Sacred Texts: Wicca and Neo-Paganism

Part One: Chapter III--FERONIA

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This is a chapter of comparative folklore scholarship, likely from Charles Godfrey Leland's *Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition* (1892), working in the tradition of late-19th-century mythological survivalism. The central argument is that ancient Roman-Etruscan deities — specifically Feronia (goddess of markets and the underworld) and Silvianus (god of forests) — survive not as dim literary memories but as living, feared spirits among contemporary Tuscan peasants, with their ancient attributes largely intact. The author documents this by juxtaposing classical sources (Livy, Strabo, Virgil, Horace, Müller) with folk legends and incantations he collected directly from Tuscan informants, showing point-for-point correspondences: Feronia's ancient role as protector of the poor and recipient of offerings maps onto a wandering beggar-witch who rewards the charitable and curses the stingy. A distinctive and polemical claim runs throughout: mainstream historians of the Mommsen school dismiss legends too readily by nitpicking details, whereas the author insists that living rural myth — not the sanitized Märchen sought by most folklorists — constitutes genuine evidence of unbroken religious continuity from antiquity. The piece is of interest to anyone studying the intersection of classical religion, folk magic, and 19th-century folklore methodology, particularly the thesis that pre-Christian goddess figures persisted in Italian peasant belief well into the modern era.

Part One: Chapter III--FERONIA

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