“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.