I have in a note to another legend spoken of the instinct which seems to lead children or grown people to associate wells with indwelling fairies, to hear a voice in the echo, and see a face in the reflection in the still water.  Keats has beautifully expressed it in “Endymion”:

“Some mouldered steps lead into this cool cell
Far as the slabbed margin of a well,
Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye
Right upward through the bushes to the sky. . . .
Upon a day when thus I watched . . . behold!
A wonder fair as any I have told—
The same bright face I tasted in my sleep
Smiling in the clear well.  My heart did leap
Through the cool depth. . . .
Or ’tis the cell of Echo, where she sits
And babbles thorough silence till her wits
Are gone in tender madness, and anon
Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone.”

“In which tale,” writes the immortal Flaxius, “there is a pretty allegory.  Few there are who know why truth is said to be at the bottom of a well; but this I can indeed declare to you.  For as a mirror was above all things an emblem of truth, because it shows all things exactly as they are, so the water in a well was, as many traditions prove, considered as a mirror, because looking into it we see our face, which we of course most commonly see in a glass, and this disk of shining water resembles in every way a hand-mirror.  And for this reason a mirror was also regarded as expressing life itself, for which reason people so greatly fear to break them.  So in the Latin, Velut in speculo, and in the Italian, Vero come un specchio—‘True as a mirror,’ we have the same idea.  And a poet has written, ‘Mirrored as in a well,’ and many have re-echoed the same pretty fancy.

“Now it befell that a certain youth near Heidelberg fell into a well, or put himself there, when a certain maid whom he loved, came and looked in, and believing that she saw the face of her destined spouse, went away in full faith that the fairy of the well had taken his form, and so she married him.  Which, if it be not true, is ben trovato.

“Truth is always represented, be it remembered, as holding a mirror.

“And note also that the hand-mirror and the well were strangely connected in ancient times, as appears by Pausanias, who states that before a certain temple of Ceres hung a speculum, which, after it had been immersed in a neighbouring well or spring, showed invalids by reflection whether they would live or die.  And with all this, the holding a mirror to the mouth of an insensible person to tell whether the breath was still in the body, seemed also to make it an indicator of life.”

“Thus in life all things do pass,
As it were, in magic glass.”

“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.

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:

Via delle Serve Smarrite.

“And here chance favoured him beyond all hope; for on going to the door, he found an old woman about to enter, to whom he gave a gold piece, and begged her to tell him the true story of the house, and whether he could enter it.  But what was his amazement to find in her his old foster-mother of the country, whom he had not seen for many years, and who loved him dearly.

“And she, being pressed, told him the whole story of the house, wherein she was a servant, but that she had grown deadly tired of such evil ways, and seeing such sin as went on there, though she was well paid, and said if he would only give her a home, she would reveal all to justice.  And she added that for the present he could freely join the girls who were dancing, as the wizard, their master, was away that night.

“But when he entered, he was amazed at the splendour of the rooms and the beauty of the women.  Now among these he found one who truly enchanted him, and entering into conversation with her, found that she would gladly escape with him, and that many others were inclined to leave, but dare not show it for fear of the master.

“When lo! all at once there was an awful and simultaneous shriek as the door opened, and the Domine—I mean the headmaster, wizard, or sultan—entered, gazing like an astonished demon on the scene before his eyes.  In a voice of thunder he asked the meaning of the scene, when he found himself confronted by the intruding Signore, before whom his heart run away like water when he recognised in him a man having very great authority, with the police at his back.

“Now, servant-maids, however pretty they may be, are mostly contadine with powerful muscles and mighty arms, and with one accord they rushed on their late master, and soon overpowered him.  Then he was securely bound with silken curtain ropes, and the new Signore, taking his place at a great table, bade all the damsels range themselves at the sides in solemn council, for the offender was now to be tried, condemned, and punished too, should he be found guilty.

