Chapter VII (9)

Before the sun was up on May-day morning, the people of Edinburgh assembled at Arthur's Seat to "meet the dew." May-dew was thought to possess all kinds of virtues. English girls went into the fields at dawn to wash their faces in it, in order to procure a good complexion. Pepys speaks of his wife going to Woolwich for a little change of air, and to gather the May-dew. In Croatia, the women get from the woods flowers and grasses which they throw into water taken from under a mill-wheel, and next morning they bathe in the water, imagining that thus the new strength of Nature enters into them. There is said to also exist a singular rain-custom in Croatia. When a drought threatens to injure the crops, a young girl, generally a gipsy, dresses herself entirely in flowers and grasses, in which primitive raiment she is conducted through the village by her companions, who sing to the skies for mercy. In Greece, too, there are many songs and ceremonies in connection with a desire for the rain, which never comes during the whole pitiless summer.

If there be a part of the world where spring plays the laggard, it is certainly the upper valley of the Inn. Nevertheless the children of the Engadine trudge forth bravely over the snow, shaking their cow-bells and singing lustily:

Chalanda Mars, chaland'Avrigl
Lasche las vachias our d'nuilg.

Were the cows to leave their stables as is here enjoined, they would not find a blade of grass to eat--but that does not matter. The children have probably sung that song ever since their forefathers came up to the mountains; came up in all likelihood from sunny Tuscany. The Engadine lads, after doing justice to their March-day fare, set out for the boundaries of their commune, where they are met by another band of boys, with whom they contend in various trials of strength, which sometimes end in hand-to-hand fights. This may be analogous to the old English usage of beating the younger generation once a year at the village boundaries in order to impress on them a lasting idea of local geography. By the Lake of Poschiavo it is the custom to "call after the grass"--"chiamar l'erba"--on March-day.

In the end, as has been seen, March gets an ill-word from the Greek folk-singer, who is not more constant in his praise of April. It is the old fatality which makes the Better the Enemy of the Good.

May is coming, May is coming, comes the month so blithe and gay;
April truly has its flowers, but all roses bloom in May;
April, thou accurst one, vanish! Sweet May-month I long to see;
May fills all the world with flowers, May will give my love to me.

May is pre-eminently the bridal month in Greece; a strange contradiction to the prejudice against May marriages that prevails in most parts of Europe. "Marry in May, rue for aye." The Romans have been held responsible for this superstition. They kept their festival of the dead during May, and while it lasted other forms of worship were suspended. To contract marriage would have been to defy the fates. Traces of a spring feast of souls survive in France, where, on Palm Sunday, _Paques fleuries_ as it is called, it is customary to set the first fresh flowers of the year upon the graves. Nor is it by any means uninteresting to note that in one great empire far outside of the Roman world the _fete des morts_ is assigned not to the quiet close of the year but to the delightful spring. The Chinese festival of Clear Weather which falls in April is the chosen time for worshipping at the family tombs.

The marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and James Bothwell was celebrated on the 16th of May; an unknown hand wrote upon the gate of Holyrood Palace Ovid's warning:

Si te proverbia tangunt,
Mense malas Maio nubere vulgus ait.

Of English songs treating of that "observance" or "rite" of May to which Chaucer and Shakespeare bear witness, there are unfortunately few. The old nursery rhyme:

Here we go a-piping,
First in spring and then in May,

tells the usual story of house-to-house visiting and expected largess. In Devonshire, children used to take round a richly-dressed doll; such a doll is still borne in triumph by the children of Great Missenden, Bucks, where a doggerel is sung, of which these are the concluding verses:

A branch of May I have you brought,
And at your door I stand;
'Tis but a spray that's well put out
By the works of the mighty Lord's hand.

If you have got no strong beer,
We'll be content with small;
And take the goodwill of your house,
And give good thanks for all.

God bless the master of this house,
The mistress also;
Likewise the little children
That round the table go.

My song is done, I must be gone,
No longer can I stay;
God bless you all, both great and small,
And send you a joyful May.

The poets of Great Missenden not being prolific, the two middle stanzas are used at Christmas as well as on May-day.

May-poles were prohibited by the Long Parliament of 1644, being denounced as a "heathenish vanity generally abused to superstition and wickedness." A long while before, the Roman Floralia, the feast when people carried green boughs and wore fresh garlands, had been put down for somewhat the same reasons. With regard to May-poles I am not inclined to think too harshly of them. They died hard: an old Essex man told me on his death-bed of how when he was a lad the young folks danced regularly round the May-pole on May-day, and in his opinion it was a good time. It was a time, he went on to say, when the country was a different thing; twice a day the postillion's horn sounded down the village street, the Woolpack Inn was often full even to the attics in its pretty gabled roof, all sorts of persons of quality fell out of the clouds, or to speak exactly, emerged from the London coach. The life of the place seemed to be gone, said my friend, and yet "the place" is in the very highest state of modern prosperity.

The parade of sweeps in bowers of greenery lingered on rather longer in England than May-poles. It is stated to have originated in this way. Edward Wortley Montagu (born about 1714), who later was destined to win celebrity by still stranger freaks, escaped when a boy from Westminster School and borrowed the clothes of a chimney sweep, in whose trade he became an adept. A long search resulted in his discovery and restoration to his parents on May 1; in recollection of which event Mrs Elizabeth Montagu is said to have instituted the May-day feast given by her for many years to the London chimney-sweepers.

