.” The romances of Mercury, and Janus, and Vesta, and Apollo, and Diana all inspire the narrator to pray to them in all sincerity, just as a Catholic, after telling a legend of a saint, naturally repeats a prayer to him or a novena. It is the last remains of classic faith.

Or we may say, as things fell out, that the Goethean-Helen-Faust-Renaissance poem represents things as they were, or as they came to pass, as if it were the acme, while the Virgilian tradition which I here impart indicates things as they might have happened, had the stream of evolution been allowed to run on in its natural course, just as Julian the apostate (or rather apostle of the gospel of letting things be) held that progress or culture and science might have advanced just as surely and rapidly on the old heathen lines as any other. According to Heine, this would have saved us all an immense amount of trouble in our school-studies, in learning Latin and mythology, had we kept on as we were.

I mean by this that these traditions of Virgil indicate, as no other book does, the condition of a naïvely heathen mind, “suckled in a creed out-worn,” believing in the classic mythology half turned to fairies, much more sincerely, I fear, than many of my readers do in the Bible, and from this we may gather very curious reflection as to whether men may not have ideas of culture, honesty, and mercy in common, whatever their religion may be.

The marvels of the birth of Virgil of old, as told by Donatus, probably after the lost work of Suetonius, are that his mother Maia dreamed, se enixam laureum ramum, that she gave birth to a branch of laurel; that he did not cry when born, and that the pine-tree planted according to ancient custom on that occasion attained in a very short time to a great height, which thing often happens when plants grow near hot springs, as is the case on the Margariten Island, by Budapesth, where everything attains to full-size in one-third of the usual time. The custom of planting a pine-tree on the birth of a child, in the belief that its condition will always indicate its subject’s health and prosperity, is still common among the Passamaquoddy, and other Red Indians in America, I having had such a tree pointed out to me by an old grandfather.

In the Aryan or Hindu mythology Buddha, who subsequently becomes a great magus and healer of all ills, like Christ, “was born of the mother-tree Maya,” according to J. F. Hewitt (“L’Histoire et les Migrations de la Croix et du Su-astika,” Bruxelles, 1898). He was the son of Kapila Vastu, who was born holding in his hands a medicament, whence he became “the Child of Medicine,” or of healing. Buddha appears to be confused with his father.

Now Virgil is clearly stated to be born of Maya or Maia, who is a mythical tree; his life is involved in that of a mysterious tree, and in more than one legend he is unquestionably identical with Esculapius, the god of medicine.

VIRGIL, THE EMPEROR, AND THE TWO DOVES.

“Qualis spelunca subito commota Columba,
Cui domus, et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi,
Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis
Dat tecto ingentem; mox ære lapsa quieto
Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas.”

Virgilius: Aen., V. 213.

This is another story, telling how Virgil first met the Emperor.

It happened on a time that the Emperor of Rome invited many of his friends to a hunt, and on the appointed day all assembled with fine horses and hounds, gay attendants, and sounding horns—tutti allegri e contenti, “all as gay as larks.”

And when they came to the place, they left their horses and went into the forest, where it befell, as usual, that some got game, while others returned lame; but on the whole they came to camp with full bags and many brags of their adventures and prowess, and supped merrily.

“It is ever so,” said the Emperor to a courtier, “one stumbles, and another grumbles; then the next minute something joyful comes, and he smiles.

“‘Thus it is true in every land
Good luck and bad go hand in hand.’”

“When men speak in that tone,” replied the courtier, “they often prophesy. Now, there is near by an ancient grotto, long forgot by men, wherein if you will sleep you may have significant dreams, even as people had in the olden time.”

So when night came on some of the courtiers went to a contadino house to lodge, while others camped out alla stella, or in the albergo al fresco, while the Emperor was guided by the courtier to an old ruin, where in a solid rock there was a door of stone, which Virgil opened by a spell. (Sic in MS.)

The Emperor was then led through a long passage into a cave, which was dry and comfortable enough, and where the attendants made a bed, whereon His Highness lay down, and, being very weary, was soon asleep.

But he had not slumbered long ere, as it seemed to him, he was awakened by the loud barking of a dog, and saw before him to his amazement a marvellously beautiful lady clad in white, with a resplendent star (crescent) on her forehead. In her right hand she bore a white dove, and in her left another, which was black.

When the lady, or goddess, saw that the Emperor was awake, she let both the doves fly. The white one, after circling several times round his head, alighted on his shoulder. The black one also flew about him, and then winged its course far away.

Then the lady disappeared, and the white dove followed her, and sat on her shoulder as she fled.

The Emperor was so much amazed, or deeply moved, by this strange sight that he slept no more, but remained all night meditating on it, nor did he on the morrow give any heed to the chase, but ever reflected on the lady and her doves.

The courtier asked him what had occurred. And the Emperor replied:

“I have had a wonderful vision, and I cannot tell the meaning thereof.”

The gentleman replied:

“There is in Rome a young man, a poet and sage, of whom I have heard strange things, and I believe that he excels in unfolding signs and mysteries.”

“It is well,” replied the Emperor. So when they returned to Rome he sent for the magician, who came, yet he knew beforehand why he was summoned to Court. And it is said that this was the first time when the Emperor knew Virgil. [12]

Now, Virgil was as yet a young man. And when the Emperor set forth what he had beheld, he replied:

“It is a marvellously favourable sign for you, oh my Emperor, for in that lady you have seen your star. There is a planet allotted to every man, and thine is of the greatest. Thou hast one—call to her, invoke her ever when in need of help, and she will never abandon thee. Thou hast seen thy star. Her greeting to thee (saluto) means that a year hence a danger will threaten thee. The black dove signifies that one year hence thou wilt have an enemy who will make war on thee. When the dove fled afar, it was not the dove but the enemy, who will be put to flight. And the white dove was not a dove, but your victory announced to you in that form, and your star has announced it because in one year you will have, as the proverb says, ‘the enemy at your heels.’”

And all this came to pass as he had foretold.

Then the poet and magician became his friend, and from that time the Emperor never moved a leaf (i.e. did nothing) without taking the advice of Virgil.

The goddess, or planet, described in this tale is very evidently Diana, appropriately introduced as the deity of the chase, but more significantly as the queen of the witches, and mistress of mysteries and divination. In both forms the dog has a peculiar adaptation, because a black dog was the common attendant of a sorcerer, as exampled by that of Henry C. Agrippa.

The dove is so widely spread in this world, and is everywhere so naturally recognised as a pretty, innocent creature, that it is no wonder that very different and distant races should have formed much the same ideas and traditions regarding it. It is a curious anomaly that while doves, especially in Roman Catholic symbolism, are the special symbols of love and peace, there are in reality no animals or birds which fight and peck so assiduously among themselves, as I have verified by much observation. However, herein the pious mythologists “builded better than they knew,” for the odium theologicum, either with heretics or among rivals in the Church, has been the cause of more quarrelling than any other in the world—woman perhaps excepted.

