The Fairy Mythology - The Fairy Mythology Part 65
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The Fairy Mythology Part 65

They travel through the air in various strange conveyances, and it is no easy matter to distinguish between their convention and a Sabbath of the Witches.

We meet with another Fata in Bojardo,[511] the beautiful Silvanella, who raised a tomb over Narcissus, and then dissolved away into a fountain.

When Brandamarte opens the magnificent tomb and kisses the hideous serpent that thrusts out its head, it gradually becomes a beautiful maiden.

Questa era Febosilla quella fata, Che edificato avea l'alto palaccio E'l bel giardino e quella sepoltura, Ove un gran tempo e stata in pena dura.

Perche una fata non pu morir mai, Sin che non giunge il giorno del giudizio, Ma ben ne la sua forma dura assai, Mill' anni o piu, s come io aggio indizio.

Poi (siccome di questa io vi contai Qual fabbricato avea il bell' edifizio) In serpe si tramuta e stavvi tanto Che di baciarla alcun si doni il vanto.

L. II. c. xxvi. st. 14, 15

The other Fate who appear in this poem are Le Fate Nera and Bianca, the protectresses of Guidone and Aquilante; the Fata della Fonte, from whom Mandricardo obtains the arms of Hector, and finally Alcina, the sister of Morgana, who carries off Astolfo. Dragontina and Falerina, the owners of such splendid gardens, may also have been Fate, though they are not called so by the poet.

Alcina re-appears in great splendour in the Orlando Furioso, where she is given a sister named Logistilla, and both, like Morgana in the preceding poem, are in a great measure allegorical. We also obtain there a glimpse of the White and Black Fate. The Maga Manto of Dante becomes here a Fata, and we meet her in the form of a serpent; to account for which she says,

Nascemmo ad un punto che d' ogni altro male Siamo capaci fuor che della morte.

Ma giunta e con questo essere immortale Condizion non men del morir forte; Ch' ogni settimo giorno ognuna e certa Che la sua forma in biscia si converta.

C. xliii. st. 98.

Elsewhere (x. 52) the poet tells us that

Morir non puote alcuna fata mai Fin che il Sol gira, o il ciel non muta stilo.

In the Amadigi of Bernardo Tasso the Fate appear for the last time in Italian poetry;[512] but in greater number, and, we may say, greater splendour than elsewhere. There are two classes of them, the beneficent and protective, and the seductive and injurious. The terms Maga and Incantatrice, as well as Fata, are applied to them all indifferently.

The good Fairy-ladies are Urganda, termed _La savia_ and _La sconosciuta_,[513] the guardian of Amadigi, and the fair Oriana; Silvana or Silvanella who stands in a similar relation to Alidoro; Lucina, also named La Donna del Lago, another protectress of Alidoro and of his lady-love, the fair warrior Mirinda, sister of Amadigi; Eufrosina, the sister of Lucina; Argea, called La Reina della Fate, the protectress of Floridante, to whom, after making him undergo various trials, she gives her daughter Filidora in marriage; finally, Argea's sister Filidea. The Fate whose character resembles that of Alcina are Morganetta, Nivetta, and Carvilia, the three daughters of Morgana. Beside these then are two Fate of neutral character, Dragontina, who formed a palace, temple and gardens, in which, at the desire of her father, she enchanted a young prince and his wife; and Montana, who, to avenge the fate of her lover, slain by Alidoro, enchanted that warrior in a temple which she had raised to the memory of the fallen.[514]

Ma veggiam ch' io non stessi troppo a bada Con queste Alcine e Morgane.

The earliest collections of European Fairy-tales in prose belong to Italy. In 1550, Straparola, a native of Caravaggio, in the Milanese, published at Venice his Notti Piacevoli, a collection of tales, jokes, and riddles, of which several, and those the best, are Fairy-tales.