In the country west of Glasgow it is still remembered how once the houses were adorned with flowers and branches on the first of May, and in some parts of Ireland they still plant a May-tree or May-bush before the door of the farmhouse, throwing it at sundown into a bonfire. The lighting of fires was not an uncommon feature of May-day observance, but it is a practice which seems to me to have strayed into that connection from its proper place in the great festival of the summer solstice on St John's Eve. Among people of English speech, May-day customs are little more than a cheerful memory. Herrick wrote:

Wash, dress, be brief in praying,
Few beads are best when once we go a-maying.

People neglect their "beads" or the equivalents now from other motives.

May night is the German Walpurgis-nacht. The witches ride up to the Brocken on magpies' tails, not a magpie can be seen for the next twenty-four hours--they are all gone and they have not had time to return. The witches dance on the Brocken till they have danced away the winter's snow. May-brides and May-kings are still to be heard of in Germany, and children run about on May-day with buttercups or with a twist of bread, a _Bretzel_, decked with ribbons, or holding imprisoned may-flies, which they let loose whilst they sing:

Maikaeferchen fliege,
Dein Vater ist in kriege,
Deine Mutter ist in Pommerland,
Pommerland ist abgebrannt,
Maikaeferchen fliege.

May chafer must fly away home, his father is at the wars, his mother is in Pomerania, Pomerania is all burnt. May chafer in short is the brother of our ladybird. Dr Karl Blind is of opinion that "Pommerland" is a later interpolation for "Holler-land"--the land of Freya--Holda, the Teutonic Aphrodite; and he and other German students of mythology see in the conflagration an allusion to the final end and doom of the kingdom of the gods. It is pointed out that the ladybird was Freya's messenger, whose business it was to call the unborn from their tranquil sojourn amongst celestial flowers, into the storms of human existence. There is an airy May chafer song in Alsace--Teutonic in tradition, though French in tongue:

Avril, tu t'en vas,
Car Mai vient la-bas,
Pour balayer ta figure
De pluie, aussi de froidure.
Hanneton, vole!
Hanneton, vole!

Au firmament bleu
Ton nid est en feu,
Les Turcs avec leur epee
Viennent tuer ta couvee.
Hanneton, vole!
Hanneton, vole!

Dr Blind recollects taking part, as a boy, in an extremely curious children's drama, which is still played in some places in the open air. It is an allegory of the expulsion of winter, who is killed and burnt, and of the arrival of summer, who comes decked with flowers and garlands. The children repeat:

Now have we chased death away,
And we bring the summer weather;
Summer dear and eke the May,
And the flowers all together:
Bringing summer we are come,
Summer tide and sunshine home.

With this may be compared an account given by Olaus Magnus, a Swedish writer of the fifteenth century, of how May Day was celebrated in his time. "A number of youths on horseback were drawn up in two lines facing each other, the one party representing 'Winter' and the other 'Summer.' The leader of the former was clad in wild beasts' skins, and he and his men were armed with snow-balls and pieces of ice. The commander of the latter--'Maj Greve,' or Count May--was, on the contrary, decorated with leaves and flowers, and his followers had for weapons branches of the birch or linden tree, which, having been previously steeped in water, were then in leaf. At a given signal, a sham fight ensued between the opposing forces. If the season was cold and backward, 'Winter' and his party were impetuous in their attack, and in the beginning the advantage was supposed to rest with them; but if the weather was genial, and the spring had fairly set in, 'Maj Greve' and his men carried all before them. Under any circumstances, however, the umpire always declared the victory to rest with 'Summer.' The winter party then strewed ashes on the ground, and a joyous banquet terminated the game." Mr L. Lloyd, author of "Peasant Life in Sweden" (1870), records some lines sung by Swedish children when collecting provisions for the _Maj gille_ or May feast, which recall the "Swallow-song":

"Best loves from Mr and Mrs Magpie,
From all their eggs and all their fry,
O give them alms, if ever so small,
Else hens and chickens and eggs and all,
A prey to 'Piet' will surely fall."

The Swedes raise their _Maj st[)a]ng_ or May-pole, not on May, but on St John's Eve, a change due, I suspect, to the exigencies of the climate.

German _Mailieder_ are one very much like the other; they are full of the simple gladness of children who have been shut up in houses, and who now can run about in the sunny air. I came across the following in Switzerland:

"Alles neu macht der Mai,
Macht die Seele frisch und frei.
Lasst dans Haus!
Kommt hinaus!
Windet einen Strauss!

"Rings erglaenzet Sonnenschein,
Dustend pranget Flur und Hain.
Voegel-sang,
Lust'ger Klang
Toent den Wald entlang."

In Lorraine girls dressed in white go from village to village stringing off couplets, in which the inhabitants are turned into somewhat unmerciful ridicule. The girls of this place enlighten the people of that as to their small failings, and so _vice versa_. All the winter the village poets harvest the jokes made by one community at the expense of another, in order to shape them into a consecutive whole for recital on May Day. The girls are rewarded for their part in the business by small coin, cakes and fruit. The May-songs of Lorraine are termed "Trimazos," from the fact that they are always sung to the refrain,

"O Trimazot, c'at lo Maye;
O mi-Maye!
C'at lo joli mois de Maye,
C'at lo Trimazot."

