Italian Folktales (53 page)

As he was anxious to get that eye corrected, the giant consented to being tied to the marble table. When he was all bound up like a sausage, the Florentine poured the pot of boiling oil into his eyes, blinding him. Then in a flash he was down the steps, rejoicing to himself. “This, too, will I relate!”

The giant let out a howl that shook the whole house, jumped up with the marble table bound to his back, and ran after the man as best he could. But realizing he would never catch him now, he fell back on a trick. “Florentine!” he yelled. “O Florentine! Why are you running away from me? Don't you want to finish the operation? How much will you take to finish it? Would you like this ring?” He threw him a ring. It was an enchanted ring.

“How about that!” said the Florentine. “I'll take this back to Florence and show it to anybody who doesn't believe me!” But he'd no sooner picked it up and slipped it on than his finger turned to marble and weighted him completely to the ground. There he lay motionless, for the finger weighed tons and tons. He vainly tried to pull his finger out of the ring, but it stuck fast to him. The giant was almost upon him. At his wit's end, the Florentine pulled out his pocketknife and cut off the finger. That way he escaped and the giant caught him no more.

He reached Florence with his tongue hanging out, and gone forever was his urge not only to travel far and wide but also to talk about his journeys. As for the finger, he said he had cut it off mowing the grass.

 

(
Pisa
)

77

There was a king in Naples who had three sons. Being an old man, he decided to give his eldest son the queen of Scotland as a wife. Shortly after his son's marriage the old king died, and the son inherited the throne. But the other two brothers could not bear being ruled by him, and their hatred grew to the point that they resolved to kill him. They thought of all the ways to do so, and finally one of them suggested, “Let's set fire to the palace. Everyone inside, including the king, will perish. Then we'll build ourselves another palace.” So the two of them, in league with other rogues in the city, formed a plot to burn down the royal palace. But one of the conspirators had a change of heart and turned the king's spy. Seeing that, the other conspirators realized they hadn't a minute to lose, so they surrounded the palace and set fire to it.

When the queen, who happened to be downstairs, saw the flames, she leaped from the window into the garden with Elizabeth, her maid of honor. At the end of the garden was a door, through which they passed into safety. From a distance the palace was seen going up in smoke and flames along with all those who were trapped inside.

The two women entered a forest. They walked the whole day, but the queen, who was expecting a baby, grew very tired. Toward evening they ran into twelve murderers. “You women there! What are you doing in this forest?”

“Misfortune has driven us here,” answered the queen.

The murderers seized the maid of honor, bound her to a tree, and left her there, while they took the queen home with them to keep house and cook for them. They also showed her their medicine cabinet, in case they should ever come in wounded. One day when the queen was by herself and looking in the cabinet, she found a bottle labeled
POISON: CAUSES DEATH WITHIN TWELVE HOURS
. She took the bottle and sprinkled all the food with its contents. When the murders came home to dinner, she put everything on the table and fled. Off their guard, the murderers ate and were poisoned to death.

The queen went through the forest looking for her maid of honor, but found no trace of her, near or far. She was tired and in pain. In the heart of the forest she came upon a hollow tree, went in to rest, and all at once labor pains started, and she gave birth to a boy. She stayed inside the tree all night nursing him. In the morning two shepherds passing by heard the baby crying and went up to the tree. Seeing the woman with the newborn baby, they gave her their assistance, carried her home with them, and said, “Here you will be the lady of the house, and we will provide for you.” So the queen, with her little son, dwelled in the shepherds' house, while back in Naples her two treacherous brothers-in-law lived in their newly built palace and reigned undisturbed.

The shepherds were rich and had a big house. One day while they were out, the queen decided to look around.

She opened a door and saw a very long flight of stairs. Climbing it, she came to a door already ajar and pushed it open. There sat a pensive youth, with his face in his hands. The queen made a move to withdraw, but he raised his head and told her to come in. They asked each other how they happened to be in that house, and told each other their stories.

“I am the son of the king of Portugal,” said the youth. “My father and his chamberlain both got married the same day. The day I was born, the chamberlain's wife gave birth to a baby girl. From the beginning, we children were together, and as we grew up we fell in love with each other. No one knew about our love, but I swore I would never go to the altar with any girl but my lovely Adelaide. Meanwhile my father had grown old and decided to marry me off. He sent ambassadors to the queen of England to conclude the marriage. I didn't have the courage to say I loved Adelaide and let the negotiations continue. One day I was finally forced to tell her I was about to marry another girl. No memory is more bitter to me than the pain and wrath of my beloved on hearing my confession. Hopeless and indignant, she dismissed me, and I deserved it. Meanwhile my father went on with lavish preparations for the wedding. He had three entrances made into the banquet hall: one for princes, one for maids of honor, and one for pages. During the ceremony the bride observed my distress.

“‘Listen,' she said to me, ‘if you are not marrying me of your own free will, I'll gladly go back home.'”

“With courtesy, I told her I was gloomy by nature. And I married her. After the wedding we took our places on the throne. The whole court filed by, with all the princes advancing through one door, maids of honor through another, and pages through the third. The last page was a lad dressed in white, with a large bouquet of flowers. He came to the foot of the throne, bowed, and mounted the steps to offer the flowers to the bride. As she reached out for them, the little page drew a dagger from the flowers and stabbed her right there on the throne beside me. The page was seized by the guards and carried before my father. No sooner did he Stand before the king than he drew out a second dagger and planted it in his own heart. Upon trying to revive him, they discovered the page was a woman; I bent over her and immediately recognized Adelaide, who was already dead.

