Note 3 — CÈCINGÙLO.
Reading edition
It is very likely Cècingùlo was some generations older even than the narrator’s ‘papa.’ I have thought it worth while to put this much about him on record, as he was doubtless one of those who have given the local colouring to these very tales. The old women whose heads are their storehouse, as they repeat them over the spinning-wheel, say them with no further alteration than want of memory or want of apprehension necessarily occasions. It is the professional wag who, sitting in the midst of the vegetable market amid a peasant audience, will ascribe to a cicoriaro the acts of a paladin, and insert ‘a casino in the Campagna’ in the place of an oriental palace. I have met various people who had heard as much as the above about Cècingùlo, but no more. ↑