The derivation of _Trimazo_ is uncertain; someone suggested that _Tri_ stands for three, and _mazo_ for maidens; but I think _mazo_ is more likely to be connected with the Italian _mazzo_, "nosegay." The word is known outside Lorraine: at Islettes children say:

"Trimazot! en nous allant
Nous pormenes eddans les champs
Nous y ons trouve les bles si grands
Les Aubepin' en fleurissant."

They beg for money to buy a taper for the Virgin's altar; for it must not be forgotten that the month of May is the month of Mary. The villagers add a little flour to their pious offering, so that the children may make cakes. Elsewhere in Champagne young girls collect the taper money; they cunningly appeal to the tenderness of the young mother by bringing to her mind the hour "when she takes her pretty child up in the morning and lays him to sleep at night." There was a day on which the girls of the neighbourhood of Remiremont used to way-lay every youth they met on the road to the church of Dommartin and insist on sticking a sprig of rosemary or laurel in his cap, saying, "We have found a fine gentleman, God give him joy and health; take the May, the pretty May!" The fine gentleman was requested to give "what he liked" for the dear Virgin's sake. In the department of the Jura there are May-brides, and in Bresse they have a May-queen who is attended by a youth, selected for the purpose, and by a little boy who carries a green bough ornamented with ribands. She heads the village girls and boys, who walk as in a marriage procession, and who receive eggs, wine, or money. A song still sung in Burgundy recalls the prae-revolutionary aera and the respect inspired by the seigneurial woods:--

"Le voila venu le joli mois,
Laissez bourgeonner le bois;
Le voila venu le joli mois,
Le joli bois bourgeonne.
Il faut laisser bourgeonner le bois,
Le bois du gentilhomme."

The young peasants of Poitou betake themselves to the door of each homestead before the dawn of the May morning and summon the mistress of the house to waken her daughters:--

"For we are come before hath come the day
To sing the coming of the month of May."

But they do not ask the damsels to stand there listening to compliments; "Go to the hen-roost," they say, "and get eighteen, or still better, twenty new laid eggs." If the eggs cannot be had, they can bring money, only let them make haste, as day-break is near and the road is long. By way of acknowledgment the spokesman adds a sort of "And your petitioners will ever pray;" they will pray for the purse which held the money and for the hen that laid the eggs. If St Nicholas only hears them that hen will eat the fox, instead of the fox eating the hen. The gift is seemly. Now the dwellers in the homestead may go back to their beds and bar doors and windows; "as for us, we go through all the night singing at the arrival of sweet spring."

The antiquary in search of May-songs will turn to the Motets and Pastorals of that six-hundred-year-old Comic Opera "Li gieus de Robin et de Marion." Its origin was not illiterate, but in Adam de la Halle's time and country poets who had some letters and poets who had none did not stand so widely apart. The May month, the summer sweetness, the lilies of the valley, the green meadows--these constituted pretty well the whole idea which the French rustic had formed to himself of what poetry was. It cannot be denied that he came to use these things occasionally as mere commonplaces, a tendency which increased as time wore on. But he has his better moods, and some of his ditties are not wanting in elegance. Here is an old song preserved in Burgundy:

Voici venu le mois des fleurs
Des chansons et des senteurs;
Le mois qui tout enchante
Le mois de douce attente.
Le buisson reprend ses couleurs
Au bois l'oiseau chante.

Il est venu sans mes amours
One j'attends, helas, toujours;
Tandis que l'oiseau chante
Et que le mai l' on plante
Seule en ces bois que je parcours
Seule je me lamente.

In the France of the sixteenth century, the planting of the May took a literary turn. At Lyons, for instance, the printers were in the habit of setting up what was called "Le Mai des Imprimeurs" before the door of some distinguished person. The members of the illustrious Lombard house of Trivulzi, who between them held the government of Lyons for more than twenty-five years, were on several occasions chosen as recipients of the May-day compliment. "Le Grand Trivulce," marshal of France, was a great patron of literature, and the encouragement of the liberal arts grew to be a tradition in the family. In 1529 Theodore de Trivulce had a May planted in his honour bearing a poetical address from the pen of Clement Marot, and Pompone de Trivulce received a like distinction in 1535, when Etienne Dolet wrote for the occasion an ode in the purest Latin, which may be read in Mr R. C. Christie's biography of its author.

Giulio Cesare Croce, the famous ballad-singer of Bologna (born 1550), wrote a "Canzonetta vaga in lode del bel mese di maggio et delle regine o contesse che si fanno quel giorno in Bologna," and in 1622, a small book was published at Bologna, entitled: "Ragionamenti piacevoli intorno alle contesse di maggio; piantar il maggio; nozze che si fanno in maggio." The author, Vincenzo Giacchiroli, observes: "These countesses, according to what I have read, the Florentines call Dukes of May--perhaps because there they have real dukes." The first of May, he continues, the young girls select one from among them and set her on a high seat or throne in some public street, adorned and surrounded with greenery, and with such flowers as the season affords. To this maiden, in semblance like the goddess Flora, they compel every passer-by to give something, either by catching him by his clothes, or by holding a cord across the street to intercept him, singing at the same time, "Alla contessa, alla contessa!" They who pass, therefore, throw into a plate or receptacle prepared for the purpose, money, or flowers, or what not, for the new countess. In some places it was the custom to kiss the countess; "neither," adds the author, "is this to be condemned, since so were wont to do the ancients as a sign of honour."