These were translated into French in 1560-76, and seem to have been the origin of the so well known Contes des Fees. Perrault's Puss in Boots (_Le Chat Botte_,) and the Princess Fairstar (_Belle Etoile_,) and many others of Madame D'Aulnoy's, who borrowed largely from the Notti Piacevoli, are to be found in Straparola. In 1637, eighty-seven years after the Notti Piacevoli appeared at Naples, and in the Neapolitan dialect, the Pentamerone, the best collection of Fairy-tales ever written.[515] The author, Giambattista Basile,[516] had spent his youth in Candia, and then passed several years rambling through Italy. He seems to have carefully treasured up all the tales he heard, and he wrote and published them, under the feigned name of Gian Alesio Abbatutis, in his native dialect, not long before his death.

In the Tales and Popular Fictions we gave some translations from the Notti Piacevoli, the only ones in English, and they will probably remain such, as the work is not one likely ever to be translated. In the same work we gave two from the Pentamerone, and three (the Dragon, Gagliuso, and the Goatface) in the former edition of the present work.

Most certainly we were the first to render any of these curious tales into English, and we look back with a mixture of pleasure and surprise at our success in the unaided struggle with an idiom so different from the classic Italian.[517] We fancied that we had been the first to make translations from it into any language, but we afterwards learned that of the two tales in our other work, the one, Peruonto, had been translated into French (probably by the Abbe Galiani) for the Cabinet des Fees, the other, the Serpent into German, by M. Grimm.[518] Of late, this most original work has been brought within the reach of ordinary readers by two translations, the one in German by Felix Liebrecht, who has given the work complete with few omissions; the other in English by Mr. J. E. Taylor, who has made a selection of thirty tales, and these most carefully expurgated, in order that agreeably to its second title, it might form a book of amusement even for children--a most difficult task, and in which his success has been far greater than might have been anticipated. All our own translations have been incorporated in it, and we can safely refer to it those who wish to know the real character and nature of the Pentamerone.

Whatever name Basile might give his book it is quite plain that he never could have meant it merely for children. The language alone is proof enough on that head. It is, besides, full of learned allusions and of keen satire, so that it could only be understood and relished by grown persons, for whose amusement it was apparently designed; and its tales are surely not much more extravagant than some of those in Ariosto and the other romantic poets. It in fact never was a child's book like the Contes de ma Mere l' Oie. It has now become very scarce; we could not at Naples meet with a copy of it, or even with any one who had read it.

FOOTNOTES:

[501] Aulularia, Prologue.

[502] See our Mythology of Greece and Italy, p. 543; and our Ovid's Fasti, Excursus iv.

[503] Satyricon, ch. 38. _Sunt qui eundem_ (Hercules) _Incubonem esse velint_. Schol. Hor. Sat. ii. 6, 13.

[504] Viessieux, Italy and the Italians, vol. i. pp. 161, 162.

[505] _L'huorco_, the Orco of Bojardo and Ariosto, probably derived from the Latin Orcus: see Mythol. of Greece and Italy, p. 527. In this derivation we find that we had been anticipated by Minucci in his notes on the Malmantile Racquistato, c. ii. st. 50.

In a work, from which we have derived some information (Lettres sur les Contes des Fees, Paris, 1826), considerable pains are taken, we think to little purpose, to deduce the French Ogre from the Ogours, a Tartar tribe, who with the other tribes of that people invaded Europe in the twelfth century. In the Glossaire de la Langue Romaine, Ogre is explained by Hongrois. Any one, however, that reads the Pentamerone will see that the ugly, cruel, man-eating Huorco is plainly an Ogre; and those expert at the _tours de passe passe_ of etymology will be at no loss to deduce Ogre from Orco. See Tales and Popular Fictions, p. 223.

[506] In another of these tales, it is said of a young man, who, on breaking open a cask, found a beautiful maiden in it, that he stood for a while _comme o chillo che ha visto lo Monaciello_.

[507] See Tales and Popular Fictions, chap. ix. p. 269; see also _Spain_ and _France_.

[508] Vincentius apud Kornmann, _de Miraculis Vivorum_.

[509] This being, unknown to classic mythology, is first mentioned by Lactantius. It was probably from Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum that Bojardo got his knowledge of him.

[510] I Cinque Canti, c. i. st. l. _seq._

[511] Lib. II. xvii. 56, _seq._

[512] There is, however, a Maga or Fata named Falsirena in the Adone of Marini.

