Italian Folktales (111 page)

Peppi got beneath one wing. The sun rose, and the serpent said, “Go on, Peppi, tell the sun what you have to tell him before he gets away.”

“O treacherous sun, only you could have betrayed me. You shouldn't have done so, traitor!”

“
I
betrayed you?” replied the sun. “No, it was not I. Do you know who did? Your wife, to whom you revealed your secret.”

“Well, excuse me, sun,” replied Peppi. “But there is a favor only you can do for me: if you would set at half-past twelve tonight, I could recover my possessions.”

“Of course, I'll gladly do you this favor.”

Peppi thanked him for everything and departed. Back home his wife had his broth waiting for him. He ate and then sat outside for a while. His princely brothers-in-law passed by and he called to them, “Brothers, let us make another bet.”

“Just what are you staking? Your property is all gone.”

“Well, I'll stake my life, and you two can put up my property.”

“Very well, then, you stake your life and we'll stake your property and also our own. But what, by the way, is this bet?”

Then Peppi said, “When does the sun set?”

“Of all things, he's gone mad and no longer knows when the sun sets!” the brothers-in-law told each other; to him they replied, “What? At half-past nine o'clock, that's when it sets!”

“Wrong! I say it sets at a half-past midnight!”

They had the agreement drawn up in writing, then proceeded to watch the sun. At half-past nine the sun was about to go down, when Peppi said to him, “O sun, is this how you keep the promise you made me?”

Then the sun remembered and, instead of setting, lingered on and on, up to half-past midnight.

“What did I tell you?” said Peppi.

“You are right,” replied the brothers-in-law, and gave him back his possessions at once along with their own.

“Now,” said Peppi, “I intend to show you the heart of a peasant”—as they still called him. He gathered up all their belongings and returned them, saying, “Take all of this back; I have no desire for the property of others, but only for my own.”

He went back to his old way of life with his wife. The king insisted on embracing him and, removing his crown, placed it on Peppi's head. The brothers-in-law, as one might expect, were furious, but what could they do? The following day there was a magnificent feast, with all the relatives present. Everyone was happy as course after course followed, concluding at long last with coffee, ices, and cassata. So goes the story of Peppi, who started out as a starving cowherd and ended up the wealthiest and happiest of kings.

 

(
Salaparuta
)

173

The parents of a certain little boy were very loyal to St. Michael the Archangel. They never let a year pass without celebrating his feast. The father died, and the mother continued to keep St. Michael's day every year with the little money she had left. Then came a year when she found herself penniless and with nothing more to sell in order to observe the feast. She therefore took the child off to sell to the king.

“Majesty,” she said to the king, “will you buy this little boy of mine? I'm asking only twelve crowns, or whatever you want to give me for him, just so I can keep St. Michael's day.”

The king gave her one hundred gold pieces and kept the little boy. Then he got to thinking. Just imagine, this poor woman has sold her own son so as to be able to honor St. Michael the Archangel, while here I am king and pay him no honor at all. He therefore had a chapel built, bought a statue of St. Michael the Archangel, and celebrated his feast. But once the feast was over, he threw a veil over the statue and thought no more about the saint.

The little boy, whose name was Peppi, grew up in the palace and played with the king's daughter, who was his age exactly. They were always together, and when they got older, they fell in love. The councilors noticed it and said to the king, “Majesty, what's going to happen? You certainly won't marry your daughter to that poor fellow, will you?”

The king replied, “What can I do? Can I send him away?”

“Follow our advice,” said the councilors. “Send him on a trading expedition in your oldest and ricketiest boat. Give the order for him to be abandoned on the open sea. He will drown, and our problem is solved.”

The king liked the idea, so he said to Peppi, “Listen, you are to go on a trading expedition. You have three days to load your boat.”

The boy spent the night wondering what cargo he'd best put aboard the vessel. No ideas came to him the first night nor the second. He thought and thought the third night, and finally called on St. Michael the Archangel. St. Michael appeared and said to him, “Don't be discouraged. Tell the king to have your boat loaded with salt.”