“The trial was indeed one of peculiar interest, and the testimony adduced would have made the fortune of a French novelist, but space (if nothing else) prohibits my giving it.  Suffice it to say that the wizard was found guilty of taking unto himself an undue share of pretty hand-maidens, a great sin considering the number of gallant soldiers and other bachelors who were thereby defrauded of their dues.  But as he had neither murdered nor stolen, it was decided to let him go and carry on his games in some less Christian town, on condition that he would divide what money he had in the house among the poor girls whom he had so cruelly cajoled.

“And as this last sentence was plaintively pronounced, there was a deep and beautiful sigh uttered by all the victims, followed by three cheers.  The master’s strong-box was at once hunted up, and its contents shared, and indeed they were so considerable that the maidens one and all soon married nobly and lived happily.”

“Ye may break, ye may ruin the flask if ye will,
But the scent of the brandy will hang round it still.”

“Now among the Greeks, as with the Northern races, the boar was the special type of male generation, even as the frog expressed that of the female sex.  And therefore images of the boar were set in public places that fertility might be developed among women, for which reason they also wear, as among the Arabs, necklaces of silver frogs.”—Notes on Symbolism.

In front of the Mercato Nuovo, built by Cosimo I., stands a bronze copy of an ancient boar, now in the Uffizzi Gallery.  It was cast by Pietro Tacca, and is now a fountain.  The popular legend in relation to it is as follows:

“In the market-place of Florence, which is called Il Porcellino, because there is in it a fountain with a swine, there was anciently only a spring of water and a pool, in which were many frogs, water-lizards, shell-snails, and slugs.  These were round about, but in the spring itself was a frog who was confined there because she had revealed that her lover was a boar.

“This boar was the son of a rich lord, who, being married for a very long time, had no children, and for this reason made his wife very unhappy, saying that she was a useless creature, and that if she could not bear a son she had better pack up and be off with herself, which she endured despairingly and weeping continually, praying to the saints and giving alms withal, all to bring forth an heir, and all in vain.

“And the fairy heard this, and took her at her word; and, as you will see, she cut her cloth without measuring it first, from which came a sad misfit.  And soon after she was ill, and this being told to her husband, he replied, ‘Good news, and may she soon be gone!’ but he changed his tone when he heard that he was to have an heir.  Then he flew to her and begged her pardon, and made great rejoicings.

“Now as surely as that time and straw ripen medlars, as the saying is, just so surely will it come to pass that a woman will tell a secret, even to her own shame.  And so it befell this lady, who told it as a great mystery to her mother, who at once imparted it under oath to all her dear friends, who swore all their friends on all their salvations not to breathe a word of it to anybody, who all confessed it to the priests.  How much farther it went God knows, but by the time the whole town knew it, which was in one day of twenty-four hours, or ere the next morning, the bride had become a frog who lived in the spring, and the bridegroom a boar who every day went to drink at the water, and when there said:

“‘Lady Frog! lo, I am here!
He to whom thou once wert dear.
We are in this sad condition,
Not by avarice or ambition,
Nor by evil or by wrong,
But ’cause thou could’st not hold thy tongue;
For be she shallow, be she deep,
No woman can a secret keep;
Which all should think upon who see
The monument which here will be.’

“So it came to pass either that the boar turned into the great bronze maiale which now stands in the market-place, or else the people raised it in remembrance of the story—chi sa—but there it is to this day.

“As for the Signora Frog, she comforted herself by making a great noise and telling the tale at the top of her voice, having her brains in her tongue—il cervello nella lingua, as they say of those who talk well yet have but small sense.  And that which you hear frogs croaking all night long is nothing but this story which I have told you of their ancestress and the bronze boar.”

“Bella di fronte e infino alle Calcagna,
Con un corredo nobile e civile,
In te risiede una cupola magna
E superbo di Giotto il Campanile.”—Giuseppe Moroni.

“Round as the O of Giotto, d’ye see?
Which means as well done as a thing can be.”—Proverb.