Regarding a similar usage at Mantua, Merlinus Coccaius (Folengo) wrote:

"Accidit una dies qua Mantua tota bagordat
Prima dies mensis Maii quo quisque piantat
Per stradas ramos frondosos nomine mazzos." &c.

Exactly the same practice lingers in Spain. In the town of Almeria, improvised temples are raised at the street corners and gateways, where, on an altar covered with damask or other rich stuff, a girl decked with flowers is seated, whilst around her in a circle stand other girls, also crowned with flowers, who hold hands, and intone, like a Greek chorus--

"Un cuartito para la Maya,
Que no tiene manto ni saya."

"A penny for the May who has neither mantle nor petticoat."

Lorenzo de' Medici says in one of his ballads:

Se tu vuo' appiccare un maio.
A qualcuna che tu ami....

In his day "Singing the May" was almost a trade; the country folk flocked into Florence with their May trees and rustic instruments and took toll of the citizens. The custom continues along the Ligurian coast. At Spezia I saw the boys come round on May-day piping and singing, and led by one, taller than the rest, who carried an Italian flag covered with garlands. The name of the master of the house before which they halt is introduced into a song that begins:

Siam venuti a cantar maggio,
Al Signore ----
Come ogn' anno usar si suole,
Nella stagion di primavera.

Since Chaucer, who loved so dearly the "May Kalendes" and the "See of the day," no one has celebrated them with a more ingenuous charm than the country lads of the island of Sardinia, who sing "May, May, be thou welcome, with all Sun and Love; with the Flower and with the Soul, and with the Marguerite." A Tuscan and a Pisan _Rispetto_ may be taken as representative of Italian May-song:

'Twas in the Calends of the month of May,
I went into the garden for a flower,
A wild bird there I saw upon a spray,
Singing of love with skilled melodious power.
O little bird, who dost from Florence speed
Teach me whence loving doth at first proceed?
Love has its birth in music and in songs
Its end, alas! to tears and grief belongs.

Era di maggio, se ben mi ricordo
Quando c'incominciammo a ben volere
Eran fiorite le rose dell'orto,
E le ciliege diventavan nere;
Ciliege nere e pere moscatelle,
Siete il trionfo delle donne belle
Ciliege nere e pere moscatate.
Siete il trionfo delle innamorate
Ciliege nere e pere moscatine.
Siete il trionfo delle piu belline.

The child's or lover's play of words in this last baffles all attempt at translation: it is not sense but sweetness, not poetry but music. It is as much without rule or study or conventionality as the song of birds when in Italian phrase, _fanno primavera_.

In the Province of Brescia the Thursday of Mid-Lent is kept by what is called "Burning the old women." A doll made of straw or rags, representing the oldest woman, is hung outside the window; or, if in a street, suspended from a cord passed from one side to the other. Everyone makes the tour of town or village to see _le Vecchie_ who at sundown are consigned to the flames, generally with a distaff placed in their hands. It is a picturesque sight at Salo, when the bonfires blaze at different heights up the hills, casting long reflections across the clear lake-water. The sacrifice is consummated--but what sacrifice? I was at first disposed to simply consider the "old woman" as a type of winter, but I am informed that by those who have studied relics of the same usage in other lands, she is held to be a relative of the "harvest-man" or growth-genius, who must be either appeased or destroyed. Yet a third interpretation occurs to me, which I offer for what it is worth. Might not the _Vecchia_ be the husk which must be cast off before the miracle of new birth is accomplished? "The seed that thou sowest shall not quicken unless it die." Hardly any idea has furnished so much occasion for symbolism as this, that life is death, and death is life.

Professor d'Ancona believes, that to the custom of keeping May by singing from house to house and collecting largess of eggs or fruit or cheese, may be traced the dramatic representations, which, under the name of _Maggi_, can still be witnessed in certain districts of the Tuscan Hills and of the plain of Pisa. These May-plays are performed any Sunday in Spring, just after Mass; the men, women, and children, hastening from the church-door to the roughly-built theatre which has the sky for roof, the grey olives and purple hills for background. The verses of the play (it is always in verse) are sung to a sort of monotonous but elastic chant, in nearly every case unaccompanied by instruments. No one can do more than guess when that chant was composed; it may have been five hundred years ago and it may have been much more. Grief or joy, love and hate, all are expressed upon the same notes. It is possible that some such recitative was used in the Greek drama. A play that was not sung would not seem a play to the Tuscan contadino. The characters are acted by men or boys, the peasants not liking their wives and daughters to perform in public. A considerable number of _Maggi_ exist in print or in MS. carefully copied for the convenience of the actors. The subjects range from King David to Count Ugolino, from the siege of Troy to the French Revolution. They seem for most part modern compositions, cast in a form which was probably invented before the age of Dante.

THE IDEA OF FATE IN SOUTHERN TRADITIONS.

