"We all do know the usual way
In which our handmaids go astray,
But in this tale the situation
Has a peculiar variation;
How an old wizard--strange occurrence!
Deluded all the girls in Florence,
(It needs no magic now to do it),
And how the maidens made him rue it,
For having seized on him and stripped him,
They tied him up and soundly whipped him."
The author of "The Cities of Central Italy," speaking of Siena, says that
"In its heart, where its different hill-promontories unite, is the Piazza
del Campo, lately--with the time-serving which disgraces every town in
Italy--called Vittorio Emanuele." And with the stupidity and bad taste
which seems to characterise all municipal governments in this respect all
the world over, that of Florence has changed most of the old names of
this kind, and in order to render the confusion more complete, has put
the new names just over the old ones, with the simple addition of the
word _Gia_ or "formerly." Whence came the legend current in the
Anglo-American colony, that a newly arrived young lady, not as yet beyond
the second lesson in Ollendorff, being asked where she lived, answered in
_Gia_ Street. She forgot the rest of the name.
One of these gaping _gias_ is the Via del Parlascio _gia Via delle Serve
Smarrite_, or the street of the maidservants strayed away or gone astray.
Now Florence is famous for its pretty servant-girls, and if I may believe
a halfpenny work, entitled "Seven Charming Florentine Domestics," now
before me, which is racy of the soil--or dirt--and appears to be written
from life [as accurate portraits of all the fascinating seven are given],
I opine that the damsel of this class who had never been, I do not say a
wife, but a waif and a stray, must be a phenomenal rarity. Therefore it
was suggested to me that it was formerly in very ancient times the custom
to send all such stray cattle to the pound, that is, to dwell in this
street as a kind of Ghetto. But the folly of this measure soon became
apparent when it was found that one might as well try to get all the cats
in Tuscany into a hand-basket, or all its flies--or fleas--under one
tumbler, as try to make a comprehensive menagerie of these valuable
animals, who were, however, by no means curiosities. So the attempt was
abandoned, and thenceforth the maidens were allowed to stray wherever
they pleased, but under some slight supervision; whence it was said of
them that they were _le lucertole chi cominciano a sentir il
sole_--"fireflies which begin to see the sun"--a proverb which the
learned and genial Orlando Peschetti (1618) explains as being applicable
to those who, having been in prison and then set free, are still watched,
but which appears to me rather to refer to the suspected who are
"shadowed" before they are arrested.
But in due time I received from good authority an ancient legend of the
Via delle Serve Smarrite, in which the origin of the name is explained as
follows: