Today is the festival of the Befana, when by tradition the Befana, who is a good witch, is supposed to come to all children and leave them sweets if they are good and coal (really a hard candy coloured black) if they are not. There are various legends about the origins of the Befana, generally attached to the story of the birth of Christ: she is supposed to have missed giving him gifts along with the Wise Men and now searches all over for him, leaving gifts as she goes, like a sort of a cross between the Wandering Jew and Father Christmas (who is Babbo Natale in Italian!). In another legend she was a mother who was driven mad by the death of her child and went to see the newborn Jesus in the belief that he was her child, she gave him presents and Jesus promised that as a reward she should be the mother of every child in the world (the cynical might call this a mixed blessing).
From a writing point of view, I love characters like this: eternal, immortal wanderers. I love that the Befana doesn’t stand out, unlike Father Christmas in his red suit and flashy sleigh. She isn’t a heroine or a super-woman, she’s simply one of the masses, she’s an ordinary old woman who supplements her pension with cleaning jobs – just by chance immortal, and a wanderer as all immortals would have to be. She’s someone you could walk past in a crowd, someone you might employ for a year or so, someone you might know through someone else – and you would never know, talking to her, that you’d just had a brush with the eternal.
I thought I’d start making a list of great immortal wanderers – and they do have to be immortal, so Odysseus doesn’t count! They have to be people that, in the logic of the story or the legend, you could brush past in a crowd today. I would love to know what other characters can be added to this.
1) Mary Poppins. Mary is the Befana, somehow. Not a cleaner, perhaps, but a nanny, and one who appears when needed, brings gifts of magical experiences and then disappears.
2) The Wandering Jew. Legend says this unfortunate person was rude to Christ when he was heading to execution, and in return was cursed with having to wander the earth till the Last Judgement.
3) Ashwatthama. Never heard of this guy before I googled him. Apparently he is a character in the Mahabharata (an absolutely fascinating epic, which I wish I had read – it’s going on my to-read list for 2011) who was cursed with carrying the burden of the world’s sins on his shoulders and roaming alone like a ghost forever. To add insult to injury, he had to do this with a great big oozing sore that never healed in the centre of his forehead. Harsh.
4) Jack O’Lantern. Not just a pretty face carved out of a pumpkin, an Irish legend tells of a farmer named Jack who persuaded the devil not to take his soul when he died. But he hadn’t been a good man, so God didn’t want it either. Poor Jack was thus doomed to wander on earth forever. In a touching twist, Jack said he had no light and wouldn’t be able to see his way. The devil tossed him a coal from Hell, and he carved out a pumpkin and put it inside to light his way.
(I’m not sure what one is supposed to learn from this story: that going to Hell is better than wandering the earth forever? Hmm.)
5) ‘She’ from Outside the World by Lucy Clifford. In this extraordinary and brilliant short story by the 19th century writer Lucy Clifford, ‘She’ is never named. She comes from a cottage outside the world, has no heart, and walks around trying to find the meaning of life. She is not successful. Just like the meaning of life, he meaning of this short story remains ambiguous and obscure. It might be a metaphor for the quest of the artist or writer to truly enter into the experience of others. It might be a metaphor for depression or autism. Then again, it might not.
Who else would you add to the list?
italy by mistake 
Doctor Who?