He alone has no fear and no misgiving; for love in him is stronger than death. At the street door, when he reaches it, he finds no ghost, but his own dear lady yet alive. She is half frozen and unconscious; yet her heart still beats. How he calls the women of his household to attend her, prepares a bed, and feeds her with warm soups and wine, and how she revives, and how Antonio claims her for his wife, and wins his cause against her former bridegroom in the Bishop"s court, may be read at length in the concluding portion of the tale. The intrinsic pathos of this story makes it a real poem; for though the wizard"s wand of Northern imagination lay beyond the grasp of the Italian genius, the _novelle_ are rarely deficient in poetry evoked by sympathy with injured innocence and loyal love.
Of truly popular _novelle_ belonging to the fifteenth century, none is racier or more characteristic than the anonymous tale of _Il Gra.s.so, Legnaiuolo_.[302] It is written in pure Florentine dialect, and might be selected as the finest extant specimen of homespun Tuscan humor. We have already seen that the point of Sacchetti"s stories is nearly always a practical joke, where comedy combines with heartless cruelty in almost equal parts. The theme of _Il Gra.s.so_ is a superlatively comic _beffa_ of this sort, played by Filippo Brunelleschi on a friend of his. The incident is dated 1409, and is supposed to have really occurred. Manetto Ammannatini, a _tarsiatore_ or worker in carved and inlaid wood, was called _Il Gra.s.so_, because he was a fine stout fellow of twenty-eight years. He had his _bottega_ on the Piazza S. Giovanni and lived with his brother in a house hard by. Among his most intimate a.s.sociates were Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, Donatello, _intagliatore di marmi_, Giovanni di Messer Francesco Rucellai, and others, partly gentlemen and partly handicraftsmen; for there was no abrupt division of cla.s.ses at Florence, and this story shows how artisans and men of high condition dwelt together in good fellowship. The practical joke devised by Brunelleschi consisted in persuading Manetto that he had been changed into a certain Matteo. The whole society of friends were in the secret, and the affair was so cunningly conducted that at last they attained the desired object. They caused Manetto to be arrested for a debt of Matteo, sent Matteo"s brothers and then the clergyman of the parish to reason with him on his spendthrift habits, and fooled him so that he fairly lost his sense of ident.i.ty. The whole series of incidents, beginning with Manetto"s indignant a.s.sertion of his proper personality, pa.s.sing through his doubts, and closing with his mystification, is conducted by fine gradations of irresistibly comic humor. At last the poor man resolves to quit Florence and to seek refuge with King Mathias Corvinus in Hungary; which it seems he subsequently did, in company with a certain Lo Spano. There is no reason to suppose that this practical joke did not actually take place.
I have enlarged upon the _novella_ of _Il Gra.s.so_, because it is typical of the genuinely popular literature, written to delight the folk of Florence, appealing to their subtlest as well as broadest sense of fun, and bringing on the scene two famous artists, Brunelleschi, whose cupola is "raised above the heavens," and Donatello, whose S. George seems stepping from his pedestal to challenge all the evil of the world and conquer it. Unfortunately, our published collections are not rich in novels of this date; and next to the anonymous tale of _Il Gra.s.so, Legnaiuolo_ it is difficult to cite one of at all equal value, till we come to Luigi Pulci"s story of Messer Goro and Pius II. This is really a satire on the Sienese, whom Pulci represents with Florentine malice as almost inconceivably silly. The Tuscan style is piquant in the extreme, and the picture of manners very brilliant.[303]
From epical and narrative literature to poems written for the people upon contemporary events and public history, is not an unnatural transition. These compositions divide themselves into _Storie_ and _Lamenti_. We have abundant examples of both kinds in lyric measures and also in octave stanzas and _terza rima_.[304] A few of their t.i.tles will suffice to indicate their scope. _Il Lamento di Giuliano de" Medici_ relates the tragic ending of the Pazzi conspiracy; _Il Lamento del Duca Galeazzo Maria_ tells how that Duke was murdered in the church of S.