Many have wondered how it came to pass that Virgil lived in tradition not as a poet but as sorcerer.  But the reason for it is clear when we find that in Florence every man who ever had a genius for anything owed it to magic, or specially to the favour of some protecting fairy or folletto, spirit or god.  Is a girl musical?  Giacinto or Hyacinth, the favourite of Apollo, has given her music lessons in her dreams.  For the orthodox there are Catholic saints with a specialty, from venerable Simeon, who looks after luck in lotteries, to the ever-blessed Antony, who attends to everything, and Saint Anna, née Lucina, who inspires nurses.  And where the saints fail, the folletti, according to the witches, take their place and do the work far better.  Therefore, as I shall in another place set forth, Dante and Michel Angelo have passed into the marvellous mythology of goblins.  With them is included Giotto, as appears by the following legend of “The Goblin of the Bell-Tower of Giotto.”

Il Folletto del Campanile di Giotto.

“Now this lamb always laid down on a certain stone which was fast in the ground (masso); and Giotto, who loved the lamb, to please it, lay down also on the same stone.

“After a short time the lamb died, and when dying said:

“‘Giotto, cosa non far ti
Se mi senti parlarti,
Ti voglio tanto bene
E dove andrai,
Io ti seguiro sempre
In forma di folletto,
E col mio volere
Tu verrai un bravo scultore
E insegne disegnatore.’

“‘Giotto, be not astonished
That I thus speak to thee;
I have such love for thee,
Wherever thou shalt go
I will follow thee always
In the form of a fairy,
And through my favour
Thou shalt become a great sculptor
And artist.’

“And so it came to pass that Giotto was an able sculptor by the aid of the lamb, and all that he did was due to the lamb which helped him.

“And when he died, the spirit of the lamb remained in the form of a folletto or fairy in the campanile, and it is still often seen there, always with the spirit of Giotto.  Even in death their souls could not be separate.

“When any one desires to ascend the tower, and his or her heart fails in mounting the steps (e che ha paura di salire), the fairy below says:

“‘Vade, vade, Signora!
La vade su salgha,
Non abbia paura,
Ci sono io sotto.’

“‘Go on, go on, Signora,
Go up the stairs—oh go!
Be not afraid, my lady!
For I am here below.’

“And it is said that this fairy appears by night in the Piazza del Duomo, or Cathedral Square, in different forms.”

The reason why Giotto is so popularly known as having been a shepherd is that on the central tablet of the tower or campanile, facing the street, there is a bas-relief of a man seated in a tent with sheep before him, and this is naturally supposed to represent the builder or Giotto himself, since it fills the most prominent place.  In a very popular halfpenny chapbook, entitled “The Statues under the Uffizzi in Florence, Octaves improvised by Giuseppe Moroni, called Il Niccheri or the Illiterate,” I find the following:

Giotto.

“Voi di Mugello, nato dell’ interno,
Giotto felice, la da’ Vespignano
Prodigiose pitture in ogni esterno
A Brescia, a Roma, Firenze e Milano,
Nelle pietre, ne’ marmi nel quaderno,
L’archittetura al popolo italiano.
Da non trovare paragone simile,
Vi basti, per esempio, il campanile.”

“Thou of Mugello, born in Italy,
Happy Giotto, gav’st to Vespignan
Great pictures which on every front we see
At Brescia, Rome, in Florence and Milan,
In stone, in marble, and in poetry,
And architecture, all Italian.
Nothing surpassed thy wondrous art and power,
Take for example, then, our great bell-tower.”

The fact that this is taken from a very popular halfpenny work indicates the remarkable familiarity with such a name as that of Giotto among the people.

“They do not speak as mortals speak,
Nor sing as others sing;
Their words are gleams of starry light,
Their songs the glow of sunset light,
Or meteors on the wing.”

I once begun a book—the ending and publishing of it are in the dim and remote future, and perhaps in the limbo of all things unfinished.  It was or is “The Experiences of Flaxius the Immortal,” a sage who dwells for ever in the world, chiefly to observe the evolution of all things absurd, grotesque, quaint, illogical—in short, of all that is strictly human.  And on him I bestowed a Florentine legend which is perhaps of great antiquity, since there is a hint in it of an ancient Hebrew work by Rabbi ben Mozeltoff or the learned Gedauler Chamar—I forget which—besides being found in poetic form in my own great work on Confucius.