In the early world of Greece and Italy, the beliefs relating to Fate had a vital and penetrative force which belonged only to them. "Nothing," says Sophocles, "is so terrible to man as Fate." It was the shadow cast down the broad sunlight of the roofless Hellenic life. All Greece, its gods and men, bowed at that word which Victor Hugo saw, or imagined that he saw, graven on a pillar of Notre Dame: [Greek: Ananke]. Necessity alone of the supernatural powers was not made by man in his own image. It had no sacred grove, for in the whole world there was no place where to escape from it, no peculiar sect of votaries, for all were bound equally to obey; it could not be bought off with riches nor withstood by valour; no man worshipped it, many groaned under its dispensation; but by all it was vaguely felt to be the instrument of a pure justice. If they did not, with Herder, call Fate's law "Eternal Truth," yet their idea of necessity carried these men nearer than did any other of their speculative guesses to the idea of a morally-governed universe.

The belief in one Fate had its train of accessorial beliefs. The Parcae and the Erinnyes figured as dark angels of Destiny. Then, in response to the double needs of superstition and materialism, the impersonal Fate itself took the form of the Greek Tyche, and of that Fortuna, who, in Rome alone, had no less than eight temples. There were some indeed who saw in Fortune nothing else than the old _dira necessitas_; but to the popular mind, she was nearer to chance than to necessity; she dealt out the favourable accident which goes further to secure success than do the subtlest combinations of men. The Romans did not only demand of a military leader that he should have talent, foresight, energy; they asked, was he _felix_--happy, fortunate? Since human life was seen to be, on the whole, but a sorry business, and since it was also seen that the prosperous were not always the meritorious, the inference followed that Fortune was capricious, changeable, and, if not immoral, at least unmoral. With this character she came down to the Middle Ages, having contrived to outlive the whole Roman pantheon.

So Dante found her, and inquired of his guide who and what she might really be?

Maestro, dissi lui, or mi di' anche:
Questa Fortuna di che tu mi tocche,
Che e, che i ben del mondo ha si tra branche?

Dante had no wish to level the spiritual windmills that lay in his path: he left them standing, only seeking a proper reason for their being there. Therefore he did not answer himself in the words of the Tuscan proverb: "Chi crede in sorte, non crede in Dio;" but, on the contrary, tried to prove that the two beliefs might be perfectly reconciled. "He whose knowledge transcends all things" (is the reply) "fashioned the heavens, and gave unto them a controlling force in such wise that each part shines upon each, distributing equally the light. Also to worldly splendours he ordained a general minister, and captain, who should timely change the tide of vain prosperity from race to race and from blood to blood. Why these prevail, and those languish, according to her ruling, is hidden, like the snake in the grass; your knowledge has in her no counterpart; she provides, judges, and pursues her governance, as do theirs the other gods. Her permutations have no truce, necessity makes her swift; for he is swift in coming who would have his turn. This is she who is upbraided even by those who should praise her, giving her blame wrongfully and ill-repute; but she continues blessed, and hearkens not; glad among the other primal creatures, she revolves her sphere, and being blessed, rejoices."

The peasants, the _pagani_ of Italy, did not give their name for nothing to the entire system of antiquity. They were its last, its most faithful adherents, and to this day their inmost being is watered from the springs of the antique. They have preserved old-world thoughts as they have preserved old-world pots and pans. In the isolated Tuscan farm you will be lighted to your bed by a woman carrying an oil lamp identical in form with those buried in Etruscan tombs; on the Neapolitan hill-side a girl will give you to drink out of a jar not to be distinguished from the amphorae of Pompeii. A stranger hunting in the campagna may often hear himself addressed with the "Tu" of Roman simplicity. The living Italian people are the most interesting of classical remains. Even their religion has helped to perpetuate practices older than Italy. How is it possible, for instance, to see the humble shrine by vineyard or maize field, with its posy of flowers and its wreath of box hung before the mild countenance of some local saint, without remembering what the chorus says to Admetus: "Deem not, O king, of the tomb of thy wife as of the vulgar departed; rather let it be kept in religious veneration, a cynosure for the way-faring man. And as one climbs the slanting pathway, these will be the words he utters: 'This was she who erewhile laid down her life for her husband; now she is a saint for evermore. Hail, blessed spirit, befriend and aid us!' Such the words that will be spoken."

Can it be doubted that the Catholic honour of the dead--nay, even the cult of the Virgin, which crept so mysteriously into the exercise of Christian worship--had birth, not in the councils of priests and schoolmen, but in the all-unconscious grafting by the people of Italy of the new faith upon an older stock?

With this persistency of thought, observable in outward trifles, as in the deepest yearnings of the soul, it would be strange if the Italian mind had ceased to occupy itself with the old wonder about fate. The folk-lore of the country will show the mould into which the ancient speculations have been cast, and in how far these have undergone change, whether in the sense of assimilating new theories or in that of reverting to a still earlier order of ideas.

