Angelical thou art and not terrene, Who dost kings' wives excel in loveliness! Thou art a pearl, or Grecian Helen, I ween, For whom Troy town was brought to sore distress; Thine are the locks which graced the Magdalene, Lucrece of Rome did scarce thy worth possess: If thou art pitiless to me, oh, my Queen, No Christian thou, a Turk, and nothing less!
A glance at the daughter of Greek Calabria will throw some light on the plaints of her devoted suitors. The name she bears = _Dihatera_, brings directly to mind the Sanskrit _Duhita_; and the vocation of the Græco-Calabrian girl is often as purely pastoral as that of the Aryan milkmaid who stood sponsor for so large a part of maidenhood in Asia and in Europe. She is sent out into the hills to keep sheep; a circumstance not ignored by the shepherd lad who sits in the shade and trills on his treble reed. Ewe's milk is as much esteemed as in the days of Theocritus; it forms the staple of the inevitable _ricotta_. In the house the Greek damsel never has her hands idle. She knows how to make the mysterious cakes and comfits, for which the stranger is bound to have as large an appetite in Calabria as in the isles of Greece. A light heart lightens her work, whatever it be. "You sit on the doorstep and laugh as you wind the reels, then you go to the loom, _e ecínda magna travudia travudia_" ("and sing those beautiful songs"). So says the ill-starred poet, who discovers to his cost that it is just this inexhaustible merriment that lends a sharp edge to maiden cruelty. "I have loved you since you were a little thing, never can you leave my heart; you bound me with a light chain; my mind and your mind were one. Now,"--such is the melancholy outcome of it all--"now you are a perfect little fox to me, while you will join in any frolic with the others." The fair tyrant develops an originality of thought which surprises her best friends: "Ever since you were beloved, you have always an idea and an opinion!" It is beyond human power to account for her caprices: "You are like a fay in the rainbow, showing not one colour, but a thousand." When trouble comes to her as it comes to all--when she has a slight experience of the pain she is so ready to inflict--she does not meekly bow her head and suffer. "Manamu," cries a girl who seems to have been neglected for some one of higher stature. "Mother mine, I have got a little letter, and all sorts of despair. _She_ is tall, and _I_ am little, and I have not the power to tear her in pieces!"--as she has probably torn the sheet of paper which brought the unwelcome intelligence. She goes on to say that she will put up a vow in a chapel, so as to be enabled to do some personal, but not clearly explained damage to the cause of her misfortunes. There is nothing new under the sun; the word "anathema" originally meant a votive offering: one of those execratory tablets, deposited in the sacred places, by means of which the ancient Greeks committed their enemies to the wrath of the Infernal Goddesses. Mr Newton has shown that it was the gentler sex which availed itself, by far the most earnestly, of the privilege. Most likely our Lady of Hate in Brittany would have the same tale to tell. Impotence seeks strange ways to compass its revenge.