To the idealised vision that goes along with hereditary culture
a large town may seem an impressive spectacle. For Wordsworth,
worshipper of nature though he was, earth had not anything to show
more fair than London from Westminster Bridge, and Victor Hugo found
endless inspiration on the top of a Parisian omnibus. As shrines of
art, as foci of historic memories, even simply as vast aggregates of
human beings working out the tragi-comedy of life, great cities have
furnished the key-note to much fine poetry. But it is different
with the letterless masses. The student of literature, who turns to
folk-songs in search of a new enjoyment, will meet with little to
attract him in urban rhymes; if there are many that present points
of antiquarian interest, there are few that have any kind of poetic
worth. The people's poetry grows not out of an ideal world of
association and aspiration, but from the springs of their life. They
cannot see with their minds as well as with their eyes. What they do
see in most great towns is the monotonous ugliness which surrounds
their homes and their labour. Then again, it is a well-known fact that
with the people loss of individuality means loss of the power of
song; and where there is density of population there is generally a
uniformity as featureless as that of pebbles on the sea beach.
Still to the rule that folk-poesy is not a thing of town growth one
exception has to be made. Venice, unique under every aspect, has songs
which, if not of the highest, are unquestionably of a high order. The
generalising influences at play in great political centres have hardly
affected the inhabitants of the city which for a thousand years of
independence was a body politic complete in itself. Nor has Venetian
common life lacked those elements of beauty without whose presence the
popular muse is dumb. The very industries of the Venetians were
arts, and when they were young and spiritually teachable, their chief
bread-winning work of every day was Venice--her ducal chapel, her
campanile, her palaces of marble and porphyry. In the process of
making her the delight of after ages, they attended an excellent
school of poetry.
The gondolier contemporary with Byron was correctly described as
songless. At a date closely coinciding with the overthrow of Venetian
freedom, the boatmen left off waking the echoes of the Grand Canal,
except by those cries of warning which, no one can quite say why, so
thrill and move the hearer. It was no rare thing to find among the
Italians of the Lombardo-Venetian provinces the old pathetic instinct
of keeping silence before the stranger. I recollect a story told me
by one of them. When he was a boy, Antonio--that was his name--had to
make a journey with two young Austrian officers. They took notice of
the lad, who was sprightly and good-looking, and by and by they asked
him to sing. "Canta, canta, il piccolo," said they; "sing us the songs
of Italy." He refused. They insisted, and, coming to a tavern, they
gave him wine, which sent the blood to his head. So at last he said,
"Very well, I will sing you the songs of Italy." What he sang was one
of the most furiously anti-Austrian songs of '48. "Ah! taci, taci il
piccolo!" cried the officers, but the "piccolo" would not be quiet
until he had sung the whole revolutionary repertory. The Austrians
knew how to appreciate the boy's spirit, for they pressed on him a ten
franc piece at parting.
To return to Venice. In the year 1819 an English traveller asked for
a song of a man who was reported to have once chanted Tasso _alla
barcaruolo_; the old gondolier shook his head. "In times like these,"
he said, "he had no heart to sing." Foreign visitors had to fall back
on the beautiful German music, at the sound of which Venetians ran
out of the Piazza, lest they might be seduced by its hated sweetness.
Meanwhile the people went on singing in their own quarters, and away
from the chance of ministering to their masters' amusement. It is
even probable that the moral casemate to which they fled favoured the
preservation of their old ways, that of poetising included. Instead of
aiming at something novel and modern, the Venetian wished to be like
what his fathers were when the flags on St Mark's staffs were not
yellow and black. So, like his fathers, he made songs and sang songs,
of which a good collection has been formed, partly in past years,
and partly since the black-and-yellow standard has given place,
not, indeed, to the conquered emblems of the Greek isles, but to the
colours of Italy, reconquered for herself.
Venetian folk-poesy begins at the cradle. The baby Venetian, like
most other babies, is assured that he is the most perfect of created
beings. Here and there, underlying the baby nonsense, is a dash of
pathos. "Would you weep if I were dead?" a mother asks, and the child
is made to answer, "How could I help weeping for my own mamma, who
loves me so in her heart?" A child is told that if he asks his mother,
who is standing by the door, "What are you doing there?" she will
reply, "I am waiting for thy father; I wait and wait, and do not see
him coming; I think I shall die thus waiting." The little Venetian has
the failings of baby-kind all the world over; he cries and he laughs
when he ought to be fast asleep. His mother tells him that he was born
to live in Paradise; she is sure that the angels would rejoice in her
darling's beauty. "Sleep well, for thy mother sits near thee," she
sings, "and if by chance I go away, God will watch thee when I am
gone."
A christening is regarded in Venice as an event of much social as
well as religious importance. By canon law the bonds of relationship
established by godfatherhood count for the same as those of blood, for
which reason the Venetian nobles used to choose a person of inferior
rank to stand sponsor for their children, thus escaping the creation
of ties prohibitive of marriage between persons of their own class. In
this case the material responsibilities of the sponsor were slight--it
was his part to take presents, and not to make them. By way of
acknowledging the new connection, the child's father sent the
godfather a marchpane, that cake of mystic origin which is still
honoured and eaten from Nuremberg to Malaga. With the poor, another
order of things is in force. The _compare de l'anelo_--the person
who acted as groomsman at the marriage--is chosen as sponsor to the
first-born child. His duties begin even before the christening. When
he hears of the child's birth, he gets a piece of meat, a fowl, and
two new-laid eggs, packs them in a basket, and despatches them to
the young mother. Eight days after the birth comes the baptism. On
returning from the church, the sponsor, now called _compare de
San Zuane_, visits the mother, before whom he displays his
presents--twelve or fifteen lire for herself; for the baby a pair of
earrings, if it be a girl; and if a boy, a pair of boy's earrings,
or a single ornament to be worn in the right ear. Henceforth the
godfather is the child's natural guardian next to its parents; and
should they die, he is expected to provide for it. Should the child
die, he must buy the _zogia_ (the "joy"), a wreath of flowers now set
on the coffins of dead infants, but formerly placed on their heads
when they were carried to the grave-isle in full sight of the people.