They tell at Venice the story of a husbandman who had set his heart on finding _one who was just_ to be sponsor to his new-born child. He took the babe in his arms and went forth into the public ways to seek _El Giusto_. He walked and walked and met a man (who was our Lord) and to him he said, "I have got this son to christen, but I do not wish to give him to any one who is not just. Are you just?" To him the Lord replied, "But I do not know if I am just." Then the husbandman went a little further and met a woman (who was the Madonna), and to her he said, "I have this son to christen, but I only wish to give him to one who is just. Are you just?" "I know not," said the Madonna; "but go a little further and you will meet one who is just." After that, he went a little further, and met another woman who was Death. "I have been sent to you," he said, "for they say you are just. I have a child to christen, and I do not wish to give him except to one who is just. Are you just?" "Why, yes; I think I am just," said Death; "but let us christen the babe and afterwards I will show you if I am just." So the boy was christened, and then this woman led the husbandman into a long, long room where there were an immense number of lighted lamps. "Gossip," said the man, who marvelled at seeing so many lamps, "what is the meaning of all these lights?" Said Death: "These are the lights of all the souls that are in the world. Would you like just to see, Gossip? That is yours, and that is your son's." And the husbandman, who saw that his lamp was going out, said, "And when there is no more oil, Gossip?" "Then," replied Death, "one has to come to me, for I am Death." "Oh! for charity," said the husbandman, "do let me pour a little of the oil out of my son's lamp into mine!" "No, no, Gossip," said Death, "I don't go in for that sort of thing. A just one you wished to meet, and a just one you have found. And now, go you to your house and put your affairs in order, for I am waiting for you."[1]

In this parable, we see a severe fatalism, which is still more oriental than antique.

... God gives each man one life, like a lamp, then gives
That lamp due measure of oil....

The Mahomedans say that there are trees in heaven on each of whose leaves is the name of a human being, and whenever one of these leaves withers and falls, the man whose name it bears dies with it. The conception of human life as of something bound up and incorporated with an object seemingly foreign, lies at the very root of elementary beliefs. In an Indian tale the life of a boy resides in a gold necklace which is in the heart of a fish; in another a woman's life is contained in a bird: when the bird is killed, the woman must perish. In a third a prince plants a tree before he goes on a journey, saying as he does so, "This tree is my life. When you see the tree green and fresh, then know that it is well with me. When you see the tree fade in some parts, then know that I am in an ill case. When you see the whole tree fade, then know that I am dead and gone."

According to a legend of wide extension--it is known from Esthonia to the Pyrenees--all men were once aware of the hour of their death. But one day Christ went by and saw a man raising a hedge of straw. "That hedge will last but for a short while," He said; to which the man answered, "It will be good for as long as I live; that it should last longer, matters not;" and forthwith Christ ordained that no man should thereafter know when he should die.

The southern populations of Italy cling to the idea that from the moment of a man's birth his future lot is decided, whether for good or evil hap, and that he has but little power of altering or modifying the irrevocable sentence. There are lucky and unlucky days to be born on; lucky and unlucky circumstances attendant on an entry into the world, which affect all stages of the subsequent career. He who is born on the last day of the year, will always arrive late. It is very unfortunate to be born when there is no moon. Anciently the moon was taken as symbol both of Fortune, and of Hecate, goddess of Magic. The Calabrian children have a song: "Moon, holy moon, send me good fortune; thou shining, and I content, lustrous thou, I fortunate." Also at Cagliari, in Sardinia, they sing: "Moon, my moon, give me luck; give me money, so I may amuse myself; give it soon, so I may buy sweetmeats." The changing phases of the moon doubtless contributed to its identification with fortune; "Wind, women, and fortune," runs the Basque proverb, "change like the moon." But yet more, its influence over terrestrial phenomena, always mysterious to the ignorant observer and by him readily magnified to any extent, served to connect it with whatever occult, unaccountable power was uppermost in people's minds.

In Italy, nothing is done without consulting the _Lunario_. All kinds of roots and seeds must be planted with the new moon, or they will bear no produce. Timber must be cut down with the old moon, or it will quickly rot. These rules and many more are usually followed; and it is reported as a matter of fact, that their infringement brings the looked-for results. In the Neapolitan province, old women go to the graveyards by night and count the tombs illuminated by the moonlight; the sum total gives them a "number" for the lottery. The extraordinary vagaries of superstition kept alive by the public lotteries are of almost endless variety and complexity. No well-known man dies without thousands of the poorest Neapolitans racking their brains with abtruse calculations on the dates of his birth, death, and so on, in the hope of discovering a lucky number. Fortune, chance (what, after all, shall it be called?) sometimes strangely favours these pagan devices. When Pio Nono died, the losses of the Italian exchequer were enormous; and in January 1884, the numbers staked on the occasion of the death of the patriot De Sanctis, produced winnings to the amount of over two million francs. During the last cholera epidemic, the daily rate of mortality was eagerly studied with a view to happy combinations. Even in North Italy such things are not unknown. At Venice, when a notable Englishman died some years ago in a hotel, the number of his room was played next day by half the population. Domestic servants are among the most inveterate gamblers; they all have their cabalistic books, and a large part of their earnings goes to the insatiable "lotto."

The feeling of helplessness in the hands of Fate is strongest in those countries where there is the least control over Nature. The relations between man and Nature affect not only the social life, but also the theology and politics of whole races of men. A learned Armenian who lives at Venice, came to London for a week in June to see some English friends. It rained every day, and when he left Dover, the white cliffs were enveloped in impenetrable fog. "I asked myself" (he wrote, describing his experiences) "how it was possible that a great nation should exist behind all that vapour?" It was suggested to him that in the continual but, in the long run, victorious struggle with an ungenial climate might lie the secret of the development of that great nation. Different are the lands where the soil yields its increase almost without the labour of man, till one fine day the whole is swallowed up by flood or earthquake.

