1. Esempj, or those stories under which some religious or moral
lessons might be conveyed, answering to what we call Legends. Though
the word Leggenda exists in the dictionary, and is not altogether
unused, I have never once met it among the people.
2. Ghost stories and local and family traditions. The latter are much
more carefully preserved than among our own people, [8] and the Roman
poor will tell the tale (more or less accurately) of the virtues and
vices of their great families, with a gusto which shows that they look
upon them as something specially belonging to themselves; but the
former do not appear to have any recognised title, and the contempt
in which they are held makes it very difficult to get hold of them,
so that it is not very easy to avoid giving offence in approaching
the subject. Only by a prolonged and round-about conversation one may
sometimes elicit excellent specimens brought in as matters of curious
personal experience by the very persons who, on direct questioning,
had repudiated all knowledge of anything of the sort.
3. Favole. The word universally appropriated in Roman dialect for
'Fairy Tales,' a not unclassical application of the term, I think,
and continued in the 'Fabliaux' of the mediæval period. But when
asking for them I have never had any given me belonging to the class
which we call 'fables' in English.
4. Ciarpe, expounded by Bazzarelli as parole vane, ciance; ciance
being said, on the authority of Petrarch, to stand for parole vane,
lontane dal vero, chiacchiera; chiacchiera being the equivalent for
gossip. Versions of some stories in this category, notably No. 6,
'L'Uccelletto' (The Little Bird), and 21, 'The Value of Salt,' we
all heard in our English nurseries, while those under the heading of
'La Sposa Cece' (The Simple Wife) belong to the same class as ours of
the man who being told to give his wife her medicine in a convenient
vehicle, wheeled her about in a hand-barrow, while she swallowed it;
or that of the idiotic couple who wasted their three precious chances
in wishing three yards of black pudding on each other's noses,
and then wishing it off again; but I do not know that we have any
special technical designation for such. All the headings of which I
have given the Italian are those used by the narrators themselves.
It is impossible, in making acquaintance with these stories in
their own language, not to regret having to put them into another
tongue. Much of what is peculiar in them, and distinguishes them
from their counterparts in other lands, is, of course, wrapped up in
the form of expression in which they are clothed. Divested of this,
they run the risk of losing the national character they have acquired
during their residence on Italian soil. I had purposed, therefore,
originally, to print an Italian version, side by side with the English
rendering, but was obliged to renounce the arrangement, as it would
have proved too voluminous. I have only been able to preserve some
few of the vernacular idiosyncrasies in the notes, for the benefit of
those who take an interest in the people's characteristic utterances.
I think I may safely say that the whole of the stories are
traditional. There were only two of my contributors who could have
read them had they even existed in print. The best-instructed of them
was the one who gave me 'Prete Olivo' and 'Perchè litigano i cani ed
i gatti;' both of which I am clear, from 'asides' which accompanied
them concerning her father's manner of telling, she had heard from
his lips, even as she said.
With the exception of some of the Legends, Local Traditions, and
Ciarpe, there are few, either printed in this collection or among those
I still hold in MS., the leading episodes of which (if not the entire
story) are not to be found in the collections of other countries;
but certain categories common in other countries are wanting in the
Roman. One could not in making the collection but be struck with the
almost complete absence of stories of heroism and chivalry. There are
some, indeed, in which courageous deeds occur; but there is none of
the high-souled mettle which comes out so strong in Hungarian, Gaelic,
and Spanish tradition, in many of the Teutonic and Breton, and some
Norse and Russian tales. Several, we shall find, are identical stories,
with the grand and fierce element left out. I have never come across a
single story of knightly prowess in any shape. I have in MS. one or two
dragon stories, but no knights figure even in these. At the same time,
tales of horror seem equally to have failed to fascinate the popular
imagination, and we can trace again the toning down process in many
instances. I have in MS. several versions of the rather ghastly story
of the boy who went out to discover Fear, but the Roman mind does
not often indulge in such scenes as it presents. Similarly, horrid
monsters are rare. 'Orco' himself is not painted so terrible as in
other countries. Giants and dwarfs, again, being somewhat monstrous
creations, are not frequent. The stories about the Satiri were only
told me spontaneously by one narrator; one other owned to having
heard of such beings on being questioned, but there is no general
popular conception corresponding to the German ideas of wild men. I
have never met anyone who believed in the present existence of any
supernatural being of this class, [9] and rarely with any who imagined
such had ever existed. 'The stories always say, "there was a fairy
who did so and so:" but were there ever fairies? Perhaps there were,
perhaps there weren't,' soliloquised an old woman one day at the
end of a tale; that was the strongest expression of opinion in their
favour that came in my way. Another said once, 'If there ever were
such beings there would be now; but there certainly are not any now,
so I don't believe there ever were any.' [10]
Again, religious legends, with admixture of pagan superstitions,
seem rare. English readers may say that there is superstition in some
of the legends in the text; but they only exaggerate the literalness
with which they deal with Gospel promises; there is little at variance
with it. The false tale of the pilgrim husband, pp. 355-6, is the most
devious from Christian doctrine that I have come across in Rome. I
cannot fancy a Roman, however illiterate, gravely telling such stories
as some of those which Mr. Ralstone gives us from Russia. The story
of 'Pret' Olivo' is doubtless derivatively the same as Dr. Dasent's
'Master Smith'; but the Roman version presents vastly less of the
pagan element.