This last custom led to even more care being given to the toilet of
dead children than what might seem required by decency and affection.
To dress a dead child badly was considered shameful. Tradition tells
of what happened to a woman who was so miserly that she made her
little girl a winding-sheet of rags and tatters. When the night of
the dead came round and all the ghosts went in procession, the injured
babe, instead of going with the rest, tapped at its mother's door and
cried, "Mamma, do you see me? I cannot go in procession because I
am all ragged." Every year on the night of the dead the baby girl
returned to make the same reproach.
Venetian children say before they go to bed:
Bona sera ai vivi,
E riposo ai poveri morti;
Bon viagio ai naveganti
E bona note ai tuti quanti.
There is a sort of touching simplicity in this; and somehow the wish
of peace to the "poor dead" recalls a line of Baudelaire's--
Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs.
But as a whole, the rhymes of the Venetian nursery are not
interesting, save from their extreme resemblance to the nursery rhymes
of England, France, or any other European country. They need not,
therefore, detain us.
Twilight is of an Eastern brevity on the Adriatic shore, both in
nature and in life. The child of yesterday is the man of to-day, and
as soon as the young Venetian discovers that he has a heart, he takes
pains to lose it to a _Tosa_ proportionately youthful. The Venetian
and Provencal word _Tosa_ signifies maiden, though whether the
famous Cima Tosa is thus a sister to the Jungfrau is not sure, some
authorities believing it to bear the more prosaic designation
of baldheaded ("Tonsurata"). Our young Venetian may perhaps be
unacquainted with the girl he has marked out for preference. In any
case he walks up and down or rows up and down assiduously under her
window. One night he will sing to a slow, languorous air--possibly an
operatic air, but so altered as to be not easy of recognition--"I wish
all good to all in this house, to father and to mother and as many as
there be; and to Marieta who is my beloved, she whom you have in
your house." The name of the singer is most likely Nane, for Nane and
Marieta are the commonest names in Venice, which is explained by
the impression that persons so called cannot be bewitched, a serious
advantage in a place where the Black Art is by no means extinct. The
maiden long remembers the night when first her rest was disturbed
by some such greeting as the above. She has rendered account of her
feelings:
Ah! how mine eyes are weighed in slumber deep!
Now all my life it seems has gone to sleep;
But if a lover passes by the door,
Then seems it this my life will sleep no more.
It does not do to appropriate a serenade with too much precipitation.
Don Quixote gave it as his experience that no woman would believe that
a poem was written expressly for her unless it made an acrostic on her
name spelt out in full. Venetian damsels proceed with less caution:
hence now and then a sad disappointment. A girl who starts up all
pit-a-pat at the twanging of a guitar may be doomed to hear the cruel
sentence pronounced in Lord Houghton's pretty lyric:
"I am passing--Preme--but I stay not for you!
Preme--not for you!"
Even more unkind are the literal words of the Venetian: "If I pass
this way and sing as I pass, think not, fair one, that it is for
you--it is for another love, whose beauty surpasses yours!"
A brother or a friend occasionally undertakes the serenading. He
is not paid like the professional Trovador whom the Valencian lover
engages to act as his interpreter. He has no reward in view but empty
thanks, and it is scarcely surprising if on damp nights he is inclined
to fall into a rather querulous vein. "My song is meant for the
_Morosa_ of my companion," says one of these accommodating minstrels.
"If only I knew where she was! But he told me that she was somewhere
in here. The rain is wetting me to the skin!" Another exclaims more
cheerfully, "Beautiful angel, if it pleases God, you will become my
sister-in-law!"
After the singing of the preliminary songs, Nane seeks a hint of the
effect produced on the beloved Marieta. As she comes out of church,
he makes her a most respectful bow, and if it be returned ever so
slightly, he musters up courage, and asks in so many words whether
she will have him. Marieta reflects for about three days; then she
communicates her answer by sign or song. If she does not want him, she
shuts herself up in the house and will not look out for a moment.
Nane begs her to show her face at the window: "Come, oh! come! If thou
comest not 'tis a sign that thou lovest me not; draw my heart out of
all these pangs." Marieta, if she is quite decided, sings back from
behind the half-closed shutters, "You pass this way, and you pass in
vain: in vain you wear out shoes and soles; expect no fair words from
me." It may be that she confesses to not knowing her own mind: "I
should like to be married, but I know not to whom: when Nane passes, I
long to say 'Yes;' when Toni passes, I am fain to look kindly at him;
when Bepi passes, I wish to cry, God bless you!" Or again, it may be
that her heart is not hers to give:
Wouldst thou my love? For love I have no heart;
I had it once, and gave it once away;
To my first love I gave it on a day ...
Wouldst thou my love? For love I have no heart.
In the event of the girl intimating that she is disposed to listen to
her _Moroso_ if all goes well, he turns to her parents and formally
asks permission to pay his addresses to their daughter. That
permission is, of course, not always granted. If the parents have
thoughts of a wealthier match, the poor serenader finds himself
unceremoniously sent about his business. A sad state of things ensues.
