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Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition

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Amanda Messenger
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« Reply #60 on: April 06, 2009, 01:15:35 pm »

PALÓ
This deity was described to me in the following words:--

"Paló is a spirit of the fields, vines, meadows, for all kinds of crops, and when men work, be it in planting maize, or in the vineyards, they must never forget to say

'"Lo spirito Paló
Sara quello
Che mi fara
La buona fortuna!'

 

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« Reply #61 on: April 06, 2009, 01:15:59 pm »



("'The spirit Paló
He shall be
The one who brings
Good luck to me!')

And thus the peasant will be sure to ever have good fortune.'

It is not difficult to recognise in Paló the Pales of the Romans, or the ancient deity of agriculture of all kinds. To him or to her--for Pales appears to have been recognised both as male and female--offerings were made by the peasants who also drank much, and leaped over flames. PRELLER writes that in the morning the shepherd uttered four times an invocation to Pales, then drank a mixture of milk and new wine, and then jumped over blazing straw. Therefore the invocation must have been very short, since it was so often repeated. It would be strange--and yet it is not impossible--that in the four lines here given there is an echo at least of the early invocation. There is so much which is unquestionably ancient in these Tuscan traditions that I find it almost impossible sometimes to believe that there is anything modern in them. Critics may very reasonably indicate many errors and inconsistencies in details, but a comparison of the whole must leave the impression of antiquity. A single negro would not absolutely prove the existence of a black race, but a number of them would render it extremely probable.

As was the case with most deities, Pales had a town named after him. It is the modern Palo, half way between Rome and Civita Vecchia. I mention this because it may be thought--as was indeed urged as to Norcia--that the modern Tuscan deity was so called after the town.

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« Reply #62 on: April 06, 2009, 01:16:16 pm »

ESTA
"Nec tu aliud Vestam quam vivam intellige flammam,
Nataque de flammis corpora nulla vides."

                                         OVID, Fast. 6

When a light is suddenly and mysteriously extinguished or goes out apparently of its own accord, especially when two lovers are sitting together, it is commonly said in jest that "Esta did it." Esta is supposed to be a spirit who pays particular attention to lights, but beyond this I could learn nothing of her.

Hestia was an ancient name for Vesta, and CICERO thought that Vesta was derived from ?Εστήα {Greek ?Estía}. In any case the sudden extinguishment of a light or fire,

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« Reply #63 on: April 06, 2009, 01:16:27 pm »

and the satirical covert allusion to love in the dark, seems to indicate that the goddess of chastity and her light are here alluded to. However, this is a matter which those who are best able to determine must settle for themselves if they think it worth the while. I do but record the fact that Esta put out the light, and then put out the light which was extinguished over Evelyn's bower.

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« Reply #64 on: April 06, 2009, 01:16:49 pm »

CARMENTA
When I asked if the name Carmenta was known it was promptly recognised as that of a spirit who gives, presides over, and loves children, who aids in birth, and who is dear to mothers. Then the following was repeated

Carmenta, Carmenta!
Che tanta bella sei!
E inamorata sei
Tanto dei fanciulli!
Tante spose sono venute
A te a raccomandare
Che dei figli tu gli facesse fare,
E tu buona quanto e,
Bella i suoi voti tu ai,
Ascoltati ti prego pure
I miei di volere ascoltare
Perche sono molto infelice,
Il mio marito non mi ama piú
Che tanto m'amava perche figli crear
Non so, ma date, o bella Carmenta,
Mi vengo a raccomandare
Che un figlio tu mi possa far fare,
E la pace con mio marito possa ritornare!"

("Carmenta, Carmenta!
Thou who art so fair,
Thou who truly lovest
Children, everywhere!
As I come to thee,
So have many others,
Knelt before thy shrine,
Seeking to be mothers!
Thou didst grant their wishes,
Thou as good as fair,
Listen unto me,
Grant my humble prayer!
Once my husband loved me,
Now he loves no more p. 63
Because I bear no children
All his love is o'er,
Make me once a mother,
He will love me as before!")

This corresponds in name and in every detail to the Latin Carmenta or Carmentis, who was another form of the Fauna or Bona Dea. Of her PRELLER says: "The Goddess of Birth, Carmenta, was so zealously worshipped near the Porta Carmentalis, which was named from her, that there was a Flamen Carmentalis, and two calendar days, the eleventh and the fifteenth of January, called the Carmentalia, devoted to her worship. These were among the most distinguished festivals of the Roman matrons. She was peculiarly the goddess of pregnancy.

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« Reply #65 on: April 06, 2009, 01:17:06 pm »

IL SENTIERO
The boundary-stones which determine the limits of fields are believed in Tuscany to have in or attached to them spirits called Spiriti dei sentieri, which means, however, "spirits of the paths," or lines of demarcation. It was, however, distinctly asserted that they lived in the stones. "And if any one removes them the spirit will quite ruin him." The single spirit is a sentiero.