The next morning Peppi got up in the best of spirits. The king asked him, “Well, Peppi, did you decide on something?”

“I would like Your Majesty to give me a boatload of salt.”

The councilors smiled to themselves. “Perfect! With that cargo, the boat will sink right away!”

The boat sailed off, loaded with salt and towing a smaller vessel.

“What's that one?” Peppi asked the captain.

“Oh, that concerns me,” answered the captain.

In point of fart, as soon as they reached the open sea, the captain got into the smaller boat, said “Good night,” and left Peppi all by himself.

Peppi's boat started leaking and threatened to sink at any moment in the rough sea. “Dear Mother!” called Peppi. “Dear Lord! St. Michael the Archangel! Help me!” In a flash appeared a solid gold ship, with St. Michael the Archangel at the helm. Peppi grabbed the rope they threw him and tied his boat to St. Michael's, which sped over the sea like a bolt of lightning and glided into an unknown port.

“Do you come in the cause of peace, or in the cause of war?” voices on shore asked.

“In the cause of peace!” said Peppi, who was then allowed to land.

The king of that country extended Peppi and his companion an invitation to dinner (without knowing that the companion was St. Michael).

“Mind you,” said St. Michael to Peppi, “they don't know what salt is in this land.” Peppi therefore carried along a bag of it to the palace.

They sat down to the king's table and started eating, but nothing had any taste to it. Peppi said, “Why on earth, Majesty, is your food like this?”

“That's what we are used to,” replied the king.

Peppi then sprinkled a little salt over everybody's food. “See how it tastes now, Majesty.”

The king took a few bites and exclaimed, “Delicious! Delicious! Have you much of this stuff?”

“A whole boatload.”

“What are you charging for it?”

“An equal weight of gold.”

“In that case I'll buy the entire load.”

“Agreed.”

After dinner they had the salt unloaded and weighed. In one pan of the scales they put salt, in the other they put gold. So Peppi loaded his boat with gold and, after plugging up the leaks, sailed away.

The king's daughter spent her days on the balcony with her telescope trained on the horizon as she waited for Peppi to come back to her. Catching sight of the boat, she went running to her father. “Papa, Peppi's back! Peppi's back!”

As soon as he landed, Peppi greeted the king and then began unloading all that gold. The councilors were livid with rage and said to the king, “Majesty, this is more than we bargained for.”

“What can I do about it?” said the king.

“Send him on another expedition.”

So, a few days later, the king told him to be thinking of another cargo, as he was to go out again. After some thought, Peppi called on St. Michael, who said, “Have a ship loaded with cats.”

In order to supply Peppi with cats, the king issued a proclamation:
LET ALL THOSE PERSONS OWNING CATS BRING THEM TO THE ROYAL PALACE, AND THE KING WILL BUY THEM
.

The boat was soon loaded with cats and went meowing across the sea.

When they got farther out to sea than the first time, the captain said “Good night” and took his leave. The boat began sinking, and Peppi called on St. Michael the Archangel. In a flash the gold boat was there and, with lightning speed, towed him to an unknown port, where a delegation met them to see if they had come in the cause of peace or of war. “In the cause of peace,” the two said, and were immediately invited to dinner by the king.

By each person's plate lay a whisk broom. “What are they for?”

“You'll see in just a minute,” answered the king.

The food was brought in, and in rushed a horde of rats that jumped up on the table and made for the dishes. Each of the guests was supposed to drive them away with the whisk brooms, but that did no good because the rats only came right back and in such numbers that everybody was helpless.

Then St. Michael said to Peppi, “Open the sack you brought along.” Peppi untied the sack and let out four cats, which pounced on the rats and tore them to bits.

Overjoyed, the king exclaimed, “What wonderful little creatures! Do you have many?”

“A whole boatload.”

“Are you asking a fortune for them?”

