THE ROOT.

THE ROOT.There was a rich count who married an extravagant wife. As he had plenty of money he let her spend whatever she liked. But he had no idea what a woman could spend, and very much surprised was he when he found that dressmakers,and milliners, and hairdressers, and shoemakers had made such a hole in his fortune that there was very little left. He saw it was high time to look after it, and he ventured to tender some words of remonstrance; but the moment he began to speak about it she went into hysterics. There was such a dreadful scene that he feared to approach the subject again, but the matter became so serious that at last he was obliged to do so. The least allusion, however, brought on another fit of hysterics.What was he to do? To go on at this extravagant rate was impossible; equally impossible was it to endure the terrible scenes which ensued when he attempted to make her more careful.At last he went to a doctor whom he knew, and asked him if he could give him any remedy for hysterics, telling him the whole story of what he wanted it for.‘Oh, yes!’ replied the doctor; ‘I have an infallible cure. It is a certain root which must be applied very sharply to the back of the neck. If it doesn’t succeed with the first half-dozen applications, you must go on till it does. It never fails in the end.’ So saying, he gave him a stout root, as thick as a walking stick, with a knobbed end.Strong with the promised remedy, the husband went home, and sent word to all the dressmakers, milliners, hairdressers, and shoemakers that he would pay for nothing more except what he ordered himself. Indeed he met the shoemaker on the step of the door, who had just come to take the measure for a pair of velvet slippers.‘Don’t bring them,’ he said; ‘she has seven or eight pairs already, and that is quite enough.’Then he went up to his wife, and told her what he had done. Such a scene of hysterics as he had never imagined before awaited him now, but he, full of confidence in his remedy, took no notice further than to go upto her and apply the root very smartly to the back of her neck as he had been directed.‘But to me it seems that was all one with beating her with a stick,’ exclaimed another old woman who was sitting in the room knitting.‘Of course! That’s just the fun of it!’ replied the narrator. ‘And the beauty of it was that he was so simple that he thought it was some virtue in the root that was to effect the cure.’The hysterics stopped, and he ran off to the doctor to thank him for the capital remedy. The wife ran off, too, and went to her friends crying with terrible complaints that her husband would not allow her a single thing to put on, and, moreover, had even been beating her.When the count got back from the doctor, he found the father and half the family there ready to abuse him for making his wife go about with nothing on, and beating her into the bargain.‘It is all a mistake,’ said the count. ‘I will allow her everything that is right, only I will order myself what I pay for; and, as to beating her, I only applied this root which I got from the doctor to cure hysterics; nothing more.’‘Oh! it’s a case of hysterics is it!’ said the father; ‘then it is all quite right,’ and he and the rest went away; and the count and his wife got on very well after that, and he never had to make use of the doctor’s root again.THE QUEEN AND THE TRIPE-SELLER.1They say there was a queen who had such a bad temper that she made everybody about her miserable. Whatever her husband might do to please her, she was always discontented, and as for her maids she was always slapping their faces.There was a fairy who saw all this, and she said to herself, ‘This must not be allowed to go on;’ so she went and called another fairy, and said, ‘What shall we do to teach this naughty queen to behave herself?’ and they could not imagine what to do with her; so they agreed to think it over, and meet again another day.When they met again, the first fairy said to the other, ‘Well, have you found any plan for correcting this naughty queen?’‘Yes,’ replied the second fairy; ‘I have found an excellent plan. I have been up and all over the whole town, and in a little dirty back lane2I have found a tripe-seller as like to this queen as two peas.’3‘Excellent!’ exclaimed the first fairy. ‘I see what you mean to do. One of us will take some of the queen’s clothes and dress up the tripe-seller, and the other will take some of the tripe-seller’s clothes and dress up the queen in them, and then we will exchange them till the queen learns better manners.’‘That’s the plan,’ replied the second fairy. ‘You have said it exactly. When shall we begin?’‘This very night,’ said the first fairy.‘Agreed!’ said the second fairy; and that very night, while everyone else was gone quietly to bed they went, one into the palace and fetched some of the queen’s clothes, and, bringing them to the tripe-seller’s room, placed them by the side of her bed; and the other went to the tripe-seller’s room and fetched her clothes, and took them and put them by the side of the queen’s bed. They also woke them very early, and when each got up she put on the things that were by the side of the bed, thinking they were the things she had left there the night before. Thus the queen was dressed like a tripe-seller, and the tripe-seller like a queen.Then one fairy took the queen, dressed like a tripe-seller, and put her down in the tripe-seller’s shop, and theother fairy took the tripe-seller, dressed like a queen, and placed her in the palace, and both of them did their work so swiftly that neither the queen nor the tripe-seller perceived the flight at all.The queen was very much astonished at finding herself in a tripe-shop, and began staring about, wondering how she got there.