This spirit is exactly the Terminus of the Romans, or the divinity of the boundaries. Fearful penalties were attached to the removal of such landmarks. The inscription of a terminus reads: Quisquis hoc sustulerit aut lęserit, ultimus suorum moriatur ("Should any one remove or injure this stone, may he die the last of his race!"). There is indeed quite a litany of old Latin curses, almost equal to a Roman Catholic excommunication, extant, as applied to these "land-grabbers." That the memory of these has survived is evident from the only comment which my informant made---Il spirito lo guasta (" The spirit ruins them").

Lactantius, heaping ridicule on the heathen for worshipping many deities of small duties, specifies Terminus as one because he was rough and rude.

"He was the stone which Saturn swallowed thinking it was Jupiter. When Tarquin wished to build the Capitol and found these shrines of many ancient gods, he consulted them by augury whether they would yield to Jupiter. All agree to go save Terminus, who was suffered to remain. Hence the poet calls him the immovable rock of the Capitol. And what can I say of people who worship such stocks and stones (lapides et stipites) save that they are stocks and stones themselves?" (Adversus Gentes, book i., chap. xx.)

It is a pity that Lactantius could not have lived to the end of the nineteenth century, when he might have seen among Christians an array of saints of small

p. 64

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« Reply #66 on: April 06, 2009, 01:17:47 pm »

things, compared to whom all the heathen gods whom he mentions as laughable are grave and respectable deities. Terminus, a rock, as the emblem of stability (for he was truly nothing more), is a sound and sensible image, but what shall we think of Antony as the saint of pigs and truffles; Simeon of lotteries, or the Roco-co saint of dogs; or why is the Latin Cunina, who presided over children in the cradle, and whom Lactantius calls on us to laugh at, more ridiculous than Santa Anna who does the same, or even the Madonna herself--the incarnation of nursing motherhood? But the saints--and even the Virgin--had not "come up" as yet in those days! Taking them all through,--the most crushing and terrible condemnations of the later Catholic Church and its Hagiology are to be found in the arguments of the Fathers against the Gentiles, and especially in the vigorous satire of "the Christian Cicero."


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« Reply #67 on: April 06, 2009, 01:18:20 pm »



CHAPTER IV
FAFLON
"Oh, Fufluns! Fufluns! awful deity!"--Pumpus of Perusia in the Gaudeamus of W. SCHEFFEL

"But it went better with Bacchus than it did with Mars or Apollo after the grand retreat of the gods."--HEINE, The Gods in Exile

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« Reply #68 on: April 06, 2009, 01:19:07 pm »

THE Arno, which rushes roaring before the window where I am writing, swelled by much rain to a spring flood, is now a great river, very muddy and somewhat unmanageable. I have seen it in summer when it was limpid and clear, but then it was only a rivulet which went from one shining pool to another, like a silken thread scantily strung with sun-lit pearls, or a pilgrim wandering from shrine to shrine. It would have been easy then for a hundred people to carry it all away in barrels, or for all the population of the place to drink it up--as they would assuredly have done like "Macpherson," had it been wine. Now all the men in Tuscany, with all their buckets, could make no estimate of its water.

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« Reply #69 on: April 06, 2009, 01:19:26 pm »



APLU, FUFLUNS, AND SEMELE
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« Reply #70 on: April 06, 2009, 01:20:35 pm »

This reminds me of the task on which I am engaged. If it were only to gather, collate, and correct a collection of fairy tales, or proverbs, or parables,

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« Reply #71 on: April 06, 2009, 01:20:40 pm »

or games, or Exempla, it would be an easy, or at least a defined work. Such pools are not hard to fathom, or count, or measure, or exhaust. But this mass of old, obscure, unrecorded mythology, comes pouring and foaming down like the Arno from the mountains of La Romagna, in whose mysterious recesses still dwells

"the dragon's ancient brood,
And rocks fall over roaring in the flood."

Well, it is a strange country little known--we have Goethe's word for that--and it has sent me, all in a spring freshet, obscure deities of doubtful name and fame, sorceries, rhymes, legends--dirt and diamonds--tutti confusi e misti. What should I give? What should I suppress? As compared to anything which I have as yet met in folk-lore this has been more like counting Ossian's ghosts than aught else. Many a time have I almost despaired over it, and many a time been awed.

But hope springs eternal in the human breast, and so I will proceed to discuss my last discovery of a divinity who is generally supposed to have utterly died out nearly two thousand years ago, and yet who lives as a real folletto among a few old witches in La Romagna. I mean Faflon.

FUFLUNUS was the Etruscan Bacchus. "His name," writes MÜLLER (Die Etrusker, vol. ii., p. 79), "was sounded (lautet) Fuflunus, Fuflunu, Fufluns--generally Fufluns. GERHARDT, i., 83, 84, 87, 90, &c.; CORSSEN (i., p. 313-5). We find on goblets Fufunl (FAHR. P, Spl. n. 453) and Fuflunsl (CORSSEN, i., p. 430), according to CORSSEN from poculum, and poculum Bacchi. He derives the name of the god from the Indogennanic root fu, to beget, ab. Gerhard from Populonia"--which is very doubtful.

