at great length by Count Nigra, as has also the group which has hitherto gone by the name assigned to it by Gaston Paris of “Jean Renaud”,[1] but which Nigra shows would be better entitled “Morte occulta”. We find this group represented in Soleville’s collection under the name of “Lou Counte Arnaud” (p. 13).
The Canto dissected by Count Nigra under the name of Un’ Eroina (p. 90), “El fiol dij signuri cunti s’a l’è chiel n’in va ciamè”, appears in Bolognini’s Usi e Costumi del Trentino, p. 37, under the name of “Montiglia”. “Lustrissimo sior Conte se vorlo maridar.” La falsa Monaca of Nigra, p. 407, in Bolognini, p. 35, as La Monichella.
Soleville limits himself to genuine songs (Chants), but Count Nigra and Bolognini. both furnish us besides with many rhymed traditions and folk-sayings; and Bolognini with several tales not rhymed, as well as some localised legends of various vales and peaks of the Trentino.
Among Nigra’s rhymed legends occurs the ever-beautiful one of “Sant’ Alessio”, p. 538, the highest reach of sublime abnegation ever fabled of hero or saint—a sacrifice beyond that of Abraham. In pointing out details which, not occurring in the “Golden Legend” or in the “Bollandists”, prove this to be a pure folk-tradition, Count Nigra omits to trace it, as he might fairly do, to an absolutely Roman source. The church of Sant’ Alessio, on the Aventine, keeps alive the perpetual memory of the historical outline of the story—the pathetic tale which in all its long rhymed length many of the people know by heart, was, indeed, like numerous others of the same class, printed, as he says, at Bologna; but when it was first printed there, Bologna was a Papal city, and it was the Roman tradition which was carried there to be printed. The “Story of Dives”, p. 543, in Italy called “Il Epulone”, introduces the curious episode of its having been to our Lord in His own person, and not in that of the beggar Lazarus, that he refused alms. At
- ↑ Busk, Folk-Songs of Italy, pp. 161 seq.
