Strazze Ferrut — collector of scrap iron — Zompini — Arti #30

Gaetano Zompini - Arti che vanno per via - plate 30 - Strazze Ferrut - collector of used iron objects

Strazze Ferrut — plate 30

The Arti che vanno per via nella città di Venezia (1753, 1770, 1785, etc.), by Gaetano Zompini (1700–1778), contains sixty engravings of common, mostly poor people, peddling their trades on the streets of Venice in the mid-1700s.

Text

Col saco, un cesto, una stagiera, e bezzi
In scarsella, mi crio strazze ferut,
E compro pezze vechie, e fero in pezzi.

Translation

With a sack, a basket, and a balance and small change
In the pocket, I cry iron rags,
And I buy old objects, and pieces of iron.

Notes

Generally, strazze means rags, but it can also mean anything to be recycled. Ferut is iron, so strazzeferut is scrap iron to be recycled, and also the person collecting it.

A stagiera (or staliera) is a balance to weight the iron.

A bezzi (plur. bezzi) was a copper coin worth half a soldo.

Scarsea (scarsella) means a pocket.

See Boerio (1829), entries STRAZZEFERUT, STALIERA, BEZZO.

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Bibliography

Boerio, Giuseppe. Dizionario del dialetto veneziano. Venezia : coi tipi di Andrea Santini e figlio, 1829.

Zompini, Gaetano. Le arti che vanno per via nella città di Venezia inventate ed incise da Gaetano Zompini, Aggiuntavi una memoria di detto autore. Venezia, 1785.

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