“I heard a loom at work, and thus it spoke,
As though its clatter like a metre woke,
And echoed in my mind like an old song,
Rising while growing dimmer e’en like smoke.
“And thus it spoke, ‘God is a loom like me,
His chiefest weaving is Humanity,
And man and woman are the warp and woof,
Which make a mingling light of mystery.’”
_The Loom_: C. G. L.
Gega was a girl of fifteen years of age, and without parents or friends,
with nothing in the world but eyes to weep and arms to work. Yet she had
this luck, that an old woman who was a fellow-lodger in the place where
she lived, {172} moved by compassion, took the girl to live with her,
though all she had was a very small room, in which was a poor bed and a
little loom, so crazy-looking and old that it seemed impossible to work
with it.
Nunzia, {173} for such was the old woman’s name, took Gega indeed as a
daughter, and taught her to weave, which was a good trade in those days,
and in that place where few practised it. So it came to pass that they
made money, which was laid by. [This was no great wonder, for the old
loom had a strange enchantment in it, by which marvellous work could be
produced.]
The old woman very often bade Gega take great care of the loom, and the
girl could not understand why Nunzia thought so much of it, since it
seemed to her to be like any other. [For it never appeared strange to
her that when she wove the cloth seemed to almost come of itself—a great
deal for a little thread—and that its quality or kind improved as she
applied herself to work, for in her ignorance she believed that this was
the way with all weaving.]
At last the old Mamma Nunzia died, and Gega, left alone, began to make
acquaintances and friends with other girls who came to visit her. Among
these was one named Ermelinda, who was at heart as treacherous and
rapacious as she was shrewd, yet one withal who, what with her beauty and
deceitful airs, knew how to flatter and persuade to perfection, so that
she could make a simple girl like Gega believe that the moon was a pewter
plate, or a black fly white.
Now, the first time that she and several others, who were all weavers,
saw Gega at work, they were greatly amazed, for the cloth seemed to come
of itself from a wretched old loom which appeared to be incapable of
making anything, and it was so fine and even, and had such a gloss that
it looked like silk.
“How wonderful! One would say it was silk!” cried a girl.
“Oh, I can make silk when I try,” answered Gega; and applying her will to
it, she presently spun from cotton-thread a yard of what was certainly
real silk stuff.
And seeing this, all present declared that Gega must be a witch.
“Nonsense,” she replied; “you could all do it if you tried as I do. As
for being a witch, it is Ermelinda and not I who should be so, for she
first said it was like silk, and made it so.”
Then Ermelinda saw that there was magic in the loom, of which Gega knew
nothing, so she resolved to do all in her power to obtain it. And this
she effected firstly by flattery, and giving the innocent girl
extravagant ideas of her beauty, assuring her that she had an
attractiveness which could not fail to win her a noble husband, and that,
having laid by a large sum of money, she should live on it in style till
married, and that in any case she could go back to her weaving. But that
on which she laid most stress was that Gega should leave her old lodging
and get rid of her dirty old furniture, and especially of that horrible,
crazy old loom, persuading her that, if she ever should have occasion to
weave again, she, with her talent, could do far better with a new loom,
and probably gain thrice as much, all of which the simple girl believed,
and so let her false friend dispose of everything, in doing which
Ermelinda did not fail to keep the loom herself, declaring that nobody
would buy it.
“Now,” said the latter, “I am content. Thou art very beautiful; all that
thou needest is to be elegantly dressed, and have fine things about thee,
to soon catch a fine husband.”
Gega assented to this, but was loth to part with her old loom, which she
had promised Nunzia should never be neglected; but Ermelinda promised so
faithfully to keep it carefully for her, that she was persuaded to let
her have it. Then the young girl took a fine apartment, well furnished,
and bought herself beautiful clothes, and, guided by her false friend,
began to go to entertainments and make fashionable friends, and live as
if she were rich.
