Since writing the foregoing, I have obtained the following, entitled, The Pater Noster of the Country People in the Old Market, or,

Il Pater Noster dei Beceri di Mercato.

“Pate nostro quisin celi sanctifice tuore nome tumme; avvenia regno tumme; fia te volunta stua, in celo en terra.

“Pane nostro cotediano da nobis sodie, e dimitti nobis debita nostra, sicutte ette nos dimittimus debitori nostri, sette ananossie in due casse, intenzione sedie nosse e mulo.—Amenne!”

There is, however, this great difference in the two prayers here given, that the Salve Regina is intended for a jest, while the paternoster is given as actually taken down from a ciana, and is rather a specimen of dialect than a jeu d’esprit.  The following Ave Maria is also serious, and simply a curiosity of language:—

L’Ave Maria.

“Avemmaria grazia piena, dominò teco beneditta e frustris, e mulieri busse e benedetti fruttus ventris tui eiusse!

“Santa Maria Materdei, ora pro nobisse, pecatoribusse, tinche, tinona, mortis nostrisse.—Ammenne!”

These specimens of Italianised Latin are not so grotesque as some which were written out for me in all seriousness by a poor woman.  A specimen of the latter is given in my work on “Etruscan-Roman Traditions.”

I Gatti di San Lorenzo.

“In the cloisters of San Lorenzo there are many cats, and every evening people may be seen who go there to feed them, among whom are many old men and women.  But these cats were long ago themselves human, that is to say, they were once all wizards and witches, who bear their present form for punishment of an evil deed.

“There was once a very wealthy and powerful family in Florence, at the head of which was a gentleman and lady who had an only daughter, in whom was all their love and hope.  Among their servants in a higher position was an old woman, who was very vindictive and easily offended, so that she could brood over deadly revenge for years for the least affront, and she fancied she had a great many, because when she had neglected her duty at times she had been scolded by her mistress or master.

“Now this old woman knew that death or disaster to the daughter would drive the parents mad; and so having recourse to witchcraft, she put into the drink of the young lady a decoction, the result of which was that she began to waste away, growing weaker and paler, without feeling any pain.

“Then the old servant woman appeared at the door, against her will, forced by the power of the spell, in an agony of rage and bitterness; but she was at once seized and beaten, whereupon she consented to unbewitch the girl, who speedily recovered.

“Now Florence was at that time fearfully afflicted with evil witches, who defied all authority, and spread disease and death far and wide; but this affair of the bewitched lady being made known, both priests and laymen rose up in wrath, and the sorceress fled for sanctuary to the cloisters of San Lorenzo.

“Then to save their lives the Strege made a compromise with the priests, and it was agreed that they should no longer live as witches, or do any harm, but all live and die as cats in the cloister, where they should be regularly fed, and exist in peace.  Which agreement has been duly carried out to this day, and among these cats are many who were once witches in human form hundreds of years ago.”

This narrative is not so much a story as an account of the manner in which bewitchment is undone by another witch.  The reader will find the incantations in the chapter entitled “The Spell of the Boiling Clothes,” in my work on “Etruscan-Roman Remains.”  One of the most serious riots which has occurred in Milan for many years took place March 3, 1891, when the populace tortured terribly and tried to kill a witch, who had, it was believed, been detected by this spell.

“Oh! ye who visit the cloister, and see the cats, think well on this legend, and especially on the deep identity of witches with tabbies!

“And for a moral, note that, with all their sins, what the witches and cats aimed at above all things was food, with which they have remained content, according to the exquisite lyric by the divine Shelley, p. 661, Dowden’s edition:—

“‘This poor little cat
   Only wanted a rat,
To stuff out its own little maw,
   And it were as good
   Some people had such food
To make them hold their jaw.’”

“For by diabolical art he assumed varied forms, even the human, and deceived people by many occult tricks.”—Fromann, Tractatus de Fascinatione, 1675.

This is a slight tale of light value, and not new, but it has assumed local colour, and may amuse the reader.