Marieta steals many a sorrowful glance at the despised Nane, who, on
his side, vents his indignation on the authors of her being in terms
much wanting in respect. "When I behold thee so impassioned," he
cries, "I curse those who have caused this grief; I curse thy papa and
thy mamma, who will not let us make love." No idea is here implied
of dispensing with the parental fiat; the same cannot be said of the
following observations: "When I pass this house, my heart aches. The
girl wills me well, her people will me ill; her people will not hear
of it, nor, indeed, will mine. So we have to make love secretly. But
that cannot really be done. He who wishes for a girl, goes and asks
for her--out of politeness. He who wants to have her, carries her
off." It would seem that the maiden has been known to be the first to
incite rebellion:
Do, my beloved, as other lovers do,
Go to my father, and ask leave to woo;
And if my father to reply is loth,
Come back to me, for thou hast got my troth.
When the parents have no _prima facie_ objection to the youth, they
set about inquiring whether he bears a good character, and whether
the girl has a real liking for him. These two points cleared up
satisfactorily, they still defer their final answer for some weeks or
months, to make a trial of the suitor and to let the young people get
better acquainted. The lover, borne up by hope, but not yet sure of
his prize, calls to his aid the most effective songs in his repertory.
The last thing at night Marieta hears:--
Sleep thou, most fair, in all security,
For I have made me guardian of thy gate,
Safe shalt thou be, for I will watch and wait;
Sleep thou, most fair, in all security.
The first thing in the morning she is greeted thus:
Art thou awake, O fairest, dearest, best?
Raise thy blond head and bid thy slumbers fly;
This is the hour thy lover passes by,
Throw him a kiss, and then return to rest.
If she has any lurking doubts of Nane's constancy she receives the
assurance, "One of these days I will surely make thee my bride--be not
so pensive, fairest angel!" If, on the other hand, Nane lacks complete
confidence in her affection, he appeals to her in words resembling I
know not what Eastern love-song: "Oh, how many steps I have taken to
have thee, and how many more I would take to gain thee! I have taken
so many, many steps that I think thou wilt not forsake me."
The time of probation over, the girl's parents give a feast, to which
the youth and his parents are invited. He brings with him, as a first
offering, a small ring ornamented with a turquoise or a cornelian.
Being now the acknowledged lover, he may come and openly pay his court
every Sunday. On Saturday Marieta says to herself, "_Ancuo xe sabo,
doman xe festa_--to-morrow is fete day, and to-morrow I expect Nane!"
Then she pictures how he will come "dressed for the _festa_ with a
little flower in his hand;" and her heart beats with impatience.
If, after all, by some chance--who knows? by some faithlessness
perhaps--he fails to appear, what grief, what tears! Marieta's first
thought when she rises on Sunday morning is this: "No one works to-day
for it is _festa_; I pray you come betimes, dearest love!" Then comes
the second thought: "If he does not come betimes, it is a sign that he
is near to death; if later I do not see him, it is a sign that he is
dead." The day passes, evening is here--no Nane! "Vespers sound and
my love comes not; either he is dead, or" (the third and bitterest
thought of all) "a love-thief has stolen him from me!"
Some little while after the lover has been formally accepted, he
presents the maiden with a plain gold ring called _el segno_, and a
second dinner or supper takes place at her parent's house, answering
to the German betrothal feast; henceforth he is the _sposo_ and she
the _novizza_, and, as in Germany, people look on the pair as very
little less than wedded. The new bride gives the bridegroom a silk
handkerchief, to which allusion is made in a verse running, "What is
that handkerchief you are wearing? Did you steal it or borrow it? I
neither stole it nor borrowed it; my _Morosa_ tied it round my neck."
At Easter the _sposo_ gives a cake and a couple of bottles of Cyprus
or Malaga; at Christmas a box of almond sweetmeats and a little jug
of _mostarda_ (a Venetian _specialite_ composed of quinces dressed in
honey and mustard); at the feast of St Martin, sweet chestnuts; at the
feast of St Mark, _el bocolo_--that is, a rosebud, emblematical of the
opening year. The lover may also employ his generosity on New Year's
day, on the girl's name-day, and on other days not specified, taking
in the whole 365. Some maidens show a decided taste for homage
in kind. "My lover bids me sing, and to please him I will do it,"
observes one girl, thus far displaying only the most disinterested
amiability. But presently she reveals her motives: "He has a ring with
a white stone; when I have sung he will give it to me." A less sordid
damsel asks only for a bunch of flowers; it shall be paid for with a
kiss, she says. Certain things there are which may be neither given
nor taken by lovers who would not recklessly tempt fate. Combs are
placed under the ban, for they may be made to serve the purposes of
witchcraft; saintly images and church-books, for they have to do
with trouble and repentance; scissors, for scissors stand for evil
speaking; and needles, for it is the nature of needles to prick.
Whether through the unwise exchange of these prohibited articles, or
from other causes, it does sometimes happen that the betrothed lovers
who have been hailed by everybody as _novizza_ and _sposo_ yet manage
to fall out beyond any hopes of falling in again. If it is the youth's
fault that the match is broken off, all his presents remain in the
girl's undisputed possession; if the girl is to blame, she must send
back the _segno_ and all else that she has received. It is said that
in some districts of Venetia the young man keeps an accurate account
of whatever he spends on behalf of his betrothed, and in the case of
her growing tired of him, she has to pay double the sum total, besides
defraying the loss incurred by the hours he has sacrificed to her, and
the boots he has worn out in the course of his visits.
