There is an odd bit of folklore attached to this church. As may be supposed, and as I have frequently verified, “the idle repetition of vain words,” as the heathen do, or prayers in a language which people do not understand, generally lead to most ridiculous perversions of the unknown tongue. A popular specimen of this is the _Salve Regina delle Ciane Fiorentine di San Lorenzo_, or the “_Salve Regina_ of the Florentine women of the lower class, as given in San Lorenzo.” _Ciana_ is given by Barretti as a specially Florentine word. LA SALVE REGINA. “Sarvia della Regina, dreco la Misericordia, vita d’un cieco, spezia nostra, sarvia tua, te chiamao esule, fili e vacche! “Ate sospirao, i’ gemeo fetente in barca e lacrima la valle. “L’ la eggo educata nostra, _illons in tus_. “Misericordia se’ cieli e in ossi e coperte, e lesine benedette, frutti, ventri, tubi, novi, posti cocche, esilio e tende! “O crema, o pia, o dorce virgola Maria!—Ammenne!” * * * * * This is perfectly in the spirit of the Middle Ages, of which so much is still found in the cheapest popular Italian literature. I have elsewhere mentioned that it was long before the Reformation, when the Church was at the height of her power, that blasphemies, travesties of religious services, and scathing sarcasms of monkish life reached their extreme, and were never equalled afterwards, even by Protestant satirists. The _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_ of Hütten and Reuchlin was an avowed caricature by an enemy. The revelations of monkish life by Boccaccio, Cintio, Arlotto, and a hundred other good Catholics, were a thousand times more damaging than the _Epistolæ_, because they were the unconscious betrayals of friends. Since writing the foregoing, I have obtained the following, entitled, _The Pater Noster of the Country People in the Old Market_, or, IL PATER NOSTER DEI BECERI DI MERCATO. “Pate nostro quisin celi sanctifice tuore nome tumme; avvenia regno tumme; fia te volunta stua, in celo en terra. “Pane nostro cotediano da nobis sodie, e dimitti nobis debita nostra, sicutte ette nos dimittimus debitori nostri, sette ananossie in due casse, intenzione sedie nosse e mulo.—Amenne!” * * * * * There is, however, this great difference in the two prayers here given, that the _Salve Regina_ is intended for a jest, while the paternoster is given as actually taken down from a _ciana_, and is rather a specimen of dialect than a _jeu d’esprit_. The following _Ave Maria_ is also serious, and simply a curiosity of language:— L’AVE MARIA. “Avemmaria grazia piena, dominò teco beneditta e frustris, e mulieri busse e benedetti fruttus ventris tui eiusse! “Santa Maria Materdei, ora pro nobisse, pecatoribusse, tinche, tinona, mortis nostrisse.—Ammenne!” * * * * *