than they have of a
pleisosaurus, and, as a modern writer naively complains, they are not
sharp-witted enough to invent fanciful tales to please the enquiring
foreigner. Nor is this lack of intelligence to be wondered at, when we
recall to mind the clean sweep of all classical learning and tradition
which that period of time, truly known as the Dark Ages, made throughout
Italy; if Petrarch found it necessary to explain to King Robert the Wise
with the greatest tact and delicacy that Vergil was a poet and not a
wizard, what must have been the appalling ignorance prevailing amongst the
peasant and the fisherman? And yet these barren rocks were known as the
Isles of the Sirens centuries before the verses of the Aeneid immortalized
the mythic voyage of the Trojan adventurer, who passed along this
iron-bound coast on his way towards the mouth of Tiber. Their modern, or
rather medieval name of I Galli is somewhat of a puzzle. Erudite scholars
affect to derive it from Guallo, a fortress captured during a war between
King Roger and the Republic of Amalfi, but this explanation, we confess,
does not sound very reasonable. Others prefer to imagine that the word
Gallo (a cock) contains an allusion to the claws and feathers of the
Sirens themselves, for certain of the ancient writers endowed these dire
Virgins of the Rocks with the wings as well as the claws of birds;--in
fact, they represented them as Harpies, those horrible fowls with women's
faces that appeared upon the scene at Prospero's bidding to spoil the bad
king's supper party. But why, if the Sirens were female,--and on this point
all their critics agree with an unanimity that is wonderful--should their
ancient haunts be called "The Cocks?" The untutored natives themselves,
understanding nothing of Sirens or of Odysseys, hold their own theory with
regard to the disputed name, which they connect with the construction of a
harbour at distant Salerno, and though this legend sounds foolish enough,
it is scarcely less flimsy than the notions already quoted. A certain
enchanter, one Pietro Bajalardo, undertook--in modern parlance,
contracted--to build in a single night the much needed breakwater at
Salerno on the strange condition that all cocks in the neighbourhood
should first be killed; for the wizard, so the story runs, had a special
aversion to Chanticleer on account of his having caused the repentance of
St Peter by his crowing. In any case, the reigning Prince of Salerno
g