Transcribed from the 1899 Elliot Stock edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
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UNPUBLISHED LEGENDS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.