It is more usual, as well as more satisfactory, for the betrothal
to be followed in due time by marriage. After the _segno_ has been
"passed," the _sposo_ sings a new song. "When," asks he, "will be the
day whereon to thy mamma I shall say 'Madona;' to thy papa 'Missier;'
and to thee, darling, 'Wife'?" "Madona" is still the ordinary term for
mother-in-law at Venice; in Tuscan songs the word is also used in that
sense, though it has fallen out of common parlance. Wherever it is
to be found, it points to the days when the house-mother exercised an
unchallenged authority over all members of the family. Even now the
mother-in-law of Italian folk-songs is a formidable personage; to say
the truth, there is no scant measure of self-congratulation when she
happens not to exist. "Oh! Dio del siel, mandeme un ziovenin senza
madona!" is the heartfelt prayer of the Venetian girl.
If the youth thinks of the wedding day as the occasion of forming new
ties--above all that dearest tie which will give him his _anzola bela_
for his own--the maiden dreams of it as the _zornada santa_; the day
when she will kneel at the altar and receive the solemn benediction of
the church upon entering into a new station of life. "Ah! when shall
come to pass that holy day, when the priest will say to me, 'Are you
content?' when he shall bless me with the holy water--ah! when shall
it come to pass?"
It has been noticed that the institution of marriage is not regarded
in a very favourable light by the majority of folk-poets, but Venetian
rhymers as a rule take an encouraging view of it. "He who has a wife,"
sings a poet of Chioggia, "lives right merrily _co la sua cara sposa
in compagnia_." Warning voices are not, however, wanting to tell the
maiden that wedded life is not all roses: "You would never want to be
married, my dear, if you knew what it was like," says one such;
while another mutters, "Reflect, girls, reflect, before ye wed these
gallants; on the Ponte di Rialto bird cages are sold."
The marriage generally comes off on a Sunday. Who weds on Monday
goes mad; Tuesday will bring a bad end; Wednesday is a day good for
nothing; Thursday all manner of witches are abroad; Friday leads to
early death; and, as to Saturday, you must not choose that, _parche de
sabo piove_, "because on Saturday it rains!"
The bride has two toilets--one for the church, one for the wedding
dinner. At the church she wears a black veil, at the feast she appears
crowned with flowers. After she is dressed and before the bridegroom
arrives, the young girl goes to her father's room and kneeling down
before him, she prays with tears in her eyes to be forgiven whatever
grief she may have caused him. He grants her his pardon and gives her
his blessing. In the early dawn the wedding party go to church either
on foot or in gondolas, for it is customary for the marriage knot to
be tied at the conclusion of the first mass. When the right moment
comes the priest puts the _vera_, or wedding ring, on the tip of the
bride's finger, and the bridegroom pushes it down into its proper
place. If the _vera_ hitches, it is a frightfully bad omen. When once
it is safely adjusted, the best man steps forward and restores to
the bride's middle finger the little ring which formed the lover's
earliest gift; for this reason he is called _compare de l'anelo_, a
style and title he will one day exchange for that of _compare de San
Zuane_.
At the end of the service the bride returns to her father's house,
where she remains quietly till it is time to get ready for dinner. As
the clock strikes four, the entire wedding party, with the parents
of bride and bridegroom and a host of friends and relations, start in
gondolas for the inn at which the repast is to take place. The whole
population of the _calle_ or _campo_ is there to see their departure,
and to admire or criticise, as the case may be. After dinner, when
everyone has tasted the good wine and enjoyed the good fare, the feast
breaks up with cries of _Viva la novizza!_ followed by songs, stories,
laughter, and much flirtation between the girls and boys, who make the
most of the freedom of intercourse conceded to them in honour of
the day. Then the music begins, the table is whisked away, and the
assembled guests join lustily in the dance; the women perhaps, singing
at intervals, "Enota, enota, enio!" a burden borne over to Venice
from the Grecian shore. The romance is finished; Marieta and Nane are
married, the _zornada santa_ wanes to its close, the tired dancers
accompany the bride to the threshold of her new home, and so adieu!
Before leaving the subject of Venetian love-songs it may be as well to
glance at a few points characteristic of the popular mind which it has
not been convenient to touch upon in following the Venetian youth and
maiden from the _prima radice_ of their love to its consecration at
the altar. What, for instance, does the Venetian singer say of poverty
and riches?--for there is no surer test of character than the way
of regarding money and the lack of it. It is taken pretty well for
granted at Venice as elsewhere, that inequality of fortune is a bar to
matrimony. The poor girl says to her better-to-do lover, "Thou passest
this way sad and grieving, thou thinkest to speak to my father, and
on thy finger thou dost carry a little ring. But thy thought does not
fall in with my thought, and thy thought is not worth a gazette. Thou
art rich and I am a poor little one!" Here the girl puts all faith in
the good intentions of her suitor: it is not his fault if her poverty
divides them; it is the nature of things, against which there is no
appeal. But there is more than one song that betrays the suspicion
that if a girl grows poor her lover will be only too eager and ready
to desert her. "My lady mother has always told me that she who falls
into poverty loses her lover; loses friend and loses hope. The purse
does not sing when there is no coin in it." Still, on the whole, a
more high-minded view prevails. "Do not look to my being a poor man,"
says one lover,
Che povata no guasta gentilissa,
--"for poverty does not spoil or prevent gentle manners." A girl
sings, "All tell me that I am poor, the world's honour is my riches; I
am poor, I am of fair fame; poor both of us, let us make love." One is
reminded of "how the good wife taught her daughter" in the old English
poem of the fifteenth century:
I pray the, my dere childe, loke thou bere the so well
That alle men may seyen thou art so trewe as stele;
Gode name is golde worth, my leve childe!