In winding up his general remarks on the migrations of myths, Prof. de
Gubernatis gives as his opinion that 'the elementary myth was the
spontaneous production of imagination and not of reflection;' ... that
'morals have often been made an appendix to fables, but never entered
into the primitive fable;' that 'art and religion have made use of
the already existing myths (themselves devoid of moral conscience)
as allegories for their own æsthetic and moral ends.' And it appears
to me that the Romans, in adapting such elementary myths to legendary
use, have christianised them more than some other peoples.
Pacts with the Devil, in which the Germans revel, are rare; the story
of 'Pietro Bailliardo' is one of the very few. It would seem that
witchcraft never at any time obtained any great hold upon the people
of Rome, nor were witches ever treated with the same severity which
befell them in other parts of Europe. It is true that some stories
about witch-stepmothers wind up with 'e la brucciorno in mezzo alla
Piazza,' [11] but I am inclined to think it is rather a 'tag' received
from other countries, than an actual local tradition; and certainly
by cross-questioning I failed to awaken in the memory of the 'oldest
inhabitants' with whom I have had the opportunity of conversing any
tradition of anything of the sort having actually taken place.
'What do you know about burning witches in mezzo alla Piazza? I thought
such things were never done in Rome?' I observed one day to one who
ended a story thus. 'Who said the story took place in Rome?' was the
ready reply. I received the same reply to the same observation from
another, with the addition of 'There was something about a king and
a queen in the story and in other stories I have told you, and we
never had a king or a queen of Rome--the one may belong to the same
country as the other. Who knows what sort of a country such stories
come from!' A third answered, 'No; I don't believe witches were ever
burnt by law in Rome; I have always heard say that our laws were less
fierce than those of some other countries; but I can quite fancy that
if the people found a witch doing such things as I have told you,
they would burn her all by themselves, law or no law.'
Of course I have no pretension that my researches have been exhaustive,
nor have I been, properly speaking, searching for superstitions, but
in a good deal of intercourse with the uneducated, I have certainly
come across less of superstitious beliefs in Rome than collectors of
Folklore seem to have met in other countries. The saying exists,
Giorno di Venere,
Giorno di Marte,
Non si sposa,
E non si parte. [12]
But I have seldom heard the lines quoted without the addition of,
'But I don't believe in such things;' and a reference to the column
of marriage announcements in the 'Times' will show that the prejudice
against marrying in the month of May is, to say the least, quite as
strong among our own most highly-educated classes.
It is not altogether uncommon at the Parochial Mass, to hear along with
banns of marriage and other announcements, a warning pronounced against
such and such a person whom private counsel has failed to deter from
'dabbling in black arts;' but from the observations which I have
had the opportunity of making such persons find their dupes chiefly
among the dissolute and non-believing. I know a very consistently
religious woman, and also singularly intelligent, who appeared to
have a salutary contempt for certain practices in which her husband,
a worthless fellow, who had long ago abandoned her and his religion
together, indulged. 'He actually believes,' she told me one day,
'that if you go out and stand on a cross road--not merely where
two roads happen to cross each other, but where they actually make
a perfect cross--and if at the stroke of mezzogiorno in punto, you
call the Devil he is bound to come to you.'
'He always kept a bag of particular herbs,' I heard from her another
time, 'hung up over the door, all shred into the finest bits. As he
was very angry if I touched them, I one day said, "Why do you want
that bundle of herbs kept just there?" and then he told me that it
was because no witch could pass under them without first having to
count all the minute bits, and that though it was true she might do
so by her arts without taking them down and handling them, it was
yet so difficult when they were shred into such an infinite number
that it was the best preservative possible against evil influences.'
Another class of infrequent occurrence in the Roman stories is that
in which animals are prominent actors, other than those in which they
are transformed men. The tátos, the enchanted horse which excites so
great enthusiasm in the Hungarian, and whose counterpart does great
wonders also in the Gaelic tales, seems to be absolutely unknown, [13]
as I think is also the class not uncommon in the Gaelic (e.g. 'Tales
of the West Highlands,' i. 275 et seq.), also in the Russian Folklore,
p. 338, of birds made to pronounce articulate words analogous in sound
to their own cries. [14] Such traditions would naturally find a hold
rather among countrypeople than townspeople.
Fairies and witches are frequent enough, but the limits between
the respective domains assigned to them are not so marked as with
us. Roman fairies, it will be seen, are by no means necessarily
'fairy-like.' At the same time fairies, such as those described by
Mr. Campbell, 'West Highland Tales,' p. ci., are altogether unknown.