“I heard a loom at work, and thus it spoke,
As though its clatter like a metre woke,
And echoed in my mind like an old song,
Rising while growing dimmer e’en like smoke.

“And thus it spoke, ‘God is a loom like me,
His chiefest weaving is Humanity,
And man and woman are the warp and woof,
Which make a mingling light of mystery.’”

The Loom: C. G. L.

Gega was a girl of fifteen years of age, and without parents or friends, with nothing in the world but eyes to weep and arms to work. Yet she had this luck, that an old woman who was a fellow-lodger in the place where she lived, [172] moved by compassion, took the girl to live with her, though all she had was a very small room, in which was a poor bed and a little loom, so crazy-looking and old that it seemed impossible to work with it.

Nunzia, [173] for such was the old woman’s name, took Gega indeed as a daughter, and taught her to weave, which was a good trade in those days, and in that place where few practised it. So it came to pass that they made money, which was laid by. [This was no great wonder, for the old loom had a strange enchantment in it, by which marvellous work could be produced.]

The old woman very often bade Gega take great care of the loom, and the girl could not understand why Nunzia thought so much of it, since it seemed to her to be like any other. [For it never appeared strange to her that when she wove the cloth seemed to almost come of itself—a great deal for a little thread—and that its quality or kind improved as she applied herself to work, for in her ignorance she believed that this was the way with all weaving.]

At last the old Mamma Nunzia died, and Gega, left alone, began to make acquaintances and friends with other girls who came to visit her. Among these was one named Ermelinda, who was at heart as treacherous and rapacious as she was shrewd, yet one withal who, what with her beauty and deceitful airs, knew how to flatter and persuade to perfection, so that she could make a simple girl like Gega believe that the moon was a pewter plate, or a black fly white.

Now, the first time that she and several others, who were all weavers, saw Gega at work, they were greatly amazed, for the cloth seemed to come of itself from a wretched old loom which appeared to be incapable of making anything, and it was so fine and even, and had such a gloss that it looked like silk.

“How wonderful! One would say it was silk!” cried a girl.

“Oh, I can make silk when I try,” answered Gega; and applying her will to it, she presently spun from cotton-thread a yard of what was certainly real silk stuff.

And seeing this, all present declared that Gega must be a witch.

“Nonsense,” she replied; “you could all do it if you tried as I do. As for being a witch, it is Ermelinda and not I who should be so, for she first said it was like silk, and made it so.”

Then Ermelinda saw that there was magic in the loom, of which Gega knew nothing, so she resolved to do all in her power to obtain it. And this she effected firstly by flattery, and giving the innocent girl extravagant ideas of her beauty, assuring her that she had an attractiveness which could not fail to win her a noble husband, and that, having laid by a large sum of money, she should live on it in style till married, and that in any case she could go back to her weaving. But that on which she laid most stress was that Gega should leave her old lodging and get rid of her dirty old furniture, and especially of that horrible, crazy old loom, persuading her that, if she ever should have occasion to weave again, she, with her talent, could do far better with a new loom, and probably gain thrice as much, all of which the simple girl believed, and so let her false friend dispose of everything, in doing which Ermelinda did not fail to keep the loom herself, declaring that nobody would buy it.

“Now,” said the latter, “I am content. Thou art very beautiful; all that thou needest is to be elegantly dressed, and have fine things about thee, to soon catch a fine husband.”

Gega assented to this, but was loth to part with her old loom, which she had promised Nunzia should never be neglected; but Ermelinda promised so faithfully to keep it carefully for her, that she was persuaded to let her have it. Then the young girl took a fine apartment, well furnished, and bought herself beautiful clothes, and, guided by her false friend, began to go to entertainments and make fashionable friends, and live as if she were rich.