A brave little Venetian maiden cries: "How many there are who desire
fortune! and I, poor little thing, desire it not. This is the fortune
I desire, to wed a youth of twenty-one years." One lover pines for
riches, but only that he may offer them to his beloved: "Fair Marieta,
I wish to make my fortune, to go where the Turk has his cradle, and
work myself nearly to death, so that afterwards I may come back to
thee, my fair one, and marry thee." Finally, a town youth says that if
his country love has but a milk-pail for her dowry, what matters?
De dota la me da quel viso belo!
The Venetian displays no marked enthusiasm for fair hair,
notwithstanding the fame of Giorgione's sunset heads and the
traditional expedients by which Venetian ladies of past times
sought to bring their dark locks into conformity with that painter's
favourite hue. In Venetian songs there is nothing about the "golden
spun silk" of Sicily; if a Venetian folk-poet does speak of fair hair,
he calls it by the common-place generic term of blond. The available
evidence goes rather to show that in his own heart he prefers a
brunette. "My lady mother always told me that I should never be
enamoured of white roses," says a sententious young man; "she told
me that I should love the little mulberries, which are sweeter than
honey." "Cara mora," _mora_, or mulberry, meaning brunette, is
an ordinary caressing term. Two frank young people carry on this
dialogue: "Will you come to me, fair maid?" "No; I will not come, for
I am fair." "If you are fair, I am no less so; if you are the rose, I
am the spotless lily." Beauty, therefore, is valued, especially by
the possessors of it. But the Venetian admits the possibility of that
which Keats found so hard to comprehend--the love of the plain. A
girl says, and it is a pretty saying, "Se no so bela, ghe piaso al
mio amore" ("If I am not fair, I please my beloved"). A soldier,
whose _morosa_ dies, does not weep for her beauty, for she was not
beautiful; nor for her riches, for she was not rich; he weeps for her
sweet manners and conversation--it was that that made him love her.
The universal weakness for a little flattery from the hand of the
portrait-painter is expressed in a sprightly little song:
What does it matter if I am not fair,
Who have a lover, who a painter is?
He will portray me like a star, I wis;
What does it matter if I am not fair?
We hear a good deal of lovers' quarrels, and of the transitoriness of
love. "Oh! God! how the sky is overcast! It seems about to rain, and
then it passes; so is it with a man in love; he loves a fair woman,
and then he leaves her." That is her version of the affair. He has
not anything complimentary to say: "If I get out of this squall alive,
never more shall woman in the world befool me. I have been befooled
upon a pledge of sacred faith: mad is the man who believes in women."
Another man says, with more serious bitterness: "What time have I not
lost in loving you! Had I lost it in saying so many prayers, I should
have found favour before God, and my mother would have blessed me." A
matter-of-fact girl remarks, "No one will grow thin on your account,
nor will any one die on mine." When her lover says that he has sent
her his heart in a basket, she replies that she sends back both basket
and heart, being in want of neither; and if he should really happen to
die, she unfeelingly meditates, "My love is dead, and I have not wept;
I had thought to suffer more torment. A Pope dies, another is made;
not otherwise do I weep for my love."
Certain vocations are looked upon with suspicion:
Sailor's trade--at sea to die!
Merchant's trade--that's bankruptcy;
Gambler's trade in cursing ends,
Thief's trade to the gallows sends.
But in spite of the second line about "l'arte del mercante," a girl
does not much mind marrying a merchant or shopkeeper; nay, it is
sometimes her avowed ambition:
I want no fisher with a fishy smell,
A market gardener would not suit me well;
Nor yet a mariner who sails the sea:
A fine flour-merchant is the man for me.
A miller seems to think that he stands a good chance: "Come to the
window, Columbine! I am that miller who brought thee, the other
evening, the pure white flour." Shoemakers are in very bad odour: "I
calegheri ga na trista fama." Fishermen are considered poor penniless
folk, and she who weds a sailor, does so at her peril:
L'amor del mariner no dura un 'ora,
La dove che lu el va, lu s' inamora.
And even if the sailor's troth can be trusted, is it not his trade "at
sea to die"? But the young girl will not be persuaded. "All say to me,
'Beauty, do not take the mariner, for he will make thee die;' if he
make me die, so must it be; I will wed him, for he is my soul." And
when he is gone, she sings: "My soul, as thou art beyond the port,
send me word if thou art alive or dead, if the waters of the sea have
taken thee?" She returns sadly to her work, the work of all Venetian
maidens:
My love is far and far away from me,
I am at home, and he has gone to sea;
He is at sea, and he has sails to spread,
I am at home, and I have beads to thread.
The boatman's love can afford to sing in a lighter strain; there is
not the shadow of interminable voyages upon her. "I go out on the
balcony, I see Venice, and I see my joy, who starts; I go out on the
balcony, I see the sea, and I see my love, who rows." Another song is
perhaps a statement of fact, though it sounds like a poetic fancy:
To-night their boats must seek the sea,
One night his boat will linger yet;
They bear a freight of wood, and he
A freight of rose and violet.
Who forgets the coming into Venice in the early morning light of the
boats laden with fresh flowers and fruit?
Isaac d'Israeli states that the fishermen's wives of the Lido,
particularly those of the districts of Malamocca and Pelestrina (its
extreme end), sat along the shore in the evenings while the men were
out fishing, and sang stanzas from Tasso and other songs at the
pitch of their voices, going on till each one could distinguish the
responses of her own husband in the distance.