Stefano at Milan; _El Lamento di Otranto_ is an echo of the disaster which shook all Italy to her foundations in the year 1480; _El Lamento e la Discordia de Italia universale_ sounds the death-note of Italian freedom in the last years of the century. After that period the _Pianti_ and _Lamenti_, attesting to the sorrows of a nation, increase in frequency until all voices from the people are hushed in the leaden sleep of Spanish despotism.[305] The _Storie_ in like manner are more abundant between the years 1494 and 1530, when the wars of foreign invaders supplied the bards of the market-place with continual matter for improvisation. Among the earliest may be mentioned two poems on the Battle of Anghiari and the taking of Serezana.[306] Then the list proceeds with the tale of the Borgias, _Guerre Orrende_, _Rotta di Ravenna_, _Mali deportamenti de Franciosi fato in Italia_, and so forth, till it ends with _La Presa di Roma_ and _Rotta di Ferruccio_. A last echo of these _Storie_ and _Lamenti_--for alas! in Italy of the sixteenth century history and lamentation were all one--still sounds about the hillsides of Siena[307]:
O Piero Strozzi, "ndu sono i tuoi bravoni?
Al Poggio delle Donne in que" burroni.
O Piero Strozzi, "ndu sono i tuoi soldati?
Al Poggio delle Donne in quei fossati.
O Piero Strozzi, "ndu son le tue genti?
Al Poggio delle Donne a cor le lenti.
It may be well to say how these poems reached the people, before they were committed to writing or the press. There existed a professional cla.s.s of rhymsters, usually blind men, if we may judge by the frequent affix of _Cieco_ to their names, who tuned their guitar in the streets, and when a crowd had gathered round them, broke into some legend of romance, or told a tale of national misfortune. The Italian designation of these minstrels is _Cantatore in Banca_ or _Cantore di piazza_. In the high tide of Florentine freedom the _Cantore di piazza_ exercised a n.o.ble calling; for through his verse the voice of the common folk made itself heard beneath the very windows of the Signoria. In 1342, when the war with Pisa turned against the Florentines owing to the incompetence of their generals, Antonio Pucci, who was the most celebrated _Cantatore_ of the day, took his lute and placed himself upon the steps beneath the Palazzo, and having invoked the Virgin Mary, struck up a _Sermintese_ on the duty of making peace[308]:
Signor, pognam ch"i" sia di vil nascenza, I" pur nacqui nel corpo di Firenza, Come qual c"e di piu sofficienza: Onde "l mi duole Di lei, considerando che esser suole Tenuta piu che madre da figliuole; Oggi ogni bestia soggiogar la vuole E occupare.
Other poems of the same kind by Antonio Pucci belong to the year 1346, or celebrate the purchase of Lucca from Mastino della Scala, or the victory of Messer Piero Rosso at Padua, or the expulsion of the Duke of Athens from Florence in 1348. It must not be supposed that the _Cantatori in Banca_ of the next century enjoyed so much liberty of censure or had so high a sense of their vocation as Antonio Pucci. Yet the people made their opinions freely heard in rhymes sung even by the children through the streets, as when they angered Martin V. in 1420 by crying beneath his very windows[309]:
Papa Martino, Signor di Piombino, Conte de Urbino, non vale un quattrino.
During the ascendency of Savonarola and the party-struggles of the Medici the rival cries of _Palle_ and _Viva Cristo Re_ were turned into street songs[310]; but at last, after the siege and the victory of Clement, the voice of the people was finally stifled by authority.[311]
The element of satire in these ditties of the people leads me to speak of one very prominent poet of the fifteenth century--Domenico di Giovanni, called Il Burchiello, the rhyming barber.[312] He was born probably in 1403 at Florence, where his father, who was a Pisan, had acquired the rights of citizenship and followed the trade of a barber.