“It was a great art of witches and sorcerers of old to give a man or woman by art the appearance of another person, and this they called ‘drawing white lines with charcoal,’ and there is many a fine tale about it.  Now it was about the time when Berta spun and owls wore silk cloaks that a Signore Nannincino lived in the old Piazza San Biagio.  He had many small possessions in Florence, but the roast chickens of the supper, or his great piece, was an estate in the country called the Mula a Quinto, for which all his relations longed, like wolves for a fat sheep.  And Nannincini, being sharp to a keen edge, and knowing how to lend water and borrow wine, had promised this estate in secret to everybody, and got from them many a gratification, and supped and dined with them for years, yet after this died without leaving a will.

“Then six of his relations assembled and resolved to secure the property, though they invoked the devil.  And to aid them they took a certain scamp named Giano di Selva, who somewhat resembled the departed Nannincino, and he, calling in a witch of his acquaintance, was made by sorcery to look as much like the defunct as two beads of the same rosary.  So Nannincino was removed and Giano put in his place, where he lay still for an hour, and then began to show signs of life.  And after a time he called for a notary and began to make his will.  First he left a house to one, and his sword to another, and so on, till it came to the Mula a Quinto.

“‘And who shall have the Mula a Quinto, dear good uncle?’ asked a nephew.

“‘But what is his name?’ asked the nephew.

“‘Giano di Selva,’ gasped the dying man.  And it was written down by the notary, and the will was signed, and the signer died immediately after.  All their shaking could not revive him.

“The tale ends with these words: E così ingannati gli ingannatori, rimase Giano herede del podere—And thus the biters being bit, d’ye see, Giano took a handsome property.”

“And does his ghost still promenade the palace?”

“To oblige you, Signore, for this once—place a lei il comandare—it does.  The ghost walks—always when the rent fails to come in, and there is no money in the treasury—cammina, cammina per un fil di spada—walks as straight as an acrobat on a rope.  But I cannot give you a walking ghost of a rascal to every house, Signore.  If all the knaves who made fortunes by trickery were to take to haunting our houses in Florence, they would have to lie ten in a bed, or live one hundred in a room, and ghosts, as you know, love to be alone.  Mille grazie, Signore Carlo!  This will keep our ghost from walking for a week.”

“Of which remark here made that ‘the ghost doth walk,’” comments the sage Flaxius, “when money is forbidden unto man (which is so commonly heard in theatrical circles when the weekly salary is not paid), I have no doubt that it comes from the many ancient legends which assign a jealous guardian sprite to every hoard.  And thus in Spenser’s wondrous ‘Faerie Queene’ the marvellous stores in Mammon’s treasury, ‘embost with massy gold of glorious guifte,’ were watched by

“‘An ugly feend more fowle than dismall day;
The which with monstrous stalk behind him stept,
And ever as he went dew watch upon him kept.’

“The which quotation is in its turn otherwise curious since it gave, I doubt not, the original suggestion to Coleridge of the verse wherein mention is made in simile of one who walks in tear and dread, and dares not turn his head—

“‘For well he knows a griesly fiend
Doth close behind him tread.’

“‘More or less accurately, my masters, more or less.’  ‘’Tis sixty years since’—I read the original.”

“And both the undying fish that swim
Through Bowscale Tarn did wait on him:
The pair were servants of his eye
In their immortality;
They moved about in open sight,
To and fro, for his delight.”

—Wordsworth, Poems of the Imagination.

Lo Spirito della Vasca della Porta San Gallo.

“In this fountain-basin is found a pretty little fish, which is always there, and which no one can catch, because it always escapes with great lestezza or agility.

“And this is the queen of all the other fish, or else the Spirit of the Fountain.

“This spirit, while on earth, was a beautiful girl who loved an official, and he fell ill and was in the military hospital.

“The parents of the maid opposed her marriage with this official, though he was so much in love with her that it and anxiety had made him ill.  Then the maid became a nun so that she might be near him in illness, and nurse him in his last moments, which indeed came to pass, for he died, nor did she long survive him.

“’Tis worth noting,” pens the observant Flaxius on this, “that in days of yore fish, feminines, and fascination were considered so inseparable that Dr. Johannes Christian Fromann wrote a chapter on this mystical trinity, observing that music was, as an attractor, connected with them, as shown by dolphins, syrens, Arions, and things of that sort.  And he quoted—yea, in the holy Latin tongue—many instances of fishers who entice their finny prey by playing flutes:

“‘Which thing I doubted till I saw that Doubt
   Pursued, its refutation oft begets,
When in America I once found out
   That shad were caught by means of castin’ nets!’”