At first sight the songs of the various Italian provinces appear to be
greatly alike, but at first sight only. Under further examination they
display essential differences, and even the songs which travel all
over Italy almost always receive some distinctive touch of local
colour in the districts where they obtain naturalisation. The Venetian
poet has as strongly marked an identity as any of his fellows. Not
to speak of his having invented the four-lined song known as the
"Vilota," the quality of his work unmistakably reflects his peculiar
idiosyncracies. An Italian writer has said, "nella parola e nello
scritto ognuno imita se stesso;" and the Venetian "imitates himself"
faithfully enough in his verses. He has a well-developed sense of
humour, and his finer wit discerns less objectionable paths than
those of parody and burlesque, for which the Sicilian shows so fatal
a leaning. He is often in a mood of half-playful cynicism; if his
paramount theme is love, he is yet fully inclined to have a laugh at
the expense of the whole race of lovers:
A feast I will prepare for love to eat,
Non-suited suitors I will ask to dine;
They shall have pain and sorrow for their meat,
They shall have tears and sobs to drink for wine;
And sighs shall be the servitors most fit
To wait at table where the lovers sit.
As compared with the Tuscan, the Venetian is a confirmed egotist.
While the former well-nigh effaces his individual personality out
of his hymns of adoration, the latter is apt to talk so much of his
private feelings, his wishes, his disappointments, that the idol
stands in danger of being forgotten. There is, indeed, a single
song--the song of one of the despised mariners--which combines
the sweet humility of Tuscan lyrics with a glow and fervour truly
Venetian--possibly its author was in reality some Istriot seaman, for
the _canti popolari_ of Istria are known to partake of both styles.
Anyhow, it may figure here, justified by what seems to me its own
excellence of conception:
Fair art thou born, but love is not for me;
A sailor's calling sends me forth to sea.
I do desire to paint thee on my sail,
And o'er the briny deep I'd carry thee.
They ask, What ensign? when the boat they hail--
For woman's love I bear this effigy;
For woman's love, for love of maiden fair;
If her I may not love, I love forswear!
When he is most in earnest and most excited, the Venetian is still
homely--he has none of the Sicilian's luxuriant imagination. I may
call to mind a remark of Edgar Poe's to the effect that passion
demands a homeliness of expression. Passionate the Venetian poet
certainly is. Never a man was readier to "dare e'en death" at the
behest of his mistress--
Wouldst have me die? Then I'll no longer live.
Grant unto me for sepulchre thy bed,
Make me straightway a pillow of thy head,
And with thy mouth one kiss, beloved one, give.
At Chioggia, where still in the summer evenings _Orlando Furioso_ is
read in the public places, and where artists go in quest of the old
Venetian type, they sing a yet more impassioned little song.
Oh, Morning Star, I ask of thee this grace,
This only grace I ask of thee, and pray:
The water where thou hast washed thy breast and face,
In kindly pity throw it not away.
Give it to me for medicine; I will take
A draught before I sleep and when I wake;
And if this medicine shall not make me whole,
To earth my body, and to hell my soul!
It must be added that Venetian folk-poesy lacks the innate sympathy
with all beautiful natural things which pervades the poesy of the
Apennines. This is in part the result of outward conditions: nature,
though splendid, is unvaried at Venice. The temperament of the
Venetian poet explains the rest. If he alludes to the _bel seren con
tante stelle_, it is only to say that "it would be just the night to
run away with somebody"--to which assertion he tacks the disreputable
rider, "he who carries off girls is not called a thief, he is called
an enamoured young man."
Even in the most lovely and the most poetic of cities you cannot
breathe the pure air of the hills. The Venetian is without the intense
refinement of the Tuscan mountaineer, as he is without his love of
natural beauty. The Tuscan but rarely mentions the beloved one's
name--he respects it as the Eastern mystic respects the name of
the Deity; the Venetian sings it out for the edification of all the
boatmen of the canal. The Tuscan has come to regard a kiss as a thing
too sacred to talk about; the Venetian has as few scruples on the
subject as the poet of Sirmio. Nevertheless, it should be recognised
that a not very blameable unreservedness of speech is the most serious
charge to be brought against all save a small minority of Venetian
singers. I believe that the able and conscientious collector, Signor
Bernoni, has exercised but slight censorship over the mass of songs he
has placed on record, notwithstanding which the number of those that
can be accused of an immoral tendency is extremely limited. Whence it
is to be inferred that the looseness of manners prevailing amongst the
higher classes at Venice in the decadence of the Republic at no time
became general in the lower and sounder strata of society.
At the beginning of this century, songs that were called Venetian
ballads were very popular in London drawing-rooms. That they were sung
with more effect before those who had never heard them in their own
country than before those who had, will be easily believed. A charming
letter-writer of that time described the contrast made by the gay or
impassioned strain of the poetry to "the stucco face of the statue who
doles it forth;" whilst in Venice, he added, it is seconded by all the
nice inflections of voice, grace of gesture, play of features, that
distinguish Venetian women. One of the Venetian songs which gained
most popularity abroad was the story of the damsel who drops her ring
into the sea, and of the fisherman who fishes it up, refusing all
other reward than a kiss:
Oh! pescator dell 'onda,
Findelin,
Vieni pescar in qua!
Colla bella sua barca
Colla bella se ne va
Findelin! lin, la!