Then Ermelinda, having obtained the old loom, went to work with it, in full hope that she too could spin silk out of cotton, but found out to her amazement and rage that she could do nothing of the kind—nay, she could not so much as weave common cloth from it; all that she got after hours of fruitless effort was a headache, and the conviction that she had thrown away all her time and trouble, which made her hate Gega all the more.

Meanwhile the latter for a time enjoyed life as she had never done before; but though she looked anxiously to the right and the left for a husband, found none, the well-to-do young men being quite as anxious to wed wealth as she was, and all of them soon discovered on inquiry that she had little or nothing, despite her style of living, and her money rapidly melted away, till at last she found that to live she must work—there was no help for it. With what remained she bought a fine loom and thread, and sat down to weave; but though she succeeded in making common stuff like others, it was not silk, nor anything like it, nor was there anyone who would buy what she made. In despair she remembered what Mamma Nunzia had solemnly said to her, that she must never part from the old loom, so she went to Ermelinda to reclaim it. But her false friend, although she could do nothing with the loom herself, was not willing that Gega, whom she hated with all her heart, should in any way profit, and declared that her mother had broken up and burned the rubbishy old thing, and to this story she adhered, and when Gega insisted on proof of it, drove her in a rage out of the house.

While Mamma Nunzia was living she, being a very wise woman, had taught Gega with care the properties and nature of plants, roots, herbs, and flowers, saying that some day it might be of value to her, as it is to everyone. So whenever they had a holiday they had gone into the fields and woods, where the girl became so expert that she could have taught many a doctor very strange secrets; and withal, the Mamma also made her learn the charms and incantations which increase the power of the plants. So now, having come to her last coin, and finding there was some profit in it, she began to gather herbs for medicine, which she sold to chemists and others in the towns. And finding a deserted old tower in a wild and rocky place, she was allowed to make it her home; and indeed, after all she had gone through, and her disappointment both as to friends and lovers, she found herself far happier when alone than when in a town, where she was ashamed to meet people who had known her when she lived in style.

One evening as she was returning home she heard a groaning in the woods as of someone in great suffering, and, guided by the sound, found a poor old woman seated on a stone, who told her that she had hurt her leg by slipping from a rock. And Gega, who was as strong as she was kind and compassionate, carried the poor soul in her arms to the tower, where she bound an application of healing herbs to the wound, and bade her remain and welcome.“I have nothing to give you for it all,” said the old woman on the following day.

“Nor did I do it in the hope of aught,” replied Gega.

“And yet,” said the sufferer, “I might be of use to you. If, for example, you have lost anything, I can tell you how to recover it or where it is.”

“Ah!” cried Gega, “if thou canst do that, thou wilt be a friend indeed, for I have lost my fortune—it was a loom which was left to me by Mamma Nunzia. I did not regard her advice never to part with it, and I have bitterly repented my folly. I trusted it to a friend, who betrayed me, for she burned it.”

“No, my dear, she did nothing of the kind,” replied the old woman; “she has it yet, and I will make it return to thee.”

Then she repeated this invocation:

“Telaio! Telaio! Telaio!
Che per opera e virtÚ
Del gran mago Virgilio
Fosti fabricato,
E di tante virtÙ adornato
Ti prego per opera e virtu
Del gran mago Virgilio
Tu possa di una tela
Di oro di argento
Essere ordito.
E come il vento,
Dalla casa di Ermelinda,
Tu possa sortire,
Sortire e tornare
Nella vecchia sofitta
Della figlia mia
Per opera e virtÚ
Dal gran mago Virgilio!”

“Loom! Loom! O loom!
Who by the labour and skill
Of the great magician Virgil
Wert made so long ago,
And gifted with such power!
I pray thee by that skill
And labour given by
Virgil, the great magician,
As thou canst spin a web
Of silver or of gold,
Fly like the wind away
From Ermelinda’s house
Into the small old room
Where once my daughter dwelt,
All by the skill and power
Of great Virgilius!”

When in an instant they were borne away on a mighty wind and found themselves in the old room, and there also they found the loom, from which Gega could now weave at will cloth of gold or silver as well as silk.