“Were I ten times as tedious, I would find it in my heart to bestow it all on you.”—Dogberry.

This little tale is told by the Florentine Poggio, who was born in 1380 and died in 1459, yet lived—in his well-known Facezie.  But as it ever was and is a folk-story, independently of the great jester, I think it worthy of a place in this collection.

“There was once a podestà sent from Rome to govern Florence, and truly he was of that kind who to a farthing’s worth of sense have ten ducats’ value in self-conceit; for if vanity could have kept a man warm, he never would have had need to buy blankets.  And this was most shown in his belief that he was a great orator, though he was so intolerably stupid and slow that his speeches were like the post-rider of Giordano, who in good weather sometimes got as far as five miles a day.

“Now he was to be inducted into office in the Cathedral, in the presence of the priori, or notables of the city of Florence, and so begun a discourse in which he first of all described how great a man he had been as senator in Rome, and what he had done, and what everybody else connected with him had done, and all the details of his departure from the Eternal City; and then depicted a banquet given to him at Sutro, and so went on, telling everything about everybody, till, after several hours of terribly tiresome discourse, he had got no farther than Siena.

“‘Monsignore, I beg you to remember that it is growing late, and you must really get on a little faster in your journey, for if you are not in Florence to-day, the gates will be shut, and unless you get here in time you will not be allowed to enter, and thus you will miss being ordained, and cannot enter on your office.’

“Which having heard, the man of many words promptly concluded his speech by saying that he was really in Florence.”

Southey, in “The Doctor,” has narrated a number of instances of tedious discourse, but none, I think, quite equal to this.

There is a shadow under every lamp, a devil’s chapel close by every church, and even of the venerable and holy Duomo of Florence there are such tales as the following:

La Messa de’ Villani.

“If there is any faith to be put in old stories and ancient books, even the ladies and gentleman, to say nothing of priests, used such language in their ordinary conversation, in good old Medici times, as would not be heard among any but the lowest people now-a-days.  Well, as the saying is:

“‘Ne di tempo, nè di Signoria,
Non ti dar malinconia.’

“‘Fret not thyself for time long past away,
For weather, nor for what the great may say.’

“Well, it happened one morning in Florence that a gentil donna, who, I take it, was more donna than truly gentil, whatever her rank may have been, meeting at the door of the Duomo a very ordinary and rough figure of her acquaintance, who had only made himself look more vulgar by new and gaudy clothes, asked him as he came out:

When standing in the Cathedral, the visitor may remember that here Santo Crescenzio, who died in 424, once wrought a miracle, thus recorded in his “Life” of the fourteenth century:

“A poor man had come into the Cathedral and saw no light (i.e., was blind), and going to where Saint Crescentius was, implored him with great piety that he would cause the light to return unto him.  And being moved to pity, he made the sign of the cross in the eyes of the blind man, and incontinently the light was restored unto him.  Saint Crescentius did not wish this to be made known, and pretended to know nothing about it, but he could not conceal such miracles.”

Of which the immortal Flaxius remarks, that “it is singular that so many saints who wished to keep their miracles unknown had not the forethought to make silence a condition of cure.  Also, that of all the wonder-working once effected by the holy men of the Church, the only gift now remaining to them is the miraculous power of changing sons and daughters into nephews and nieces; the which, as I am assured, is still as flourishing as ever, and permitted as a proof of transubstantiation.”  Thus it is that simple heretics deride holy men.  And Flaxius is, I bid ye note, a sinner, in whose antique, unsanctified derision I most assuredly do take no part, “it being in bad form in this our age to believe or disbelieve in anything,” and therefore in bad style to laugh at aught.

It may be worth recalling, when looking out on the Cathedral Square, that it was here that San Zenobio performed another great miracle, recorded in all his lives, but most briefly in the poetical one:

Which being witnessed, says the Vita San Zenobii, all who were present began to sing, “Gloria tibi Domine qui mirabilia per servos tuos in nobis operari dignatus es, gloria sit tibi-i et laus in sæcu-la—sec-u-lo-o-o-rum, A-men.

Which, if they sung it as I heard it sung yesterday in the Cathedral of Siena, must have had an extremely soporific effect, lulling all others to sleep, and causing them to see beatific visions beyond all belief.  I had in my boyhood a teacher named Professor Sears C. Walker, who was wont to tell how he had once heard in a rural New England village a church congregation sing:

“Before thy throne the angels bow-wow-wow-ow!”

