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Updated: June 12, 2025
Just a simple innocent trifle of Sorrentine folk-lore, but how closely does it resemble the old-time gossip of rustic England, of which the great poet has left us so charming a picture!— “Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day labourers could not end.”
In point of fact, the padrone of the captured felucca, with a sole eye to the recovery of his vessel, had ascended the Scaricatojo, after landing at the Marinella, at its foot, as fast as his legs could carry him; had rather run, than glided, along the narrow lanes of the piano and the hill-side to the beach of Sorrento; had thrown himself into a boat, manned by four lusty Sorrentine watermen and Europe does not contain lustier or bolder; had gone on board the Terpsichore, and laid his case before Sir Frederick Dashwood, ignorant of the person of the real commanding officer among the three ships.
Some sparkling summer morning, if you chanced to drive four-in-hand along the broad beach at Santa Barbara, inhaling, the spicy breeze from the Sandwich Islands, along the curved shore where the blue of the sea and the purple of the mountains remind you of the Sorrentine promontory, and then dashed away into the canon of Montecito, among the vineyards and orange orchards and live-oaks and palms, in vales and hills all ablaze with roses and flowers of the garden and the hothouse, which bloom the year round in the gracious sea-air, would you not, we wonder, come to yourselves in the sense of a new life where it is good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to be surprised?
Malignant fairies are, in short, quite common upon the Sorrentine plain, where exasperated mothers are sometimes in the habit of frightening their squalling children into silence by threatening to introduce them to Mammone—perhaps a corruption of the old Greek word mormo—a terrible ghost, that must be a near relation to the “Big Black Man” of English nurseries, who is ever ready to carry off naughty boys and girls in his sack.
Yet, if I were to locate the Sirens geographically, I should place the beneficent desires on this coast, and the dangerous ones on that of wicked Baiae; to which group the founder of Naples no doubt belonged. Nowhere, perhaps, can one come nearer to the beautiful myths of Greece, the springlike freshness of the idyllic and heroic age, than on this Sorrentine promontory.
No doubt the venerable Christian sanctuary there has been frequently repaired and modified; on the terrace-level to the south can be seen the foundations of an earlier chapel, and the slopes are littered with broken bricks, Sorrentine tufa, and old battuto floors.
From that time we became friends; and our friend has often stopped near our towers to visit us. To-day we found him in a boat by the side of the English admiral's ship; and, as an old acquaintance, he undertook to bring us to the Sorrentine shore, where we are at present staying with my mother's sister."
Ruggiero found out before long that his master for the summer was eccentric in his habits, judging from the Sorrentine point of view in regard to order and punctuality. Ruggiero's experience of fine gentlemen was limited indeed, but he could not believe that they all behaved like San Miniato, whose temper was apparently as changeable as his tastes.
As we thread our way along the road that curves round headland after headland, and is carried over sheer precipices whose base is lapped by the cool jade-green water, we begin to realize the essential difference between the Sorrentine shores we have left behind us, and the marvellous Costiera d’Amalfi we are now passing.
That is our first impression, as we glance across the broad sunlit enclosure on to the empurpled slopes of Vesuvius rising grandly above the broken columns of the great temple of the Capitoline Jove; behind us, we know, is the azure Bay with Capri and the Sorrentine cape lying on its unruffled bosom, so that we stand between sea and mountain to north and south, whilst we have the luxuriant slopes of Vesuvius to westward, and to the east the rich valley of the Sarno, thickly dotted with groves and hamlets.
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