The child's or lover's play of words in this last baffles all attempt at translation: it is not sense but sweetness, not poetry but music. It is as much without rule or study or conventionality as the song of birds when in Italian phrase, _fanno primavera_.
In the Province of Brescia the Thursday of Mid-Lent is kept by what is called "Burning the old women." A doll made of straw or rags, representing the oldest woman, is hung outside the window; or, if in a street, suspended from a cord passed from one side to the other. Everyone makes the tour of town or village to see _le Vecchie_ who at sundown are consigned to the flames, generally with a distaff placed in their hands. It is a picturesque sight at Salò, when the bonfires blaze at different heights up the hills, casting long reflections across the clear lake-water. The sacrifice is consummated--but what sacrifice? I was at first disposed to simply consider the "old woman" as a type of winter, but I am informed that by those who have studied relics of the same usage in other lands, she is held to be a relative of the "harvest-man" or growth-genius, who must be either appeased or destroyed. Yet a third interpretation occurs to me, which I offer for what it is worth. Might not the _Vecchia_ be the husk which must be cast off before the miracle of new birth is accomplished? "The seed that thou sowest shall not quicken unless it die." Hardly any idea has furnished so much occasion for symbolism as this, that life is death, and death is life.
Professor d'Ancona believes, that to the custom of keeping May by singing from house to house and collecting largess of eggs or fruit or cheese, may be traced the dramatic representations, which, under the name of _Maggi_, can still be witnessed in certain districts of the Tuscan Hills and of the plain of Pisa. These May-plays are performed any Sunday in Spring, just after Mass; the men, women, and children, hastening from the church-door to the roughly-built theatre which has the sky for roof, the grey olives and purple hills for background. The verses of the play (it is always in verse) are sung to a sort of monotonous but elastic chant, in nearly every case unaccompanied by instruments. No one can do more than guess when that chant was composed; it may have been five hundred years ago and it may have been much more. Grief or joy, love and hate, all are expressed upon the same notes. It is possible that some such recitative was used in the Greek drama. A play that was not sung would not seem a play to the Tuscan contadino. The characters are acted by men or boys, the peasants not liking their wives and daughters to perform in public. A considerable number of _Maggi_ exist in print or in MS. carefully copied for the convenience of the actors. The subjects range from King David to Count Ugolino, from the siege of Troy to the French Revolution. They seem for most part modern compositions, cast in a form which was probably invented before the age of Dante.