“Upset as I was at the time, I told my father the reason for her vengeance. When he heard my account, my father, the sternest of men, ordered me locked up in a tower and the keys thrown into the sea. There I remained until I managed to slide down a long rope and flee into the forest. After walking for miles I came to a hollow tree trunk and fell asleep inside it. The next morning I was awakened by two shepherds who took pity on me and brought me here, where they treat me like a son. But tell me how you ended up in this house.”

The queen therefore told her story, and they both realized they were persecuted by fate. “Listen,” said the prince, “since death claimed your husband and my wife and chance brought us together, let's get married. We'll ask the shepherds for two horses and go to Scotland, your homeland.”

The queen agreed, and they asked the shepherds, who had come home in the meantime, for two horses, promising to knight the men for all their kindness. The shepherds let out two horses, and the prince took the queen's child into his saddle and they departed.

They had to go over the mountains, and the trail was full of perils. The queen's horse suddenly shied, took a false step, and went plunging into the ravines below. The poor prince saw this as one more instance of the misfortune that plagued him. Broken-hearted, he continued on to Scotland with the baby and tidings of what had happened to the queen.

But she was not dead. She had gone over the cliff, but landed on soft ground. Although bruised, she was alive. Regaining her senses, she looked about her and, in the midst of the precipices, spied a cottage. She approached it and knocked, but no one answered. She later returned when it grew dark, and knocked again; but there was still no answer. She settled down to wait. Around midnight a man covered with hair arrived carrying on his back a load of dead animals.

“What are you doing here?” he asked the queen.

“I'm seeking shelter for tonight.”

The hairy man knocked, and this time his wife opened the door. The queen stepped into the dark house, and they gave her a place to sleep. In the morning the hairy man went out hunting, and his wife brought the queen a cup of broth. Seeing the woman in the light, the queen exclaimed, “Elizabeth!” And the hairy man's wife said, “Yes, I'm Elizabeth.”

She was the queen's own maid of honor. The hairy man had found her tied to the tree where the murderers had left her, and brought her home with him. Every night he came in from hunting with animals for her to skin. But he was unkind to her because she would not love him.

The two women embraced and made a big to-do over each other, telling their stories in turn. “But how are we going to get away from here?” asked the queen. “Have you no opium?”

“Yes, I can get some,” replied Elizabeth.

They drugged the hairy man's wine and, once he was sleeping, killed and buried him.

At the bottom of the mountain was a door that led directly into Scotland, and the key to the door was in the possession of the hairy man. Elizabeth got it, opened the door, and she and the queen walked through it into Scotland. On seeing the queen, who had twice been reported dead, all of Scotland was overjoyed. The queen's father was glad to give his daughter to the prince of Portugal, but before celebrating the wedding, he wanted to make war on the two usurpers reigning in Naples. He dispatched ambassadors to ask the prince's father to be his ally, and the king of Portugal provided him with a good-sized army.

Before leaving for war, all the generals gathered round the throne to swear allegiance. Beside the king stood the two betrothed as the generals each stepped forward to present their swords. When it was the general of Portugal's turn, the queen suddenly dashed from the throne and hugged and kissed the general, and they both fainted. She had recognized him as her husband, the king of Naples, who had not died in the fire, but fled from his brothers and enlisted under a false name in the service of the king of Portugal.

Then the queen said to the prince, “I can't marry you, since this is my husband right here. But Elizabeth, my maid of honor, is the daughter of the king of Spain and would be fully worthy of you.”

The prince agreed, and they sent for the king of Portugal, under the pretext that his general was ailing. The king came, and seeing his son alive whom he had given up for lost, he was greatly moved and apologized for having shut him up in the tower.

They attacked, vanquished, and put to death the usurpers of Naples, returning the throne to the king and his queen and little son. Elizabeth married the prince of Portugal, and from then on there was no more misfortune.

 

(
Pisa
)

78

There was once a king who had three daughters. The oldest was in love with the baker who brought bread to the palace, and the baker Was in love with her. But how was he to ask for her hand? He went to the king's secretary and explained the situation to him.

“Have you lost your mind?” exclaimed the secretary. “The idea of a baker falling in love with the king's daughter! Heaven help you if the king should find out!”

“That's just why I came to see you,” replied the baker, “so you could prepare him for the news.”

“Heaven help us both!” sighed the secretary, putting his hands to his head. “I wouldn't dream of telling the king. He would be furious and punish me as well as you.”

But the baker was a persistent youth and kept after the secretary day in day out to talk to the king. To get rid of him, the secretary at last said, “Very well, I'll speak to His Majesty; but mark my words, no good will come of it!”

Availing himself of a day when the king was in a good humor, he said, “Majesty, if you permit, I would like to tell you something, provided you promise not to become angry with me.”

“Go right ahead,” replied the king, and the secretary repeated the baker's speech.

The king turned pale. “What! How can you be so bold? Guards! Here! Seize him!” They were already on the way out with the poor secretary when the king recalled his promise not to be angry with him, so he ordered his three daughters seized instead and kept on bread and water.

He confined them for six months. Then he decided he ought to let them get a little air and sent them out in a closed carriage with servants for a drive along the highway. When they had gone halfway, the road was suddenly enveloped in heavy fog, out of which stepped a sorcerer. He opened the carriage door, pulled the three girls out, and carried them off with him.

When the fog lifted, the servants found the carriage empty. They called and called and searched and searched, but to no avail. They returned to the palace empty-handed, and all the king could do was issue a proclamation: whoever found the three girls would be allowed to choose one of them for his wife.

The baker, who had been driven from the palace at once, joined two friends to travel about the world. One evening, in a forest, they found a house all lit up. They knocked, and the door swung open by itself. They went in and up the stairs, but no one was in sight. There was, however, a table laid for three, with supper ready and waiting. They sat down and ate, then found three bedrooms with beds turned down for the night, so they got into them and went to sleep.