‘Here! Don’t stand gaping about like that!’ cried the tripe-man,4who was a very hot-tempered fellow; ‘Why, you haven’t boiled the coffee!’‘Boiled the coffee!’ repeated the queen, hardly apprehending what he meant.‘Yes; you haven’t boiled the coffee!’ said the tripe-man. ‘Don’t repeat my words, but do your work!’ and he took her by the shoulders, put the coffee-pot in her hand, and stood over her looking so fierce that she was frightened into doing what she had never done or seen done in all her life before.Presently the coffee began to boil over.‘There! Don’t waste all the coffee like that!’ cried the tripe-man, and he got up and gave her a slap, which made the tears come in her eyes.‘Don’t blubber!’ said the tripe-man; ‘but bring the coffee here and pour it out.’The queen did as she was told; but when she began to drink it, though she had made it herself, it was so nasty she didn’t know how to drink it. It was very different stuff from what she got at the palace; but the tripe-man had his eye on her, and she didn’t dare not to drink it.‘A halfp’th of cat’s-meat!’5sang out a small boy in the shop.‘Why don’t you go and serve the customer?’ said the tripe-man, knocking the cup out of the queen’s hand.Fearing another slap, she rose hastily to give the boy what he wanted, but not knowing one thing in the shopfrom another, she gave him a large piece of the best tripe fit for a prince.‘Oh, what fine tripe to-day!’ cried the small boy, and ran away as fast as he could.It was in vain the tripe-man halloed after him, he was in too great a hurry to secure his prize to think of returning.‘Look what you’ve done!’ cried the tripe-man, giving the queen another slap; ‘you’ve given that boy for a penny a bunch of tripe worth a shilling.’ Luckily, other customers came in and diverted the man’s attention.Presently all the tripe hanging up had been sold, and more customers kept coming in.‘What has come to you, to-day!’ roared the tripe-man, as the queen stood not knowing what to do with herself. ‘Do you mean to say you haven’t washed that other lot of tripe!’ and this time he gave her a kick.To escape his fury, the queen turned to do her best with washing the other tripe, but she did it so awkwardly that she got a volley of abuse and blows too.Then came dinner-time, and nothing prepared, or even bought to prepare, for dinner. Another stormy scene ensued at the discovery, and the tripe-man went to dine at the inn, leaving her to go without any dinner at all, in punishment for having neglected to prepare it.While he was gone she helped all the customers to the wrong things, and, when he came home, got another scolding and more blows for her stupidity. And all through the afternoon it was the same story.But the tripe-seller, when she found herself all in a palace, with half-a-dozen maids waiting to attend her, was equally bewildered. When they kept asking her if there was nothing she pleased to want, she kept answering, ‘No thank you,’ in such a gentle tone, the maids began to think that a reign of peace had come to them at last.By-and-by, when the ladies came, instead of saying, asthe queen had been wont, ‘What an ugly dress you have got; go and take it off!’ she said, ‘How nice you look; how tasteful your dress is!’Afterwards the king came in, bringing her a rare nosegay. Instead of throwing it on one side to vex him, as the queen had been wont, she showed so much delight, and expressed her thanks so many times, that he was quite overcome.The change that had come over the queen soon became the talk of the whole palace, and everyone congratulated himself on an improvement which made them all happy. The king was no less pleased than all the rest, and for the first time for many years he said he would drive out with the queen; for on account of her bad temper he had long given up driving with her. So the carriage came round with four prancing horses, and an escort of cavalry to ride before and behind it. The tripe-seller hardly could believe she was to drive in this splendid carriage, but the king handed her in before she knew where she was. Then, as he was so pleased with her gentle and grateful ways, he further asked her to say which way she would like to drive.The tripe-seller, partly because she was too much frightened to think of any other place, and partly because she thought it would be nice to drive in state through her own neighbourhood, named the broader street out of which turned the lane in which she lived, for the royal carriage could hardly have turned down the lane itself. The king repeated the order, and away drove the royalcortège.The circumstance of the king and queen driving out together was sufficient to excite the attention of the whole population, and wherever they passed the people crowded into the streets; thus a volley of shouts and comments ran before the carriage towards the lane of the tripe-man. The tripe-man was at the moment engaged in administering a severe chastisement to the queen forher latest mistake, and the roar of the people’s voices afforded a happy pretext for breaking away from him.She ran with the rest to the opening of the lane just as the royal carriage was passing.‘My husband! my husband!’ she screamed as the king drove by, and plaintive as was her voice, and different from her usual imperious tone, he heard it and turned his head towards her.‘My husband! my royal husband!’ pleaded the humbled queen.The king, in amazement, stopped the carriage and gazed from the queen in the gutter to the tripe-seller in royal array by his side, unable to solve the problem.‘This is certainly my wife!’ he said at last, as he extended his hand to the queen. ‘Who then can you be?’ he added, addressing the tripe-seller.‘I will tell the truth,’ replied the good tripe-seller. ‘I am no queen; I am the poor wife of the tripe-seller down the lane there; but how I came into the palace is more than I can say.’‘And how come you here?’ said the king, addressing the real queen.‘That, neither can I tell; I thought you had sent me hither to punish me for my bad temper; but if you will only take me back I will never be bad-tempered again; only take me away from this dreadful tripe-man, who has been beating me all day.’Then the king made answer: ‘Of course you must come back with me, for you are my wife. But,’ he said to the tripe-seller; ‘what shall I do with you? After you have been living in luxury in the palace, you will feel it hard to go back to sell tripe.’‘It’s true I have not many luxuries at home,’ answered the tripe-seller; ‘but yet I had rather be with my husband than in any palace in the world;’ and she descended from the carriage, while the queen got in.‘Stop!’ said the king. ‘This day’s transformation, howsoever it was brought about, has been a good day, and you have been so well behaved, and so truth-spoken, I don’t like your going back to be beaten by the tripe-man.’‘Oh, never mind that,’ said the good wife; ‘he never beats me unless I do something very stupid. And, after all, he’s my husband, and that’s enough for me.’‘Well, if you’re satisfied, I won’t interfere any further,’ said the king; ‘except to give you some mark of my royal favour.’So he bestowed on the tripe-man and his wife a beautiful villa, with a nice casino outside the gates, on condition that he never beat her any more.The tripe-man was so pleased with the gifts which had come to him through his wife’s good conduct, that he kept his word, and was always thereafter very kind to her. And the queen was so frightened at the thought that she might find herself suddenly transformed into a tripe-seller again, that she kept a strict guard over her temper, and became the delight of her husband and the whole court.1‘La Regina e la Triparola;’‘Triparola,’ female tripe-seller.↑2‘Vicolo,’ a narrow dirty street.↑3‘Due gocciette d’acqua,’ two little drops of water, the Roman equivalent for ‘as like as two peas.’↑4‘Triparolo,’ a male tripe-seller.↑5‘Un bajocco di tripa-gatto,’ the worst part of the tripe, sold for cats’ and dogs’ meat.↑THE BAD-TEMPERED QUEEN.1They say there was a queen who was so bad-tempered that no one who could help it would come near her. All the servants ran away when she came out of her apartment, for fear she should scold and maltreat them; all the people ran away when she drove out, for fear she should vex them with some tyrannical order.As she was rich and beautiful, and ruled over vast dominions, many princes—who in their distant kingdoms had heard nothing of her failing—came to sue for her hand, but she sent them all away and would have nothing to say to any of them. She used to say she did not want to have anyone to be her master; she had rather live and govern by herself, and have everything her own way.As time went on, however, the council of state grew dissatisfied with this resolution. They insisted that she must marry, that there might be a family of princes to carry on the succession to the throne without dispute. When the queen found that she could not help it she agreed she would marry; but she was determined she would not marry any of the princes who had come to court her, because, as they were equal to herself in birth and state, they would want to rule over her and expect obedience from her. She declared she would marry no one but a certain duke, who, as she had observed in the council and in the state banquets and balls, was always very quiet and hardly ever spoke at all. She thought he would make a nice quiet manageable sort of husband, and she would have him if she must have one at all.The duke was as silent as usual when he was spoken to about it; but as he made no objection he was reckoned to have consented, and the marriage was duly solemnised.As soon as the marriage was over the queen went on making her arrangements and ordering matters in the palace just as if nothing had happened, and she were still her own mistress. In particular she issued invitations for the grandest ball she had ever given, asking to it all the ministers and their families, and all the nobility of the kingdom.The husband said nothing to all this, only a few hours before the time appointed for the banquet he called to the queen, saying: ‘Put on your travelling dress, and make haste; the carriage will be round directly.’‘I’m not going to put on my travelling dress,’ answered the queen scornfully; ‘I am just seeing about my evening dress for the banquet this evening.’‘If you are not ready in your travelling dress in five minutes, when the carriage comes round, it will be worse for you. Mind I have warned you.’And he looked so determined that she quailed before him.‘How can we be going into the country, when I have invited half the kingdom to a banquet?’ exclaimed the queen.‘Ihave invited no one,’ answered the husband quietly. ‘Don’t stand hesitating when I tell you to do a thing; go and get ready directly! we are going into the country!’ he added in his most positive voice, and, though she shed many secret tears over the loss of the banquet, she ventured to oppose nothing more to his orders, but went up and dressed, and when the carriage came round she was nearly ready. In about five minutes she came down.‘I won’t say anything this time about your keeping me waiting,’ he said when she appeared; ‘but mind it does not happen again, or you will be sorry for it.’The queen had a favourite little dog, which she fondled and talked to all the way, to show she was offended with her husband and independent of his conversation.Watching an opportunity when she was silent, the husband said to the little dog, ‘Jump on to my lap.’‘He’s not going to obey you,’ said the queen contemptuously; ‘he’smydog!’‘I keep no one about me who does not obey me,’ said her husband quietly; and he took out his pistol and shot the dog through the head.The queen began to understand that the husband she had chosen was not a person to be trifled with, nor did she venture even to utter a complaint.When they arrived at the villa, as the queen was goingto her apartment to undress, her husband called her to him into his room and bade her pull off his boots.The queen’s first impulse was to utter a haughty refusal; but by this time she had learnt that, as she would certainly have to give in to him in the end, it was better to do his bidding with a good grace at the first. So she said nothing, but knelt down and pulled off his boots.When she had done this he got up and said: ‘Now sit down in this armchair and I will take off your shoes; for my way is that one should help the other. If you behave to me asawife should, you need never fear but that I shall behave to you as a husband should.’By the time their visit to the country was at an end, and when they returned to the capital, everybody found their naughty queen had become the most angelic being imaginable.[After people’s bad tempers, their follies form the most prolific subject of theCiarpe.]1‘La Regina Cattiva.’↑THE SIMPLE WIFE.1There was a man and his wife who had a young daughter to marry; and there was a man who was seeking a wife. So the man who was seeking a wife came to the man who had a daughter to marry, and said, ‘Give me your daughter for a wife.’‘Yes,’ said the man who had a daughter to marry;2‘you’ll do very well; you’re just about the sort of son-in-law I want.’ And then he added: ‘If our daughter is to be betrothed to-day, it is the occasion for a feast.’ So to the wife he said, ‘Prepare the table;’ and to the daughter he said, ‘Draw the wine.’The daughter went down into the cellar to draw thewine. But as she drew the wine she began to cry, saying: ‘If I am to be married I shall have a child, and the child will be a son, and the son will be a priest, and the priest will be a bishop, and the bishop will be a cardinal, and the cardinal will be a pope.’ And she cried and cried, and the wine was running all the time, so that the bottle3she was filling ran over, and went on running over.Then said the father and mother: ‘What can the girl be doing down in the cellar so long?’ But the mother said: ‘I must go and see.’So the mother went down to see why she was so long, but the moment she came into the cellar she, too, began to cry; so that the wine still went on running over.Then the father said: ‘What can the girl and her mother both be doing so long down in the cellar? I must go and see.’So the father went down into the cellar; but the moment he got into the cellar he, too, began to cry, and could do nothing for crying; so the wine still went on running over.Then he who had come to seek a wife said: ‘What can these people all be doing so long down in the cellar?’ So he, too, went down to see, and found them all crying in the cellar and the wine running over. Only when the wine was all run out they left off crying and came upstairs again.Then the betrothal and the marriage were happily celebrated.One day after they were married the husband went into the market to buy meat, and he bought a large provision because he had invited a friend to dinner. When the wife saw him buy such a quantity of meat she began to cry, saying: ‘What can we do with such a lot of meat?’‘Oh, never mind, don’t make a misery of it,’ said the husband; ‘put it behind you.’4The simple wife took the meat and went home, saying to her parents,5and crying the while: ‘My husband says I am to put all this meat behind me! Do tell me whatcanI do?’‘You can’t put the whole lot of it behind you, that’s certain,’ replied the equally simple mother; ‘but we can manage it between us.’Then she took the meat and put all the hard, bony part on one chair, where she made the father sit down on it; all the fat, skinny part she put on another chair, and made the wife sit down on it; and the fleshy, meaty part she put on another chair, and sat down on that herself.Presently the husband came with his friend, ready for dinner, knocking at the door. None of the three dared to move, however, that they might not cease to be fulfilling his injunctions. Then he looked through the keyhole, and, seeing them all sitting down without moving when he knocked, he thought they must all be dead; so he ran and fetched a locksmith, who opened the door for him.