“Just their weight in gold.”

“Perfect!” The king bought the entire lot of them, and into one plate of the scales went the cats while into the other went the gold. So again, once the boat had been repaired, Peppi sailed home with a boatload of gold.

Waiting for him at the port was the king's daughter dancing for joy. The porters unloaded gold and gold and more gold, the king was in a dilemma, and the councilors were livid with rage. They said to the king, “Twice we've failed. The third time we'll get him. Let him rest a week, then send him off again.”

This time when Peppi called him, St. Michael said, “Have them load a boat with beans.”

When the boat loaded with beans was about to sink, the usual gold
vessel showed up, and before you knew it Peppi and St. Michael were putting in somewhere else.

The ruler of this city was a queen, who invited them both to dinner. After dinner the queen pulled out a deck of cards and said, “Shall we play a round?” So they began a game of lansquenet. The queen was a champion player and had all the men who lost to her imprisoned in a dungeon.

But there was no way St. Michael could lose, and the queen realized that if she continued to play she would forfeit everything she owned.

She therefore said, “I am declaring war on you.” They agreed on the time of the war, and the queen drew up all her troops. St. Michael and Peppi were an army of only two, and they rushed into battle with their swords pitted against all the others. But St. Michael the Archangel produced a mighty gust of wind that stirred up a thick cloud of dust. Nobody could see a thing, and St. Michael slipped up to the queen and cut off her head with his sword.

When the dust finally settled and everyone saw the queen's head severed from her body, a shout of joy went up, for she was a queen nobody could stand, and the men said to St. Michael, “We choose Your Honor for our king!”

St. Michael said, “I am king in other parts. Choose your king from among yourselves.”

They made an iron cage for the queen's head and hung it up at a street corner, while St. Michael and Peppi descended into the dungeon to free the prisoners. It was crowded with bad-smelling, starving people, and on the ground lay dead bodies alongside the living. Peppi threw out handful after handful of beans, and the men scrambled for them and gulped them down like animals. That way St. Michael and Peppi revived the men, made bean soup for them, and sent them all home.

Beans were unknown in that city, so Peppi sold his for their weight in gold. Then with a boatload of gold and an escort of soldiers at his command, he sailed home, announcing his arrival with a volley of cannon fire.

This time the gold boat as well came into port, and the king welcomed St. Michael the Archangel. At dinner St. Michael said to the king, “Majesty, you have a statue which you honored on a single feast day and then left to gather cobwebs. Why was that? Did you perhaps lack money?”

The king said, “Oh, yes, that's St. Michael the Archangel. I'd completely forgotten.”

Then St. Michael said, “Let's go see the statue.”

They got to the chapel and found the statue covered with mold. The
stranger said, “I am St. Michael the Archangel and I ask you, Majesty, why you have wronged me like this.”

The king fell to his knees and said, “Pardon me. Tell me how I can serve you! From now on, your feast will be the most lavishly celebrated of all!”

The saint replied, “You will celebrate the marriage of your daughter and Peppi, since these two young people are meant to become man and wife.”

So Peppi married the king's daughter and became king in his turn.

 

(
Salaparuta
)

174

It is told that once there was a cobbler with three daughters—Peppa, Nina, and Nunzia. They were as poor as church mice, and although the cobbler went about the countryside to mend shoes, he couldn't make a cent. Seeing him come home empty-handed, his wife cried, “Wretch! What will I put in the pot today?” He was tired and said to his daughter Nunzia, who was the youngest, “Listen, will you come with me to get something to make soup with?”

They went off through the fields to pick herbs for soup. They got to the end of a field and, looking for herbs, Nunzia discovered a fenneltop so big that for all she tugged at it she was unable to uproot it and had to call her father. “Father! Father! Just look at what I've found. But I can't pull it up!”

Her father also tried and tried; the fennel came up and, underneath, a trapdoor stood open. At the door appeared a handsome youth, who said, “Lovely maiden, what are you looking for?”