In the Egyptian symbolism, a widow who, out of love for her husband, will not wed again was typified by a black dove. [13] The dove who brought the olive-leaf to Noah was generally recognised as symbolizing the new birth of the world, or its regeneration after a divine bath or lustration, and the same meaning is attached to its appearance at the baptism of Christ. A German writer named Wernsdorf has written two books on the dove as a symbol, viz., “De simulacro columbæ in locis sacris antiquitas recepto,” Viterbo, 1773; and “De Columba auriculæ Gregorii adhærente,” Witteberg, 1780.

As Diana always bears the crescent, here confounded or identified very naturally with a star—both being heavenly bodies—the representing her as the peculiar planet of the Emperor is very ingenious. In seeing her he beholds his star, and, in the mute language of emblems, hears her voice. Truly there is unto all of us a star, but it is within and not without, and its name is the Will, which, when revealed or understood, can work miracles.

“So mote it be!”

VIRGILIO AND THE ROCK.

One night, when he was young, Virgil was in Naples; he went to visit a very beautiful woman. And when he left her at midnight he found the house surrounded by bravi or assassins, who had been placed there to kill him by a signore who was his rival.

Then the magician ran for his life, followed by all the crew, till he came to a steep rock like a high wall. And here he paused, and cried aloud during the minute which he had gained, this incantation:

“Apri spirito della rupe,
Apri il tuo cuore a me.
Spirito gentile, abbi,
Abbi pietà di me,
Se tu vuoi che Iddio
Abbia pietà di te.”

“Mighty spirit of the mountain,
Ope thy rocky heart to me.
Gentle sprite, I pray thee
Have mercy upon me,
As thou truly hopest
That God may pity thee.”

Then the rock opened, and Virgil fled into it and was saved.

Those who sought his life followed. And Virgil went forth, but while they were in the passage it closed at both ends, and they all perished. So was Virgil saved.

It came to pass in time that Virgil, seeing it would be of great use, opened the grotto, and it is there to this day.

There was no place where Virgil did not leave some great work, whence it came that his name is known to all the world.

There is a curious reflection, and one of great value to folk-lore, to be drawn from this, and in fact from all of these stories. It is believed—actually believed, and not merely assumed to make a tale—that the conjurations given in them have the effect attributed to them when they are uttered by any wizard or witch or person who is prepared by magic or faith. Therefore such tales as told by witches are only a frame, as it were, wherein a lesson-picture is set. This induces a deeper, hence a more advanced, kind of reflection or moral than is conveyed by common, popular fairy-tales. The one condition naturally leads to another. There is very little trace of it in the “Mährchen” of Grimm, Crane, Pitré, or Bernoni. In the novelle of Boccacio, Sachetti, Bandello and others, of which literally thousands were produced during and after the Renaissance, there is very often a commonplace kind of moral, such as follows all fables, but it is not of the same kind as that which is involved in witch-stories. Even in this of Virgil the invocation to the Spirit of the Rock, adjuring it to be merciful as it hopes for mercy from God, is beyond what is generally found in common traditions.

All of these conjurations, to have due effect, must be intoned in a certain manner, which is so peculiar that anyone who is familiar with it can recognise at a distance, where the words are not to be distinguished, by the mere sound of the voice, whether an incantation is being sung. Hence the greatest care and secresy is observed when teaching or chanting them.

Among the Red Indians of North America this is carried so far that, as one who took lessons from an Oneida sorcerer informs us, it required study every day for seven years to learn how to correctly intone one spell of twelve lines. The same is told of the old Etruscan-Latin spells in the “Dizionario Myth. Storico.”

This legend is specially interesting because the tomb of Virgil is close by the grotto of Posillippo, and it is conjectured that as it was, according to tradition, made by magic, Virgil probably made it. Therefore it may have been the first of these tales. Why the grotto was specially regarded as mysterious is almost apparent to all who have studied cave and stone worship. In early times, in the mysteries, the going through a hole or passage, especially in a rock, signified the new birth, or illumination, or initiation, hence the cult of holy or holed stones, great or small, found all over the world. Such writers as Faber and Bryant have, it is true, somewhat overdone guess-work symbolism, or fanciful interpretation, but that the passing through the dark tunnel and coming to light played a part in old rites is unquestionable, and that this respect for the subject extended to all perforated stones and even beads.

Incantations or spells are of two kinds—the traditional, and those which a powerful or gifted magician or witch improvises. This of Virgil is of the latter kind.

VIRGIL, THE EMPEROR, AND THE TRUFFLES.

“Quo ducit gula?”—Latin Saying.

“I am passionately fond of truffles, though I never tasted them.”—Xavier de Montepin.

One day Virgil was at table with the Emperor, and the latter complained that his cook was a dolt, because he could never find anything new to tempt his appetite, and that he had to eat the same kind of dishes over and over again.

“What I would like,” he said, “would be some kind of new taste or flavour. There must be many a one as yet unknown to the kitchen.”

Then Virgil, reflecting, said:

“I will see to-morrow if I cannot find something of the kind which will please your Highness.” Whereupon all who were present expressed delight, for no one doubted that he could do whatever he attempted.

So the next day Virgil went into the forests, where there were many pigs, and considered attentively what the roots might be which they dug up with such great care; for he had remarked that whatever men eat pigs also like, above all other animals. And having obtained some of the roots, which were like dark-brown or black lumps, he took them to the Emperor’s cook, and said:

“Wash these well and cut them fine, and I will see to the cooking.”

That day the Emperor had invited several friends to see what new dish Virgil would produce; and when they were assembled at table, Virgilio took the roots, cut fine, put them into a pan with oil and beaten eggs, and served them up with his own hands. And the smell thereof was so appetizing that all cried, “Evviva Virgilio!” even before they had tasted the dish. But when they had eaten of it, they were delighted indeed, and one and all wished to know what the roots were which gave such a delicate flavour; to which Virgil, rising, replied:

“Truffles!” [18]

And ever since that time, even at the table of the Pope, or any other rich man, no one has ever discovered any better flavour for food than this which was first found out by Virgil.

One day not long after this took place Virgil was in his study, when, looking at the stone in a ring which he wore, he exclaimed: “The Emperor wishes to see me!” And sure enough, a few minutes later a messenger entered, saying that his imperial master desired to speak to the sage. And, having obeyed the call, he found the Emperor ill and suffering from an indigestion.

“Caro Virgilio,” exclaimed the Emperor, “I have made thee come because I am suffering from disorder; and as that pig of a cook who caused it can give me nothing to eat to relieve it, I have recourse to science, for I know that thou art a great doctor.”

“Truly,” replied Virgil. “Very simple doctoring is needed here. Just tell the cook to boil wheat-bran in water, mix it with the yolk of an egg, and drink it in the morning before you rise.”