Their shop was situated in Calimala, and formed a meeting-place for the wits, who carried Burchiello"s verses over the town. The boy seems to have studied at Pisa, and acquired some slight knowledge of medicine.[313] At the age of four-and-twenty we find him married, with three children and no property.[314] Soon after this date, he separated from his wife; or else she left him on account of his irregular and dissolute habits. Peering through the obscurity of his somewhat sordid history, we see him getting into trouble with the Inquisition on account of profane speech, and then espousing the cause of the Albizzi against the Medicean faction. On the return of Cosimo de" Medici in 1434, Burchiello was obliged to leave Florence. He settled at Siena, and opened a shop in the Corso di Camollia, hoping to attract the Florentines whose business brought them to that quarter. Here he nearly ruined his health by debauchery, and narrowly escaped a.s.sa.s.sination at the hands of a certain Ser Rosello.[315] Leaving Siena about 1440, Burchiello spent the last years of his life in wandering through the cities of Italy. We hear of him at Venice entertained by one of the Alberti family, then at Naples, finally in Rome, where he died in 1448, poisoned probably by Robert, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Pandolfo Sigismondo Malatesta, at the instigation of his ancient enemy, Cosimo de" Medici.[316] Such long arms and such retentive memory had the merchant despot.
Burchiello"s sonnets were collected some thirty years after his death and published simultaneously at various places.[317] They owed their popularity partly to their political subject-matter, but more to their strange humor. A foreigner can scarcely understand their language, far less appreciate their fun; for not only are they composed in Florentine slang of the fifteenth century, but this slang itself consists of detached phrases and burlesque allusions, chipped as it were from current speech, broken into splinters, and then wrought into a grotesque mosaic. That Burchiello had the merit of originality, and that he caught the very note of plebeian utterance, is manifest from the numerous editions and imitations of his sonnets.[318] His Muse was a _volgivaga Venus_ bred among the taverns and low haunts of vulgar company, whose biting wit introduced her to the society of the learned. Yet her utterances, at this distance of time, are so obscure and their point has been so blunted that to profess an admiration for Burchiello savors of literary affectation.[319] He was a poet of the transition; and the burlesque style which he made popular was destined to be superseded by the more refined and subtle Bernesque manner. Il Lasca, writing in the sixteenth century, expressed himself strongly against those who still ventured to compare Burchiello with the author of _Le Pesche_. "Let no one talk to me of Burchiello; to rank him with Berni is no better than to couple the fiend Charon with the Angel Gabriel."[320]
Not the least important branch of popular poetry in its bearing on the future of Italian literature was the strictly lyrical. In treating of these Volkslieder, it will be necessary to consider them under the two aspects of secular and religious--the former destined to supply Poliziano and Lorenzo de" Medici with models for their purest works of literary art, the latter containing the germs of the Florentine Sacred Play within the strophes of a hymn.
If we return to the golden days of the fourteenth century, we find that Dante"s, Boccaccio"s and Sacchetti"s _Ballate_ descended to the people and were easily adapted to their needs.[321] Minute comparison of Dante"s dance-song of the _Ghirlandetta_ with the version in use among the common folk will show what slight alterations were needed in order to render it the property of "prentice lads and spinning maidens, and at the same time how subtle those changes were.[322] Dante"s song might be likened to a florin fresh from the mint; the popular ditty to the same coin after it had circulated for a year or two, exchanging something of its sharp lines for the smoothness of currency and usage.
The same is true of Boccaccio"s Ballata, _Il fior che "l valor perde_; except that here the transformation has gone deeper, and, if such a criticism may be hazarded, has bettered the original by rendering the sentiment more universal.[323] Sacchetti"s charming song _O vaghe montanine pasturelle_ underwent the same process of metamorphosis before it a.s.sumed the form in which it pa.s.sed for a composition of Poliziano.[324] Starting with poems of this quality, the rhymsters of the market-place had n.o.ble models, and the use they made of them was adequate. We cannot from the wreck of time recover very many that were absolutely written for the people by the people; but we can judge of their quality by Angelo Poliziano"s imitations.[325] He borrowed so largely from all sources, and his debts can be so accurately traced in his _rispetti_, that it is fair to credit the popular Muse with even such delicate work as _La Brunettina_, while the disputed authorship of the May-song _Ben venga Maggio_ and of the Ballata _Vaghe le montanine e pastorelle_ is sufficient to prove at least their widespread fame.[326]
Whoever wrote them, they became the heirlooms of the people. If proof were needed of the vast number of such compositions in the fifteenth century--erotic, humorous, and not unfrequently obscene--it might be derived from the rubrics of the _Laude_ or hymns, which were almost invariably parodies of popular dance-songs and intended to be sung to the same tunes.[327] Every festivity--May-morning tournaments, summer evening dances on the squares of Florence, weddings, carnival processions, and vintage-banquets at the villa--had their own lyrics, accompanied with music and the Carola.