But to hear the bow-wow in perfection, one must go to Rome.  A pack in full cry or a chorus of owls is nothing to it.  But let us pass on to a fresh story.

“He found such strange enchantment there,
In that garden sweet and rare,
Where night and day
The nightingales still sing their roundelay,
And plashing fountains ’neath the verdure play,
That for his life he could not thence away;
And even yet, though he hath long been dead,
’Tis said his spirit haunts the pleasant shade.”

—The Ring of Charlemagne.

A great showman, as I have heard, once declared that in establishing a menagerie, one should have the indispensable lion, an obligato elephant, a requisite tiger, an essential camel, and imperative monkeys.  One of the “indispensable lions” of Florence is the Boboli Gardens, joining the Pitti Palace, which, from their careful preservation in their original condition, give an admirable idea of what gardens were like in an age when far more was thought of them than now as places of habitual resort and enjoyment, and when they entered into all literature and life.  Abraham à Santa Clara once wrote a discourse against gardens, as making life too happy or simple, basing his idea on the fact that sin originated in the Garden of Eden.

“Its long-embowered walks, like lengthened arbours,
Are well adapted to the summer’s sun;
While statues, terraces, and vases add
Still more unto its splendour.  All around
We see attractive statues, and of these
A number really are restored antiques,
And many by good artists; best of all
Are four by mighty Michel Angelo,
Made for the second Julius, and meant
To decorate his tomb.  You see them at
The angles of the grotto opposite
The entrance to the gardens.  Of this grot
The famous Redi sang in verse grotesque:

“Ye satyrs, in a trice
   Leave your low jests and verses rough and hobbly,
And bring me a good fragment of the ice
   Kept in the grotto of the Garden Boboli.
            With nicks and picks
            Of hammers and sticks,
            Disintegrate it
            And separate it,
            Break it and split it,
            Splinter and slit it!
Till at the end ’tis fairly ground and rolled
Into the finest powder, freezing cold.”

There are also, among the things worth seeing, the Venus by Giovanni of Boulogne (called di Bologna); the Apollo and Ceres by Baccio Bandinelli; the group of Paris carrying off Helen by V. de’ Rossi, and the old Roman fountain-bath and obelisk.  The trees and flowers, shrubbery and boschetti, are charming; and if the reader often visits them, long sitting in the sylvan shade on sunny days, he will not fail to feel that strange enchantment which seems to haunt certain places, and people them with dreams, if not with elves.

Il Giardino Boboli.

“The Boboli Garden is the most beautiful in Europe.

“Boboli was the name of the farmer who cultivated the land before it was bought by Cosimo de’ Medici and his wife Eleanora.

“After he had sold the property he remained buried in grief, because he had an attachment for it such as some form for a dog or a cat.  And so great was his love for it that it never left his mind, nor could he ever say amen to it; for on whatever subject he might discourse, it always came in like one who will not be kept out, and his refrain was, ‘Well, you’ll see that my place will become il nido degli amori (the nest of loves), and I myself after my death will never be absent from it.’  His friends tried to dissuade him from thinking so much of it, saying that he would end by being lunatic, but he persevered in it till he died.

“And it really came to pass as he said; for soon after his death, and ever since, many have on moonlight nights seen his spirit occupied in working in the gardens.”

The story is a pretty one, and it is strangely paralleled by one narrated in my own Memoirs of the old Penington mansion in Philadelphia, the gardens of which were haunted by a gentle ghost, a lady who had lived there in her life, and who was, after her death, often seen watering the flowers in them by moonlight.  And thus do—

      “printless footsteps fall
By the spots they loved before.”

The second legend which I recovered, relating to the Boboli Gardens, is as follows:

“There are in the Boboli Gardens two statues of two imprisoned kings, and it is said that every night a beautiful fairy of the grotto clad in white rises from the water, emerging perfectly dry, and converses with the captive kings for one hour, going alternately from one to the other, as if bearing mutual messages, and then returns to the grotto, gliding over the ground without touching the grass with her feet, and after this vanishes in the water.”

