THE following stories were told to me by various peasants during a
summer stay amid the Tuscan Apennines above Pistoia. I had gone there
with a companion in search of quiet for the summer holidays. But I fell
ill, and, there being no nurses and no doctors, was tended by an old
peasant woman, who, living alone (for her sons had married and left
her), was only too glad to spend the warmth of her heart in “keeping
me company” and tending me to the best of her ability. Long were the
hours which she spent by my bedside, or by my hammock in the woods,
knitting and telling me stories. She would take no payment for her
time, for was she not born a twin-sister? and everyone knows that a
twin-sister, left alone, must needs attach herself to someone else in
the emptiness of her heart. So old Clementina attached herself to me as
long as I stopped in that village; and when I left it she would write
me, by means of the _scrivano_, long letters full of village news, and
expressions of affection in the sweet poetical Tuscan tongue.
Indelibly is the remembrance of the kind hospitality of those peasants
impressed on my mind. For Clementina, although my dearest, was by no
means my only friend. I had to leave her as soon as I could be moved,
for a village which boasted at any rate a chemist’s and a butcher’s;
and there, in the two months of my stay, wandering about among the
little farms, either alone, or in the company of a woman whose
husband had sent her back for the summer to her native place, I had
continual opportunities of chatting with the people and enjoying their
disinterested hospitality. Such records as I have preserved I give to
the public, thinking that others, too, might like to penetrate into
that quiet country world, see the workings of the peasant mind in one
or two of their stories, and note the curiously altered versions of
childhood acquaintances or of old legends which have found their way
into those remote regions: note, too, the lack of imagination, and the
shrewdness visible in the tales which are indigenous. As regards style,
I have endeavoured to preserve as closely as possible the old woman’s
diction.