[513] La Sabia and La Desconocida of the original romance, which Tasse follows very closely in everything relating to Amadis and Oriana.

[514] Few of our readers, we presume, are acquainted with this poem, and they will perhaps be surprised to learn that it is, after the Furioso, the most beautiful romantic poem in the Italian language, graceful and sweet almost to excess. It is strange that it should be neglected in Italy also. One cause may be its length (One Hundred Cantos), another the constant and inartificial breaking off of the stories, and perhaps the chief one, its serious moral tone so different from that of Ariosto.

It might be styled The Legend of Constancy, for the love of its heroes and heroines is proof against all temptations. Mr. Panizzi's charge of abounding in scandalous stories, is not correct, for it is in reality more delicate than even the Faerie Queene. Ginguene, who admired it, appreciates it far more justly.

[515] See Tales and Popular Fictions, p. 183. The Pentamerone we may observe, was not a title given to it by the author; in like manner the only title Fielding gave his great work was The History of a Foundling.

[516] He was brother to Adriana and uncle to Leonora Baroni, the ladies whose musical talents Milton celebrates.

[517] Ex. gr. Fiume is _shiume_; Fiore, _shiure_; Piaggia, _chiaja_; Piombo, _chiummo_; Biondo, _ghiunno_. There are likewise numerous Hispanicisms. Thus _gaiola_ in Gagliuso which we all rendered _coffin_, is the Spanish _jaula_, cage, and the meaning apparently is that he would have the cat stuffed and put in a glass-case; in like manner calling the eyes suns (as in _na bellezza a doje sole_) occurs in the plays of Calderon.

[518] In the Taschenbuch fur altdeutscher Zeit und Kunst, 1816.

SPAIN.

Duendecillo, duendecillo, Quien quiera que seas o fueras, El dinero que tu das En lo que mandares vuelve.

CALDERON, _La Dama Duende_.

When we inquired after the fairy-system of Spain, we were told that there was no such thing, for that the Inquisition had long since eradicated all such ideas. Most certainly we would not willingly be regarded as partisans of the Holy Office, yet still we must express our doubt of the truth of this charge. In Senor Llorente's work, as far as we can recollect, there is no account of prosecutions for Duende-heresy; and even to the Holy Office we should give its due. Still, with all our diligence, our collection of Iberian fairy-lore is extremely scanty.

Our earliest authority for Spain, as for other countries, is the celebrated marshall of Champagne, Gervase of Tilbury, who thus relates:--

_The Daughter of Peter De Cabinam._

In the bishoprick of Gerunda (_i. e._ Gerona), and the province of Catalonia, stands a mountain which the natives call Convagum. It is very steep, and on its summit is a lake of dark water, so deep that it cannot be fathomed. The abode of the Demons is in this lake; and if a stone, or anything else, be thrown into it, there rises from it an awful tempest.

Not far from this mountain, in a village named Junchera, lived a man named Peter de Cabinam, who being one day annoyed by the crying of his little girl, wished in his anger that the Demons might fetch her away.

The child instantly vanished--snatched away by invisible hands--and was seen no more. Time passed on; and it was seven years after this event, when a man belonging to the village, as he was one day rambling about the foot of the mountain, met a man weeping bitterly, and bewailing his hard fate. On inquiry, he said that he had now been seven years in the mountain under the power of the Demons, who employed him as a beast of burden. He added, that there was also a girl in the mountain, the daughter of Peter de Cabinam of Junchera, a servant like himself; but that they were tired of her, and would restore her to her father if he came to claim her. When this information came to Peter de Cabinam, he forthwith ascended the mountain, and going to the edge of the lake, he besought the Demons to give him back his child. Like a sudden gust of wind she came, tall in stature, but wasted and dirty, her eyes rolling wildly, and her speech inarticulate. The father, not knowing what to do with her, applied to the Bishop of Gerunda, who took this opportunity of edifying his people by exhibiting the girl to them, and warning them against the danger of wishing that the Demons had their children. Some time after the man also was released, and from him the people learned that at the bottom of the lake there was a large palace, with a wide gate, to which palace the Demons repaired from all parts of the world, and which no one could enter but themselves, and those they brought thither.[519]