The songs of luck, or rather of ill-luck, nearly all come from the Calabrias. There are hundreds of variations upon the monotonous theme of predestined misery. "In my mother's womb I began to have no fortune; my swaddling clothes were woven of melancholy; when we went to church, the woman who carried me died upon the way, and the godfather who held me at the font said, 'Misfortunate art thou born, my daughter!'" Here is another: "Hapless was I born, and with a darkened moon; never did a fair day dawn for me. Habited in weeds, and attended by cruel fortune, I sail upon a sea of grief and trouble." Or this: "Wretched am I, for against me conspired heaven and fortune and destiny; and the four elements decreed that never should I prosper: earth would engulf me; air took away my breath; water flowed with my tears; fire burnt this poor heart." Again: "I was created under an ill-star; never had I an hour's content. By my friends I saw myself forsaken, and chased away by my mistress. The heavens moved against me, the stars, the planets, and fortune; if there is no better lot for me, open thou earth and give me sepulchre!" The luckless wretch imagines that the sea, even where it was deepest, dried up at his birth; and the spring dried up for that year, and all the flowers that were in the world dried up; and the birds went singing: "I am the most luckless wight on earth!" Human friendship is a delusion: "I was the friend of all, and a true friend--for my friends I reckoned life as little." But he is not served so by others: "Wretched is he who trusts in fortune; sad is he who hopes in human friendship! Every friend abandons thee at need, and walks afar from thy sorrow." No good can come to him who is born for ill: "When I was born, it was at sea, amongst Turks and Moors. A gipsy asked to tell my fortune; 'Dig,' she said, 'and thou shalt find a great treasure.' I took the spade in my hand to dig, but I found neither silver nor gold. Traitress gipsy who deceived me! Who is born afflicted, dies disconsolate."

So continues the long tale of woe; childish in part, but withal tragic by other force of iteration. This song of Nardo may be taken as its epitome:

The heavens were overcast when I was born;
No luck for me, no, luckless and forlorn,
E'en from my cradle, all forlorn was I;
No luck for me, no, grief for ever nigh.
I loved--my love was paid by fraud and scorn;
No luck for me, no, luckless and forlorn.
The stars and moon were darkened in the sky,
No luck for me, no, naught but misery!

The Calabrians have a house-spirit called the _Auguriellu_, who appears generally dressed as a little monk, and who has his post especially by babies' cradles: he is thought to be one of the less erring fallen angels, and is harmless and even beneficent if kindly treated. The "house-women" (_Donne di casa_) of Sicily are also in the habit of watching the sleep of infants. But in no part of Italy does there seem to be any distinct recollection of the Parcae. In Greece, on the other hand, the three dread sisters are still honoured by propitiatory rites, and they figure frequently in the folk-lore of Bulgaria and Albania. A Bulgarian song shows them weaving the destiny of the infant Saviour. In M. Auguste Dozon's collection of Albanian stories, there is one called "The sold child," which bears directly on the survival of the Parcae. "There was an old man and woman who had no children" (so runs the tale). "At last at the end of I do not know how many years, God gave them a son, and their joy was without bounds that the Lord had thus remembered them. Two nights had passed since the birth, and the third drew nigh, when the Three Women would come to assign the child his destiny.

"That night it was raining so frightfully that nobody dared put his nose out of doors, lest he should be carried away by the waters and drowned. Nevertheless, who should arrive through the rain but a Pasha, who asked the old man for a night's lodging. The latter, seeing that it was a person of importance, was very glad; he put him in the place of honour at the hearth, lit a large fire, gave him to eat what he could find; and putting aside certain objects, which he set in a corner, he made room for the Pasha's horse--for this house was only half covered in, a part of the roof was missing.

"The Pasha, when he was warmed and refreshed, had nothing more to do but to go to sleep; but how can one let himself go to sleep when he has I know not how many thousand piastres about him?

"That night, as we have said already, the Three Women were to come and apportion the child his destiny. They came, sure enough, and sat down by the fire. The Pasha, at the sight of that, was in a great fright, but he kept quiet, and did not make the least sound.

"Let us leave the Pasha and busy ourselves with these women. The first of the three said, 'This child will not live long; he will die early.' The second said, replying to her who had just spoken, 'This child will live many years, and then he will die by the hand of his father.' Finally the third spoke as follows: 'My friends, what are you talking about? This child will live sufficiently long to kill the Pasha you see there, rob him of his authority, and marry his daughter.'"

How the Pasha froze with fear when he heard that sentence, how he persuaded the old man to let him have the child under pretence of adopting him, how he endeavoured by every means, but vainly, to put him out of the way, and how, in the end, he fell into an ambush he had prepared for his predestined successor, must be read in M. Dozon's entertaining pages. Though not precisely stated, it would seem that the mistaken predictions of the two first women arose rather from a misinterpretation of the future than from complete ignorance. The boy but narrowly escaped the evils they threatened. In Scandinavian traditions a disagreement among the Norns is not uncommon. In one case, two Norns assign to a newborn child long life and happiness, but the third and youngest decrees that he shall only live while a lighted taper burns. The eldest Norn snatches the taper, puts it out, and gives it to the child's mother, not to be kindled till the last day of his life.