The dance-songs and canzonets, of which we have been speaking, were chiefly of town growth and Tuscan. Another kind of popular love-poem, common to all the dialects of Italy, may be regarded as a special production of the country. Much has lately been written concerning these _Rispetti_, _Strambotti_ and _Stornelli_.[328] Ample collections have been made to ill.u.s.trate their local peculiarities. Their points of resemblance and dissimilarity have been subjected to critical a.n.a.lysis, and great ingenuity has been expended on the problem of their origin. It will be well to preface what has to be said about them with some explanation of terms. There are, to begin with, two distinct species.
The _Stornello Ritornello_ or _Fiore_, called also _Ciure_ in Sicily, properly consists of two or three verses starting with the name of a flower. Thus[329]:
Fior di Granato!
Bella, lo nome tuo sta scritto in cielo, Lo mio sta scritto sull"onda del mare.
_Rispetto_ and _Strambotto_ are two names for the same kind of song, which in the north-eastern provinces is also called _Villotta_ and in Sicily _Canzune_.[330] Strictly speaking, the term _Strambotto_ should be confined to literary imitations of the popular _Rispetto_. In Tuscany the lyric in question consists, in its normal form, of four alternately rhyming hendecasyllabic lines, followed by what is technically called the _ripresa_, or repet.i.tion, which may be composed of two, four, or even more verses. Though not strictly an octave stanza, it sometimes falls into this shape, and has then two pairs of three alternate rhymes, finished up with a couplet. In the following instance the quatrain and the _ripresa_ are well marked[331]:
Quando sara quel benedetto giorno, Che le tue scale salir pian piano?
I tuoi fratelli mi verranno intorno, Ad un ad un gli toccher la mano.
Quando sara quel d, cara colonna, Che la tua mamma chiamer madonna?
Quando sara quel d, caro amor mio?
Io sar vostra, e voi sarete mio!
In Sicily the _Canzune_ exhibits a stanza of eight lines rhyming alternately throughout upon two sounds. Certain peculiarities, however, in the structure of the strophe render it probable that it was originally a quatrain followed by a _ripresa_ of the same length.
Thus[332]:
Quannu nascisti tu, stidda lucenti, "N terra calaru tri ancili santi; Vinniru li Tri Re d"Orienti, Purtannu cosi d"oru e di brillanti; Tri aculi vularu prestamenti, Dannu la nova a punenti e a livanti; Bella, li to" billizzi su" putenti!
Avi nov"anni chi ti sugnu amanti.
In the north-east the _Villotta_ consists of a simple quatrain. Of this form the following is an example[333]:
Quanti ghe n"e, che me sente a cantare, E i dise;--Custia canta dal bon tempo.-- Che prego "l ciel che me possa agiutare; Quando che canto, alora me lamento.
Though these are the leading types of the _Rispetto_, _Canzune_ and _Villotta_, each district exhibits a variety of subordinate and complex forms. The same may be said about the _Stornello_, _Ritornello_ and _Ciure_. The names, too, are very variously applied; nor without pedantry would it be possible to maintain perfect precision in their usage.[334] It is enough to have indicated the two broad cla.s.ses into which popular poetry of this kind is divided. For the future I shall refer to the one sort as _Rispetti_, to the other as _Stornelli_.
Comparative a.n.a.lysis makes it clear that the _Rispetti_ and _Stornelli_ scattered over all the provinces of Italy, const.i.tute a common fund.
