d:

"There was once a condemned criminal being carried along to execution,
and on the way passed before the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. One of
the friars put his head out of a little round window, which was just
large enough for it to pass through, and this was over the entrance on
the lesser side of the church, facing the Via de' Conti. As the
condemned passed by the friar said:

"'Date gli da bere, 'un morira mai.'
"'Give him a drink and he never will die.'

"To which the condemned replied:

"'E la testa di costi tu 'un la levrai'.
"'And thy head shall stick where it is for aye.'

"And so it came to pass that they could not get the head of the friar
back through the hole, so there he died. And some say that after they
got the body out they carried his likeness in stone and put it there in
the little round window, in remembrance of the event, while others think
that it is the friar himself turned to stone--_chi sa_?"

* * * * *

The conception of a stone head having been that of a person petrified for
punishment is of the kind which would spring up anywhere, quite
independently of tradition or borrowing; hence it is found the world
over. That ideas of the kind may be common, yet not in common, nor yet
uncommon, is shown by the resemblance of the remark of the friar:

"Give him a drink and he never will die,"--

which was as much as to say that inebriation would cause him to forget
his execution--to a verse of a song in "Jack Sheppard":

"For nothing so calms,
Our dolorous qualms,
And nothing the transit to Tyburn beguiles,
So well as a drink from the bowl of Saint Giles."

There is a merrier tale, however, of Santa Maria Maggiore, and one which
is certainly far more likely to have occurred than this of the petrified
_pater_. For it is told in the ancient _Facetiae_ that a certain
Florentine nobleman, who was a jolly and reckless cavalier, had a wife
who, for all her beauty, was _bisbetica e cattiva_, capricious and
spiteful, malicious and mischievous, a daughter of the devil, if there
ever was one, who, like all those of her kind, was very devout, and went
every day to confession in Santa Maria Maggiore, where she confessed not
only her own sins, but also those of all her neighbours. And as she
dwelt with vast eloquence on the great wickedness of her husband--having
a tongue which would serve to sweep out an oven, or