1 It is significant of a symbolical intention that the story should thus allude to the Valle del Orco; the more so as I cannot hear of any such actual locality in Val Sugana, though ‘Orco’ has lent his name to more than one spot, as we shall see later. There is, however, a Val d’Inferno between this valley and Predazzo.
2 Settepergole—Seven Pergolas—the name of several farms in Wälsch-Tirol. Pergola is the name for a vine trellised to form an arbour, all over Italy.
3 This effect has often been noticed here by travellers.
4 Two bronze statuettes of Apollo were found here in June 1869.
5 Very like and very unlike the legend of S. Giuliano I met in Rome (Folklore of Rome), where he was supposed to be a native of Albano, and to have passed his penitential time at Compostella. G. Schott, Wallächische Märchen, pp. 281 and 375, gives a similar legend applied to Elias in place of St. Julian.
6 Folklore of Rome, p. 320.
7 I need not repeat the characteristics of the Tirolean Norg, which I have given in the translation of the ‘Rose-garden’ in Household Stories from the Land of Hofer.
8 Thorp’s Northern Mythology, vol. ii. pp. 20–2.
9 Though of course mere similarity of sound may lead one absurdly astray; as if any one were to say that the old fables of rubbing a ring to produce the ‘Slave of the ring’ was the origin of the modern substitute of ringing to summon a servant!
10 Again, Mr. Cox (Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. ii. p. 221 et seq.) says, ‘the Maruts or storm winds who attend on Indra ... became the fearful Ogres in the traditions of Northern Europe ... they are the children of Rudra, worshipped as the destroyer and reproducer and ... like Hermes, as the robber, the cheat, the deceiver, the master thief.’
11 Etruscan Researches, p. 376 and note.
12 Stöber, Sagen des Elsasses, p. 30.
13 Cities of Etruria, vol. ii. p. 65–8.
14 Selvan, at all events, is a word which, Mr. Isaac Taylor observes, is of frequent occurrence in Etruscan inscriptions (Et. Res. pp. 394–5), and its signification has not yet been fixed. And may not Gannes have some relation with Kan or Khan (p. 322)?
15 It is very disappointing that he has translated the great bulk of his vast collection of fiabe (‘fiaba’ in North Italian answers to the ‘favola’ of Rome) so utterly into German that, though we find all our old friends among them, all the distinctive expressions are translated away, and they are rendered valueless for all but mere childish amusement. Thus it is interesting to find in Wälsch-Tirol a diabolical counterpart of the Roman story of ‘Pret’ Olivo,’ but it would have rendered it infinitely more interesting had the collector told us what was the word which he translates by ‘Teufel,’ for it is the rarest thing in the world for an Italian to bring the personified ‘Diavolo’ or ‘Demonio’ into any light story. In the same way it is interesting to find all the other tales with which we are familiar turn up here, but the real use of printing them at length would have been to point out their characteristics. What was the Italian used for the words rendered in the German by ‘Witch?’ Was it ‘Gannes’ or ‘strega?’ or for ‘Giant’ and ‘Wild man:’ was it ‘l’om salvadegh’ or ‘salvan’ or ‘orco?’ I cannot think it was ‘gigante.’ But all is left to conjecture. Among the few bits of Italian he does give are two or three ‘tags’ to stories, among them the one I met so continually in Rome ‘Larga la foglia’—(it was still ‘foglia’ and not ‘voglia’) word for word.
16 Dr. Steub, in his Herbsttagen in Tirol, shows that the Beatrick may be identified with Dietrich von Bern.
17 Though nothing would seem simpler than to suppose the word derived from the Euganean inhabitants who left their name to Val Sugana.
18 It is curious to observe the story pass through all the stages of the supernatural agency traditional in the locality; first the good genius of the Etruscans merging next into the Germanic woodsprite, then assuming the vulgar characteristics of later imaginings about witchcraft, and then the Christian teaching ‘making use of it,’ as Professor de Gubernatis says, ‘for its own moral end.’
19 A collection of the ‘Costumi’ of Tuscany I have, without a title-page, but I think published about 1835, laments the growing disuse in Lunigiana (i.e. the country round the Gulf of Spezia, so called from Luna, an Etruscan city, but ‘not one of the twelve,’ and including Carrara, Lucca, and Pisa) of the practice of recounting popular traditions at the Focarelli there. These seem to be autumn evening gatherings round a fire, but in the open air, often on a threshing-floor; while the able-bodied population is engaged in the preparation of flax, and some are spinning, the boys and girls dance, wrestle, and play games, and the old crones gossip; but now, says the writer, they begin to occupy themselves only with scandalous and idle reports, instead of old-world lore.
20 My readers will perhaps not recognize at first sight that this is a corruption of Frau Bertha, the Perchtl whom we met in North Tirol. In the Italian dialects of the Trentino she is also called la brava Berta and la donna Berta.
