NOTES.
Note 1, p.48.—This line is printed in the edition of 1825 (I am not aware whether there is any other) as “An old stony Giggiano,” which does not make sense, as there appears to be no such word as “Giggiano” in Italian, except a proper name, applied to a district in Tuscany. The emendation I have ventured upon gives the sense correctly. The literal translation of the last six lines is—“Or of that which, vermillion and brilliant, makes proud the Aretine who grows it on Tregonzano, and amid the stones of Giggiano.” Leigh Hunt seems to have sent the MS. of his translation from Florence, in January 1825, to London, where it was published for him by his brother; so that it is probable the proofs were not revised by the author.
Note 1a, p.77.—A full description of Stenterello and the other comic masks, with pictures of the principal ones, may be found in J. A. Symonds’Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi(Introduction). See also Introduction to the present volume, p. xv.
Note 2, p.137.—Professor Th. Trede, in his recently published work,Das Heidentum in der römischen Kirche, says that Modica, in the south of Sicily, is divided into two rival camps, devoted respectively to the worship of St. Peter and St. George. The festivals of these two saints give rise to scenes more suggestive of Donnybrook Fair than anything else. Similar conflicts between rival cities are by no means rare in the Neapolitan territory. (Trede,op. cit., ii. 260.)
Note 3, p.143.—“In the south of Italy, the birth of a girl is by no means considered a particularly joyful event. The birth of a boy is followed by rejoicings and festivities—no notice is taken of a girl. Of the thousands of infants annually received into the Naples foundling hospital, the boys only remain there a short time. They are soon adopted by families who have lost a child, but it is very seldom that any one thinks of taking a girl from the hospital. In Santa Lucia, when a boy is born, the whole quarter is thrown into the greatest excitement; he is handed round to all thecomari, friends and neighbours—kissed, squeezed, pinched, out of sheer love and delight. But a girl-baby lies unnoticed in the clothes-basket, which serves as a cradle, and is neither kissed nor admired. At baptism a boy is always carried to church on the nurse’s right arm—a girl on the left.” (Trede,Das Heidentum in der römischen Kirche, iii. p. 299.)
Note 4, p.169.—Small birds of all kinds—thrushes, larks, sparrows, bullfinches, even nightingales—are looked upon as fair game in Italy, and caught wholesale in clap-nets for the table.
Note 5, p.209.—The confraternities frequently mentioned in stories depicting Italian life may need a word of explanation. When the scene of the story is in Tuscany, the confraternity meant is that of theMisericordia(the “Chaplain of the Misericordia” figures in Pratesi’s sketch of “Doctor Phœbus”), whose business it is to bury the indigent dead, and attend what in England would be pauper funerals. The procession of ghastly black figures, their heads and faces covered by hoods with eye-holes cut in them, is familiar to every one who has spent any time in an Italian town. The following account of their origin is taken from Mrs. Oliphant’sMakers of Florence:—“This still active and numerous society was established in the thirteenth century by an honest porter, one Pietro Borsi, who had the fine inspiration of at once reforming the vices and employing the idle moments of his brother porters, hanging on waiting for work in the Piazza of San Giovanni, by a most characteristic and appropriate charity. He persuaded them to fine each other for swearing, a mutual tax, half humorous, half pious, which pleased the rough fellows; then induced them to buy litters with the money thus collected, and to give, each in his turn, a cast of his trade to the service of the sick and wounded, carrying the victims of accident or disease to the hospitals, and the dead to their burial. In so warlike a city as Florence, amid all the disturbances of the thirteenth century, no doubt they had occupation enough, and this spontaneous good work, devised by the people for the people, marks one of the finest and most characteristic features of the charity of the Middle Ages. The institution grew, as might be expected, developing into greater formality and more extended operations, but always retaining the same object. There are no longer street frays in Florence, to make the charitable succour of the Misericordia a thing of hourly necessity, and the litters are no longer carried by the rough, homely hands of labouring men snatching a moment for charity out of their hard day’s labours. It is said that all classes, up to the very highest, form part of the society nowadays; called by their bell when their services are wanted, in all the districts of the city, prince and artisan taking their turns alike, and it may be together, but with this modification—and with the one addition to its aims, that the Brothers often nurse as well as carry the sick—the porters’ original undertaking is carried out with a firm faithfulness at once to tradition and Christian charity. The dress is in reality no sign of mysterious shame and expiation, but merely a precaution against any trafficking on the part of the brethren in the gratitude of their patients, from whom they are allowed to receive nothing more than a draught of water, the first and cheapest of necessities.”[40]The following, from Story’sRoba di Roma, may also be interesting:—“The admirable institution of theMisericordia, which is to be found throughout Tuscany, does not exist in Rome; but several of the confraternities attend to the duties ofburying their own dead, and one of them, called theArciconfraternita della Morte e dell’ Orazione, assumes the duty of burying the bodies of all poor persons found dead in the Campagna, or in the city. This confraternity was founded in 1551 by a Siennese priest, Crescenzio Selva, and confirmed by Pius IV. in 1560.... It is composed of most respectable persons, who wear asaccoof black, coarse linen. Upon information being received that a dead body has been found on the Campagna, notice of the fact is at once given to a certain number of the brethren, who, without delay, meet at the oratory, where they assume the black sack, and set out without delay in search of the corpse. Day or night, cold or wet, calm or storm, make no difference; the moment the news is received they set off on their pious expedition. Nor is this duty always a light one, for sometimes they are obliged to journey in search of the body more than twenty miles; and, under the pontificate of Clement VIII., when there was a great inundation of the Tiber, they reclaimed bodies which had been borne down by the current as far as Ostia and Fiumicino. They carry with them the bier, upon which they place the body when it is found, and bring it back on their shoulders to the city. Besides this duty on the Campagna, they also, in common with certain other confraternities, bury the bodies of the dead found in the city, where families are without means. TheMandataroinforms the brethren where their services are needed, and, towards evening, dressed in thin black sacks, their heads and faces covered, and with only two holes cut in thecappuccioto look through, they may be seen passing through the street, bearing the body on their bier to the church, preceded by a long, narrow standard of black, on which are worked a cross, skull, and bones, bearing torches and chanting theMiserereand other psalms.”
Note 6, p.223.—The Roman Catholic clergy are forbidden to smoke, but allowed to take snuff. The point of this sentence is fully brought out, a page or two later on, by the friar’s indignant denunciations of eating meat in Lent.
Note 7, p.230.—“Come, I will show you Lucca,” is said in joke to children, the person addressing them seizing and lifting them by the neck. The saying is probably connected with the idiom, “I shall see you again at Lucca”—i.e., ironically, “I shall never see you again;” so that “seeing Lucca” = “seeing nothing.” Tommaseo and Bellini (Dizionario) suggest that the expression may refer to the fact that the Lucchese were great travellers.