That money is the life of man, and that treasure buried in the earth is a sin to its possessor, forms the subject of one of Christ’s parables.  The same is true of all talent unemployed, badly directed, or not developed at all.  The turning-point of evolution and of progressive civilisation will be when public opinion and state interests require that every man shall employ what talent he has, and every mere idler be treated as a defaulter or criminal.  From this truly Christian point of view the many tales of ghosts who walk in agony because of buried gold are strangely instructive.

“Midnight was ringing from the cloister of San Miniato in Florence on the hill above, and Flaxius sat by the Arno down below, on the bank by the square grey tower of other days, known as the Niccolò, or Torre delta Trinità, because there are in it three arches. . . .

“It was midnight in mid-winter, and a full moon poured forth all its light over Florence as if it would fain preserve it in amber, and over the olive groves as if they had become moss agates. . . .

[“‘Or I,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘a fly in hock.’]

“Yes, it was a clear, cold, Tuscan night, and as the last peal of bells went out into eternity and faded in the irrevocable, thousands of spirits of the departed began to appear, thronging like fireflies through the streets, visiting their ancient haunts and homes, greeting, gossiping, arranging their affairs just as the peasants do on Friday in the great place of the Signoria, as they have done for centuries.

“Flaxius looked at the rolling river which went rushing by at his feet, and said:

“‘Arno mio, you are in a tremendous hurry to get to the sea, and all the more so because you have just had an accessit—a remittance of rain from the mountain-banks.  Buon pro vi faccia—much good may it do you!  So every shopman hurries to become a great merchant when he gets some money, and every farmer a signore, and every signore a great lord, and every great lord a ruler at court and over all the land—prorsum et sursum.  And when they get there—or when you get to the sea—then ye are all swallowed up in greater lives, interests, and actions, and so the rivers run for ever on, larger yet ever seeming less unto yourselves.  And so—ad altiora tendunt omnes—the flower-edged torrent and the Florentine.’ . . .

“When he suddenly heard above his head a spirit voice, clear, sweet and strange, ringing, not in words, but tones of unearthly music—of which languages there are many among the Unearthlies, all being wordless songs or airs suggesting speech, and yet conveying ideas far more rapidly.  It was the Goblin of the Tower calling to him of the tower next beyond on the farther hill, and he said:

“‘How many ghosts there are out to-night!’

“‘He is one to be pitied,’ replied the Goblin of the Trinità.  ‘He was a good fellow while he lived, but a little too fond of money.  He was afflicted with what doctors called, when I was young in Rome, the amor sceleratus habendi.  So it came to pass that he died leaving a treasure—mille aureos—a thousand gold crowns buried in my tower unknown to any one, and for that he must walk the earth until some one living wins the money.’

“Flaxius pricked up his ears.  He understood all that the spirits said, but they had no idea that the man in a scholar’s robe who sat below knew Goblinese.

“‘What must a mortal do to get the gold?’ inquired the second goblin.

“‘Truly he must do what is well-nigh impossible,’ replied the Elf of the Tower; ‘for he must, without magic aid—note that—bring to me here in this month of January a fresh full-blown rose.’

“The voices were silent; a cloud passed over the face of the moon; the river rushed and roared on; Flaxius sat in a Vandyke-brown study, thinking how he could obtain peace and repose for the ghostly monk, and also get the pecuniam.

“‘Here is,’ he thought, ‘aliquid laborare—something to be worked out.  Now is the time, and here is a chance—ingirlandarsi di lauro—to win the laurel wreath.  A rose in January!  What a pity that it is not four hundred years later, when people will have green-houses, and blue-nosed vagabonds will be selling red roses all the winter long in the Tornabuoni!  Truly it is sometimes inconvenient to be in advance of or behind the age.