“Bran boiled in water!” repeated the Emperor slowly. “Just what they give to pigs! Truly, it seems that you have brought me down to a pig’s level, since you give me ‘hogs’ broth,’ as they call it.”

“I wonder,” exclaimed Virgil, “since your Highness is so humble, that you do not put yourself below the pigs, because you have abused like a pig, and many a time, that poor devil of a cook for not pleasing your palate. It is not long since I delighted you, and had applause from all, for serving truffles at your imperial table. Had he done so, you would have curiously inquired what the roots were and whence they came; and having learned that they were cibo di maiali, or pigs’ food, you would have cast him forth, and the truffles after him. For such is the wisdom of this world, and so is man deluded! But as for the bran boiled in water, whether it be pigs’ broth or not, ’tis the specific for your illness.”

“Ah well, my dear Virgilio,” replied the Emperor, “in future serve me up as many pigs’ dainties and give me as much pigs’-doctor stuff as you please, provided that all be as good as truffles, or the medicine bran broth. It is foolish to be led by mere fancies: a pig or a peasant may know as well as a prince what is pleasant for the palate or good as a cure. Evviva Virgilio!”

In this merry tale I have followed to the letter an undoubted original, which was in every detail new to me; and this is the more remarkable since there is in it decidedly the stamp and expression of a kind of humour and philosophy which seems to be peculiar to individual or literary genius. The joke of pigs’ dainties, pigs’ remedies, the calling the cook a pig, and the final reduction of the Emperor to a degree below that animal, is carried out with great ingenuity, yet as marked simplicity.

The best truffles in Italy are sold as coming from Norcia, and Nortia, who was an old Etruscan goddess, known to the original Virgil, is in popular tradition in Tuscany the Spirit of Truffles, to whom those who seek them address a scongiurazione, or evocation, which may be found in my “Etrusco-Roman Remains.” In Christian symbolism the truffle is associated with St. Antony and his pig. When the saint had resolved to die by hunger, the pig dug up and brought to him a number of truffles, the saint seeing in this an intimation by a miracle that he should eat and live, which thing would seem to be poetically commemorated in the saucisses aux truffes, or Gotha sausages, in which pork and truffles are beautifully combined.

The most remarkable variety of the truffle is one found in the United States, south of Pennsylvania. It is called tuckahoe, or Indian bread, and, with most things American, is remarkable for bigness at least, since it weighs sometimes fifteen pounds and hides at a depth of fifteen feet underground. Like California fruit, it is far more remarkable for size or weight than excellence. An incredible quantity of so-called truffles, which appear thinly sliced or in small bits in dishes even in first-class hotels or restaurants all over Europe, are nothing but burned potatoes, or similar vegetable carbon, flavoured sometimes with extract of mushrooms, but much oftener are simply tasteless soft coal. Very good truffles, equal to the French, for which they are sold, are found in the South of England. The truffle is, like raw meat, caviare, and oysters, strongly stimulating food, and as a purée or paste is beneficial for anæmic invalids.

BALSÀBO.

There once lived in Florence in the days of King Long-Ago or Queen Formerly a signore who went beyond all the men who ever sinned, in making evil out of good and turning light into darkness. For, under cover of being very devout and serving the saints, he well-nigh outdid many a devil in making all about him unhappy. He had six children, three boys and three girls, all as fine young folk as there were in Tuscany. For he was severe in punishing and slow in rewarding, always reviling, never giving a kind word. Once when his eldest son saved him from drowning at the risk of his own life, he abused and struck the youth for tearing his garment in so doing. And in his family there was ever the wolf at the table with such a hunger that one could see it, [21a] while all save himself went so sorrily clad that it was a shame to behold, and if anyone made a jest or so much as smiled there came abuse and blows. And to offend and grieve and insult was so deeply in him that it became a disease.

However, evil weeds must fade as well as flowers; everything dies except Death, and the longer time he takes to sharpen his scythe, the more keenly will it cut. So it came to pass that one day this good man, but very bad parent, came suddenly to his death-bed, while his children stood round with eyes as dry as the Arno in August, which, though it may shine here and there, never runs over. [21b]

Now, by chance there stood by the dying man the great magician Virgilio, who indeed had much love and pity for these young people. And at the same minute, but seen only by him, there came floating in, like a bit of gold-leaf on a light feather, borne on the current of air, a certain folletto, or devil, who had been drifting about in the world for a thousand years, and in all that time had only learned more and more that everything is naught, or nothing of much consequence, and that good or evil stand for one another, according to circumstances. And as the dying man was one who, above all people living, made the meanest trifle a thing of vast importance, so this devil, whose name was Balsàbo, went beyond all his own kind of diavoli pococuranti in being unlike the great Signore di Tribaldo (as the dead man was called), he being a diavolo a dirittura, a devil in a straight line, or directly forward. And this demon being invisible to all save Virgil, the master said to him secretly:

“Art thou willing to enter this man’s body and act as his soul, and become father of a family?”

“As ready for that as for anything. No doubt I will find fun in it,” answered Balsàbo.

Then Virgil said:

“Spirito di Belsàbo,
Io ti scongiurò
Che per comando mio
Tu lasci una vita sfrenata
Come ’ai tenuto per il passato
E dentro il corpo di Tribaldo
Tu possa entrare e divenire
Un capo di famiglia
Fino a ordine mio.
E tutti quei
Fanciulli educherai (sic).”

“Spirit of Belsàbo,
I now conjure thee
That by my command
Thou shalt leave the lewd life
Which thou did’st lead of old,
And enter into this body
Of Di Tribaldo, and become
Head of a family,
And educate his children.”

So into the body he went, as the spirit of Di Tribaldo went out, like the toy which shows the weather in which one puppet pops forth as the other goes in. So there he lay for a minute, all the children around in silent amazement that he had departed without cursing them. When all at once up leaped Balsàbo, as gay as a lark, crying like a Scaramuccio:

“Whoop, pigs! here we are again!”

Hearing which, the dear children, understanding that he had come to life again, did indeed weep bitterly, so that Di Tribaldo, had he stopped a little longer, might have been amazed. But he had no sooner gone out of his body than a great grim devil, a kind of detective demon, who was on the look-out for souls, whipped him up, gave him a couple of cuffs to keep him quiet, and, putting him into a game-bag, drawing the cords tight, and then rolling them round and tying them, flew off to give the prey up to the proper authorities, and what disposition they made of this precious piece of property I know not, nor truly do I much care. All that can be said is that ’twas a good riddance of bad rubbish, and that we may all rejoice that he comes no more into this story.

