“C’est bien raison que je vous compte des histoires de Virgille de Romme lequel en son temps, fis moult de merveilles.”—Les Faictz Merveilleux de Virgille. XVIth Century.

The reader is probably aware that during the Middle Ages, Virgil, who had always retained great fame as a poet, and who was kindly regarded as almost a Christian from a conjectured pious prophecy in his works, underwent the process of being made romantic and converted into a magician. How it all came to pass is admirably set forth by Professor Domenico Comparetti in his truly great work on “Virgil in the Middle Ages.” [0a]

During the twelfth century, and for some time after, many learned pilgrims or tourists from different parts of Europe, while in Italy, hearing from the people these tales, which had a great charm in an age when the marvellous formed the basis of nearly all literature, gave them to the world in different forms. And as the fame of Virgil as a poet was almost the first fact learned by those who studied Latin, legends relating to him spread far and wide. The Mantuan bard had been well-nigh deified by the Romans. “Silius Italicus used to celebrate his birthday every year, visiting his tomb as if it were a temple, and as a temple the Neapolitan Statius used to regard it.” [0b] And this reverence was preserved by the Christians, who even added to it a peculiar lore.

“These tales,” says Comparetti, “originated in Naples, and thence spread into European literature, in the first instance, however, outside Italy. Their origin in Italy was entirely the work of the lower classes, and had nothing to do with poetry or literature; it was a popular superstition founded on local records connected with Virgil’s long residence in Naples, and the celebrity of his tomb in that city.”

This latter is a shrewd observation, for as the tomb is close by the mysterious grotto of Posilippo, which was always supposed to have been made by magic, it was natural that Virgil, who was famed for wisdom, should have been supposed to have wrought the miracle, and it may well be that this was really the very first, or the beginning of all the legends in question. These were “connected with certain localities, statues and monuments in the neighbourhood of Naples itself, to which Virgil was supposed to have given a magic power.” . . . Foreigners who visited Naples thus learned these legends, and they passed “even into Latin works of a learned nature.” So it resulted that from the twelfth century onward the fame of Virgil as a magician spread all over Europe. Among those who thus made of him a wonder-worker were Conrad von Querfurt, Gervase of Tilbury, Alexander Neckham, and John of Salisbury.

That these marvellous tales were localized in Naples, and there first applied to Virgil, may be freely admitted, but that they really originated or were first invented there will be claimed by no one familiar with older or Oriental legends. This has not escaped Senator Comparetti, who observes that wonders attributed long before to Apollonius of Tyana and others “are practically identical with those attributed in Naples to Virgil.” The idea of setting up the image of a fly to drive away flies, as Virgil did in one legend, is Babylonian, for in Lenormand’s ChaldÆan Magic we are told that demons are driven away by their own images, and Baalzebub, as chief of flies, was probably the first honoured in this respect.

That is to say, that little by little and year by year the tales which had been told of other men in earlier times—magicians, sorcerers, and wizards wild—were remade and attributed to Virgil. The very first specimen of an ancient Italian novella, given by Roscoe, is a Virgilian legend, though the translator makes no mention of it. So in the “Pentamerone” of Giambattista Basile of Naples we find that most of the tales come from the East, and had been of old attributed to Buddha, or some other great man.

The Neapolitan stories of Virgil were spread far and wide, into almost every language in Europe; but they had their day, and now rank with black-letter literature, being republished still, but for scholars only. I had read most of them in my youth, and when the work of Senator Comparetti appeared, I was struck by the singular fact that there is next to nothing in all the vast amount of VirgilianÆ which he quotes, which appears to have been gathered of late among the people at large. A great number of classic and mediÆval names and characters are very familiar to the most ignorant Italians. How came it to pass that nothing is known of Virgil, who appears in the “Divina Commedia” as the guide, philosopher, and friend of Dante, whose works are read by all.

Inspired with this idea, I went to work and soon found that, as I had conjectured, there were still extant among the people a really great number of what may be called post-Virgilian legends, which possibly owe their existence, or popularity, to the Virgil of Dante. A very few of them are like certain of the old Neapolitan tales, but even these have been greatly changed in details. As might have been expected of Northern Italian narratives, they partake more of the nature of the novella or short romance, than of the nursery-tale or the mere anecdote, as given by the earlier writers. That is to say, there was, after Dante, among the people a kind of renaissance in the fame of Virgil as a magician. It is by a curious coincidence that, as Senator Comparetti admits, all the earlier legends of the bard were gathered and published by foreigners; so have these of later time been collected by one not to the country born.

