Legends Of Florence Part 33

I conjure thee by all the woe Which grieved thy soul so long ago!

And pain, when thy _Auradice_ From the dark realm thou couldst not free, To grant me of thy mighty will That I may play this pipe with skill, Even as thou hast played before; For, as the story runs, of yore, Whenever thou didst wake its sound, The forest beasts came raptured round.

Orpheus! Orpheus! I pray, Orpheus! teach me how to play!

And when sweet music forth I bring, On every chord thy name shall ring, And every air which charms shall be A hymn of thanks, great lord, to thee!

And unto all I'll make it known, I owe it all to thee alone, And of the wondrous skill I'll tell, Which mighty Orpheus won from h.e.l.l.

And by the music, and the power, Of pa.s.sion in me, from this hour Henceforth in this sweet instrument I shall be ever well content; For now, I do remember well, What 'twas my father oft would tell, That all who would learn music thus Must conjure mighty Orpheus, Even as I have done to-day, So I to him will ever pray."

To which the ma.n.u.script adds in prose:

"Thus the peasants do when they do not succeed in playing the shepherd's pipe, which they esteem beyond any other instrument."

To any one who fully feels and understands what is meant to be conveyed by this incantation-and a great deal is expressed by pa.s.sionate singing and a deep thrilling intonation which the text does not give-my translation will appear to be quite accurate. But, in any case, no scholar or poet can deny that there is in it a strange depth of cla.s.sic feeling, or of old Roman romance, not strained at second-hand through books, but evidently drawn from rude antiquity, which is as fresh in its ring as it is marvellous.

It may be observed as exquisitely curious that in this incantation the peasant who wishes to become a skilled performer on the flageolet _buries it for three days in the ground_, invoking Orpheus by what the spirit suffered in losing Eurydice, and subsequently distinctly declaring that he won or conjured his great musical power from Hades, which means that by the penance and loss, and his braving the terrors of the Inferno, he gained _skill_. This is a mighty element of the myth in all its forms, in all ages, in every country. The burying the instrument for three days probably typifies the three days during which Orpheus was in h.e.l.l.

It may be observed that Eurydice has become _Auradice_ in the incantation, in which there is probably an intimation of _Aura_, a light wind or zephyr. Air is so naturally a.s.sociated with music. This, by a very singular coincidence, yet certainly due to mere chance, recalls the invocation to the Spirit of the Air, given by Bulwer in "The Last Days of Pompeii":

"Spectre of the viewless air, Hear the blind Thessalian's prayer, By Erichtho's art that shed Dews of life when life was fled, By lone Ithaca's wise king, Who could wake the crystal spring To the voice of prophecy _By the lost Eurydice_!

Summoned from the shadowy throng, At the muse-son's magic song: Come, wild Demon of the Air, Answer to thy votary's prayer."

It is indeed very remarkable that in the call to the G.o.d of Music, who is in certain wise a spirit of the air, as in that to the Spirit of the Air himself, both are invoked:

"By the lost Eurydice!"

If it could be shown that Bulwer owed this poem and allusion to any ancient work or tradition, I should be tempted to believe that the popular invocation was derived from some source in common with the latter. There is indeed a quaint nave drollery in the word _Aura_dice-"Air-tell!" or "Air-declare!" which adapts it better to the spirit of Bulwer's poem, in which the air is begged to tell something, than to the Orphean or Orphic spell. It may be that the Orphic oracles were heard in the voice of the wind, apropos of which latter there is a strange Italian legend and an incantation to be addressed to all such mystic voices of the night, which almost seems re-echoed in "Lucia":

"Verrano a te sull' aure, I miei sospiri ardenti, Udrai nell mar che mormora L'eco de miei lamenti!"

It is worth observing that this tradition, though derived from the Romagna, was given to me in Florence, and that one of the sculptures on the Campanile represents Orpheus playing the pipe to wild beasts. It is said that in the Middle Ages the walls of churches were the picture-books of the people, where they learned all they knew of Bible legends, but not unfrequently gathered many strange tales from other sources. The sculptors frequently chose of their own will scenes or subjects which were well known to the mult.i.tude, who would naturally be pleased with the picturing what they liked, and it may be that Orpheus was familiar then to all. In any case, the finding him in a witch incantation is singularly in accordance with the bas-relief of the Cathedral of Florence, which again fits in marvellously well with Byron's verse:

"Florence! whom I will love as well As ever yet was said or sung, Since Orpheus sang his spouse from h.e.l.l, Whilst thou art fair and I am young.

"Sweet Florence! those were pleasant times, When worlds were staked for ladies' eyes.

Had bards as many realms as rhymes, Thy charms might raise new Antonies!"