But what was the amazement of the well-nigh bereaved children when their solemn parent made a leap half-way to the ceiling, and then, while imitating with his mouth a zufolo, or shepherd’s pipe, to perfection, began to dance with grace a wild coranto, and anon sang:

“Chi ben vive, ben muore,
Io lo credo in mio cuore;
Oggi vivo, in figura,
E doman in sepoltura,
Ho scappato ben il orco,
Morto io, morto il porco!” [23]

“He who lives well may well depart,
As I believe with all my heart.
To-day alive, and all in bloom,
To-morrow buried in the tomb;
But I’ve escaped, and don’t care why!
If I were dead the pig might die!
The pig might die, the world be burned!
And everything to ashes turned!”

Which pious song being ended, he asked them why they were all staring at him like a party of stuck pigs, and bade them scamper and send out for a good supper, with flowers and wine; and on their asking what he would have, he replied, still singing:

“Everything to please the palate,
Venison, woodcocks, larks, and sallet,
Partridges both wild and tame,
And every other kind of game,
Buttered eggs and macaroni,
Salmagundi, rice and honey,
Mince-pies and oyster too,
Lobster patties, veal ragoût,
Beef, with mushrooms round the dish,
And everything that heart could wish.”

Whereupon, being told by his eldest daughter, who was of opinion that he had gone mad, that such a supper would cost twenty crowns, he replied that it could not be done for the money, and that he should always expect such a meal every day, and a much better one when guests should come. Wherein he kept his word, and amazed them all by urging them to stuff and cram to their hearts’ desire, but especially by pressing them to drink; and whereas it had been of yore that they had been scolded like beasts if they so much as begged for a second glass of sour, half-watered wine, they were now jeered and jibed as duffers and sticks for not swigging off their bumpers of the best and strongest like men.

And they also noted a great change in this, that while the late Signore Tribaldo had ever been as severe in manner and conversation as any saint, and grim as an old owl, the Signore Balsàbo during the meal cracked one joke after the other, some of them none too seemly, and roared with laughter at their frightened looks. But as ’tis easy to teach young cats the way to the dairy, they began to slowly put out one paw after the other, and be of the opinion that on the whole their dear papa had been much improved by his death and revival. And some word having been said of games, he suddenly whipped out a pack of cards and proposed play. At which his eldest son replying that it would be but a thin game with them who had hardly a quattrino apiece, Balsàbo sent for his strong-box, which was indeed well-lined, and gave them each a hundred crowns in gold, swearing it was a shame that such a magnificent family as his should go about like poor beggars, because handsome youth and beautiful girls needed fine clothes, and that in future they were all to spend what they liked—and bless the expense at that!—for as long as there was twopence in the locker, half of it should be theirs.

Then they sat down to play, and Gianni, the eldest son, and Bianca, the eldest daughter, who had aforetime learned to play a little on the sly, thought they would surely win. But Balsàbo in the end beat them all, and when they marvelled at his luck roared with laughter, and said ’twas no wonder, for he had cheated at every turn; and then, sitting down again, showed them how ’twas done, but bade them keep it all a family secret. “For thus,” said he, “we can among us cheat all the gamesters in Florence, and ever be as rich as so many Cardinals.”

And then he said to them, as in apology: “Ye have no doubt, my dear children, marvelled that I have this evening been somewhat strict and austere with you, which is not to be blamed, considering that I have been dead and am only just now alive again; but I trust that in future I shall be far more kind and indulgent, and lend you a helping hand in all your little games, whatever they be; for the only thing which can grieve me is that there shall be any fun or devilry going on, and I not have a hand in it. And as it is becoming that children should obey their parents, and have no secrets from them, I enjoin it strictly on you that whatever you may be up to, from swindling at pitch-and-toss, up to manslaughter or duels, ye do nothing without first taking counsel with me, because I, being more experienced in the ways of this wicked world, can best guard you against its deceptions. And so, my beloved infants, go in peace, which means go it while you are young, and as peacefully as you can, and merrily if you must!”

Now, the eldest son, Gianni, had longed well nigh to being ill, and even to tears, to wear fine clothes (in which Bianca and the others were well up with him), and have a gallant horse, like the other youths of his rank in Florence. But kind as Balsàbo had been to him, he hardly dared to broach the subject, when all at once his father introduced it by asking him why he went footing about like a pitiful beggar, instead of riding like a cavalier; and learning that it was because he had no steed, Balsàbo gave a long whistle and said:

“Well, you are a fool of forty-five degrees! Why the devil, if you thought I would not approve it, did you not buy a horse on post-obit credit, and ride him on the sly? However, ’tis never too late to mend. But such a goose as you would be certainly cheated in the buying. Come with me.”

And Gianni soon found that his saint of a father was well up to all the tricks of the horse trade, the end being that he had the best steed in Florence for half of what it would have cost him. And from this accomplished parent he also learned to ride and fence, and in the latter he taught his son so many sly passes and subtle tricks, crafty glissades and botte, that he had not his master in all the land.

And now a strange thing came to pass: that as all these young people, though willing enough to be gay and well attired, were good at heart and honest, as they day by day found that their father, though really bad in nothing, had, on the other hand, no more conscience or virtue than an old shoe or a rag scarecrow, so it was they who began to sermonize him, even as the late Signore Tribaldo had lectured them, the tables being quite turned. But what was most marvellous was that Signore Balsàbo, far from taking any offence, seemed to find in this being scolded for his want of heart, morals, and other crimes, a deep and wondrous joy, a sweet delight, as of one who has discovered a new pleasure or great treasure. This was especially the case when he was brought to book, or hauled over the coals, by his daughter Bianca, who was gifted with the severe eloquence of her other father, which she now poured forth in floods on his successor.

Now, you may well imagine that an old devil-goblin who had been kicked and footed about the world for a thousand years between the back-kitchen of hell unto the inner courts of the Vatican, including all kinds of life, but especially the bad, thus having a family to support and beloved daughters and sons to blow him up, and, in fact, the mere having any decent Christian care enough for him to call him a soulless old blackguard, was like undreamed-of bliss. He had been in his time exorcised by priests in Latin through all that grammar and vocabulary could supply, and cursed in Etruscan, Greek, Lombard, and everything else; but the Italian of his daughter had in it the exquisite and novel charm that there was real love mingled with it and gratitude for his profuse kindness and indulgence, so that ’twas to him like the pecking of an angry and dear canary bird, the which thing acted on him so strangely that he at times was fain to look about him for some stray sin to commit, in order to get a good sound scolding. For he had fallen so much into decent life and ways by living with his dear children that it often happened that he did nothing wrong for as much as three or four days together.

And truly it was a brave sight to see him, when reprimanded, cast down his eyes and sigh: “Yes, yes! ’tis too true: mea culpa! mea maxima culpa! It was indeed wicked!” when all the while he hardly knew where the sin was or wherein he had done wrong or right or anything else. Now, it may seem a strange thing that so old a sinner should ever come to grace; but as ye know that in old tombs raspberry or other seeds, hard and dry, a thousand years old, have been found which, however, grew when planted, so Balsàbo began to think and change, and try, even for curiosity’s sake, what being good meant.

