Roman Legends (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | R H Busk | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

PREFACE. I HAD HEARD it SO often positively asserted that modern Italy had no popular mythology, and no contribution of special versions to offer to the worlds store of Traditionary Tales, that, while possessing every opportunity, I was many years without venturing to set myself against the prevailing opinion so far as to attempt putting it to the proof. A certain humble friend, however, used time after time so to impress me with the fancy that she had all the qualifications for being a valuable repository of such lore if it only existed, that I was finally led to examine her on the subject. She gave me a capital opportunity one day when, during a visit to a bedridden cripple whom she nursed, she was flapping the dust off the pictures and ornaments with a feather-brush according to the Roman idea of dusting. C I never do any dusting, she said the while, but I always think of Jfmigrwr Delegato dusting the altar of the holy house of Loreto. And now I think of it, he was not called Monsignor Delegato, butl Monsignor Commissario. But every evening of my life while I was young and living at Loreto, I have seen him dust the altar of the Santa Casa at 23 oclock, before they shut 1 An hour before the evening Ave. Preface. up the church, saying a Salve Regina for the benefactors of the spot. If she was so familar with Loreto, I concluded, and had so noticed and remembered its customs, probably she was not ignorant of its Legends either, and I commenced my inquisition at once. I have not given her Legends of Loreto in the text because, being tolerably familiar, they were among those which could best be sacrificed to the exigencies of space. I gathered on that day, however, one version of S. Giovanni Bocca doro, with two stories of Padre Filippo and her subsequent testimony concerning the crucifix of Scirollo came in usefully pp. 193,195 in illustration of the Legend of Pietro Bailliardo but, what was precious to me above all, I gained the proof and earnest that there was certainly a vein of legendary lore underlying the classic soil of Rome, and that it only remained to find the means of working it. I first lazily set myself to hunt through the bookshops, new and old, to find any sort of collection of traditionary tales ready made but only with the effect of establishing the fact that no Italian Grimm had yet arisen to collect a d organise them, and put them into available shape. It is true the erudite and indefatigable Cesare Cantii has found time in the midst of his more important labours Professor de Gnbernatis whose work was not published till my collection had long been in progress fdls a far more important place than t3at of a mere collector of legends. His vast generalisations, indeed, touch less upon the household tales of Italy than those of any other country, and those which he does introduce are entirely from Tuscany and Piedmont. I had not the adrantage of seeing either his book on Zoological Mythology, or Mr. Coxs Ddythology of the Aryan Nations, till after my MS. was in the printers hands, and S not able, therefore, to give references in my notes to the places where their interpretation may be found, though each group to. which my stories respectively belong has been treated by them. It is a treatment, however, which requires to be stndied as a whole, and could hardly be understood under any piecemeal reference. Preface...