True it is that _this_ Florence seems to have had dazzling eyes and ringlets curled; and it is on the other hand not true that Orpheus sang his spouse from h.e.l.l-he only tried to do it. And it is worth noting that one of the commonest halfpenny pamphlets sold in Florence, which is to be found at every public stand, is a poem called "Orpheus and Eurydice."

This fact alone renders it less singular that such cla.s.sical incantations should exist.

The early Christians, notwithstanding their antipathy to heathen symbols, retained with love that of Orpheus. Orpheus was represented as a gentle youth, charming-wild beasts with the music of the pipe, or as surrounded by them and sheep; hence he was, like the Good Shepherd, the favourite type of Christ. He had also gone down into shadowy Hades, and returned to be sacrificed by the heathen, unto whose rites he would not conform.

Miss Roma Lister found traces of Orpheus among the peasantry about Rome, in a pretty tradition. They say that there is a spirit who, when he plays the _zufolo_ or flageolet to flocks, attracts them by his music and keeps them quiet.

"Now there were certain shepherd families and their flocks together in a place, and it was agreed that every night by turns, each family should guard the flocks of all the rest. But it was observed that one mysterious family all turned in and went to sleep when their turn came to watch, and yet every morning every sheep was in its place.

Then it was found that this family had a spirit who played the _zufolo_, and herded the flock by means of his music."

The name is wanting, but Orpheus was there. The survival of the soul of Orpheus in the _zufolo_ or pipe, and in the sprite, reveals the mystic legend which indicates his existing to other times. In this it is said that his head after death predicted to Cyrus the Persian monarch that he too would be killed by a woman (_Consule Leonic_, _de var. histor._, lib.

i. cap. 17; _de Orphei Tumulo in monte Olympo_, &c., cited by _Kornmann de Miraculis Mortuorum_, cap. 19). The legend of Orpheus, or of a living wife returning from another world to visit an afflicted husband, pa.s.sed to other lands, as may be seen in a book by Georgius Sabinus, _in Notis ad Metamorp_. _Ovidii_, lib. x. _de descensu Orphei ad Inferos_, in which he tells how a Bavarian lady, after being buried, was so moved by her husband's grief that she came to life again, and lived with him for many years, _semper tamen fuisse tristem ac pallidem_-but was always sad and pale. However, they got on very well together for a long time, till one evening _post vesperi potum_-after he had taken his evening drink-being somewhat angry at the housemaid, he scolded her with unseemly words. Now it was the condition of his wife's coming back to life and remaining with him that he was never to utter an improper expression (_ut que deinceps ipse abstineret blasphemis conviciandi verbis_). And when the wife heard her husband swear, she disappeared, soul and body, and that in such a hurry that her dress (which was certainly of fine old stiff brocade) was found standing up, and her shoes under it. A similar legend, equally authentic, may be found in the "Breitmann Ballads," a work, I believe, by an American author. On which subject the learned Flaxius remarks that "if all the men who swear after their evening refreshments were to lose their wives, widowers would become a drug in the market."

Of the connection between _aura_ as air, and as an _air_ in music, I have something curious to note. Since the foregoing was written I bought in Florence a large wooden cup, it may be of the eleventh century or earlier, known as a _misura_, or measure for grain, formerly called a _modio_, in Latin _modus_, which word has the double meaning of measure for objects solid or liquid, and also for music. Therefore there are on the wooden measure four female figures, each holding a musical instrument, and all with their garments blowing in one direction, as in a high wind, doubtless to signify _aura_, Italian _aria_, air or melody.

These madonnas of the four _modes_ are rudely but very gracefully sketched by a bold master-hand. They represent, in fact, Eurydice quadrupled.

There is a spirit known in the Toscana Romagna as _Turabug_. He is the guardian of the reeds or canes, or belongs to them like the ancient Syrinx. There is a curious ceremony and two invocations referring to him. Ivy and rue are specially sacred to him. One of these two invocations is solely in reference to playing the _zufolo_, partly that the applicant may be inspired to play well, and secondly, because the spirit is supposed to be attracted by the sound of the instrument. The very ancient and beautiful idea that divinities are invoked or attracted by music, is still found in the use of the organ in churches.

A large portion of the foregoing on Orpheus formed, with "Intialo," the subject of a paper by me in Italian, which was read in the Collegio Romana at Rome at the first meeting of the Italian _Societa n.a.z.ionale per le Tradizioni Popolari Italiani_, in November 1893. Of which society I may here mention that it is under the special patronage of her Majesty Margherita the Queen of Italy, who is herself a zealous and accomplished folklorist and collector-"special patronage" meaning here not being a mere figurehead, but first officer-and that the president is Count Angelo de Gubernatis.