‘What on earth are you all doing there,’ exclaimed the hungry husband, ‘instead of getting dinner ready?’‘You told me to put the meat behind me, and I have done so,’ answered the simple wife.Then he saw they were sitting on the meat. Out of all patience with such idiocy, he exclaimed: ‘This is the last you’ll ever see of me. At least I promise you not to come back till I have met three other people as idiotic as you, and that’s hardly likely to occur.’With that he took his friend to a tavern to dine, and then put on a pilgrim’s dress and went wandering over the country.In the first city he came to there was great public rejoicing going on. The princess had just been married, and the court was keeping high festival. As he came up to the palace the bride and bridegroom were just come back from church. The bride wore one of those very highround headdresses that they used to wear in olden time, with a long veil hanging from it. It was so very high that she could not by any means get in at the door, and there she stuck, not knowing what to do. Then she began to cry, saying: ‘What shall I do? what shall I do?’‘Shall I tell you what to do?’ said the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.‘Oh, pray do, if you can; I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me how to get in.’So he went and made her go a few steps backward, and then bow her head very low, and so she could pass under the door.‘Really, I have found one woman as simple as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as he sat down to the banquet at the special invitation of the princess, in reward for his services. Afterwards she counted out a hundred scudi to him, and he went further.Further along the road he came to a farm, with barns and cattle and plenty of stock about, and a large well at which a woman was drawing water. Instead of dipping in the pail, she had got the well-rope knotted into a huge knot, which she kept dipping into the water and squeezing out into the pail, and she kept crying as she did so: ‘Oh, how long shall I be filling the pail! The pail will never be full!’‘Shall I show you how to fill it?’ asked the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.‘Oh, yes, do show me if you can. I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me.’Then he took all the knots out of the rope and let down the pail by it, and filled it in a minute.‘Here’s a second woman as stupid as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as the farmer’s wife asked him in to dinner in reward for his great services; ‘if I go on at this rate I shall have to return to her at last, in spite of my protestations.’After that the farmer’s wife counted out the hundred scudi of the promised reward, and he went on further, having first packed six eggs into his hollow staff as provision for the journey.Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage. Here he knocked and asked a bed for his night’s lodging.‘I can’t give you that,’ said a voice from the inside; ‘for I am a lone widow. I can’t take a man in to sleep here.’‘But I am a pilgrim,’ replied he; ‘let me in at least to cook a bit of supper.’‘ThatI don’t mind doing,’ said the good wife, and she opened the door.‘Thanks, good friend!’ said the pilgrim-husband as he sat down by the stove; ‘now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan.’6So she gave him a pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan, too.Presently, when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs swimming in the pan instead of two, she said: ‘Lack-a-day! you must surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know so-and-so there’ (naming her dead husband)?‘Oh, yes,’ said the pilgrim-husband, enjoying the joke; ‘I know him very well; he lives just next to me.’‘Only to think of that!’ replied the poor woman. ‘And do tell me, how do you get on in the other world? What sort of a life is it?’‘Oh, not so very bad; it depends what sort of a place you get. The part where we are is not very bad, except that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly starved.’‘No, really!’ cried the good wife, clasping her hands; ‘only fancy! my good husband starving out there; so fond as he was of a good dinner, too!’ Then she added, coaxingly: ‘As you know him so well, perhaps youwouldn’t mind doing him the charity of taking him a little somewhat to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could easily send him.’‘O, dear no, not at all; I’ll do it with great pleasure,’ answered he; ‘but I’m not going back till to-morrow; and if I don’t sleep here I must go on further, and then I shan’t come by this way.’‘That’s true,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, I mustn’t mind what the folks say, for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning I’ll load a donkey with provisions for my poor dear husband.’‘Oh, no,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you shan’t be disturbed in your bed; only let me sleep on the hearth, that will do for me; and as I’m an early riser I can be gone before anyone’s astir, so folks won’t have anything to say.’So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up loading the donkey with the best of her stores. There were ham, and maccaroni, and flour, and cheese, and wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying: ‘You’ll send the donkey back, won’t you?’‘Of course I would send him back; he’d be no use to us out there: but I shan’t get out again myself for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won’t find his way back alone, for it’s no easy way to find.’