Certain vocations are looked upon with suspicion:
Sailor's trade--at sea to die! Merchant's trade--that's bankruptcy; Gambler's trade in cursing ends, Thief's trade to the gallows sends.
But in spite of the second line about "l'arte del mercante," a girl does not much mind marrying a merchant or shopkeeper; nay, it is sometimes her avowed ambition:
I want no fisher with a fishy smell, A market gardener would not suit me well; Nor yet a mariner who sails the sea: A fine flour-merchant is the man for me.
A miller seems to think that he stands a good chance: "Come to the window, Columbine! I am that miller who brought thee, the other evening, the pure white flour." Shoemakers are in very bad odour: "I calegheri ga na trista fama." Fishermen are considered poor penniless folk, and she who weds a sailor, does so at her peril:
L'amor del mariner no dura un 'ora, La dove che lu el và, lu s' inamora.
And even if the sailor's troth can be trusted, is it not his trade "at sea to die"? But the young girl will not be persuaded. "All say to me, 'Beauty, do not take the mariner, for he will make thee die;' if he make me die, so must it be; I will wed him, for he is my soul." And when he is gone, she sings: "My soul, as thou art beyond the port, send me word if thou art alive or dead, if the waters of the sea have taken thee?" She returns sadly to her work, the work of all Venetian maidens:
My love is far and far away from me, I am at home, and he has gone to sea; He is at sea, and he has sails to spread, I am at home, and I have beads to thread.
The boatman's love can afford to sing in a lighter strain; there is not the shadow of interminable voyages upon her. "I go out on the balcony, I see Venice, and I see my joy, who starts; I go out on the balcony, I see the sea, and I see my love, who rows." Another song is perhaps a statement of fact, though it sounds like a poetic fancy:
To-night their boats must seek the sea, One night his boat will linger yet; They bear a freight of wood, and he A freight of rose and violet.
Who forgets the coming into Venice in the early morning light of the boats laden with fresh flowers and fruit?
Isaac d'Israeli states that the fishermen's wives of the Lido, particularly those of the districts of Malamocca and Pelestrina (its extreme end), sat along the shore in the evenings while the men were out fishing, and sang stanzas from Tasso and other songs at the pitch of their voices, going on till each one could distinguish the responses of her own husband in the distance.