THE FABLES AND FOLK-LORE
OF
ROME
Copyright and Published by
ESTES AND LAURIAT
1877
[v]
PREFACE.
I had heard it so often positively asserted thatmodern Italy had no popular mythology, and no contribution of specialversions to offer to the world’s store of Traditionary Tales,that, while possessing every opportunity, I was many years withoutventuring to set myself against the prevailing opinion so far as toattempt putting it to the proof.
A certain humble friend, however, used time after timeso to impress me with the fancy that she had all the qualifications forbeing a valuable repository of such lore if it only existed, that I wasfinally led to examine her on the subject. She gave me a capitalopportunity one day when, during a visit to a bedridden cripple whomshe nursed, she was flapping the dust off the pictures and ornamentswith a feather-brush according to the Roman idea of dusting. ‘Inever do any dusting,’ she said the while, ‘but I alwaysthink of Monsignor Delegato dusting the altar of theholy house of Loreto. And now I think of it, he was not calledMonsignor Delegato, but Monsignor Commissario. But every evening of mylife while I was young and living at Loreto, I have seen him dust thealtar of the Santa Casa at 23 o’clock,1before they shut [vi]up the church, saying aSalve Regina for the benefactors of the spot.’If she was so familiar with Loreto, I concluded, and had sonoticed and remembered its customs, probably she was not ignorant ofits Legends either, and I commenced my inquisition at once.
I have not given her Legends of Loreto in the textbecause, being tolerably familiar, they were among those which couldbest be sacrificed to the exigencies of space. I gathered on that day,however, one version of S. Giovanni Bocca d’oro, with two storiesof Padre Filippo: and her subsequent testimony concerning the crucifixof Scirollo came in usefully (pp. 193, 195) in illustration of theLegend of Pietro Bailliardo; but, what was precious to me above all, Igained the proof and earnest that