regions by means of a grand apparatus. May 1, the Calendimaggio, was the high day for the people, and the green branches on the door-posts have preserved the name of May in Italian as well as in German (and in English). It was on this day that Dante first saw Beatrice Portinari at an entertainment for children. Among the popular festivals were the Epiphany (_Befana_), celebrated by processions and masquerades, which are still carried on; and the Ferragosto, the Roman August holidays, where a donkey-race took place, with a buffalo-race as counterpart. Public games in which physical strength and, still more, agility were brought into play, delighted high and low. Among these were _calcio_ and _maglio_: the first of which was played on the large oblong square, afterwards shut in by rows of houses which bears the name of Prato d’Ognissanti; the latter in the vicinity of the Piazza San Marco, where the Via del Maglio still reminds us of it. In the one game the feat consisted in throwing a ball with the hand; in the other it was propelled by a wooden hammer weighted with iron. We shall speak farther on of the tourneys, exercises, and festivals of the high, and the merry popular gatherings of the _potenze_. There was never a lack of music. The trumpeters and other musicians of the Signoria were never absent from any procession, and cheerful tunes accompanied every festival. Boccaccio’s tales and the frescoes in the Camposanto of Pisa show how music formed an integral part of social life. The most renowned instrumental performer who flourished in the second half of the fourteenth century, Francesco Landino, enchanted all by his delicate performances on the harpsichord, even in his old age and blindness.