‘To be sure not; I ought to have thought of that,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, so as my poor husband gets a good meal never mind the donkey.’So the pretended pilgrim from the other world went his way. He hadn’t gone a hundred yards before the widow called him back.‘Ah, she’s beginning to think better of it!’ said he to himself; and he continued his way, pretending not to hear.‘Good pilgrim!’ shouted the widow; ‘I forgot one thing. Would any money be of use to my poor dear husband?’‘Oh dear yes, all the use in the world,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you can always get anything for money everywhere.’‘Oh, do come back then, and I’ll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him.’The pretended pilgrim came back willingly for the hundred scudi, and the widow counted them out to him.‘There is no help for it,’ soliloquised he as he went his way; ‘I must go back to those at home. I have actually found three women each more stupid than they.’So he went home to live, and complained no more of the simplicity of his wife.[We have the German of this story in ‘Die Klugen Leute,’ Grimm, p. 407, and again the beginning of it in ‘Die Kluge Else’ (Clever Lizzie), Grimm, p. 137 (which ends with the desperation of the wife as the second Roman version ends with the death of the husband); in some variants given in the ‘Russian Folk Tales,’ pp. 53–4; in an Italian-Tirolese tale, ‘Le donne matte’ (the title resembling that of the next Roman version); and the ending, in the Norse ‘Not a pin to choose between them.’ Senhor de Saraiva told me the following Portuguese story entitled ‘Pedro da Malas Artes’ (Tricky Peter), which embodies these incidents, but opens with a different purport.Tricky Peterwas a knowing blade; so he went out on his travels to set all the world straight; and he found plenty to do.In the very first town he came to there was a great commotion. A bride had come to church to be married, and there she stuck at the church door, mounted on her mule, while the people deliberated whether they should facilitate her ingress by cutting off some of her head or some of the mule’s legs.‘Let her alight and walk in,’ said Tricky Peter; ‘and the door will be high enough.’ And all the people applauded his wisdom.At the next town he found the people all full of discontent, because one of them had to sit up by turns to tell the others when the sun rose.‘I’ll give you a bird to perform that office,’ said Tricky Peter; and he went home and fetched a cock, and then they could all rest comfortably.After this the story has no more silly people to deal with; but Peter fools a giant, and overcomes his strength with craft. He does not seem, either, to get paid for his services, as do the heroes of ‘La Sposa Cese,’ and all the others.I have also another Roman story (too long to print here) of a man who sets out with a different purpose again, who meets with three sets of people afflicted with similar follies, and who also makes a good deal of money by his counsel; together with various stories in which men go to fetch their wives back from the devil’s kingdom, get three commissions of a similar nature by the way, for executing which they get richly paid on their return.There is a story in the 5th Tantra given as ‘Le Brahme aux vains projets’ in Abbé Dubois’ translation of the ‘Pantcha-Tantra,’ which has an analogous opening to that of ‘La Sposa Cece.’ There is another among the ‘Contes Indiens’ published at the end of it, in which four Brahmans have a great dispute as to which of them can claim to be the greatest idiot—a strife only second in folly to that of the ‘Three Indolent Boys’ in Grimm, p. 551—and they each narrate such proof of having acted with consummate folly that the decision given is that there is not a pin to choose between them.In a somewhat analogous story, which he calls ‘Aventures duGourou Paramarta,’ one of the disciples commits the counting mistake ‘of the well-known Irishman,’ in omitting to reckon himself in his computation, also found in the Russian ‘Folk Tales,’ p. 54, and they go to buy a foal’s egg, just as do certain peasants of the Trentino in an Italian-Tirolese ‘storiella da rider’7(laughable story).]LA SPOSA CECE.2Another version of this story was told me, or rather an entirely different story embodying the same purport, which, though full of fun, turned on the double meanings of common words of household use too homely for the most part, and some too coarse to please the English reader. The husband, among other things, tells his wife to prepare dinner for a friend and to mind she has ‘brocoli strascinati’ and ‘uovi spersi,’8as they are his favourite dishes. ‘Strascinare’ is to drag anything along, but is technically used to express brocoli chopped up and fried, the commonest Roman dish. ‘Spergere’ is to scatter, but the word is used among common people to express eggs poached in broth, a favourite delicacy; (eggs poached as in England are called ‘uova in bianco’). The wife, taking the words literally, drags the brocoli all over the house and all over the yard, till it is so nasty it cannot be eaten, instead of frying it, and scatters the eggs all about the place instead of poaching them, and so on through a number of other absurdities difficult to explain in detail. In the end the husband falls ill, partly from her bad cooking and partly from annoyance; a doctor is called in, who tells her (among other directions which she similarly misunderstands), that he must have nothing but ‘brodo,’9but she is to make it ‘alto, alto.’ ‘Alto’ is literally ‘high,’ but he uses it for ‘good,’ ‘strong;’ she, however, understands him to mean her to make it in a high place, and goes up on the roof to make it. When the husband asks for it she says she cannot get it for him then as it is up on the roof.Ultimately the husband dies of vexation.There is a very familiar German story which everyone who hasany acquaintance with the people must have met, of a lady who complains to her servant that the tea has not ‘drawn,’ and the simple girl answers, ‘It is not my fault, I havedrawnit all about the place enough I’m sure’ (Ich hab’ es genug umhergezogen).1‘La Sposa Cece,’the simple wife. ‘Cece’ among the common people seems to mean pretty nearly the same as ‘tonto,’ ‘silly,’ ‘idiotic;’ in this place more exactly ‘simple’ or ‘half-witted.’↑2It is a characteristic of the Roman people that as a rule they never call people by their names; the ‘casato’ or married name, and the ‘cognome’ or family name, are used indifferently when such a name is called in request at all, by married people. If they must give a name to a stranger it is always the Christian name that comes first to their lips; among themselves, however, it is seldom the genuine name that is used. They have some ‘sopranome’ or nick-name for everybody, or at least a shortening of the Christian name, as ‘Checca’ and ‘Checco’ for Francesca and Francesco; ‘Pippo’ for Filippo; ‘Pepe’ for Giuseppe; ‘Cola’ for Niccola; ‘Maso’ for Tomaso; ‘Teta’ for Teresa; ‘Lalla’ for Adelaide; ‘Lina’ for Carolina; ‘Tuta’ for Geltrude; the abbreviations for Giovanni are innumerable.But what they most love to designate people by is a description of their persons. When you come home from your walk, your servant does not tell you Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so have called, but it will be ‘Quel signore vecchio ingobbato’ (that old hump-backed kind of gentleman), if he be the least grey and high-shouldered, however young he may be; or ‘Quel bel giovane alto’ (that tall, handsome, young gentleman), whatever his age, if he be onlybien conservé. Then ‘Quella signora alta, secca, che veste di lutto’ (that tall thin lady dressed in mourning). ‘Quella signora bella bionda, giovane’ (that lady, pretty, fair, young). Or ‘Quello che porta il brillante’ (he who wears a brilliant), because the same friend happened to have a diamond stud in his cravat one day; or ‘Quella contessa che veste di cilestro,’ because the lady happened once to wear a blue dress, and so on, with all manner of signs and tokens which it may take you half-an-hour to recognise a person by, if you ever make it out at all. Or, if there is no distinctive mark of the kind to seize upon, it will be‘Quel signore,’ or ‘quella signora di Palazzo,’ or ‘Via,’ or ‘Piazza’ So-and-so. And this not from the difficulty of catching a foreign name, because it is still more in vogue when designating their own people; if you are asking for the address of a servant, a tailor, a dressmaker, &c., it is in vain you try to make them out by the name, you must do your best to describe them, and then they will break out with an exclamation hitting it off for themselves: ‘Ah! si, quel scimunito’ (that silly-looking fellow); ‘quel gobbo’ (that high-shouldered fellow—lit. ‘hunchbacked’); ‘quella strega’ (that ugly old woman, cunning woman—lit. ‘witch’); ‘quella bella giovane alta’ (that tall handsome girl); ‘quella donna bassetta’ (that short little woman), for with their descriptions as with their names they must super-add a diminutive or a qualification, and ‘basso’ (short) is pretty sure to be rendered by ‘bassetto,’ ‘piccola’ (little) by ‘piccinina,’ ‘vecchio’ (old) by ‘vecchietto.’ ‘Quella scimia’ or ‘scimietta’ (that old woman, or that little old woman who looks like a monkey). ‘Quella donna anziana’ (that respectable old woman). ‘Quella donniciuola’ (that nasty little old woman, contemptible old woman). ‘Quel ragazzino, tanto carino, tanto caruccio’ (that nice boy, that very nice boy). ‘Quel vecchietto’ (that nice old man); and in this way the hero of this story is designated as ‘The man who has a daughter to marry.’↑3‘Boccione,’ a large coarse glass bottle commonly used in Rome for carrying wine. When it is covered with twisted rushes—like the oil-flasks that come to England—it is called a ‘damigiana,’ a young lady, a little lady.↑4‘Mettetevelo addietro.’ Lit. ‘Put it behind you,’ a way of saying ‘Never mind it,’ ‘don’t care about it.’ But the woman is supposed to be so foolish that she understands it literally.↑5The Italian custom of the newly married couples continuing to live with the parents of one or other of them is here brought in.↑6‘Tegame,’ a flat earthen pan much in vogue in Roman kitchens; ‘ova in tegame’ is a favourite and not a bad dish. A little fresh butter is oiled, and the eggs are dropped into it as for poaching, and very slowly cooked in it; when scarcely set they are reckoned done.↑7Such notions are not altogether so impossible as they seem. I myself heard a very intelligent little boy one day say to his mother, ‘Mama, I should so like to see a horse’s egg.’ ‘A horse’s egg, my dear—there are no such things,’ was the reply of course. ‘Oh yes, theremustbe,’ rejoined the child, ‘because I’ve heard Pa several times talk about finding a mare’s nest.’↑8‘Uovo,’ by the way, is a word with which great liberties are taken. The correct singular is ‘uovo’ and the plural ‘uova,’ but it is very common to make the plural in ‘i’ and also to say ‘uova’ for the singular, and ‘uove’ for plural, while the initial ‘u’ is most usually dropped out.↑9‘Brodo’ is beef-tea or clear broth with nothing in it; broth with vermicelli or anything else in it is ‘minestra;’ ‘zuppa,’ which sounds most like ‘soup,’ is rather ‘sop,’ and when applied to broth, means strictly only broth with bread in it, from ‘inzuppare,’ to steep, soak, or sop; but it is also used for broth with anything else in it besides bread, but never without anything in it.↑