In India it is the deity Bidhata-Purusha who forecasts the events of each man's life, writing them succinctly on the forehead of the child six days after birth. The apportionment of good and evil fortune belongs to Lakshmi and Sani. Once they fell out in heaven, and Sani, the giver of ill, said that he ranked higher than the beneficent Lakshmi. The gods and goddesses were equally ranged on either side, so the two disputants decided to refer the case to a just mortal. To which end they approached a wise and wealthy man called Sribatsa. Now Sribatsa means "the child of Fortune," Sri being one of the names of Lakshmi. Sribatsa did not know what to do lest he should give offence to one or the other of the celestial powers. At last he set out two stools without saying a word; one was silver, and on that he bade Sani sit; the other was gold, and to that he conducted Lakshmi. But Sani was furious at having only the silver stool, so he swore that he would cast his evil eye upon Sribatsa for three years, "and I should like to see how you fare at the end of that time," he added. When he was gone, Lakshmi said: "My child, do not fear; I'll befriend you." Needless to say that after the three trial years were passed, Sribatsa became far more prosperous than he had ever been before.

Among the Parsis, a tray with writing materials including a sheet of blank paper is placed by the mother's bed on the night of the sixth day. The goddess who rules human destiny traces upon the paper the course of the child's future, which henceforth cannot be changed, though the writing is invisible to mortal eyes.

In Calabria there is a plant called "Fortune's Grass," which is suspended to the beams of the ceiling: if the leaves turn upwards, Fortune is sure to follow; if downwards, things may be expected to go wrong. The oracle is chiefly consulted on Ascension Day, when it is asked to tell the secrets confided to it by Christ when He walked upon the earth.

Auguries, portents, charms, waxen images, votive offerings, the evil eye and its antidotes, happy "finds," such as horseshoes, four-leaved shamrocks, and two-tailed lizards: these, and an infinite number of kindred superstitions, are closely linked with what may be called the Science of Luck. Fortune and Hecate come into no mere chance contiguity when they meet in the moon. For the rest, there is hardly any popular belief that has not points of contact with magic, and that is not in some sort made the more comprehensible by looking at the premises on which magical rites rest. Magic is the power admitted to exist among all classes not so very long ago, of entering by certain processes into relation with invisible powers. For modern convenience it was distinguished into black magic, and natural, and white--the latter name being given when the intention of the operant was only good or allowable, and when the powers invoked were only such as might be supposed, whether great or small, to be working in good understanding with the Creator. The reason of existence of all magic, which runs up into unfathomable antiquity, lies in the maxim of the ancient sages, Egyptian, Hebrew, Platonist, that all things visible and sensible are but types of things or beings immediately above them, and have their origin in such. Hence, in magical rites, black or white, men used and offered to the unseen powers those words or actions or substances which were conceived to be in correspondence with their character or nature, employing withal certain secret traditional man[oe]uvres. The lowest surviving form is fetish; sacrifice also had a similar source; so had the Mosaic prescriptions, in which only innocent rites and pure substances were to be employed. Whereas the most horrible practices and repulsive substances have always been associated with witches, necromancers, &c., who are reported to have put their wills at the absolute disposal of the infernal and malevolent powers who work in direct counter-action of the decrees and providence of the Deity. Hence the renunciation of baptism, treading on holy things, the significant act of saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, _i.e._, in the opposite intention to that of the author. This is the consummate sin of _pacti_, or, as it is said, "selling the soul," and is the very opposite of divine magic or the way of the typical saint: "Present yourselves a living sacrifice (not a dead carcase) in body, soul, and spirit." To persons in the last condition unusual effects have been ascribed, as it was believed that those who had put themselves at the absolute disposal of the malignant powers were also enabled to effect singular things, on the wrong side, indeed, and very inferior in order, so long as the agreement held good.

The most sensible definition of magic is "an effect sought to be produced by antecedents obviously inadequate in themselves." Certain words, gestures, practices, have been recognised on the tradition of ancient experience to have certain remedial or other properties or consequents, and they are used in all simplicity by persons who can find no other reason than that they are thought to succeed.

One of the most remarkable of early ideas still current about human destiny is that which pictures each man coupled with a personal and individualised fate. This fate may be beneficent or maleficent, a guardian angel or a possessive fiend; or it may, in appearance at least, combine both functions. The belief in a personal fate was deeply rooted among the Greeks and Romans, and proved especially acceptable to the Platonists. Socrates' daemon comes to mind: but in that case the analogy is not clear, because the inward voice to which the name of daemon was afterwards given, was rather a personal conscience than a personal fate--a difference that involves the whole question of the responsibility of man. But the evil genii of Dion the Syracusan and of Brutus were plainly "personal fates." Dion's evil genius appeared to him when he was sitting alone in the portico before his house one evening; it had the form of a gigantic woman, like one of the furies as they were represented on the stage, sweeping the floor with a broom. It did not speak, but the apparition was followed by the death of Dion's son, who jumped in a fit of childish passion from the house-top, and soon after, Dion himself was assassinated. Brutus' daemon was, as every-one knows, a monstrous spectre that seemed to be standing beside him in his tent one night, a little while before he left Asia, and which, on being questioned, said to him, "I am thy evil genius, Brutus, thou wilt see me at Philippi."