co. Firenze: G. Barbera, 1869.]

[Footnote 23: This is a description of the Tuscan rispetto.
In Sicily the stanza generally consists of eight lines
rhyming alternately throughout, while in the North of Italy
it is normally a simple quatrain. The same poetical material
assumes in Northern, Central, and Southern Italy these
diverge but associated forms.]

[Footnote 24: This song, called Ciure (Sicilian for _fiore_)
in Sicily, is said by Signor Pitre to be in disrepute there.
He once asked an old dame of Palermo to repeat him some of
these ditties. Her answer was, 'You must get them from light
women; I do not know any. They sing them in bad houses and
prisons, where, God be praised, I have never been.' In
Tuscany there does not appear to be so marked a distinction
between the flower song and the rispetto.]

[Footnote 25: Much light has lately been thrown on the
popular poetry of Italy; and it appears that contemporary
improvisatori trust more to their richly stocked memories
and to their power of recombination than to original or
novel inspiration. It is in Sicily that the vein of truly
creative lyric utterance is said to flow most freely and
most copiously at the present time.]

[Footnote 26: 'Remember me, fair one, to the scrivener. I do
not know him or who he is, but he seems to me a sovereign
poet, so cunning is he in his use of verse.']

[Footnote 27: It must be remarked that Tigri draws a strong
contrast in this respect between the songs of the mountain
districts which he has printed and those of the towns, and
that Pitre, in his edition of Sicilian _Volkslieder_,
expressly alludes to the coarseness of a whole class which
he had omitted. The MSS. of Sicilian and Tuscan songs,
dating from the fifteenth century and earlier, yield a fair
proportion of decidedly obscene compositions. Yet the fact
stated above is integrally correct. When acclimatised in the
large towns, the rustic Muse not unfrequently assumes a garb
of grossness. At home, among the fields and on the
mountains, she remains chaste and romantic.]

[Footnote 28: In a rispetto, of which I subjoin a
translation, sung by a poor lad to a mistress of higher
rank, love itself is pleaded as the sign of a gentle soul:--

My state is poor: I am not meet
To co