O thou great Devil, Lord of Hell! Grant me this I ask of thee. I recommend to thee the Niccolotti! I pray thee carry all the Castellani off to hell! Give the winning flag to the Niccolotti. The following is a fine example of party pride:-- When a Niccolotto is born, a god is born! When a Castellano is born, a brigand is born! When a Niccolotto is born, a count is born! When a Castellano is born, he turns out a gallows-builder! And here is another:-- We are the Niccolotti, that is enough! We will march with the black scarf, and with the flower in our hat; and there are knife-wounds for the pigs of Castellani! On the other hand, the Castellani sang as follows:-- Swine of ill-born Niccolotti, how can you expect the girls to love you? All night you wallow in the mud, you ill-born swine of Niccolotti. The mud is that of the lagoons, the Niccolotti being fishermen. In spite of this constant exchange of amenities, and in spite of their love of fighting each other, neither Bocconio nor Tiepolo nor Faliero ever got any advantage from the popular factions. I can recall no other case nor similar instance in history. They abused each other, but they all felt that they were sons of Saint Mark, a sentiment which strongly appears in another song of more generous type which was sung by the two factions together on occasions of common peril:-- Are we not all of one nation? Sons of Saint Mark, and of his state? May God preserve it, and make it grow, For all the good we have we get from Him! [Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Less._] [Sidenote: _Cecchetti, Corte._] [Sidenote: _Sagredo._] The Niccolotti had a species of constitution; they had special customs of their own, and a head who was officially called their ‘gastaldo,’ but who by an old tradition bore the title of the ‘fisherman’s Doge’; and who on all public occasions arrayed himself in red like the High Chancellor, with wide skirts lined with fur in the winter, and, like the real Doge, wore red stockings and shoes of red morocco. He held so much to the right of wearing these red hose that he never appeared without them, even in ordinary life, and when fishing in his boat. Little by little this chief of the people obtained the right to follow the Doge to the ‘Espousal of the Sea’ in a beautifully decorated boat towed by the Bucentaur; he was granted the privilege of dining with the Doge [Illustration: THE LITTLE FISH MARKET]