On inquiring from my best authority if there was in La Romagna Toscana a spirit of the vineyards, or of wine, I was promptly informed that there was such a being known as Fardel, or Flavo, but among the witches, or those better informed in such mysteries, as Faflon. And at once there was narrated to me a legend which was then written out:--

"Faflon is a spirit who lives in the vines, and when women or men have gathered grapes and filled the panniers, then comes this Faflon and scatters them all on the ground; but woe to the contadini should they be angered at it, for then Faflon knocks them right and left, and tramples (on the grapes), so that they get no profit. But if they take it good-naturedly, he gathers them again, and replaces them in the panniers.

"Now there was a peasant who greatly loved the spirits, and frequently blessed them. One year everything went wrong with him, his crop of grapes and all other fruit failed, yet for all this he still loved Faflon and blessed him.

 

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« Reply #72 on: April 06, 2009, 01:20:55 pm »

"One morning he rose to gather what little there was on the vines, but found that even that little was gone. The poor peasant began to weep, and said: 'Non mi resta che morire. All that remains for me now is to die, for I have lost what little crop I had in my little vineyard.' When all at once Faflon appeared, but beautiful with a beauty like enchantment--ma tanto bello di una bellezza da fare incantare--and said: 'Oh, peasant with great coarse shoes, but with a fine brain, thou hast loved me so well I will reward thee. Go to thy cellar, and there a great quantity

"D'uva mastatata tu troverai
E gran vino tu lo farai.

("Pressed grapes thou shalt see,
And great thy store of wine will be.)

"Now what Faflon had said seemed to be like a dream to the peasant, but he went to his cellar, and truly the wine which he had that year made him rich, e non ebbe piú biogna di fare il contadino--he was no longer obliged to live as a peasant."

No one can doubt that this Faflon--it was written in the MS. sometimes Flaflon--is the Fufluns, or Fufunal, of the Etruscans. His appearance as a very beautiful being is perfectly in accordance with that of Bacchus. It is exactly in this manner that Bacchus flashes up in beauty from disguise in classic tales. Bacchus of old carried off mortal beauties for mistresses, and I now give word for word as related by a witch a story of a modern Ariadne:--

"There was a contadino who had several vineyards, yet all went so ill with them for several years that he had not wine enough to drink for his family.

"Now he had a daughter--di una belleza da fare incantare--of enchanting beauty. And one evening as he was sitting almost in despair, his daughter said: 'Father, dear, do you not know how all this came to pass? Have you forgotten that strange and beautiful youth who once came to you and begged for me--he was so much in love? And when you denied him what he asked, he replied: "If I cannot have her neither shall you have any vintage."'

"Then the peasant was very angry, and beat his daughter, so that she had to go to bed. Then he went into the cellar, but what a sight be saw! On all the barrels were devils frolicking; fire flashed from their eyes and flamed from their mouths, and as they danced they sang:--

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« Reply #73 on: April 06, 2009, 01:21:13 pm »

Give Faflon that girl of thine,
And henceforth thou shalt have wine
If the maiden you deny,
As a beggar thou shalt die.'

"Then the man gave his daughter to Faflon, and lo! all the barrels were filled with the best, and from that time his vintages were abundant."

The picture of the cellar full of frisking Bacchanals and Fauns is good. I suspect that a Catholic influence made them "devils with fire coming out of their mouths." But perhaps it was only

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« Reply #74 on: April 06, 2009, 01:21:26 pm »

"Il vino divino
Che fiammeggia nel Sansovino."

The wine divine
Which flames so red in Sansovine.")

 

I should have been really sorry if, after all this fine Bacchic lore, I had not found a hymn to him. And here it is. When a peasant wants a good vintage he may possibly pray for it in church, but to make sure of it he repeats the following to the jovial god:--

 

"Faflon, Faflon, Faflon!
A vuoi mi raccomando!
Che l'uva nella mia vigna
E multa scarsa,
E vuoi mi raccomando,
Che mi fate avere
Buona vendemmia!

Faflon, Faflon, Faflon!
A vuoi mi raccomando!
Che il vino nella mia cantina
Me lo fate venire fondante,
E molto buono,
Faflon, Faflon, Faflon!"

("Faflon, Faflon, Faflon!"
Oh, listen to my prayer.
I have a scanty vintage,
My vines this year are bare
Oh, listen to my prayer!
And put, since thou canst do so,
A better vintage there!

Faflon, Faflon, Faflon!
Oh, listen to my prayer
May all the wine in my cellar
Prove to be strong and rare,
And good as any grown,
Faflon, Faflon, Faflon!")

 

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