“‘Eureka!  I have it,’ he at last exclaimed, ‘by the neck and tail.  I will spogliar la tesoria—rob the treasury and spoil the Egyptian—si non in errore versatus sum—unless I am stupendously mistaken.  Monk! thy weird will soon be dreed—thy penance prophesied will soon be o’er.’

“Saying this he went into the city.  And there the next day, going to a fair dame of his acquaintance, who excelled all the ladies of all Italy in ingenious needlework, he had made of silk a rose; and so deftly was it done, that had it been put on a bush, you would have sworn that a nightingale would have sung to it, or bee have sought to ravish it.

“‘Che vuoi?  What dost thou seek?’ cried the Elf.

“‘The treasure of the monk!’

“‘Bene!  Give me a rose.’

“‘Ecco!  There it is,’ replied Flaxius, extending it.

“‘Non facit—it won’t do,’ answered the goblin (thinking Flaxius to be a monk).  ‘It is a sham rose artificially coloured, murice tincta est.’

“‘Smell it,’ replied Flaxius calmly.

“‘The smell is all right, I admit,’ answered the guardian of the gold.  ‘The perfume is delicious;’ here he sniffed at it deeply, being, like all his kind, enraptured with perfume, ‘and that much of it is, I grant, the real thing.’

“‘Now tell me,’ inquired Flaxius, ‘truly—religiosè testimonium dicere—by thy great ancestress Diana and her sister-double Herodias and her Nine Cats, by the Moon and the eternal Shadow, Endamone, and the word which Bergoia whispered into the ear of the Ox, and the Lamia whom thou lovest—what is it makes a man?  Is it his soul or his body?’

“‘Man of mystery and master of the hidden lore,’ replied the awe-struck goblin, ‘it is his soul.’

“‘And is not the perfume of the rose its soul—that which breathes its life, in which it speaks to fairies or to men?  Is not the voice in song or sweetened words the perfume of the spirit, ever true?  Is not—’

“‘I give it up,’ replied the goblin.  ‘The priest may turn in now for a long, long nap.  Here, take his gold, and ne gioire tutto d’allegrezza—may you have a merry time with it.  There is a great deal of good drinking in a thousand crowns; and if you ever try to ludere latrunculis vel aleis, or shake the bones or dice, I promise you three sixes.  By the way, I’ll just keep this rose to remember you by.  Addio—a rivederlei!’

“So the bedesman slept amid his ashes cold, and the good Flaxius, who was a stout carl for the nonce, with a broad back and a great beard, returned, bearing a mighty sack of ancient gold, which stood him in good stead for many a day.  And the goblin is still there in the tower.”

Thus wrote Flaxius.

Since I penned the foregoing from memory, I have found the Italian text or original, which had been mislaid for years.  In it the tale is succinctly told within the compass of forty lines, and ends with these words:

“‘Take the treasure, and give me the rose!’

“And so the spirit gave him the treasure and took the rose, and the poor man went home enriched, and the priest to sleep in peace—fra gli eterni—among the eternals.”

I ought, of course, to have given scientifically only the text word for word, but litera scripta manet—what is written remains, and Flaxius is an old friend of mine, and I greatly desired to introduce him to my readers.  And I doubt not that the reviewers will tell me if I have sinned!

“Do a good deed, or aught that’s fit,
You never again may hear of it;
But make a slip, all will detect it,
And every friend at once correct it!”

“If I believed that spirits ne’er
Return to earth once more,
And that there’s naught unto them dear
In the life they loved before;
Then truly it would seem to me,
However fate has sped,
For souls there’s no eternity,
And they and all are dead.”

It must have struck every one who has read the life of Michel Angelo, that he was, like King James the First of England, “nae great gillravager after the girls,” or was far from being susceptible to love—in which he formed a great contrast to Raphael, and indeed to most of the Men of his Time—or any other.  This appears to have impressed the people of Italy as something even more singular than his works, for which reason he appears in popular tradition as a good enough goblin, not without cheerfulness and song, but as one given to tormenting enamoured couples and teasing lady artists, whom he subsequently compliments with a gift.  The legend is as follows:

Lo Spirito di Michele Angiolo Buonarotti.