21 ‘Your servant! Mistress Bertha of the long nose.’ Such was supposed to be the correct form of addressing the sprite.
22 Many of these concern the earthly wanderings of Christ and his apostles. I have given one of the most sprightly and characteristic of Schneller’s, too long to be inserted here, in The Month for September, 1870, entitled ‘The Lettuce-leaf Barque.’
23 Gathered for the above-named collection by Herr Zacchea of the Fassathal, in the Val di Non, Lederthal, and Val Arsa.
24 I have mentioned the only other wolf-stories that I have met with in the chapter on Excursions round Meran; and at p. 31 of this volume.
25 Cox’s Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 405.
26 I have thought this one of the best specimen tales, as the two stories of the Three Wishes and the Three Faithful Beasts are leading ones in every popular mythology. I have named a good many variants in connexion with their counterparts in the Folklore of Rome, and a more extensive survey of them, together with a most interesting analysis of their probable origin, will be found in Cox’s Mythology of Aryan Nations, vol. i. pp. 144 and 375. I had thought that these, being strung together in the text version, was owing to a freak of memory of some narrator who, having forgotten the original conclusion of the former story, takes the latter one into it; but, curiously enough, in the note to the last-named page of Mr. Cox’s work, he happens actually to establish an intrinsic identity of origin in the two stories. The Three Wishes story has also a strangely localized home in the Oetzthal, which, though properly belonging to the division of North Tirol, I prefer to cite here, for the sake of its analogies. Its particular home is in the so-called Thal Vent, on the frozen borders of the Gletscher described by Weber, as appalling to a degree in its loneliness, and in the roaring of its torrents, and the stern rugged inaccessibility of its peaks. Here, he says, three Selige Fräulein (Weber, like Schneller, translates everything inexorably into German; this may have been an Enguana) have their abode in a sumptuous subterranean palace, which no mortal might reach. They are also called die drei Feyen, he says, forming a further identification with the normal legend, but he does not account for the penetration of the French word into this unfrequented locality. They were kind and ancillary to the poor mountain folk, but the dire enemies of the huntsman, for he hunted as game the creatures who were their domestic animals (here we have the nucleus of a heap of various tales and legends of the pet creatures of fairies and hermits becoming the intermediaries of supernatural communication). The Thal Vent legend proceeds that a young shepherd once won the regard of the drei Feyen; they fulfilled all his wishes, and gave him constant access to their palace under the sole condition that he should never reveal its locality to any huntsman. After some years the youth one day incautiously let out the secret to his father, and from thenceforth the drei Feyen were inexorable in excluding him from their society. He pleaded and pleaded all in vain, and ultimately made himself a huntsman in desperation. But the first time he took aim at one of their chamois, the most beautiful of the three fairies appeared to him in so brilliant a light of glory, that he lost all consciousness of his actual situation and fell headlong down the precipice.
27 They are called ‘Lustige Geschichte,’ ‘Storielle da rider.’ The Germans have a saying that ‘in jeder Sage haftet eine Sache;’ the ‘Sache’ is perhaps more hidden in these than in others. I have pointed out counterparts of the following at Rome and elsewhere in Folklore of Rome.
28 Capitello, in Wälsch-Tirol, is the same as Bildstöcklein in the German provinces—a sacred image in a little shrine.
29 Bears exist to the present day in Tirol. Seven were killed last year. A prize of from five-and-twenty to fifty florins is given for killing one by various communes.
30 A distinct remnant of Etruscan custom. It is singular, too, that Mr. I. Taylor finds ‘faba’ to have been taken by the Romans from the Etruscans for a bean, but though the custom of connecting beans with the celebration of the departed is common all over Italy, I do not think the Etruscans provided their dead with beans except along with all other kinds of food (supra p. 130–1 note).
31 The little book of Costumi spoken of above, mentions the ‘Zocco del Natale’ as in use also in Lunigiana; it is generally of olive-tree, and household auguries are drawn from the crackling of leaves and unripe berries. It cites a letter of a certain Giovanni da Molta, dated 1388, showing that the custom has not undergone much change in five hundred years.
32 Two travellers, two prosperous ones, and a cardinal?—Answer. Sun and moon; earth and heaven; and the ocean.
33 There is a meadow overblown with carnations, yet if the Pope came with all his court, not one sole carnation would he be able to carry off?—Answer. The heaven beaming with stars.
34 Plate upon plate; a man fully armed; a lady well dressed; a stud well appointed?—Answer. Heaven and earth; the sun; the moon; the stars.
35 There is a palace with twelve rooms; each room has thirty beams, and two are ever running after each other through them without ever catching each other?—Answer. The palace is the year, the rooms the months, the beams the days, and day and night are always following each other without overlapping.