[Footnote 23: This is a description of the Tuscan rispetto. In Sicily the stanza generally consists of eight lines rhyming alternately throughout, while in the North of Italy it is normally a simple quatrain. The same poetical material assumes in Northern, Central, and Southern Italy these diverge but associated forms.] [Footnote 24: This song, called Ciure (Sicilian for _fiore_) in Sicily, is said by Signor Pitré to be in disrepute there. He once asked an old dame of Palermo to repeat him some of these ditties. Her answer was, 'You must get them from light women; I do not know any. They sing them in bad houses and prisons, where, God be praised, I have never been.' In Tuscany there does not appear to be so marked a distinction between the flower song and the rispetto.] [Footnote 25: Much light has lately been thrown on the popular poetry of Italy; and it appears that contemporary improvisatori trust more to their richly stocked memories and to their power of recombination than to original or novel inspiration. It is in Sicily that the vein of truly creative lyric utterance is said to flow most freely and most copiously at the present time.] [Footnote 26: 'Remember me, fair one, to the scrivener. I do not know him or who he is, but he seems to me a sovereign poet, so cunning is he in his use of verse.'] [Footnote 27: It must be remarked that Tigri draws a strong contrast in this respect between the songs of the mountain districts which he has printed and those of the towns, and that Pitrè, in his edition of Sicilian _Volkslieder_, expressly alludes to the coarseness of a whole class which he had omitted. The MSS. of Sicilian and Tuscan songs, dating from the fifteenth century and earlier, yield a fair proportion of decidedly obscene compositions. Yet the fact stated above is integrally correct. When acclimatised in the large towns, the rustic Muse not unfrequently assumes a garb of grossness. At home, among the fields and on the mountains, she remains chaste and romantic.] [Footnote 28: In a rispetto, of which I subjoin a translation, sung by a poor lad to a mistress of higher rank, love itself is pleaded as the sign of a gentle soul:-- My state is poor: I am not meet To court so nobly born a love; For poverty hath tied my feet, Trying to climb too far above. Yet am I gentle, loving thee; Nor need thou shun my poverty. [Footnote 29: When the Cherubina, of whom mention has been made above, was asked by Signor Tigri to dictate some of her rispetti, she answered, 'O signore! ne dico tanti quando li canto! . . . ma ora . . . bisognerebbe averli tutti in visione; se no, proprio non vengono.']