"Sarvia della Regina, dreco la Misericordia, vita d'un cieco, spezia
nostra, sarvia tua, te chiamao esule, fili e vacche!
"Ate sospirao, i' gemeo fetente in barca e lacrima la valle.
"L' la eggo educata nostra, _illons in tus_.
"Misericordia se' cieli e in ossi e coperte, e lesine benedette, frutti,
ventri, tubi, novi, posti cocche, esilio e tende!
"O crema, o pia, o dorce virgola Maria!--Ammenne!"
* * * * *
This is perfectly in the spirit of the Middle Ages, of which so much is
still found in the cheapest popular Italian literature. I have elsewhere
mentioned that it was long before the Reformation, when the Church was at
the height of her power, that blasphemies, travesties of religious
services, and scathing sarcasms of monkish life reached their extreme,
and were never equalled afterwards, even by Protestant satirists. The
_Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_ of Hutten and Reuchlin was an avowed
caricature by an enemy. The revelations of monkish life by Boccaccio,
Cintio, Arlotto, and a hundred other good Catholics, were a thousand
times more damaging than the _Epistolae_, because they were the
unconscious betrayals of friends.
Since writing the foregoing, I have obtained the following, entitled,
_The Pater Noster of the Country People in the Old Market_, or,