Quannu nascisti tu, stidda lucenti, 'N terra calaru tri ancili santi; Vinniru li Tri Re d'Orienti, Purtannu cosi d'oru e di brillanti; Tri aculi vularu prestamenti, Dannu la nova a punenti e a livanti; Bella, li to' billizzi su' putenti! Avi nov'anni chi ti sugnu amanti.
In the north-east the _Villotta_ consists of a simple quatrain. Of this form the following is an example[333]:
Quanti ghe n'è, che me sente a cantare, E i dise;--Custia canta dal bon tempo.-- Che prego 'l ciel che me possa agiutare; Quando che canto, alora me lamento.
Though these are the leading types of the _Rispetto_, _Canzune_ and _Villotta_, each district exhibits a variety of subordinate and complex forms. The same may be said about the _Stornello_, _Ritornello_ and _Ciure_. The names, too, are very variously applied; nor without pedantry would it be possible to maintain perfect precision in their usage.[334] It is enough to have indicated the two broad classes into which popular poetry of this kind is divided. For the future I shall refer to the one sort as _Rispetti_, to the other as _Stornelli_.
Comparative analysis makes it clear that the _Rispetti_ and _Stornelli_ scattered over all the provinces of Italy, constitute a common fund. That is to say, we do not meet with the _Rispetti_ of each dialect confined to their own region; but the same original _Rispetto_, perhaps now lost to sight, has been adapted and transformed to suit the taste and idiom of the several provinces. To reconstitute the primitive type, to decide with certainty in each case the true source of these lyrics, is probably impossible. All we know for certain is that beneath apparent dialectical divergences the vulgar poetry of the Italians presents unmistakable signs of identity.[335] Which province was the primitive home of the _Rispetti_; whether Sicily, where the faculty for reproducing them is still most vivid[336]; or Tuscany, where they certainly attain their purest form and highest beauty; or whether all Italian country districts have contributed their quota to the general stock; are difficult questions, as yet by no means satisfactorily decided. Professor d'Ancona advances a theory, which is too plausible to be ignored in silence. _Rispetti_, he suggests, were first produced in Sicily, whence they traveled through Central Italy, receiving dialectical transmutation in Tuscany, and there also attaining to the perfection of their structure.[337] Numerous slight indications lead to the conclusion that their original linguistic type was southern. The imagery also which is common in verses sung to this day by the peasants of the Pistoja highlands, including frequent references to the sea with metaphors borrowed from orange-trees and palms, seems to indicate a Sicilian birthplace.[338] We have, moreover, the early evidence of six _Napolitane_ copied from a Magliabecchian MS. of the fourteenth century, which exhibit the transition from southern to Tuscan idiom and structure.[339] One of these still exists in several dialects, under the title of _La Rondinella importuna_.[340] It is therefore certain that many _Rispetti_ are very ancient, dating from the Suabian period, when Sicilian poetry, as we have seen, underwent the process of _toscaneggiamento_. However, D'Ancona's theory is too hypothetical, and it may also be said, too neat, to be accepted without reservation.