Then the old woman looked steadily at Gega, and the girl saw the features of the former change to those of Nunzia, and as she embraced her, the old woman said:

“Yes, I am Mamma Nunzia, and I came from afar to restore to thee thy loom; but guard it well now, for if lost thou canst never recover it again. But if thou shouldst ever need aught, then invoke the grand magician Virgil, because he has always been my god.” [177]

Having said this, she departed, and Gega knew now that Nunzia was a white witch or a fairy. So, becoming rich, she was a lady, and ever after took good care of her loom and distrusted flattering friends.

This legend exists as a fairy-tale in many forms, and may be found in many countries; perhaps its beginning was in that of the princess who could spin straw into gold. To have some object which produces food or money ad libitum when called on, to be cheated out of it, and finally be revenged on the cheater, is known to all.

Virgil is in one of these tales naÏvely called a saint, and in this he is seriously addressed as a god, by which we, of course, understand a classical heathen deity, or any spirit powerful enough to answer prayer with personal favours. But Virgil as the maker of a magic loom which yields gold and silk, and as a god at the same time, indicates a very possible derivation from a very grand ancient myth. The reader is probably familiar with the address of the Time Spirit in Goethe’s “Faust”:

“In Being’s flood, in action’s storm,
I work and weave, above, beneath—
Work and weave in endless motion
Birth and Death—an infinite ocean,
A-seizing and giving
The fire of the Living.
’Tis thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the garment thou see’st Him by.”

Thomas Carlyle informs us, in “Sartor Resartus,” that of the thousands who have spouted this really very intelligible formula of pantheism, none have understood it—implying thereby that to him it was no mystery. But Carlyle apparently did not know, else he would surely have told the reader, that the idea was derived from the Sanskrit myth that Maya (delusion or appearance), “the feminine half of the divine primitive creator (Urwesen), was represented as weaving the palpable universe from herself, for which reason she was typified as a spider.” [178] Hence Maia of the Greeks; and it is a curious coincidence that Maia in the Neapolitan legends is the mother of Virgil, all of which is confused, and may be accidental, but there may also be in it the remains of some curious and very ancient tradition. The spider was, however, certainly the emblem of domestic, stay-at-home, steady industry, as Friedrich illustrates, therefore of prosperity, hence it is believed to bring luck to those on whom it crawls, as set forth in the novel of “The Red Spider.” And it is evident that the moral of this tale of Virgil’s loom is to the effect that the heroine gained her good fortune by hard work at home, and came to grief by gadding abroad and playing the belle.

That Maia, or Illusion or Glamour, should, according to our tradition, be the mother of the greatest thaumaturgist, wonder-worker, poet, and sorcerer of yore is curious. That the original Maya of India should be the living loom from which the universe is spun, and that in another tale the same magician, her son, is a god who makes a magic loom which spins gold, silver, and silk, may be all mere chance coincidence, but, if so, it is strange enough to rank as a miracle per se.

The name Gega, with g the second soft, is very nearly Gaia, the Goddess of the Earth, who was one with Maia, as a type of the Universe.

As I regard this as a tradition of some importance, I would state that it owes nothing whatever to any inquiry, hint, or suggestion from me; that it was gathered from witch authority by Maddalena, near Prato; and, finally, that it is very faithfully translated, with the exception of the passages indicated by brackets, which were inserted by me to make the text clearer—a very necessary thing in most of these tales, where much is often palpably omitted. I have seldom had a story so badly written as this was; it appears to have been taken down without correction from some illiterate old woman, who hardly understood what she was narrating.

It is to be observed that in a number of these tales the proper names are strangely antique and significant. They are not such as are in use among the people, they would not even be known to most who are tolerably well read. I have only found several after special search in mythologies, etc.; and yet they are, I sincerely believe, in all cases appropriate to the tradition as in this case.