That is to say, we do not meet with the _Rispetti_ of each dialect confined to their own region; but the same original _Rispetto_, perhaps now lost to sight, has been adapted and transformed to suit the taste and idiom of the several provinces. To reconst.i.tute the primitive type, to decide with certainty in each case the true source of these lyrics, is probably impossible. All we know for certain is that beneath apparent dialectical divergences the vulgar poetry of the Italians presents unmistakable signs of ident.i.ty.[335] Which province was the primitive home of the _Rispetti_; whether Sicily, where the faculty for reproducing them is still most vivid[336]; or Tuscany, where they certainly attain their purest form and highest beauty; or whether all Italian country districts have contributed their quota to the general stock; are difficult questions, as yet by no means satisfactorily decided. Professor d"Ancona advances a theory, which is too plausible to be ignored in silence. _Rispetti_, he suggests, were first produced in Sicily, whence they traveled through Central Italy, receiving dialectical trans.m.u.tation in Tuscany, and there also attaining to the perfection of their structure.[337] Numerous slight indications lead to the conclusion that their original linguistic type was southern. The imagery also which is common in verses sung to this day by the peasants of the Pistoja highlands, including frequent references to the sea with metaphors borrowed from orange-trees and palms, seems to indicate a Sicilian birthplace.[338] We have, moreover, the early evidence of six _Napolitane_ copied from a Magliabecchian MS. of the fourteenth century, which exhibit the transition from southern to Tuscan idiom and structure.[339] One of these still exists in several dialects, under the t.i.tle of _La Rondinella importuna_.[340] It is therefore certain that many _Rispetti_ are very ancient, dating from the Suabian period, when Sicilian poetry, as we have seen, underwent the process of _toscaneggiamento_. However, D"Ancona"s theory is too hypothetical, and it may also be said, too neat, to be accepted without reservation.
One point, at any rate, may be considered certain. Though the _Rispetti_ are still alive upon the lips of _contadini_; though we may hear them echoing from farm and field through all the length and breadth of Italy; though the voluminous collections we possess have recently been gathered from _viva voce_ recitation; yet they are perhaps as ancient as the dialects. The proof of this antiquity lies in the fact that whether we take the literary _Strambotti_ of Poliziano for our standard, or the _pasticci_, _incatenature_ and _intrecciature_ of the sixteenth century for guides, we find the phrases and the style that are familiar to us in the rural lyrics of to-day.[341] Bronzino"s _Serenata_ and the _Incatenatura_ of Bianchino contain, embedded in their structure, ditties which were universally known in the sixteenth century, and which are being sung still with unimportant alterations by the people. The attention of learned men was directed in the renascence of Tuscan literature to the beauty of these lyrics. Poliziano, writing to Lorenzo de" Medici in 1488, and describing his journey with Pietro through Montepulciano and Acquapendente in the month of May, says that he and his companions amused themselves with _rappresaglie_ or adaptations of the songs they heard upon the way.[342] His road took him through what is still one of the best sources of local verse and music; and we may believe that at the close of the fifteenth century, the _contadini_ of that district were singing nearly the same words as now. Nor, when we examine the points of similarity and difference in the Italian _Rispetti_ and _Stornelli_, as they now exist, is there anything improbable in this antiquity. Nothing but great age can account for their adaptation to the tone, feeling, fancy, habits and language of so many regions. It must have taken more than a century or two to rub down their original angles, to efface the specific stamp of their birthplace, and to make them pa.s.s for home productions in Venice no less than Palermo, in Tuscan Montalcino and Ligurian Chiavari.
The retentiveness of the popular memory, before it has been spoiled by education, is quite sufficient to account for the preservation of these lyrics through several hundred years. Nor need their wide diffusion suggest difficulties. Italy in the middle ages offered readier means of intercommunication between the inhabitants of her provinces than she has done since the settlement of the country in 1530. When the liberation of the Communes gave a new impulse to intellectual and commercial activity, there began a steady and continually increasing movement from one city to another. Commercial enterprise led the burghers of Pisa, Lucca, Florence, Venice, Genoa, to establish themselves as bankers and middle-men, brokers and manufacturers, in Rome and Naples. Soldiers of adventure flocked from the south, and made the northern towns their temporary home. The sanctuaries of Gargano, Loretto and a.s.sisi drew pilgrims from all quarters. n.o.blemen of Romagna acted as _podesta_ beyond the Apennines, while Lombards opened shops in Palermo. Churchmen bred upon the Riviera wore the miter in the March; natives of the Spoletano taught in the schools of Bologna and Pavia. Men of letters, humanists and artists had no fixed dwelling-place, but wandered, like mercenary soldiers, from town to town in search of better pay. Students roamed from school to school according as the fame of great professors drew them. Party-quarrels in the commonwealths drove whole families, such as the Florentine Uberti, Alberti, Albizzi, Strozzi, into exile.