One good reason why I obtained so many of these tales so readily is that they were gathered, like my “Florentine Legends” and “Etrusco-Roman Remains,” chiefly among witches or fortune-tellers, who, above all other people, preserve with very natural interest all that smacks of sorcery. It is the case in every country—among Red Indians, Hindus or Italians—that wherever there are families in which witchcraft is handed down from generation to generation there will be traditional tales in abundance, and those not of the common fairy-tale kind, but of a mysterious, marvellous nature. Now, that the narratives in this book contain—quite apart from any connection with Virgil—in almost every instance some curious traces of very ancient tradition, is perhaps to be admitted by all. Such is the description of Agamene, the Spirit of the Diamond, which is one of the oldest of GrÆco-Roman myths, and PÆonia, who kills or revives human beings by means of flowers, wherein she is the very counterpart of Minerva-PÆonia, who taught Esculapius, as mythology expressly states, “the power of flowers and herbs,” even as the statue PÆonia teaches Virgil. These are only two out of scores of instances, and they are to me, as they will be to every scholar, by far the most valuable part of my book.

These incidents, which I in many cases did not know, until after subsequent search in mythologies, were ancient, certainly could not have been invented by the very ignorant old women from whom they were gathered. And this brings me to the important consideration as to whether these stories are really authentic. A learned Italian professor very lately asked me how I could be sure that the common people did not palm off on me their own inventions as legends of Virgil. To which I replied that I would not be responsible for the antiquity or origin of a single tale. For, in the first place, any story of any sorcerer is often attributed to Virgil, so that in two or three instances which I have specially noted “a Virgil” means any magician. And very often I have myself told some story as a hint or suggestion, in order to give some idea as to what I wanted, or to revive the memory. But in all cases they have come back to me so changed, and with such strange fragments of classic lore of the most recondite kind added, that I had no scruple in giving them just for what they were worth, leaving it for critics to sift out the ancient from the modern, even as the eagles described by Sinbad the Sailor, brought back the legs of mutton with diamonds sticking to them. “You would not,” I said to the professor of classical lore, “reject newly-mined gold because it is encumbered with dross; and that there may be much dross in all which I have gathered I am sure; but there is gold in it all.”

The nursery peasant tales collected by Grimm and Crane, and many more, represent surface-diggings. Those who were first in the field had an easy time in gathering what thousands knew. But these finds are becoming exhausted, and the collector of the future must mine out of the rock, and seek for deeper traditions which have been sedulously concealed or kept secret. There are still many peasants who know this lore, though their number is very rapidly diminishing, and they are, as a rule, without exception, extremely averse to communicating it to anyone whom they know or think is not what I may call a fellow-heathen, or in true sympathy with them. I may give in illustration of this an incident which occurred recently as I write: Miss Roma Lister, who had an old Italian witch-nurse, still living in Rome (and who has contributed several of these tales of Virgil), who taught her something of the art “which none may name,” while walking with a priest near Calmaldoli, met with a man whom she knew had the reputation of being a stregone, or wizard. She asked him, sotto voce, if he knew the name of Tinia, one of the Etruscan gods, still remembered by a few, and who is described in the “Etrusco-Roman Remains.” He hastily replied in a whisper: “Yes, yes; and I know the incantation to him also—but don’t let the priest hear us.” At a subsequent meeting they interchanged confidences freely. Maddalena, whom I have chiefly employed to make collections among witches and others, has often told me how unwilling those who knew any witch-lore are to confess it, especially to ladies or gentlemen. One must literally conjure it out of them.

These tales of Virgil were collected in Florence, Volterra, Rocca-Casciano, Arezzo, Siena, and several places near it, and Rome. I have several not to be published, because they are so trifling, or so utterly confused and badly written, or “shocking,” that I could make nothing of them. In all, however, which I have collected, with one exception—which is manifestly a mere common fairy-tale arbitrarily attributed to the subject as a magus—Virgil appears as a great and very benevolent man. He aids the poor and suffering, has great sympathy for the weak and lowly, and is ever ready to reprove arrogance and defeat the plans of evil sorcerers. But while great and wise and dignified, he is very fond of a joke. Sometimes he boldly punishes and reproves the Emperor of Rome—anon he contrives some merry jest to amuse him. The general agreement of so many stories drawn from different sources as to this character is indeed remarkable.