Meanwhile it was a marvel to see how well—notwithstanding all the expenditure, to which there was no limit, save the consciences of the children—Balsàbo kept the treasury supplied. And this was to him a joke, as all life was, save, indeed, the children, in whom he began to take interest, or for whom he felt love; for, what with knowing where many an old treasure lay hidden, or the true value of many a cheap estate, and a hundred other devices and tricks, he ever gained so much that in time he gave great dowers to his daughters, and castles and lands, with titles, to his sons.

Now, it came to pass—and it was the greatest marvel of all—that Bianca, by her reproving and reforming Balsàbo, had her own heart turned to goodness, and gave herself up to good works and study and prayer; and unto her studies Balsàbo, curiously interested, gave great aid. Then she learned marvellously deep secrets of magic and spirits, but nothing evil; and it came to pass that in her books she found that there were beings born of the elements, creatures appointed to live a thousand years or more, and then pass away into air or fire, and exist no longer. Furthermore, she discovered that such wandering spirits sometimes took up their abode in human bodies, and that, being neither good nor bad, they were always wild and strange, given up of all things to quaint tricks and strange devices, as ready unto one thing as another.

And it came to her mind, as she noted how Balsàbo knew all languages, and spoke of things which took place ages before as if he had lived in them, and of men long dead as if he had known them, that he who was her father aforetime was ignorant of all this as he was of gentleness or kindness or good nature, all which Balsàbo carried to a fault, not caring to take the pains to injure his worst enemy or to do a good turn to his best friend, unless it amused him, in which case he would kill the one with as little sorrow as if he were a fly, and give the other a castle or a thousand crowns, and think no more of it than if he had fed a hawk or a hound. And all such good deeds he played off in some droll fashion, like tricks, as if thinking that sport, and nothing else, was the end and aim of all benevolence. However, as regarded Bianca and her brothers and sisters, he seemed to have other ideas, and to her he appeared to be as another being, in love and awe obeying her as a child and striving to understand her lessons.

So this went on for years, till at last one day Bianca, full of strange suspicions, which had become well nigh certainties, went to Virgilio and said:

“Tell me in truth who is this being whom thou didst send us as my father, for that he is not the Di Tribaldo of earlier days, I am sure. Good and kind he hath been, but too strange to be human; wild hart is he, not to be measured as a man.”

Virgil replied:

“Thou hast guessed the riddle, and yet not all; for he is a spirit of the elements, and his appointed time is drawing near to an end, and, being neither good nor evil, he would have passed away in peace into the nothing which is the end of all his kind. But thou hast awakened in him a knowledge of love and duty, so that he will die in sorrow, for he has learned from thee what he has lost.”

Then Bianca asked:

“Can he not be saved?”

And Virgil replied:

“If anyone would give his or her life, then by virtue of that sacrifice, when the thousand years of his existence shall be at an end, the two lives shall be as one in the world where all are one in love for ever.”

Bianca replied:

“That which I have begun I will finish. Having opened the bud, I will not leave the flower; having the flower, I will bring it to fruit and seed; the egg which I found and saved, I will hatch. She who hath said ‘A’ must also say ‘B,’ till all the letters are learned.

“‘Who such a course hath once begun,
To the very end must run.’

And so will I give my life to give a soul to this poor spirit, even as the Lord gave His to save mankind.”

Then Bianca departed, and many days passed. On a time Virgilio saw Balsàbo, who greeted him with a sad smile.

“My sand is well-nigh run out, oh master,” said the spirit. “Yet another day, and the sun which is to rise no more will go down behind the mountain-range of life. Il sole tramonta.”

“And art thou pleased to have been for a time a man?” asked Virgil.

“It was not an ill thing to be loved by the children,” replied Balsàbo. “There I had great joy and learned much—yea, far too much for my own happiness, for I found that I was lost. When I was ignorant, and only a poor child of air and earth, fire and water, I knew nothing of good or evil, or of a soul or a better life in eternity; now I have learned all that by love, and also that it is not for me.”

“Wait and see,” replied Virgilio. “He who has learned to love has made the first step to immortality.”

And after a few days, news was brought to Virgilio that Balsàbo, whom men called Di Tribaldo, was dying, and that Bianca also could not live long; and that night the master, looking from his tower beyond the Arno on the hill, that which is now called the San Gallo, or the Torre di Galileo, saw afar in the night a strange vision, the forms of a man and of a young woman, divinely beautiful, sweetly spiritual, in a golden, rosy light, ever rising higher and higher, while afar there was a sound as of harps and voices singing:

“They walked in the world as in a dream,
For nothing they saw as it now doth seem;
And all they knew of care and woe
Is now but a tale of the long ago;
And they will walk in the land on high
Where flowers are blooming ever and aye,
And every flower in its breath and bloom
Sings in the spirit with song perfume,
And the song which it sings in the land above,
In a thousand forms, is eternal love.”

And as they rose Virgilio saw falling from them, as it were, a rain of rose-leaves and lilies, and every leaf as it fell faded, yet became a spirit which entered some newborn babe, and the spirit was its life.

“Sweetly hast thou sung, oh Spirit of God,” said Virgilio, as the last note was heard and the sight vanished. “The poorest devil may be saved by Love.”

The idea that a soul or spirit, human or other, can enter into a dead body and revive it is to be found in the legends of all lands, from those of ancient Egypt, as appears in that of “Anpu and Bata,” which has been nine times translated into English, down to several of these Italian tales. It is a fancy which need not be traditional or borrowed; it would occur to man as soon as the Shaman pretended to go out of his body while in a trance.

After the foregoing was written out, including the allusion to seeds found in tombs a thousand years old which grew again, and which were, of course, Roman or Etruscan, as the only kind known in Italy—I never having read of any such thing save as regards corn found in Egypt—I met with the following passage in “The Sagacity and Morality of Plants,” by Dr. J. E. Taylor:

“Seeds have been found in Celtic tumuli . . . which, after an interval of perhaps two thousand years, have germinated into plants, and similar successful experiments have been made with seeds found in ancient Roman tombs.”

As regards the original of this story, it was so imperfect, brief, and trifling that I have, as it were, well-nigh reconstructed it, and might as well claim to be its author as not, as I should have done were I an earlier Italian novelist, who without scruple appropriated popular stories with as little conscience as Robert Burns did old ballads. Bishop Percy amended them, and owned it, and all that he got thereby was much abuse and ridicule. But it is of little consequence when the legend is not offered as a mere tradition, and this is only a scrap of tradition réchauffé.

The character of Balsàbo belongs closely to the class which includes Falstaff, Panurge, Punch, Belphegor, and many other types who are “without conscience or cognition” of right or wrong, neither adapted to be banned or blessed, genially selfish, extravagantly generous, good fellows and bad Christians, yet who have ever been pre-eminently popular. But I am not aware that it ever entered into a mortal head to dream of their being reformed, any more than their cousins Manfred and Don Giovanni, for which reason I consider this tale of Balsàbo as decidedly original. Sinners we have had repentant by thousands, but this is really the only history of the conversion of Nothingarian.