But this song is not peculiarly Venetian; it is sung everywhere on the
Adriatic and Mediterranean coasts. And the version used was in pure
Italian. Judged as poetry, the existing Venetian ballads take a
lower place than the _Vilote_. They are often not much removed from
doggerel, as may be shown by a lamentable history which confusedly
suggests Enoch Arden with the moral of "Tue-la:"
"Who is that knocking at my gates?
Who is that knocking at my door?"
"A London captain 'tis who waits,
Your very humble servitor."
In deshabille the fair one ran,
Straightway the door she opened wide:
"Tell me, my fair one, if you can,
Where does your husband now abide?"
"My husband he has gone to France,
Pray heaven that back he may not come;"
--Just then the fair one gave a glance,
It was her spouse arrived at home!
"Forgive, forgive," the fair one cried,
"Forgive if I have done amiss;"
"There is no pardon," he replied,
For women who have sinned like this."
Her head fell off at the first blow,
The first blow wielded by his sword;
So does just Heaven its anger show
Against the wife who wrongs her lord.
Venetian songs will serve as a guide to the character, but scarcely
to the opinions, of the Venetians. The long struggle with Austria has
left no other trace than a handful of rough verses dating from the
Siege--mere strings of _Evvivas_ to the dictator and the army. It may
be argued that the fact is not exceptional, that like the _Fratelli
d'ltalia_ of Goffredo Mameli, the war-songs of the Italian movement
were all composed for the people and not by them. Still there have
been genuine folk-poets who have discoursed after their fashion of
_Italia libera_. The Tuscan peasants sang as they stored the olives of
1859--
L'amore l'ho in Piamonte,
Bandiera tricolor!
There is not in Venetian songs an allusion to the national cause so
naively, so caressingly expressive as this. It cannot be that the
Venetian _popolano_ did not care; whenever his love of country was
put to the test, it was found in no way wanting. Was it that to his
positive turn of mind there appeared to be an absence of connection
between politics and poetry? Looking back to the songs of an earlier
period, we find the same habit of ignoring public events. A rhyme,
answering the purpose of our "Ride a cock horse," contains the sole
reference to the wars of Venice with the Porte--
Andemo a la guera
Per mare e per tera,
E cataremo i Turchi,
Li mazzaremo tuti, &c.
In the proverbs, if not in the songs, a somewhat stronger impress
remains of the independent attitude assumed by the Republic in its
dealings with the Vatican. The Venetians denied Papal infallibility
by anticipation in the saying, "The Pope and the countryman know more
than the Pope alone;" and in one line of a nursery ditty, "El Papa no
xe Re," they quietly abolished the temporal power. When Paul V.
laid the city under an interdict, the citizens made answer, "Prima
Veneziani e poi cristiani," a proverb that survives to this day.
"Venetians first" was the first article of faith of these men, or
rather it was to them a vital instinct. Their patriotism was a kind of
magnificent _amour propre_. No modern nation has felt a pride of
state so absorbing, so convinced, so transcendent: a pride which lives
incarnate in the forms and faces of the Venetian senators who look
serenely down on us from the walls of the Art Gallery out of the
company of kings, of saints, of angels, and of such as are higher than
the angels.
A chance word or phrase now and then accidentally carries us back to
Republican times and institutions. The expression, "Thy thought is not
worth a _gazeta_," occurring in a love-song cited above, reminds us
that the term gazette is derived from a Venetian coin of that name,
value three-quarters of a farthing, which was the fee charged for the
privilege of hearing read aloud the earliest venture in journalism, a
manuscript news-sheet issued once a month at Venice in the sixteenth
century. The figure of speech, "We must have fifty-seven," meaning,
"we are entering on a serious business," has its origin in the
fifty-seven votes necessary to the passing of any weighty measure
in the Venetian Senate. The Venetian adapter of Moliere's favourite
ditty, in lieu of preferring his sweetheart to the "bonne ville de
Paris," prefers her to "the Mint, the Arsenal, and the Bucentaur."
Every one is familiar with the quaint description of the outward
glories of St Mark's Square:
In St Mark's Place three standards you descry,
And chargers four that seem about to fly;
There is a time-piece which appears a tower,
And there are twelve black men who strike the hour.
Social prejudices creep in where politics are almost excluded. A group
of _Vilote_ relates to the feud--old as Venice--between the islanders
of San Nicolo and the islanders of Castello, the two sections of the
town east of the Grand Canal, in the first of which stands St Mark's,
in the last the arsenal. The best account of the two factions is
embodied in an ancient poem celebrating the fight that rendered
memorable St Simon's Day, 1521. The anonymous writer tells his tale
with an impartiality that might be envied by greater historians, and
he ends by putting a canto of peaceable advice into the mouth of a
dying champion, who urges his countrymen to dwell in harmony and love
one another as brothers. Are they not made of the same flesh and bone,
children alike of St Mark and his State?
Tuti a la fin no semio patrioti,
Cresciu in sti campi, ste cale e cantoni?
The counsel was not taken, and the old rivalry continued unabated,
fostered up to a certain point by the Republic, which saw in it,
amongst other things, a check on the power of the patricians. The
two sides represented the aristocratic and democratic elements of
the population: the Castellani had wealth and birth and fine palaces,
their upper classes monopolised the high offices of State, their lower
classes worked in the arsenal, served as pilots to the men-of-war, and
acted as rowers in the Bucentaur. The better-to-do Nicoloti came off
with a share of the secondary employs, whilst the larger portion of
the San Nicolo folk were poor fishermen. But their sense of personal
dignity was intense. They had a doge of their own, usually an old
sailor, who on high days and holidays sat beside the "renowned prince,
the Duke of Venice." This doge, or _Gastaldo dei Nicoloti_, was
answerable for the conduct of his people, of whom he was at once
superior and equal. "Ti voghi el dose et mi vogo col dose" ("You row
the doge, I row with the doge"), a Nicoloto would say to his rival.