As regards the general “value” of these Virgilian tales, and a vast number of others which I have collected, all of them turning on magic or occult motives, it is well worth mentioning that from one to three centuries ago a great number of tales very much resembling them were published by Grosius, PrÆtorius, and others, as at a later date the “Histoire des FantÔmes et des Demons,” Paris, 1819, which work unquestionably supplied Washington Irving with the story of the Spectre Bridegroom, and another tale. [0c] In Italy, the writers of novella, such as Boccaccio, Bandello, Cinthio, and in fact nearly all of them, shook off and ridiculed all that was associated with barbarous superstitions and incantations, and yet in the “Metamorphosi” of Lorenzo Selva, Florence, 1591, and here and there in similar obscure works by writers not so painfully afflicted by “culture” and style as the leaders, there are witch and fairy-tales which might have come from very old women, and would be certainly recognised by them as familiar traditions. That these mysterious stories contained an immense amount of valuable old Latin classic lore and minor mythology, or that they were not altogether silly and useless, does not seem to have entered the head of any one Italian from Dante downward. Men like Straparola and Basile made, it is true, collections of merry tales to amuse, but that there was anything in them of solid traditional value never occurred to them. I mention the few and far-between witch-tales which are found in certain writers, because they are marvellously like those which I have given. Some of these, especially the later, are so elaborate or dramatic, or inspired with what seems to be literary culture, that many who are only familiar with simple fairy-tales might doubt whether the former are really traditional folklore of the people, or even of fortune-tellers. There is a curious fact, unnoted now, which will be deeply dwelt on in a future age when folklore and phases of culture will be far more broadly and deeply or genially considered than they are at present. This is, that among the masses in Italy there exists an extraordinary amount of a certain kind of culture allied to gross ignorance, as is amusingly illustrated in the commonest language, in which, even among the lowest peasants, one hears in every sentence some transformed or melted Latin word of three or four syllables, suggesting excess of culture—like unto which is the universal use of the sonnet and terzarime among the most ignorant.

If there are any readers who find it strange that in these legends and traditions there are not only extraordinary but apparently incredible remains of culture, fragments of mythology and incantations, which pierce into the most mysterious depths of archÆology, they would do well to remember that the same apparent paradox struck “Vernon Lee,” who treated it very fully in her “Euphorion,” in the chapters on the Outdoor Poetry of Italy. And among other things she thus remarks:

“Nothing can be too artificial or highflown for the Italian peasantry; its tales are all of kings, princesses, fairies, knights, winged horses, marvellous jewels . . . its songs, almost without exception, about love, constancy, moon, stars, flowers. Such things have not been degraded by familiarity and parody, as in the town; they retain for the country-folk the vague charm, like that of music, automatic and independent of thorough comprehension, of belonging to a sphere of the marvellous—hence they are repeated with almost religious servility.”

But it must be remembered that with elaborate poetic forms and fancies, which would be foreign or unintelligible, and certainly unsympathetic, even to the fairly well-educated citizen of England or America, there has been preserved to the very letter, especially in Tuscany, a mass of literature which, while resembling the romances of chivalry which Chaucer ridiculed, is far ruder; it even surpasses the Norse prose sagas in barbarism. The principal work of this kind is the “Reali di Francia,” which is reprinted every year, and which is at least a thousand years old. This work, and several like it, are the greatest literary curiosities or anomalies of the age. In them we are hurried from battle to battle, from carnage to carnage, with rude interludes of love and magic, as if even the Middle Age had never existed. The “Nibelungen Lied” and “Heldenbuch” are by comparison to them refined and modern.

Can the reader imagine this as existing in combination with the literary relics of the Renaissance and many strangely-refined forms of speech? Just so among the youngest children in Florence one sees gestures and glances and hears phrases which would seem to have been peculiar to grown-up people in some bygone stage of society. It is really necessary to bear all this in mind when reading the legends which I have collected, for they present the contradictions of barbarism and culture, of old Latin traditions and crass ignorance, as I have never seen them even imagined by students of culture.