Paracelsus was the first writer, following the Neo-Platonists and popular traditions, to make a mythology of elementary spirits and define their nature.

“There dwell,” he says, “under the earth semi-homines, or half-human beings, who have all temporal things which can be enjoyed and desired. They are called ‘gnomes,’ though properly the name should be sylphs or pygmies. They are not spirits, yet may be compared to them . . . between them and the devil is a great difference, because he does not die and they do, albeit they are very long-lived. And they are not spirits, because a spirit is immortal.”

This gave birth in later days to the “Entertainments” of the Comte de Gabalis, and the exquisite “Undine” of La Motte Fouqué. Of late years exact science, by its investigations into zoology and botany, has approached Paracelsus by discovering incredible developments in instinctive intelligence, as distinguished from self-conscious reason, in all that exists.

Since the foregoing tale, with the comment on it, was written, even to the last word, I met with and read a novel entitled “Entombed in the Flesh,” by Michael Henry Dziewicki, [32] which, both as regards plot and many details, bears such an extraordinary, and yet absolutely accidental, resemblance to the story of “Balsàbo” that, unless I enter a protest to the contrary, I can hardly escape the accusation of having borrowed largely from it. In it a demon, neither angel nor devil, enters into the body of a man just dead, and has many marvellous and amusing adventures, being, of course, involved in the fate of a girl whom Lucifer wishes to destroy. The end is, however, very different, because in the novel Phantasto, the spirit, is set free, and the maiden rescued by the latter going into a Salvation Army meeting and being moved by hearing the name and teaching of Jesus. In “Balsàbo” the demon has immortality conferred on him by Bianca’s giving her own life to effect it. This is, I think, more ingenious than any other sacrifice could be, because in the tale, though it be rudely expressed, there is the exquisite conception that an immortal existence can take in, include with it, and identify a minor intelligence or raise it to a higher sphere.

That I have somewhat enlarged the original tale or written it up will be evident to everyone, but I have omitted very little which is in the text, save an incantation at the end which Virgil addresses to the unborn souls who are to enter into the bodies of the children born of the rose-leaves. But I have inadvertently missed one point, to the effect that, after having been kicked out of hell, Balsàbo got down so low in morality as to be finally expelled from the Vatican. The literal translation of the passage is as follows:

“But poor Balsàbo, who had been kicked out of the kitchen of hell, . . . and even from the Vatican (felt honoured) . . . when Bianca scolded him like a child, and said: ‘Vergogna!’—‘For shame!’”

VIRGIL, MINUZZOLO, AND THE SIREN.

“Caperat hic cantus Minyas mulcere, nec ullus
Præteriturus erat Sirenum tristia fata
Iam manibus remi exciderant stetit uncta carina.”

Orpheus: Argonauticis.

[Virgil had a pupil named Minuzzolo, who was very small indeed, but a very beautiful youth, and the great master was very fond of his disciple.]

They undertook a long journey round the world, since Virgil wished that his little Minuzzolo should learn all the wonders which are hidden in the earth.

So he said to him one day:

“Know, Minuzzolo, that we are going on a long journey which may last for years, and thou must be right brave, my boy, for many are the perils through which we must pass, and dire are the monsters which we shall meet.”

So they went forth into the world, far and wide, and little Minuzzolo showed himself as brave as the biggest, and as eager to learn as a whole school with a holiday before it when it shall have got its lesson.

All things he learned: how to resist all sorceries and evil spells; he could call the eagle down from the sky, and the fish from the sea; but one thing he did not learn from his master.

One day Virgil gave him a book wherein was the charm against the Song of the Siren, the words which protect him who knows them against the music of the Voice. But two leaves stuck together like one, so that Minuzzolo skipped two pages, and never knew it.

Virgil had gone forth, and Minuzzolo, seated in a hut in the forest where they lived, began to sing. Then he heard in the wood a girl’s voice, which seemed to come from a torrent, singing in answer; and it was so sweet that all his soul and senses were captured, he forgot all duty and desire, his master and everything, all in a mad yearning to follow the sound. So he went on and on, led by the song; day and night were unnoticed by him. The Voice went with the torrent, he followed it to a river, and the river to the sea, where the waves rolled high in foam and fog; he followed the song, it went deep into the sea, but he gave no heed, but went ever on.

Then he found himself in a very beautiful but extremely strange old city—a city like a dream of an ancient age. And as eve came on, the youth asked of this and that person where he could pass the night, and all said that they knew of no place, for into that city no strangers ever came. However, at last one said to him: “I know where there dwells a witch, and she often hath strange guests; perhaps she will give thee shelter.”

“I will go to her,” replied Minuzzolo.

“Better not,” was the reply. “I did but jest, and I would be sorry if so fair a youth should be devoured by some monster.” [34]

“Little fear of that have I,” replied the young magician. “He who has harmed no one need fear none, and in the name of my Master I am safe.”

So he went to the house and knocked, and there came to his call an old woman of such unearthly ugliness, that Minuzzolo saw at once that she was a sorceress. So when she asked what he wanted, he replied:

“In the name of him whom all
Like thee obey, and heed his call,
And tremble at his lightest word,
Virgil, my master and thy lord,
I bid thee give me food and rest,
Whate’er thou canst and of the best!”

And she answered:

“Whate’er is asked in that dread name,
I’m sworn to answer to the same.”

So the youth stayed there and was well served. And in the morning he thanked the old woman, and asked her where he could find Virgil. She replied:

“Do not seek him in the forest where thou didst leave him. Since then thou hast passed over half the world, for she who called thee was a Siren, whom none can resist unless they learn the spell which thy master, foreseeing that thou wert in danger, gave thee, and which thou didst not learn. However, I will give thee a ring which will be of use, but do not seek its help until thou shalt be in dire need. And then thou shalt say to it:

“‘In nome del gran Mago,
In nome di Virgilio,
A chi sara buono!
Questo anello sara mia sposa!’”

“In the name of the great magician!
In the name of Virgil!
To whom be all good,
This ring shall be my spouse!”

“Well shall I remember it,” replied Minuzzolo. So he went on to the land and by the strand ever on, till he came to a great and fine ship, and pausing as he looked at it, he thought he would like to be a sailor. Therefore he asked the captain if a boy was wanted. And the captain, being much pleased, took him and treated him very kindly, and for three years Minuzzolo was a mariner.

But one night there was a great storm, and there came in an instant such a tremendous wave and gale of wind that Minuzzolo was blown afar into the sea and wafted away a mile ere he was missed. However, he gained a beach and scrambled ashore, where he lay for a long time as if asleep. Yet it seemed to him, while thinking of the captain and his mates, that he were being borne away and ever on, as if in a dream, and indeed, when he awoke, he found himself in what he knew must be another country, in another clime.