“The spirit of Michel Angelo is seen mostly by night, in woods or groves.  The good man appears as he did in life, come era prima, ever walking among trees singing poetry.  He amuses himself very much by teasing lovers—a dare noia agli amoretti—and when he finds a pair who have hidden themselves under leaves and boughs to make love, he waits till they think they are well concealed, and then begins to sing.  And the two feel a spell upon them when they hear his voice, and can neither advance nor retreat.

“When some lady-artist goes to sketch or paint, be it al piazzale, in open places, or among the woods, it is his delight to get behind, and cause her to blunder, scrawl, and daub (fare degli scarabocchi).  And when the artist is angered, she will hear a loud peal of laughter; and if this irritates her still more, she will hear a song, and yet not perceive the singer.  And when at last in alarm she catches up her sketch, all scrawled and spoiled, and takes to flight, she will hear the song following her, and yet if she turns her head she will see no one pursuing.  The voice and melody are always beautiful.  But it is marvellously lucky to have this happen to an artist, for when she gets home and looks at her sketch, she finds that it is neither scrawled nor daubed, but most exquisitely executed in the style of Michel Angelo.”

It is marvellous how the teasing faun or Silvanus of the Romans has survived in Tuscany.  I have found him in many forms, under many names, and this is the last.  But why it should be Michel Angelo, I cannot imagine, unless it be that his face and stump nose, so familiar to the people, are indeed like that of the faun.  The dii sylvestres, with all their endless mischief, riotry, and revelry, were good fellows, and the concluding and rather startling touch that the great artist in the end always bestows a valuable picture on his victim is really godlike—in a small way.

It is remarkable as a coincidence, that Michel Angelo was himself during life terribly annoyed and disturbed by people prying and speering about him while painting—especially by Pope Leo—for whom he nevertheless painted very good pictures.  It would almost seem as if there were an echo of the event in the legend.  Legend is the echo of history.

“‘Well I ween it may be true
That afar in fairyland
Great artists still pursue
That which in life they knew,
And practise still, with ever bettering hand,
Sculpture and painting, all that charm can bring,
While by them all departed poets sing.’”

“Musa profonda dei Toscani, il Dante,
Il nobil cittadin, nostro Alighieri,
Alla filosofia ricco e brillante
Purgò il linguaggio e corredò i pensieri;
E nell’ opera sua fatto gigante
A Campaldino nei primi guerrieri;
Lui il Purgatorio, Paradiso e Inferno
Fenomeno terren, poeta eterno!”

—Le Statue disotto gli Ufizi in Fireneze.  Ottave improvisate da Giuseppe Moroni detto Il Nicchieri (Iliterato).  Florence, 1892.

It has been boldly asserted by writers who should know better, that there are no ghosts in Italy, possibly because the two only words in the language for such beings are the equivocal ones of spirito or spirit, and spettro or spectre—or specter, as the Websterians write it—which is of itself appalling as a terrific spell.  But the truth is that there is no kind of spuk, goblin, elf, fairy, gnome, or ouphe known to all the North of Europe which was not at home in Italy since old Etruscan days, and ghosts, though they do not make themselves common, are by no means as rare as eclipses.  For, as may be read in my “Etruscan Roman Legends,” people who will look through a stone with a hole in it can behold no end of revenants, or returners, in any churchyard, and on fine nights the seer can see them swarming in the streets of Florence.  Giotto is in the campanile as a gentle ghost with the fairy lamb, and Dante, ever benevolent, is all about town, as appears from the following, which was unexpectedly bestowed on me:

“And it is said that if in any public place of resort or inn (bettola) any poet sings the poems of Dante, he is always present among those who listen, appearing as a gentleman or poor man—secondo il locale—according to the place.

“Thus the spirit of Dante enters everywhere without being seen.

“If his poems be in the house of any person who takes no pleasure in them, the spirit of the poet torments him in his bed (in dreams) until the works are taken away.”