Lady Vere de Vere, who has investigated witchcraft as it exists in the Italian Tyrol, in an admirable article in _La Rivista_ of Rome (June 1894)—which article has the only demerit of being too brief—tells us that “the Community of Italian Witches is regulated by laws, traditions, and customs of the most secret kind, possessing special recipes for sorcery,” which is perfectly true. Having been free of the community for years, I can speak from experience. The more occult and singular of their secrets are naturally not of a nature to be published, any more than are those of the Voodoos. Some of the milder sort may be found in the story of the “Moscone, or Great Fly,” in this work. The great secret for scholars is, however, that these pagans and heretics, who are the last who cling to a heathen creed out-worn in Europe—these outcast children of the Cainites, Ultra-Taborites, and similar ancient worshippers of the devil, are really the ones who possess the most valuable stores of folk-lore, that is to say, such as illustrate the first origins of the religious Idea, its development, and specially the evolution of the Opposition or Protestant principle. As regards the many legends in this book which do not illustrate such serious research, it is but natural that witches, who love and live in the Curious, should have preserved more even of them than other people, and it was accordingly among her colleagues of the mystic spell that Maddalena found tales which would have been long sought for elsewhere, of which this book is a most convincing proof in itself; for while I had resolved on second thought to make it one of simple local tales, there still hangs over most—even of these—a dim, unholy air of sorcery, a witch _aura_, a lurid light, a something eerie and uncanny, a restless hankering for the broom and the supernatural. Those tales are Maddalena’s every line—I pray thee, reader, not to make them mine. The spirit will always speak. Very different, indeed, from these are the contributions of Marietta Pery, the _improvvisatrice_, though even she in good faith, and not for fun, had a horseshoe for luck; which, however, being of an artistic turn, she had elegantly gilded, and also, like a true Italian, wore an amulet. She, too, knew many fairy tales, but they were chiefly such as may be found among the _Racconti delle Fate_, and the variants which are now so liberally published. She had, however, a rare, I may almost say a refined, taste in these, as the poems which I have given indicate.