Conquered cities, like Pisa, sent forth their burghers by hundreds as emigrants, too proud to bear the yoke of foes they had resisted. Nor were the Courts of princes without their influence in mingling the natives of different districts. Whether, then, we study the _Novelle_, or the histories of great houses, or the biographies of eminent Italians, or the records of the universities, we shall be led to the conclusion that from the year 1200 to the year 1550 there was a perpetual and lively intercourse by land and sea between the departments of Italy. This reciprocity of influence did not cease until the two despotic races, Austrian and Spaniard, threw each separate province into solitary chains. Such being the conditions of social exchange at the epoch when the language was in process of formation, there is nothing strange in finding the rural poetry of the south acclimatized in central and northern Italy. But the very facility of communication and the probable antiquity of these lyrics should make us cautious in adopting any rigid hypothesis about their origin. It is reasonable to suppose that such transferable property as love-poems might have been everywhere produced and rapidly diffused, the best from each center surviving by a natural process of selection. Lastly, whatever view may be taken of their formation and their age, we have every reason to believe that the fifteenth century was a fruitful period of production and acc.u.mulation.
Toward the close of the _quattrocento_ they attracted the curiosity of lettered poets, who began to imitate them, and in the next hundred years they were committed in large numbers to the press.[343]
In addition to the influence exercised by these popular lyrics over polite literature in the golden age of the Renaissance, extraordinary interest attaches to them as an indigenous species of verse, dating from remote antiquity and still surviving in all corners of the country. In them we a.n.a.lyze the Italian poetic genius at its source and under its most genuine conditions. Both from their qualities and their defects inferences may be drawn, which find application and ill.u.s.tration in the solemn works of laureled singers. The one theme of _Rispetti_ and _Stornelli_ is love; but love in all its phases and with all its retinue of a.s.sociated emotions--expectation, fruition, disappointment, jealousy, despair, rejection, treachery, desertion, pleading, scorn--the joys of presence, the pangs of absence, the ecstasy of union, the agony of parting--love, natural and unaffected, turbulent or placid, chaste or troubled with desire, imperious or humble, tempestuously pa.s.sionate or toned to tranquil acquiescence--love varying through all moods and tempers, yet never losing its note of spontaneity, sincerity and truth.
The instincts of the people are pure, and their utterances of affection are singularly free from grossness. This at least is almost universally the case with lyrics gathered from the country. Approaching town-life, they lose their delicacy; and the products of the city are not unfrequently distinguished by the crudest obscenity.[344] The literary form of many of these masterpieces exhibits the beauty of rhythm, the refinement of outline, which we a.s.sociate with melodies of the best Italian period--with chants of Pergolese, songs of Salvator Rosa. When we compare their subject-matter with that of our Northern Ballads, we notice a marked deficiency of legend, superst.i.tion or grotesque fancy.
There are no witches, dragons, demon-lovers, no enchanted forests, no mythical heroes, no n.o.ble personages, few ghosts, few dreams and visions, in these songs poured forth among the olive-trees and myrtle-groves of Italy. Human nature, conscious of pleasure and of pain, finding its primitive emotion an adequate motive for verse subtly modulated through a thousand keys, is here sufficient to itself. The echoes imported from an outer world of pa.s.sion and romance and action into this charmed region of the lover"s heart are rare and feeble.
Through all their national vicissitudes, the Italian peasants followed one sole aim in verse. The _Rispetti_ of all times, localities and dialects form one protracted, ever-varying Duo between Thou and I, the _dama_ and the _damo_, the eternal protagonists in the play of youth and love.
This absence of legendary and historical material marks a main difference between Italian and Teutonic inspiration. Among the Italic communities the practical historic sense was early developed, and sustained by the tradition of a cla.s.sic past. It demanded a positive rather than imaginative treatment of contemporary fact and mythus.
