This absence of legendary and historical material marks a main difference between Italian and Teutonic inspiration. Among the Italic communities the practical historic sense was early developed, and sustained by the tradition of a classic past. It demanded a positive rather than imaginative treatment of contemporary fact and mythus. Among the people this requirement was satisfied by _Storie_, _Lamenti_, and prose Chronicles. Very few, indeed, are the relics of either romantic or actual history surviving in the lyrics of the rural population. Only here and there, in dim allusions to the Sicilian Vespers and the Norman Conquest, in the tale of the Baronessa di Carini, or in the Northern legend of Rosmunda, under its popular form of _La Donna Lombarda_, do we find a faint analogy between the Italian and Teutonic ballads.[345] Dramatic, mythical and epical elements are almost wholly wanting in the genuine lyrics of the people.
This statement requires some qualification. The four volumes of _Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti_ recently published by Signor Pitrè, prove that the Sicilians in prose at least have a copious literature corresponding to German _Märchen_ and Norse tales.[346] This literature, however, has not received poetic treatment in any existing southern songs that have been published, excepting in the few already noticed. At the same time, it must be mentioned that the collections of lyrics in north-western dialects--especially the _Canti Monferrini_, _Canzoni Comasche_, and _Canti Leccesi_--exhibit specimens of genuine ballads. It would seem that contact with French and German borderers along the Alpine rampart had introduced into Piedmont and Lombardy a form of lyric which is not essentially Italian. Had I space sufficient at disposal, I should like to quote the _Donna Lombarda_, _Moglie Infedele_, _Giuseppina Parricida_, _Principessa Giovanna_, _Giuliano della Croce Bianca_, _Cecilia_, _Rè Carlino_, _Morando_, and several others from Ferraro's collection.[347] They illustrate, what is exceedingly rare in popular Italian poetry, both the subject-matter and the manner peculiar to the Northern Ballad. Let the following verses from _La Sposa per Forza_ suffice[348]:
