The practice of plucking out the hair was so general in the last century that even at Naples the old women had hardly a hair left from out-living many relations. It was proper also to observe the day of burial as a fast day. Two unlucky women near Salerno lost their characters for ever because the dog of a visitor who had come to condole, sniffed out a dish of tripe which had been hastily thrust into a corner. The Italian, or rather Calabrese-speaking population of Calabria, call their preficae--where they still have any--_Reputatrici_. Some remarkable songs have been collected in the commune of Pizzo, the place of dubious fame by whose peasants Murat was caught and betrayed. There is something Dantesque in the image of Death as _'nu gran levreri_ crouching in a mountain defile: Joy, I saw death; Joy, I saw her yesterday; I beheld her in a narrow way, like unto a great greyhound, and I was very curious. "Death, whence comest thou?" "I am come from Germany, going thence to Count Roger. I have killed princes, counts, and cavaliers; and now I am come for a young maiden so that with me she may go". Weep, mamma, weep for me, weep and never rest; weep for me Sunday, Easter, and Christmas Day; for no more wilt thou see thy daughter sit down at thy board to eat, and no more shalt thou await me. One conclusion forced upon us incidentally by folk-dirges must seem strange when we remember how few are the cultured poetesses who have attained eminence--to wit, that with the unlettered multitude the poetic faculty is equally the property of women as of men.