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Music from the South. 85 |
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over the destinies of a family.' She is a distant kinswoman of the Scotch Brownie and the Irish Cluricaune—devoted, touchy, or troublesome, in proportion as she is treated civilly or the reverse. She is propitiated accordingly, and the peasants (says the authority above referred to) make a point of bidding her good-night, with, it may be, as much fear as love. Nor must one forget the fairy Morgana, to whose enchantments have been ascribed those magical atmospheric effects, which make Sicily and its skies and sea so charming; neither the Oreo of Venice, so picturesquely presented by Madame Dudcvant in one of her best Venetian romances. But the list of the Italian beings of superstition at best makes but a poor show. As for witches, those under the walnut tree at Benevento, whose gambols inspired Paganini the wizard with one of his quaintest fantasias, are almost the only ones whose reputation has crossed the Alps. The supernatural terrors of 'Udolpho' were conjured up by no native romancer, but by a gentle, retired Englishwoman, amid the fogs of the bad climate which the Southerns hold in such effeminate disdain.
An exception to the above limitation might be thought to present itself in the 'Fiabe' or super- |
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