Among the people this requirement was satisfied by _Storie_, _Lamenti_, and prose Chronicles. Very few, indeed, are the relics of either romantic or actual history surviving in the lyrics of the rural population. Only here and there, in dim allusions to the Sicilian Vespers and the Norman Conquest, in the tale of the Baronessa di Carini, or in the Northern legend of Rosmunda, under its popular form of _La Donna Lombarda_, do we find a faint a.n.a.logy between the Italian and Teutonic ballads.[345] Dramatic, mythical and epical elements are almost wholly wanting in the genuine lyrics of the people.
This statement requires some qualification. The four volumes of _Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti_ recently published by Signor Pitre, prove that the Sicilians in prose at least have a copious literature corresponding to German _Marchen_ and Norse tales.[346] This literature, however, has not received poetic treatment in any existing southern songs that have been published, excepting in the few already noticed. At the same time, it must be mentioned that the collections of lyrics in north-western dialects--especially the _Canti Monferrini_, _Canzoni Comasche_, and _Canti Leccesi_--exhibit specimens of genuine ballads. It would seem that contact with French and German borderers along the Alpine rampart had introduced into Piedmont and Lombardy a form of lyric which is not essentially Italian. Had I s.p.a.ce sufficient at disposal, I should like to quote the _Donna Lombarda_, _Moglie Infedele_, _Giuseppina Parricida_, _Principessa Giovanna_, _Giuliano della Croce Bianca_, _Cecilia_, _Re Carlino_, _Morando_, and several others from Ferraro"s collection.[347] They ill.u.s.trate, what is exceedingly rare in popular Italian poetry, both the subject-matter and the manner peculiar to the Northern Ballad. Let the following verses from _La Sposa per Forza_ suffice[348]:
Ra soi madona a r"ha bra.s.saja Suvra u so coffu a r"ha minee; Uardee qui, ra me noiretta, Le bele gioje che vi voi dunee.
Mi n"ho csa fe dle vostre gioje; E manc ancur dla vostra ca; Cma ca voja dir bel gioje Ra me mama m" na mandira.
To comparative mythologists in general, and to English students in particular, the most interesting of these rare Italian Ballads is undoubtedly one known as _L"Avvelenato_.[349] So far as I am aware, it is unique in the Italian language; nor had its correspondences with Northern Ballad-literature been noticed until I pointed them out in 1879.[350] In his work on popular Italian poetry, Professor D"Ancona included the following song, which he had heard upon the lips of a young peasant of the Pisan district[351]:
Dov"eri "ersera a cena Caro mio figlio, savio e gentil?
Mi fai morire Ohime!
Dov"eri "ersera a cena Gentile mio cavalier?-- Ero dalla mia dama; Mio core sta male, Che male mi sta!
Ero dalla mia dama; "L mio core che se ne va.-- Che ti dienno da cena, Caro mio figlio, savio e gentil?
Mi fai morire, Ohime!
Che ti dienno da cena, Gentile mio cavalier?-- Un anguilletta arrosto, Cara mia madre; Mio core sta male, Che male mi sta!
Un anguilletta arrosto, "L mio core che se ne va.
Other versions of the same poem occur in the dialects of Venice, Como and Lecco with such variations as prove them all to be the offshoots from some original now lost in great antiquity. That it existed and was famous so far back as the middle of the seventeenth century, is proved by an allusion in the _Cicalata in lode della Padella e della Frittura_, recited before the Accademia della Crusca by Lorenzo Panciatichi in 1656.[352] A few lines are also quoted in the _incatenatura_ of the Cieco Fiorentino, published at Verona in 1629.[353] Any one who is familiar with our Border Minstrelsy will perceive at once that this is only an Italian version of the Ballad of Lord Donald or Lord Randal.[354] The ident.i.ty between the two is rendered still more striking by an a.n.a.lysis of the several Lombard versions. In that of Como, for example, the young man makes his will; and this is the last verse[355]:
Cossa la.s.se alla vostra dama, Figliuol mio caro, fiorito e gentil, Cossa la.s.se alla vostra dama?
La forca da impiccarla, Signora mama, mio cor sta mal!
La forca da impiccarla: Ohime, ch"io moro, ohime!