Then Ermelinda, having obtained the old loom, went to work with it, in
full hope that she too could spin silk out of cotton, but found out to
her amazement and rage that she could do nothing of the kind—nay, she
could not so much as weave common cloth from it; all that she got after
hours of fruitless effort was a headache, and the conviction that she had
thrown away all her time and trouble, which made her hate Gega all the
more.
Meanwhile the latter for a time enjoyed life as she had never done
before; but though she looked anxiously to the right and the left for a
husband, found none, the well-to-do young men being quite as anxious to
wed wealth as she was, and all of them soon discovered on inquiry that
she had little or nothing, despite her style of living, and her money
rapidly melted away, till at last she found that to live she must
work—there was no help for it. With what remained she bought a fine loom
and thread, and sat down to weave; but though she succeeded in making
common stuff like others, it was not silk, nor anything like it, nor was
there anyone who would buy what she made. In despair she remembered what
Mamma Nunzia had solemnly said to her, that she must never part from the
old loom, so she went to Ermelinda to reclaim it. But her false friend,
although she could do nothing with the loom herself, was not willing that
Gega, whom she hated with all her heart, should in any way profit, and
declared that her mother had broken up and burned the rubbishy old thing,
and to this story she adhered, and when Gega insisted on proof of it,
drove her in a rage out of the house.
While Mamma Nunzia was living she, being a very wise woman, had taught
Gega with care the properties and nature of plants, roots, herbs, and
flowers, saying that some day it might be of value to her, as it is to
everyone. So whenever they had a holiday they had gone into the fields
and woods, where the girl became so expert that she could have taught
many a doctor very strange secrets; and withal, the Mamma also made her
learn the charms and incantations which increase the power of the plants.
So now, having come to her last coin, and finding there was some profit
in it, she began to gather herbs for medicine, which she sold to chemists
and others in the towns. And finding a deserted old tower in a wild and
rocky place, she was allowed to make it her home; and indeed, after all
she had gone through, and her disappointment both as to friends and
lovers, she found herself far happier when alone than when in a town,
where she was ashamed to meet people who had known her when she lived in
style.
One evening as she was returning home she heard a groaning in the woods
as of someone in great suffering, and, guided by the sound, found a poor
old woman seated on a stone, who told her that she had hurt her leg by
slipping from a rock. And Gega, who was as strong as she was kind and
compassionate, carried the poor soul in her arms to the tower, where she
bound an application of healing herbs to the wound, and bade her remain
and welcome.
“I have nothing to give you for it all,” said the old woman on the
following day.
“Nor did I do it in the hope of aught,” replied Gega.
“And yet,” said the sufferer, “I might be of use to you. If, for
example, you have lost anything, I can tell you how to recover it or
where it is.”
“Ah!” cried Gega, “if thou canst do that, thou wilt be a friend indeed,
for I have lost my fortune—it was a loom which was left to me by Mamma
Nunzia. I did not regard her advice never to part with it, and I have
bitterly repented my folly. I trusted it to a friend, who betrayed me,
for she burned it.”
“No, my dear, she did nothing of the kind,” replied the old woman; “she
has it yet, and I will make it return to thee.”
Then she repeated this invocation:
“Telaio! Telaio! Telaio!
Che per opera e virtú
Del gran mago Virgilio
Fosti fabricato,
E di tante virtù adornato
Ti prego per opera e virtu
Del gran mago Virgilio
Tu possa di una tela
Di oro di argento
Essere ordito.
E come il vento,
Dalla casa di Ermelinda,
Tu possa sortire,
Sortire e tornare
Nella vecchia sofitta
Della figlia mia
Per opera e virtú
Dal gran mago Virgilio!”
“Loom! Loom! O loom!
Who by the labour and skill
Of the great magician Virgil
Wert made so long ago,
And gifted with such power!
I pray thee by that skill
And labour given by
Virgil, the great magician,
As thou canst spin a web
Of silver or of gold,
Fly like the wind away
From Ermelinda’s house
Into the small old room
Where once my daughter dwelt,
All by the skill and power
Of great Virgilius!”
When in an instant they were borne away on a mighty wind and found
themselves in the old room, and there also they found the loom, from
which Gega could now weave at will cloth of gold or silver as well as
silk.
