"Wherever beauty dwells,
In gulf or aerie mountains or deep dells,
Thou pointest out the way, and straight 'tis won,
Thou leddest Orpheus through the gleams of death."
--KEATS.
"Silvestres homines sacer interpres que Deorum
Caedibus et victu deterruit ORPHEUS.
Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque Leones."
--HORACE.
It may have happened to the reader, in his travels, to trace in some
majestic mountain-land, amid rocky ravines, that which was, perhaps, in
prehistoric times a terrible torrent or a roaring river. I mean, indeed,
such a furious flood as is now unknown on earth, one which tore away the
highest hills like trifles, melting them in a minute to broad alluvials,
and ground up the grandest granite cliffs to gravel-dust, even as a
mighty mill grates grain to flour.
You trace the course of the ancient river which when young vaulted the
valley, which it had made, on either side with overhanging precipices,
which now bend like silent mourners over its grave. And it seems to be
dead and buried for ever.
Yet it may chance that, looking more deeply into its course to see if,
perhaps, some flakes of antique gold are not to be found in the bed of
the old water-course, you hear deep in some rocky crevice far below, and
out of sight, the merry gurgle or voice-like murmur of a spring or unseen
rivulet which indicates that the river of ancient days is not quite lost
in the land. Unsuspected, like the sapphire serpent of Eastern legend,
that diamond-clear rivulet has wound its mysterious course deep in the
earth for ages, and, following its sound, you may come to some place
where it again leaps forth into sunlight--little, indeed, yet ever
beautiful. It is almost touching to see that diminished rill creeping
timidly round the feet of giant boulders which it once rent in sport from
the mighty rocks, and rolled into what were for it in its whilom power,
mere marbles. It is small now, and very obscure, yet it lives and is
ever beautiful.
Such a stream, which I traced yesterday in an ancient gorge in the heart
of the Apennines, where the grey tower of Rocca looks down on the
mysterious Ponte del Diavolo of the twelfth century--the most picturesque
bridge in Italy--forcibly reminds me of the human stream of old tradition
which once, as marvellous mythology or grand religion, roared and often
raged over all this region, driving before it, and rending away, all the
mighty rocks of human will, now tearing down and anon forming stupendous
cliffs of observances, and vast monoliths of legend and faith. Such were
the Etruscan and early Roman cults, which drove before them and engulfed
irresistibly all the institutions of their time, and then disappeared so
utterly that men now believe that the only remaining record of their
existence is in their tombs or rocky relics of strange monuments.
But by bending low to earth, or seeking among the people, we may hear the
murmur of a hidden stream of legend and song which, small and shrunken as
it may be, is still the veritable river of the olden time. Many such
streams are running in many lands, and that full openly on the earth's
surface, but this to which I specially refer is strangely occult and
deeply hidden, for to find it we must seek among the _strege_ and
_stregoni_, or witches and sorcerers, who retain as dark secrets of their
own, marvellous relics of the myths of the early ages. These are, in
many cases, so strangely quaint and beautiful that they would seem to
have kept something of an original perfume which has utterly perished in
the dried flowers of tradition preserved in books, or even by poets.
This seems to me to be the case with the incantation to Orpheus, which is
now before me, written in rude dialect, which indicates, so to speak, the
depth of the earth from which it was taken. I had asked the woman who
gave it to me whether she knew such a name as that of Orpheus or Orfeo,
as connected with music. This was the reply which I received: