The Red Goblin Of The Bargello

“Lord Foulis in his castle sat,
And beside him old Red-cap sly;
‘Now tell me, thou sprite, who art mickle of might,
The death which I shall die?’”

—SCOTT's _Border Minstrelsy_.

The Bargello has been truly described as one of the most interesting historical monuments of Florence, and it is a very picturesque type of a towered mediæval palace. It was partly burned down in 1322, and rebuilt in its present form by Neri di Fioravanti, after which it served as a prison. Restored, or modernised, it is now a museum. As I conjectured, there was some strange legend connected with it, and this was given to me as follows:

IL FOLLETTO ROSSO.

“The Red Goblin is a spirit who haunts the Bargello, or was there of old in the prisons, _nelle carceri_, and he always foretold to every prisoner what his sentence would be before it was pronounced.

“He always appeared in the cell of the condemned, and first lighting a candle, showed himself all clad in red, and said to the prisoner:

“‘Piangi, piangi, ma piangi forte,
E prepararti che e giunta
L’ora della tua morte.’

“‘Weep, oh weep full many a tear;
Make ready; thy hour for death is near.’

“Then if the prisoner replied boldly:

“‘Anima chi siei!
Ti pregò di volermi aiutare
A liberarmi dalla morte!’

“‘Spirit, whoe’er thou be,
I beg thee now for aid;
From death pray set me free!’

Then the goblin would burst into a laugh and say:

“‘Non piangere, ridi, ridi!
Ma ride sempre, e spera
Che io ti aiutera!’

“But if the prisoner had replied badly, or cursed, or said ‘_Vai al diavolo_!’ or ‘_Che il diavolo ti porti_!’—then there were heard dreadful sounds, such as frightened all the prisoners and assistants, and the goblin vanished crying:

“‘Woe, woe, and woe to thee!
For thou soon shalt punished be;
Away be led, to lose your head,
There is no hope for thee!’

“And after that the man might well despair. Yet the Red Goblin was a jolly sprite when not crossed, and made great sport for the prisoners, who all knew him. He went into every cell, and would tell wild tales, and relate to every one all that he, the prisoner, had done since he was a boy, and how he came to be locked up, and what would be the end of it, and told all this with such peals of laughter that the most unhappy were fain to laugh with him.

“Then the assistants and the director hearing such sounds, thought it was the prisoners rioting, but could not detect them. {161a} And the spirit relieved many innocent men from punishment, and especially visited those condemned to wear the iron collar or _gogna_, which was fastened to a post, but at the Bargello it was on the Campanile outside, in sight of all the people. {161b}

“Now there was a young man in the prison who was good at heart, and deeply repented that he had done wrong, and now feared that he indeed was in the power of Satan, and destined to be in prison for all this life and in _inferno_ all the next.

“And when he was thus sunk in misery one night, he heard him, and was in great alarm, but it said, ‘Fear not, for I am the protecting spirit of the prisoners in the Bargello, and have come to free thee; put thy trust in me and I will save thee!’

“Then he told the youth how he was to act, and bade him say certain things when examined, and follow closely all the goblin would whisper to him; but whether it was his fault or his failure, he missed every point and went wrong in his replies, the end being that he was condemned to prison for life. Truly it went to his heart to think that while he lived he should always see the sun looking like a chess-board, {162} and bitterly reflected on the proverb:

“‘Ne a torto nè a ragione,
Non ti lasciar metter prigione.’

“‘Whether you’re right or wrong, my man,
Keep out of prison as long as you can.’

“But it went most bitterly to his heart to think that he had by his own stupidity and want of study lost the chance of freedom. And for some time the Red Goblin never came near him. But at last the prisoner heard him call, and then the spirit said, ‘Now thou see’st to what a pass thy neglect of my advice has brought thee. Truly _il diavolo non ti tenterebbe_—the devil takes no pains to tempt such a fool as thou, for he knows that he will get him without the trouble of asking. And yet I will give thee one more chance, and this time be thou wide awake and remember that _a buona volontà_, _non manca facoltá_—where there’s a will there’s a way.’

“Now there was a great lord and mighty man of the state who had been in the Bargello, and greatly comforted by the Red Goblin, who now went unto this Signore, speaking so well of the young man that the latter ere long had a new trial. And this time, I warrant you, he studied his case like a lawyer; for _asino punto_, _convien che trottè_—when an ass is goaded he must needs trot—and the end thereof was that he trotted out of prison, and thence into the world, and having learned repentance as well as the art of watching his wits and turning them to account, prospered mightily, and to his dying day never forgot to pray for the Red Goblin of the Bargello.”

* * * * *

There have been other spirits which haunted prisons; there was one in the Bastile, and the White Ladies of Berlin and Parma are of their kind. This of the Bargello is certainly the household sprite with the red cap, in a short shirt, who was very well known to the Etruscans and Romans, and afterwards to the Germans, the _Lutin_ of the French castles, the Robin Goodfellow of England, and the Domovoy of the Russians. His characteristics are reckless good nature mingled with mischief and revenge; but he is always, when not thwarted, at heart a _bon garçon_. Of the Bargello I have also the following anecdotes or correlative incidents:

GIORGIO.

“Truly I will not swear that this is a story of the Bargello, for I am very particular as to truth, Signore, but I will swear that ’tis of a prison in Florence, and that when it happened the Bargello was the only prison there. And it runs thus: Giorgio, whoever he was, had killed a man, and as the law ran in his case, in those strange days, he could not be executed till he had confessed or owned the deed. And he would not confess.

