Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/14

 dreaming, I seem to retain no trace of my waking individuality. In this dream I knew nothing, in respect to food, clothing, housing or any other of the circumstances of life, beyond what would have been known to an Italian condottiere of the fourteenth century. As the dream recurred I came to recognize it for a dream and, while experiencing it in my dream-personality, was able to look on, as it were, in my own personality and con the whole. I was over and over impressed with the entire absence of any feature inappropriate to the locality and period in which the dream seemed to belong, and struck with the uncanny raciness of the Italian in what was said to me. I never could, after waking, recall more than a word or two; but I retained and retain a distinct impression of knowing vastly more Italian in that dream (as in many other dreams) than I know in my proper person.

Stevenson, somewhere, writes of dream-words and of the warped and enhanced significance which real words take on in dreams. So in this. "Bauro," as far as I know, is no Italian name, nor an Italian word, at all. In the dream it appeared, somehow, a well-known dialectic variant of "paura," "fear," and seemed to imply Bauro's ferocity and the dread which he inspired universally.

The title of this tale is taken from a dream