And being very hungry, and seeing a fine garden wherein delicious fruit was growing, he approached a tree to pluck a pear; when all at once there sprang out a man of terrible form, with eyes like a dragon, who threatened him with death.

But Minuzzolo drew the ring from his pocket and repeated the charm, and as he did this the sorcerer fell dead. And then he heard the voice of the Siren singing afar, and it drew nearer and nearer, till a beautiful girl appeared. And when she saw the hideous sorcerer lying dead, she exclaimed with joy: “At last I am free! This the great Master Virgilio has done; over land and sea and afar off he has put forth his power. Blessed be his name!”

Then she explained to the youth that she and others had been enslaved and enchanted, and compelled to become a Siren and bewitch men. But Virgilio, knowing that she was lurking near to charm his pupil, had given him the book to read, but that her master by his power had closed the leaves, so that Minuzzolo had yielded to her song. But Virgilio had put forth a greater power, and brought it to pass that the Siren was herself enchanted with love, and in the end the sorcerer was defeated.

Then Virgilio appeared and blessed the young couple, who were wedded and lived ever after happily. Such things did Virgilio.

This strange story, in which classic traditions are blended with the common form of a fairy-tale, was sent to me from Siena, where it had been taken down from some authority to me unknown. It begins very abruptly, for which reason I have supplied the introductory passage in parenthesis.

Minuzzolo, led strangely afar over the sea, drawn by the voice of the Siren, suggests that the Argonauts were called Minii, because they were descended, like Jason, from the daughters of Minia. There may be here some confusion with Minos, of whom Virgil says that “he holds in his hand an urn and shakes the destiny of all human beings, citing them to appear before his tribunal,” “Quæsitor Minos urnam movet.” In the Italian legend Minuzzolo, or Minos, has a ring which compels all who hear his charm to obey.

Minuzzolo wins his Siren by means of a ring, and it is remarkable that Hesychius derives the name Siren from σεἰρη, seire, a small ring. Moreover, the sirens in the old Greek mythology did not of their own accord or will entice sailors to death. “The oracle,” says Pozzoli (Dizionario Mit.) “had predicted that they should perish whenever a single mortal who had heard their enchanting voices should escape them.” Therefore they were compelled by a superior power to act as they did.

Confused and garbled as it all is, it seems almost certain that in this tale there are relics of old Græco-Latin mythology.

The names of the three Sirens were Aglaope, Pisinoe, Thexiopia; according to Cherilus, Thelxiope, Molpe and Aglaophonos. Clearchus, however, gives one as Leucosia, another as Ligea, the third as Parthenope. “Aglaope was sweetest to behold, Aglaophone had the most enchanting voice.” Therefore we may infer that Aglaope, or Aglaophone, was the heroine of this tale. It is remarkable that Aglaia, a daughter of Jupiter, was the fairest and first of the three Muses, as Aglaope was of the Sirens.

It would seem evident that Edgar A. Poe had the Siren Ligea in mind when he wrote:

“Ligeia, Ligeia,
My beautiful one,
Whose harshest idea
Will to melody run . . .
Ligeia! wherever
Thy image may be,
No magic shall sever
Thy music from thee;
Thou hast bound many eyes
In a dreamy sleep,
But the strains still arise
Which thy vigilance keep.”

Most remarkable of all is the fact that the Sirens, who were regarded as evil witches or enchantresses of old, are in this story, which was written by a witch, indicated as women compelled by fate to delude mariners, which has escaped all commentators, and yet was plainly enough declared by the Oracle.

LAVERNA.

One day a fox entered a sculptor’s shop,
And found a marble head, when thus he spoke:
‘O Head! there is such feeling shown in thee
By art—and yet thou canst not feel at all!’

Æsop’s Fables.

It happened on a time that Virgil, who knew all things hidden or magical, he being a magician and poet, having heard an oration, was asked what he thought of it.

And he replied:

“It seems impossible for me to tell whether it is all introduction or conclusion. It is like certain fish, of whom one is in doubt whether they are all head or all tail, or the goddess Laverna, of whom no one ever knew whether she was all head or all body, or both.”

Then the Emperor asked him who this deity might be, for he had never heard of her.

And Virgil answered:

“Among the gods or spirits who were of the ancient times there was one female, who was the craftiest and most knavish of all. She was called Laverna; she was a thief, and very little known to the other deities, who were honest and dignified, while Laverna was rarely in heaven or in the country of the fairies. She was almost always on earth among thieves, pickpockets, and panders; (she lived) in darkness. Once it happened that she went to a great priest, in the form of a very beautiful, stately priestess, and said to him:

“‘Sell me your estate. I wish to raise on it a temple to (our) god. I swear to you on my body that I will pay thee within a year.’ [39]

“Therefore the priest gave her the estate. And very soon Laverna had sold off all the crops, grain, cattle, and poultry. There was not left the value of four farthings. But on the day fixed for payment there was no Laverna to be seen. The fair goddess was far away, and had left her creditor in the lurch—in asso.

“At the same time Laverna went to a great lord, and bought of him a castle, well-furnished, with much land. But this time she swore on her head to pay in full in six months. And she did as she had done by the priest; she stole and sold everything—furniture, cattle, crops; there was not left wherewith to feed a fly.

“Then the priest and the lord appealed to the gods, complaining that they had been robbed by a goddess. And it was soon found that the thief was Laverna. Therefore she was called to judgment before all the gods. And she was asked what she had done with the property of the priest, unto whom she had sworn by her body to make payment at the time appointed. And she replied by a strange deed, which amazed them all, for she made her body disappear, so that only her head remained, and it cried:

“‘Behold me! I swore by my body, but body have I none.’

“Then all the gods laughed.

“After the priest came the lord, who had also been tricked, and to whom she had sworn by her head. And in reply to him Laverna showed to all present her whole body, and it was one of the greatest beauty, but without a head, and from the neck there came a voice which said:

“‘Behold me, for I am Laverna, who
Have come to answer to that lord’s complaint
Who swears that I contracted debt with him,
And have not paid, although the time is o’er,
And that I am a thief because I swore
Upon my head; but, as you all can see,
I have no head at all, and therefore I
Assuredly ne’er swore by such an oath!’

“Then there was indeed a storm of laughter among the gods, who made the matter right by ordering the head to join the body, and bidding Laverna pay up her dues, which she did.

“Then Jove spoke and said:

“‘Here is a roguish deity without a duty, while there are in Rome innumerable thieves, sharpers, cheats, and rascals—ladri, bindolini, truffatori e scrocconi—who live by deceit. These good folk have neither a church nor a god, and it is a great pity, for even the very devils have their master Satan. Therefore I command that in future Laverna shall be the goddess of all the knaves or dishonest tradesmen, and all the rubbish and refuse of the human race, who have been hitherto without a god or devil, inasmuch as they have been too despicable for the one or the other.’

