The Unpublished Legends of Virgil

Which pious song being ended, he asked them why they were all staring at him like a party of stuck pigs, and bade them scamper and send out for a good supper, with flowers and w...

Everybody may have heard who Virgilio was, and how he was a sorcerer above all others. He had a custom of giving to his friends sayings and proverbs, or sentences {190a} wherein...

Miss Roma Lister, when residing in Florence, having written to her old nurse Maria, in Rome, asking her if she knew, or could find, any tales of Virgil, received after a while t...

“O Goddess of the Snow, who art so white And pure that in the evening, in the light Of the full moon, thou seem’st to be A fair bright sheet spread over earth and roofs (That al...

When in an instant they were borne away on a mighty wind and found themselves in the old room, and there also they found the loom, from which Gega could now weave at will cloth...

But later in the night, when the doors were closed and the light extinguished, and the worshippers who remained were calling “Avesta!” the two sleepers who were side by side wer...

“Trust not to looks in this world, for in outward seeming there is great deceit. By their _voice_ shall ye know them; by their song, which is the same in all lands. For many are...

And here I would remark, as allied to this subject, that folklore is as yet far from being understood in all its fulness. In France, for example, no scholar seems to have got be...

One day the Signore and Dorione found themselves in a battle together, sore beset and separated from all their troop. They were in extremest danger of being killed. {61} When al...

Then the lady asked the girl if she would enter a monastery, where she would be educated and brought up to live in a noble family in return for her music. The girl replied that...

The marvels of the birth of Virgil of old, as told by Donatus, probably after the lost work of Suetonius, are that his mother Maia dreamed, _se enixam laureum ramum_, that she g...

I have frequently had occasion to observe that, in all of these legends which I have received from witches, the story, unlike the common fairy tale or _novella_ of any kind, is...

The story of the fly is told in almost all the collections. The reader will bear in mind the following frank and full admission, of which all critics are invited to make the wor...

I do not know what the origin may be of the head of the sorcerer rising from the surface of the earth with ears like mushrooms, implying that they were very large; but I find in...

The Spirit of Mirth in this story has really nothing in common with Momus, who was, in fact, the God of Sneering, or captious, petty criticism of the kind which objects to great...

“Well shall I remember it,” replied Minuzzolo. So he went on to the land and by the strand ever on, till he came to a great and fine ship, and pausing as he looked at it, he tho...

All classic scholars are familiar with the Legends of Virgil in the Middle Ages, in which the poet appears as a magician, the last and best collection of these being that which...

Virgil is introduced, I may say, almost incidentally in the following tale, not by any means as _coryphæus_ or hero, as is indeed the case in several other stories, which fact,...