“This tale is, as I conceive,” writes the observant Flaxius, “an allegory, or, as Petrus Berchorius would have called it, a moralisation, the marrow whereof is as follows: The two captive kings are Labour and Capital, who have, indeed, been long enchained, evil tongues telling each that the other was his deadly foe, while the fairy is Wise Reform, who passes her time in consoling and reconciling them.  And it shall come to pass that when the go-betweens or brokering mischief-makers are silenced, then the kings will be free and allied.”

“Then indeed, as you may see,
All the world will happy be!”

Vivat Sequenz!  Now for the next story.

“Puer—abige Muscas!”

—Cicero de Orat., 60.

The following story contains no new or original elements, as it is only an ordinary tale of transformation by witchcraft, but as it accounts for the origin of the name of a street in Florence I give it place:—

La Via della Mosca.

“This is the way that the Via della Mosca, or the Street of the Fly, got its name.  There once dwelt in it, in a very old house, a family which, while of rank, were not very wealthy, and therefore lived in a retired manner.  There were father, mother, and one daughter, who was wonderfully beautiful—un vero occhio di sole.

“There is a saying of a very unlucky contrary sort of man that casco in Arno ed arse (He fell in the Arno and burnt himself).  But in this case, by luck, the falling of the young lady into the river caused her heart to burn with love, for so bravely and courteously and kindly did the young signore behave, conveying her promptly home without a sign of love-making or hint of the past, that she began to reconsider her refusal, and the end thereof was a betrothal, by which the mother and daughter were maddened to think that they had only hastened and aided what they had tried to prevent.

“Now, it is true that bad people put ten times as much strong will and hard work into their evil acts as good folk do into better deeds, because the latter think their cause will help itself along, while the sinners know perfectly well that they must help themselves or lose.  So the witch only persevered the more, and at last she hit on this plan.  With much devilish ado she enchanted a comb of thorns, so that whoever was combed with it would turn into a fly, and must remain one till the witch bade the victim assume his or her usual form.

“Then on the bridal morn the old woman offered to comb out the long golden locks of the young lady, and she did so, no other person being present, so she began her incantation:

“‘Earthly beauty fade away,
Maiden’s form no longer stay,
For a fly thou shalt become,
And as a busy insect hum,
Hum—hum—brum—brum!
Buzz-uz-uz about the room!

“‘Ope thine eyes and spread thy wings,
Pass away to insect things.
Now the world will hate thee more
Than it ever loved before
When it hears thy ceaseless hum,
Buzz-uz-uz about the room!’

“And hearing this, the bride sank into a deep sleep, during which she changed into a fly, and so soared up to the ceiling and about the room, buzzing indeed.

“But when they went to look at the fly, and found it so large and beautiful, they were amazed, nor were they less astonished when they heard it begin to buzz with a most entrancing strangely sweet sound, and then sing:—

“‘Be ye not amazed that I
Am enchanted as a fly,
Evil witchcraft was around me,
Evil witches’ spells have bound me:
Now I am a fly I know,
But woe to her who made me so!’

“And when the young signore stretched out his hand, the fly came buzzing with joy and lighted like a bird on his finger, and this she did with great joy whenever any of the poor whom she had befriended came to see her, and so she behaved to all whom she had loved.  And when it was observed that the fly had no fear of holy things, but seemed to love them, all believed in her song.

“Till one day the young signore, calling all the family and friends together, said: ‘This is certainly true, that she who was to have been my wife is here, turned into a fly.  And as for her being a witch, ye can all see that she fears neither holy water nor a crucifix.  But I believe that these women here, her nurse and daughter, have filled our ears with lies, and that the nurse herself is the sorceress who hath done the evil deed.  Now, I propose that we take all three, the fly, the mother, and daughter, and hang the room with verbena, which I have provided, and sprinkle the three with much holy water, all of us making the castagna and jettatura, and see what will come of it.’

“Then those present seized the witches, and said: ‘Your lives shall indeed be spared, but it is only just that ere ye go ye shall be as nicely combed, according to the proverb which says, “Comb me and I’ll comb thee!”’

“Said and done, but the combing this time drew blood, and the mother and daughter, shrinking smaller and smaller, flew away at last as two vile carrion-flies through the window.

“And as the story spread about Florence, every one came to see the house where this had happened, and so it was that the street got the name of the Via della Mosca or Fly Lane.”