a d'un cieco, spezia
nostra, sarvia tua, te chiamao esule, fili e vacche!

"Ate sospirao, i' gemeo fetente in barca e lacrima la valle.

"L' la eggo educata nostra, _illons in tus_.

"Misericordia se' cieli e in ossi e coperte, e lesine benedette, frutti,
ventri, tubi, novi, posti cocche, esilio e tende!

"O crema, o pia, o dorce virgola Maria!--Ammenne!"

* * * * *

This is perfectly in the spirit of the Middle Ages, of which so much is
still found in the cheapest popular Italian literature. I have elsewhere
mentioned that it was long before the Reformation, when the Church was at
the height of her power, that blasphemies, travesties of religious
services, and scathing sarcasms of monkish life reached their extreme,
and were never equalled afterwards, even by Protestant satirists. The
_Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_ of Hutten and Reuchlin was an avowed
caricature by an enemy. The revelations of monkish life by Boccaccio,
Cintio, Arlotto, and a hundred other good Catholics, were a thousand
times more damaging than the _Epistolae_, because they were the
unconscious betrayals of friends.

Since writing the foregoing, I have obtained the following, entitled,
_The Pater Noster of the Country People in the Old Market_, or,

IL PATER NOSTER DEI BECERI DI MERCATO.

"Pate nostro quisin celi sanctifice tuore nome tumme; avvenia regno
tumme; fia te volunta stua, in celo en terra.

"Pane nostro cotediano da nobis sodie, e dimitti nobis debita nostra,
sicutte ette nos dimittimus debitori nostri, sette ananossie in due
casse, intenzione sedie nosse e mulo.--Amenne!"

* * * * *

There is, however, this great difference in the two prayers here given,
that the _Salve Regina_ is intended for a jest, while the paternoster is
given as actually taken down from a _ciana_, and is rather a specimen of
dialect than a _jeu d'esprit_. The following _Ave Maria_ is also
serious, and simply a curiosity of language:--

L'AVE MARIA.

"Avemmaria grazia piena, domino teco beneditta e frustris, e mulieri
busse e benedetti fruttus ventris tui eiusse!

"Santa Maria Materdei, ora pro nobisse, pecatoribusse, tinche, tinona,
mortis nostrisse.--Ammenne!"

* * * * *

These specimens of Italianised Latin are not so grotesque as some which
were written out for me in all seriousness by a poor woman