It is easy to see how the party spirit engendered by the old feud
produced a sentiment of independence in even the poorest members
of the community, and how it thus became of great service to the
Republic. Its principal drawback was that of leading to hard blows,
the last occasion of its doing so being St Simon's Day, 1817, when a
fierce local outbreak was severely suppressed by the Austrians. Since
then the contending forces have agreed to dwell in harmony; whether
they love one another as brothers is not so clear. There are songs
still sung in which mutual recrimination takes the form of too strong
language for ears polite. "If a Nicoloto is born, a Count is born; if
a Castellan is born--set up the gallows," is the mildest dictum of a
son of San Nicolo, to which his neighbour replies, "When a Castellan
is born, a god is born; when a Nicoloto is born, a brigand is born."
The feud lingers on even in the matter of love. "Who is that youth who
passes so often?" inquires a girl; "if it be a Castellan, bid him be
off; if it be a Nicoloto, bid him come in."
On the night of the Redeemer (in July) still takes place what was
perhaps one of the most ancient of Venetian customs. A fantastic
illumination, a bridge of boats, a people's ball, a prize-giving to
the best gondolas, a promiscuous wandering about the public gardens,
these form some of the features of the festival. But its most
remarkable point is the expedition to the Lido at three o'clock in the
morning to see the dawn. As the sun rises from his cradle of eastern
gold, he is greeted by the shout of thousands. Many of the youths leap
into the water and disport themselves like wild creatures of the sea.
A word in conclusion as to the dialect in which Venetian songs are
composed. The earliest specimen extant consists in the distich--
Lom po far e die in pensar
E vega quelo che li po inchiontrar,
which is to be read on the facade of St Mark's, opposite the ducal
palace. The meaning is, Look before you leap--an adage well suited
to the people who had the reputation of being the most prudent in the
world. This inscription belongs to the twelfth century. There used to
be a song sung at Ascension-tide on the occasion of the marriage of
the doge with the Adriatic, of which the signification of the words
was lost and only the sound preserved. It is a pity that it was never
written out phonetically; for modern scholars would probably have
proved equal to the task of interpreting it, even as they have given
us the secret of the runes on the neck of the Greek lion at the
arsenal. We owe to Dante a line of early Venetian--one of those
tantalising fragments of dialect poems in his posthumous work, _De
Vulgari Eloquentia_--fragments perhaps jotted down with the intention
of copying the full stanzas had he lived to finish the treatise.
Students have long been puzzled by Dante's judgment on the Venetian
dialect, which he said was so harsh that it made the conversation of
a woman resemble that of a man. The greatest master of the Italian
tongue was ruthless in his condemnation of its less perfect forms,
to the knowledge of which he was all the same indebted in no slight
degree. But it must not be overlooked that the question in Dante's day
was whether Italy should have a language or whether the nation should
go on oscillating between Latin and _patois_. For reasons patriotic
and political quite as much as literary, Dante's heart was set on the
adoption of one "illustrious, cardinal, aulic and polite" speech by
the country at large, and to that end he contributed incalculably,
though less by his treatise than by his poem. The involuntary hatred
of _patois_ as an outward sign of disunion has reappeared again in
some of those who in our own time have done and suffered most for
united Italy. Thus I once heard Signor Benedetto Cairoli say: "When
we were children, our mother would on no account let us speak anything
but good Italian." It is possible that Dante's strong feeling on the
subject made him unjust. It is also possible that the Venetian and the
other dialects have undergone a radical change, though this is not so
likely as may at first be supposed. A piece of nonsense written in the
seventeenth century gives an admirable idea of what the popular idiom
was then and is now:
Mi son tanto inamorao
In dona Nina mia vesina
Che me da gran disciplina,
Che me vedo desparao.
Gnao bao, bao gnao,
Mi son tanto inamorao!
Mi me sento tanti afani
(Tuti i porto per so amore!)
Che par proprio che sia cani
Ch'al mi cor fazza brusore;
Che da tute quante l'ore
Mi me sento passionao.
Gnao bao, bao gnao,
Mi son tanto inamorao!
In most respects Venetian would approach closely to standard Italian
were it not for the pronunciation; yet to the uneducated Venetian,
Italian sounds very strange. A maid-servant who had picked up a few
purely Italian words, was found to be under the delusion that she had
been learning English. The Venetian is unable to detect a foreigner by
his accent. An English traveller had been talking for some while to a
woman of Burano, when she asked in all seriousness, "Are you a Roman?"
A deficiency of grammar, a richness in expressive colloquialisms, and
the possession of certain terms of Greek origin, constitute the main
features of the Venetian dialect as it is known to us. It was used by
the Republic in the affairs of state, and it was generally understood
throughout Italy, because, as Evelyn records, all the world repaired
to Venice "to see the folly and madnesse of the Carnevall." With the
exception of Dante, every one seems to have been struck by its merits,
of which the chief, to modern ears, are vivacity and an exceeding
softness. It can boast of much elegant lettered poetry, as well as of
Goldoni's best comedies. To the reading of the latter when a child,
Alfieri traced his particular partiality for "the jargon of the
lagunes." Byron declared that its _naivete_ was always pleasant in
the mouth of a woman, and George Sand mentions it approvingly as "ce
gentil parler Venitien, fait a ce qu'il me semble pour la bouche des
enfants."