Then the old woman looked steadily at Gega, and the girl saw the features
of the former change to those of Nunzia, and as she embraced her, the old
woman said:
“Yes, I am Mamma Nunzia, and I came from afar to restore to thee thy
loom; but guard it well now, for if lost thou canst never recover it
again. But if thou shouldst ever need aught, then invoke the grand
magician Virgil, because he has always been my god.” {177}
Having said this, she departed, and Gega knew now that Nunzia was a white
witch or a fairy. So, becoming rich, she was a lady, and ever after took
good care of her loom and distrusted flattering friends.
* * * * *
This legend exists as a fairy-tale in many forms, and may be found in
many countries; perhaps its beginning was in that of the princess who
could spin straw into gold. To have some object which produces food or
money _ad libitum_ when called on, to be cheated out of it, and finally
be revenged on the cheater, is known to all.
Virgil is in one of these tales naïvely called a saint, and in this he is
seriously addressed as a god, by which we, of course, understand a
classical heathen deity, or any spirit powerful enough to answer prayer
with personal favours. But Virgil as the maker of a magic loom which
yields gold and silk, and as a _god_ at the same time, indicates a very
possible derivation from a very grand ancient myth. The reader is
probably familiar with the address of the Time Spirit in Goethe’s
“Faust”:
“In Being’s flood, in action’s storm,
I work and weave, above, beneath—
Work and weave in endless motion
Birth and Death—an infinite ocean,
A-seizing and giving
The fire of the Living.
’Tis thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the garment thou see’st Him by.”
Thomas Carlyle informs us, in “Sartor Resartus,” that of the thousands
who have spouted this really very intelligible formula of pantheism, none
have understood it—implying thereby that to him it was no mystery. But
Carlyle apparently did not know, else he would surely have told the
reader, that the idea was derived from the Sanskrit myth that Maya
(delusion or appearance), “the feminine half of the divine primitive
creator (Urwesen), was represented as weaving the palpable universe from
herself, for which reason she was typified as a spider.” {178} Hence
Maia of the Greeks; and it is a curious coincidence that Maia in the
Neapolitan legends is the mother of Virgil, all of which is confused, and
may be accidental, but there may also be in it the remains of some
curious and very ancient tradition. The spider was, however, certainly
the emblem of domestic, stay-at-home, steady industry, as Friedrich
illustrates, therefore of prosperity, hence it is believed to bring luck
to those on whom it crawls, as set forth in the novel of “The Red
Spider.” And it is evident that the moral of this tale of Virgil’s loom
is to the effect that the heroine gained her good fortune by hard work at
home, and came to grief by gadding abroad and playing the belle.
That Maia, or Illusion or Glamour, should, according to our tradition, be
the mother of the greatest thaumaturgist, wonder-worker, poet, and
sorcerer of yore is curious. That the original Maya of India should be
the living loom from which the universe is spun, and that in another tale
the _same_ magician, her son, is a god who makes a magic loom which spins
gold, silver, and silk, may be all mere chance coincidence, but, if so,
it is strange enough to rank as a miracle _per se_.
The name Gega, with _g_ the second soft, is very nearly _Gaia_, the
Goddess of the Earth, who was one with Maia, as a type of the Universe.
As I regard this as a tradition of some importance, I would state that it
owes nothing whatever to any inquiry, hint, or suggestion from me; that
it was gathered from witch authority by Maddalena, near Prato; and,
finally, that it is very faithfully translated, with the exception of the
passages indicated by brackets, which were inserted by me to make the
text clearer—a very necessary thing in most of these tales, where much is
often palpably omitted. I have seldom had a story so badly written as
this was; it appears to have been taken down without correction from some
illiterate old woman, who hardly understood what she was narrating.
It is to be observed that in a number of these tales the proper names are
strangely antique and significant. They are not such as are in use among
the people, they would not even be known to most who are tolerably well
read. I have only found several after special search in mythologies,
etc.; and yet they are, I sincerely believe, in all cases appropriate to
the tradition as in this case.