And here I would remark, as allied to this subject, that folklore is as yet far from being understood in all its fulness. In France, for example, no scholar seems to have got beyond the idea that it consists entirely of traditions populaires, necessarily ancient. In England we have advanced further, but we are still far from realizing that with every day there springs up and grows among the masses that which in days to come will be deeply interesting, as expressing the spirit of the age. This accretive folklore is just as valuable as any—or will be so—and it should be gathered and studied, no matter what its origin may be. So of this book of mine, I express the conviction that it contains many tales which have, since the days of Dante, and many perhaps very recently, been attached to the name of Virgil, yet do not consider them less interesting than those collected in the twelfth century by Gervais of Tilbury, Neckham, and others. In fact, these here given actually contain far more ancient and curious traditional matter, because they have not been abridged or filed down by literary mediÆval Latinists into mere plots or anecdotes as contracted as the “variants” of a modern folklorist. The older writers, and many of the modern, regarded as ugly excrescence all that did not belong, firstly, to scholarship or “style”; secondly, to the fact or subject in hand. Thus, Lorenzo Selva gives a witch story with six incantations, which are far more interesting than all the washy poetry in his book, but is so ashamed of having done so, that he states in a marginal note that he has only preserved them to give an idea of “the silliness of all such iniquitous trash”—the “iniquitous trash” in question being evidently of Etrusco-Roman origin, to judge from form and similarity to other ancient spells. In these later Virgilian tales there has been no scruple, either as regards literary elegance or piety, to prevent the chronicler from giving them just as they were told, the “sinful and silly” incantations, when they occurred, being faithfully retained, with all that can give an idea of the true spirit of the whole. The mean fear of appearing to be vulgar, or credulous, or not literally “genteel,” has caused thousands of such writers to suppress traditions worth far more than all they ever penned.

I write this in the belief that all my critics will admit that in these, as in my “Florentine Legends” and “Etrusco-Roman Remains,” I have really recovered and recorded a great deal of valuable ancient tradition. Also that what was preserved to us of ancient Etruscan or GrÆco-Latin lore regarding the minor gods and sylvan deities, goblins, etc., by classic writers is very trifling indeed compared to the immense quantity which existed, and that a great deal of it may still be found among the peasantry, especially among wizards and witches, is unquestionable. That I have secured some of this in my books is, I trust, true; future critics will winnow it all out, and separate the wheat from the chaff.

I have entitled this work “The Unpublished Legends of Virgil,” which may be called a contradiction in terms, since it is now given in type. But it is the only succinct title of which I can think which expresses its real nature, and separates it from the earlier collections of such tales, the latest of which was issued by Mr. D. Nutt.

And, finally, I would remark with some hesitation in advancing so strange an idea, that in all the legends which I have gathered, I find persistence in a very rude and earlier faith, which the GrÆco-Roman religion and Christianity itself, instead of destroying, seem to have simply strengthened. Indeed, there are remote villages in Italy in which Catholicism in sober truth has come down to sorcery, or gradually conformed to it, not only in form, but in spirit; from which I conclude that, till science pur et simple shall be all-prevalent, the oldest and lowest cults will exist among those whose minds are adapted to them. And as Edward Clodd, the President of the Folklore Society, has clearly shown, [0d] there are thousands, even among the highly-educated in Europe, who really belong to these old believers.

There will come a day, and that not very far off, when the last traces of these strange semi-spiritual-romantic or classic traditions will have vanished from the people, and then what has been recorded will be sought for and studied with keenest interest, and conclusions drawn from it of which we have no conception. To some of us they are even now only as

“Departing sunbeams, loth to stop,
Still smiling on the mountain-top.”

To the vast majority even of the somewhat educated world, collecting such lore is like sending frigates to watch eclipses and North Pole explorations, and the digging up old skulls in Neanderthals—that is, a mere fond waste of money and study to no really useful purpose. There is a law of evolution which is so strictly and persistently carried out, that it would seem as if the mocking devil, who, according to the Buddhists, is the real head of the Universe, had it in his mind to jeer mankind thereby—and it is that the work of man in the past shall perish rapidly, and those who seek vestigia rerum shall have as little material as possible, even as dreams flit. So the strife goes ever on, chiefly aided by the ignorant, who “take no interest” in the past; and so it will be for some time to come. I have often observed that in Italy, as in all countries, children and peasants take pleasure in destroying old vases and the like, even when they could sell them at a profit; and there is something of the same spirit among all people regarding things which they do not understand. Blessed are they who do something in their generation to teach to the many the true value of all which conduces to culture or science! Blessed be they who save up anything for the future, “and they shall be blest” by wiser men to come! The primeval savages who heaped up vast koken middens, or thousands of tons of oyster-shells and bones, did not know that they were writing history; but they did it. Perhaps the wisest of us will be as savages to those who are to come, as they in turn will be to later men.