“Now there was a lawyer, _un notaio_, _ò chi che si fosse_ (or whoever he was), who declared that he would bring to pass with a trick what justice had not been able to do with torture. So going to the prison, he called for wine, and when they had drunk deep he cried heartily:

“‘_Orsú_, _Giorgio_, _stiamo un poco allegri_, _cantiam qualche cosa_’—‘Come now, Giorgio, let’s be merry and sing something!’

“‘_Come ti piace_’—‘As you please,’ quoth Master Giorgio. ‘You sing one line.’

“So the notary began, touching a lute:

“‘Giorgi hà morto l’huomo.’
“‘Giorgio once killed a man.’

“To which Giorgio, who was sharp as a razor, added:

“‘Così non canta Giorgio.’
“‘But it was not thus that Giorgio sang.’

“So it passed into a proverb, meaning as much as _Così non dico io_—I don’t say that; or _Così non l’intendo io_—I don’t see it in that light. And so the notary found that you cannot see Verona from the top of every hill.

“And there is another story of a prisoner, who had long curling hair in the old Florentine style. Hair, Signore, like charity, may cover much sin. Now this man, after he had been a while in the Bargello, got his sentence, which was to have his ears cropped off. But when the _boia_ or hangman came to do the job, he found that the man had had his ears cut off smooth long before. Whence came the proverb:

“‘Quel che havea mozzi gli orecchi,
E’ci sara de gli arreticati.’

“‘He whose ears had been cut away,
Fooled another, or so they say.’

Which is a proverb to this day, when a man finds that somebody has been before him.

“And it may have been that Donatello, the great sculptor, was in the Bargello when he said, ‘_E’rise a me ed io riso à lui_’—‘He laughs at me, and I do laugh at him.’ Donatello was _in quistione_, or in trouble with the law, and in prison, for having killed one of his pupils. The Marquis di Ferrara asked him if he was guilty. But Donatello had already received from the Marquis a license to slay any one in self-defence, and so he made that answer.”

A LEGEND OF THE BARGELLO.

“One day a young man, who had been gaming and lost, threw some dirt at an image of the Virgin in one of the numerous shrines in the city, blaming her for his bad luck. He was observed by a boy, who reported it to the authorities, and was soon arrested. Having confessed that he did it in a rage at having lost, he was hanged the same night from one of the windows of the Bargello.” {164}

* * * * *

Thereby adding another ghost or _folletto_ to those who already haunt the place. It should be noted that according to Italian witch-lore a ghost is never simply the spirit of the departed as he _was_, but a spirit transformed. A witch becomes a _fata_, good or bad, and all men something more than they were.

Among other small legends or tales in which the Bargello is referred to, I find the following, of which I must first mention that _debito_ in Italian means not only debt but duty, and that _fare un debito_ is not only to get into debt, but to do what is just, upright, and honourable.

“It happened once, long ago, that a certain good fellow was being
escorted, truly not by a guard of honour, but by several
bum-bailiffs, to the Bargello, and met a friend who asked him why he
was in custody. To which he replied, ‘Other men are arrested and
punished for crime or villainy, but I am treated thus for having
acted honourably, _per aver fatto il debito mio_.’

“And it happened to this same man that after he had been entertained
for a time at the public expense in that _gran albergo_, or great
hotel, the Bargello, that the Council of Eight, or the public
magistracy, gave him a hearing, and told him that he must promptly
pay the debt which he owed, which was one of fifty _scudi_ or crowns.
To which he replied that he could not. Then the chief of the Eight
said, ‘We will find out a way to make you pay it, be sure of that.’
To which he answered, ‘_De gratia_, _Signore_, while you are about
it, then, make it a hundred, for I have great need just now of
another fifty crowns.’”

Prisoners in the Bargello, as elsewhere, were subject to the most appalling injustice and cruelty. Thus we are told of Cosimo di Medici, when he was doing all in his power to assassinate or poison Piero Strozzi, that he was always very circumspect as regarded the venom, “and did not use it till he had studied the effects and doses on condemned prisoners in the Bargello.” But “condemned prisoners” here means doubtless those who were simply condemned to be made the subjects of such experiments, as may be supposed, when we learn that Cosimo obtained the recipe of making up a poison from Messer Apollino, secretary of Piero Luigi, by _torturing_ him. It was thus they did in good old pious times. Poisoning, as a most familiar and frequent thing, even in England, did not pass out of practice, even in politics, until that great beginning of a moral era, the Reformation.

“_Hæc fabula docet_,” wrote the good and wise Flaxius on the revise, “that as a _Zoccolone_ friar is the best priest for a peasant, so even a _buon diavolo_, or jolly devil, or a boon blackguard who knows his men, is, perhaps, generally the best guide for certain kinds of rough sinners, often setting them aright in life where a holy saint would be _inter sacrem et saxum_, or in despair. As for poisoning, I fear _that_ cup, far from passing away, is, under another form, passed round far more frequently now than it ever was. For François Villon declared that lying gossip, tittle-tattle, and second-hand slander were worse than poison (which simply kills the body), and this with infinite refinement prevails far more in modern society (being aided by newspapers) than it ever did of yore anywhere. _This_ is the poison of the present day, which has more _veneficæ_ to spread it than the Locustan or Borgian venoms ever found. Now for a merrier tale!”

“If all that’s written, talked or sunge
Must be of the follies of menne,
’Twere better that no one moved his tongue,
Or that none could use a penne.

“Jog on, jog on the footpath-waye,
And cheerily jump the stile;
A merry heart goes all the daye,
A sad one tires in a mile!”