It may be observed as exquisitely curious that in this incantation the peasant who wishes to become a skilled performer on the flageolet _buries it for three days in the ground_, invoking Orpheus by what the spirit suffered in losing Eurydice, and subsequently distinctly declaring that he won or conjured his great musical power from Hades, which means that by the penance and loss, and his braving the terrors of the Inferno, he gained _skill_. This is a mighty element of the myth in all its forms, in all ages, in every country. The burying the instrument for three days probably typifies the three days during which Orpheus was in hell. It may be observed that Eurydice has become _Auradice_ in the incantation, in which there is probably an intimation of _Aura_, a light wind or zephyr. Air is so naturally associated with music. This, by a very singular coincidence, yet certainly due to mere chance, recalls the invocation to the Spirit of the Air, given by Bulwer in “The Last Days of Pompeii”: “Spectre of the viewless air, Hear the blind Thessalian’s prayer, By Erichtho’s art that shed Dews of life when life was fled, By lone Ithaca’s wise king, Who could wake the crystal spring To the voice of prophecy _By the lost Eurydice_! Summoned from the shadowy throng, At the muse-son’s magic song: Come, wild Demon of the Air, Answer to thy votary’s prayer.” It is indeed very remarkable that in the call to the God of Music, who is in certain wise a spirit of the air, as in that to the Spirit of the Air himself, both are invoked: “By the lost Eurydice!” If it could be shown that Bulwer owed this poem and allusion to any ancient work or tradition, I should be tempted to believe that the popular invocation was derived from some source in common with the latter. There is indeed a quaint naïve drollery in the word _Aura_dice—“Air-tell!” or “Air-declare!” which adapts it better to the spirit of Bulwer’s poem, in which the air is begged to tell something, than to the Orphean or Orphic spell. It may be that the Orphic oracles were heard in the voice of the wind, apropos of which latter there is a strange Italian legend and an incantation to be addressed to all such mystic voices of the night, which almost seems re-echoed in “Lucia”: “Verrano a te sull’ aure, I miei sospiri ardenti, Udrai nell mar che mormora L’eco de miei lamenti!”