I believe that the establishment of this society will contribute vastly to shake in Italy the old-fashioned belief that to be a person of the _most_ respectable learning it is quite sufficient to be thoroughly acquainted with a few "cla.s.sic" writers, be they Latin, French, or Italian, and that it is almost a crime to read anything which does not directly serve as a model or a copy whereby to "refine our style." As regards which the whole world is now entering on a new renaissance, the conflict between the stylists and the more liberally enlightened having already begun.

But Orpheus, with the ecclesiastical witch-doctors, was soon turned into a diabolical sorcerer; and Leloyer writes of him: "He was the greatest wizard who ever lived, and his writings boil over with praises of devils and filthy loves of G.o.ds and mortals, . . . who were all only devils and witches."

That Eve brought death and sin into the world by eating one apple, or a fig, or orange, or Chinese nectarine, or the fruit of the banana tree, or a pear, a peach, or everything pomological, if we are to believe all translators of the Bible, coincides strongly with the fact that Eurydice was lost for tasting a pomegranate. "Of the precise graft of the espalier of Eden," says the author of the 'Ingoldsby Legends,'

"Sanchoniathon, Manetho, and Berosus are undecided; the best informed Talmudists have, however . . . p.r.o.nounced it a Ribstone pippin," Eve being a rib. The ancients were happy in being certain that their apple was one of Granada.

"_Haec fabula docet_," writes our Flaxius, "that mysteries abound in every myth. Now, whether Orpheus was literally the first man who ever went to h.e.l.l for a woman I know not, but well I ween that he was not the last, as the majority of French novelists of the present day are chiefly busy in proving, very little, as it seems to me, either to the credit of their country or of themselves. But there are others who read in this tale a dark and mysterious forewarning to the effect that ladies _a la mode_ who fall in love with Italian musicians or music-masters, and especially those who let themselves and their fortunes be _sifflees_ (especially the fortunes), should not be astonished when the fate of Eurydice befalls them. Pa.s.s on, beloved, to another tale!

"'Walk on, amid these mysteries strange and old, The strangest of them all is yet to come!'"

INTIALO THE SPIRIT OF THE HAUNTING SHADOW

"O ombra che dalla luce siei uscita, Misuri il pa.s.so al Sole, all'uom la vita."

"Umbram suam metuere."

"Badate.

La vostra ombra vi avra fatto paura."

-_Filippo Pananti_.

"There is a feeling which, perhaps, all have felt at times; . . . it is a strong and shuddering impression which Coleridge has embodied in his own dark and supernatural verse that Something not of earth is behind us-that if we turned our gaze backward we should behold that which would make the heart as a bolt of ice, and the eye shrivel and parch within its socket. And so intense is the fancy, that _when_ we turn, and all is void, from that very void we could shape a spectre as fearful as the image our terror had foredrawn."-BULWER, _The Disowned_.

The resemblance and the relation of the shadow to the body is so strangely like that of the body to the soul, that it is very possible that it first suggested the latter. It is born of light, yet is in itself a portion of the mystery of darkness; it is the facsimile of man in every outline, but in outline alone; filled in with uniform sombre tint, it imitates our every action as if in mockery, which of itself suggests a goblin or sprite, while in it all there is something of self, darkling and dream-like, yet never leaving us. It is only evident in brightest hours, like a skeleton at an Egyptian feast, and it has neither more nor less resemblance to man than the latter. Hence it came that the strange "dwellers by the Nile" actually loved both shade and death by a.s.sociation, and so it happened that

"Full many a time They seemed half in love with easeful Death; Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,"

while they made of the cool shadow a portion of the soul itself, or rather one of the seven or eight ent.i.ties of which man consisted, these being-_Khat_, a body; _Ba_, the spirit; _Khon_, the intelligence; _Khabit_, _the shadow_; _Ren_, the name; _Ka_, eternal vitality; _Ab_, the heart; and _Sahn_, the mask or mummy.

It is extremely interesting to consider, in connection with this Egyptian doctrine, the fact, ill.u.s.trated by every writer on Etruscan antiquity, that these ancient dwellers in Italy, when they represented the departed, or the dead, as living again on a tomb, added to the name of the deceased the word _Hinthial_. This I once believed meant simply a ghost or spirit. I had no other a.s.sociation with the name.

I inquired for a long time if there was any such name as _Hintial_ for a ghost among the people, and could not find it. At last my chief agent succeeded in getting from sources to me unknown, but, as in all cases, partly from natives of the Toscana Romagna, or Volterra, and at different times, very full information regarding this mysterious being, which I combine as follows:

INTIALO.

"This is a spirit in human form who shows himself in any shadow, {238} and diverts himself by inspiring terror in a sorcerer, or in any one who has committed a crime. He causes a fearful shadow to be ever present to the man, and addresses him thus:

_Il domone al Stregone_.

"Vile-tu non potrai Avere mai bene-avrai Sempre la mia ombra In tua presenza, e saro Vendicato . . . {239}