“And so Laverna became the goddess of all dishonest people. Whenever anyone planned or intended any knavery or aught wicked, he entered her temple and invoked Laverna, who appeared to him as a woman’s head. But if he did his work badly and maladroitly, when he again invoked her he saw only the body. But if he was clever, then he beheld the whole goddess, head and body.

“Laverna was not more chaste than she was honest, and had many lovers and many children. It is said that, not being bad at heart, she often repented her life and sins; but do what she might she could not reform, because her passions were so inveterate. And if a man had got any woman with child, or any maid found herself incinta, and would hide it from the world and escape scandal, they would go every day to invoke Laverna. [40] Then, when the time came for the suppliant to be delivered, Laverna would bear her in sleep during the night to her temple, and after the birth cast her into slumber again, and carry her back to her bed. And when she awoke in the morning she was ever in vigorous health and felt no weariness, and all seemed to her as a dream.

“But to those who desired in time to reclaim their children Laverna was indulgent, if they led such lives as pleased her and faithfully worshipped her. And this is the manner of the ceremony and the incantation to be offered to Laverna every night:

“There must be a set place devoted to the goddess, be it a room, a cellar, or a grove, ever a solitary place. Then take a small table of the size of forty playing-cards set close together, and this must be hid in the same place, and going there at night. . . .

“Take the forty cards and spread them on the table, making of them, as it were, a close carpet on it. Take of the herbs paura [41a] and concordia and boil the two together, repeating meanwhile:

“‘Fo bollire la mano della concordia,
Per tenere a me concorde.
La Laverna, che possa portare a me
Il mio figlio e che possa
Guardarmelo da qual un pericolo!

“‘Bollo questa erba ma non bollo l’erba.
Bollo la paura [41b] che possa tenere lontano
Qualunque persona, e se le viene,
L’idea a qualchuno di avvicinarsi,
Possa essere preso da paura,
E fuggire lontano!’”

“I boil the cluster of concordia
To keep in concord and at peace with me
Laverna, that she may restore to me
My child, and that she, by her favouring care,
May guard me well from danger all my life!

“I boil this herb, yet ’tis not it which boils;
I boil the fear that it may keep afar
Any intruder, and if such should come
[To spy upon my rite], may he be struck
With fear, and in his terror haste away!”

“Having said this, put the boiled herbs in a bottle, and spread the cards on the table, one by one, saying:

“‘Batezzo queste quarante carte
Ma non batezzo le quarante carte.
Batezzo quaranta dei superiori
Alla dea Laverna che le sue
Persone divengono un vulcano
Fino che la Laverna non sara
Venuta da me colla mia creatura.
E questi dei dal naso dalla bocca,
E dall’ orecchie possino buttare
Fiammi di fuoco e cenere,
E lasciare pace e bene alia dea
Laverna, che possa anche essa
Abbracciare i suoi figli,
A sua volunta!’”

“I spread before me now the forty cards,
Yet ’tis not forty cards which here I spread,
But forty of the gods superior
To the deity Laverna, that their forms
May each and all become volcanoes hot,
Until Laverna comes and brings my child.
And till ’tis done, may they all cast
Hot flames of fire and coals from their lungs,
And leave her in all peace and happiness,
And still embrace her children at her will.”

The character of Virgil is here clearly enough only an introduction by the narrator, in order to make a Virgilian tale or narrative. But the incantation, which I believe to be bonâ fide and ancient, is very curious and full of tradition. The daring to conjure the forty gods that they may suffer till they compel Laverna to yield is a very bold and original conception, but something like it is found very often in Italian witchcraft. It is of classic origin. In the witchcraft manufactured by the Church, which only dates from the last decade of the fifteenth century, it never occurs. The witches of Sprenger and Co. never lay any of the Trinity under a ban of torture till a desire is accomplished, nor are they ever even invoked.

La femme comme il faut, or “the only good woman,” is a very ungallant misogamic corner tavern sign once common in France. It represents a headless woman. Perhaps she was derived from some story like this of Laverna. It recalls the inhuman saying: “The only good (Red) Indian is a dead Indian.”

Laverna is in this tale another form of Diana. There are also traces of Lucina in the character.

VIRGIL AND THE UGLY GIRL.

“Though her ugliness may scare,
Money maketh all things fair.”

Proverb.

“Gelt—wie lieb’ich Dich.”—How truly I love thee! or, “Money—how I love thee!”—German Jest.

There was once in Rome an ugly young lady; yes, the ugliest on earth! And, as if this were not enough, she was ill-tempered and spiteful, and in his whole course the sun did not shine on a more treacherous being. She was a true devilkin, being as small as a dwarf. However, devil or not, she was worth millions, and had the luck to be betrothed to the handsomest young man in Rome, who was, indeed, poor.

One day a certain Countess said to Virgil:

“I cannot understand how it comes to pass that such a splendid fellow is allied to such a horrid little fright—un tal spauracchio!”

Virgil said nothing, but he went home and took two scorpions, and by his magic art turned them into gold, and of these he made two ear-rings and sent them to the Countess, who was delighted with them, and when Virgil asked her if she liked them, answered: “Tanta, tanta, sono molto belli”—“Very much, they are so beautiful!”

“You said to me a little while ago,” replied Virgil, “that you did not see what the handsomest man in Rome finds to admire in the ugliest girl. It is gold, Signora Contessa, which does it all—gold which makes scorpions so charming that you wear them in your ears, and call them beautiful!”

The Countess laughed, and said: “Thou speakest truth—

“‘Gold like the sun turns darkness to night,
And fear or hatred to love and delight.
Gold makes raptures out of alarms,
Gold turns horror to beautiful charms,
And gives the beauty of youth to the old.
On earth there’s no magic like that of gold.’”

VIRGIL AND THE GEM.

SHOWING HOW VIRGIL BY HIS ART DROVE ALL THE FLIES OUT OF ROME.

“Cil une mouche d’arain fist,
Que toutes mouches qui estoient.
Celle approchier ne povoient.”

Renars Contrefais, A.D. 1318.

“Et fist une mousche d’arain,
De quoi encor le pris et ain.
A Naples cele mousche mist
Et de tel maniere la fist,
Que tant com la mousche fu la
Mousche dedenz Naples n’entra,
Mais je ne sai que puis devint,
La mousche, ne qu’il en avint.”

Adenès li Rois: Roman de Cleomadès. XIIIth Century.

“There were at that time near the city many swamps, in consequence of which were swarms of flies, which caused death. And Virgil . . . made a fly of gold, as large as a frog, by virtue of which all the flies left the city.”—La Cronaca di Partenope, 1350.

“Trovasi chi egli fece una moscha di rame, che dove la posa niuna moscha apariva mai presso a due saettate che incontanente non morissi.”

Antonio Pucci, XIVth Century.