The Reason May Be That This
Tint Is Too Common In Nature To Be Taken Note Of.
Or perhaps because
their chain of association between green and grass is periodically
broken up - our fields are always verdant, but theirs turn brown in
summer.
Trees they sometimes call yellow, as do some ancient writers;
but more generally "half-black" or "tree-colour." A beech in full leaf
has been described to me as black. "Rosso" does not mean red, but
rather dun or dingy; earth is rosso. When our red is to be signified,
they will use the word "turco," which came in with the well-known
dye-stuff of which the Turks once monopolized the secret. Thus there are
"Turkish" apples and "Turkish" potatoes. But "turco" may also mean
black - in accordance with the tradition that the Turks, the Saracens,
were a black race. Snakes, generally greyish-brown in these parts, are
described as either white or black; an eagle-owl is half-black; a
kestrel un quasi bianco. The mixed colours of cloths or silks are
either beautiful or ugly, and there's an end of it. It is curious to
compare this state of affairs with that existing in the days of Homer,
who was, as it were, feeling his way in a new region, and the propriety
of whose colour epithets is better understood when one sees things on
the spot. Of course I am only speaking of the humble peasant whose
blindness, for the rest, is not incurable.
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