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One good reason why I obtained so many of these tales so readily is that they were gathered, like my “Florentine Legends” and “Etrusco-Roman Remains,” chiefly among witches or fortune-tellers, who, above all other people, preserve with very natural interest all that smacks of sorcery. It is the case in every country—among Red Indians, Hindus or Italians—that wherever there are families in which witchcraft is handed down from generation to generation there will be traditional tales in abundance, and those not of the common fairy-tale kind, but of a mysterious, marvellous nature. Now, that the narratives in this book contain—quite apart from any connection with Virgil—in almost every instance some curious traces of very ancient tradition, is perhaps to be admitted by all. Such is the description of Agamene, the Spirit of the Diamond, which is one of the oldest of Græco-Roman myths, and Pæonia, who kills or revives human beings by means of flowers, wherein she is the very counterpart of Minerva-Pæonia, who taught Esculapius, as mythology expressly states, “the power of flowers and herbs,” even as the statue Pæonia teaches Virgil. These are only two out of scores of instances, and they are to me, as they will be to every scholar, by far the most valuable part of my book.