THE ROOT.There was a rich count who married an extravagant wife. As he had plenty of money he let her spend whatever she liked. But he had no idea what a woman could spend, and very much surprised was he when he found that dressmakers,and milliners, and hairdressers, and shoemakers had made such a hole in his fortune that there was very little left. He saw it was high time to look after it, and he ventured to tender some words of remonstrance; but the moment he began to speak about it she went into hysterics. There was such a dreadful scene that he feared to approach the subject again, but the matter became so serious that at last he was obliged to do so. The least allusion, however, brought on another fit of hysterics.What was he to do? To go on at this extravagant rate was impossible; equally impossible was it to endure the terrible scenes which ensued when he attempted to make her more careful.At last he went to a doctor whom he knew, and asked him if he could give him any remedy for hysterics, telling him the whole story of what he wanted it for.‘Oh, yes!’ replied the doctor; ‘I have an infallible cure. It is a certain root which must be applied very sharply to the back of the neck. If it doesn’t succeed with the first half-dozen applications, you must go on till it does. It never fails in the end.’ So saying, he gave him a stout root, as thick as a walking stick, with a knobbed end.Strong with the promised remedy, the husband went home, and sent word to all the dressmakers, milliners, hairdressers, and shoemakers that he would pay for nothing more except what he ordered himself. Indeed he met the shoemaker on the step of the door, who had just come to take the measure for a pair of velvet slippers.‘Don’t bring them,’ he said; ‘she has seven or eight pairs already, and that is quite enough.’Then he went up to his wife, and told her what he had done. Such a scene of hysterics as he had never imagined before awaited him now, but he, full of confidence in his remedy, took no notice further than to go upto her and apply the root very smartly to the back of her neck as he had been directed.‘But to me it seems that was all one with beating her with a stick,’ exclaimed another old woman who was sitting in the room knitting.‘Of course! That’s just the fun of it!’ replied the narrator. ‘And the beauty of it was that he was so simple that he thought it was some virtue in the root that was to effect the cure.’The hysterics stopped, and he ran off to the doctor to thank him for the capital remedy. The wife ran off, too, and went to her friends crying with terrible complaints that her husband would not allow her a single thing to put on, and, moreover, had even been beating her.When the count got back from the doctor, he found the father and half the family there ready to abuse him for making his wife go about with nothing on, and beating her into the bargain.‘It is all a mistake,’ said the count. ‘I will allow her everything that is right, only I will order myself what I pay for; and, as to beating her, I only applied this root which I got from the doctor to cure hysterics; nothing more.’‘Oh! it’s a case of hysterics is it!’ said the father; ‘then it is all quite right,’ and he and the rest went away; and the count and his wife got on very well after that, and he never had to make use of the doctor’s root again.THE QUEEN AND THE TRIPE-SELLER.1They say there was a queen who had such a bad temper that she made everybody about her miserable. Whatever her husband might do to please her, she was always discontented, and as for her maids she was always slapping their faces.There was a fairy who saw all this, and she said to herself, ‘This must not be allowed to go on;’ so she went and called another fairy, and said, ‘What shall we do to teach this naughty queen to behave herself?’ and they could not imagine what to do with her; so they agreed to think it over, and meet again another day.When they met again, the first fairy said to the other, ‘Well, have you found any plan for correcting this naughty queen?’‘Yes,’ replied the second fairy; ‘I have found an excellent plan. I have been up and all over the whole town, and in a little dirty back lane2I have found a tripe-seller as like to this queen as two peas.’3‘Excellent!’ exclaimed the first fairy. ‘I see what you mean to do. One of us will take some of the queen’s clothes and dress up the tripe-seller, and the other will take some of the tripe-seller’s clothes and dress up the queen in them, and then we will exchange them till the queen learns better manners.’‘That’s the plan,’ replied the second fairy. ‘You have said it exactly. When shall we begin?’‘This very night,’ said the first fairy.‘Agreed!’ said the second fairy; and that very night, while everyone else was gone quietly to bed they went, one into the palace and fetched some of the queen’s clothes, and, bringing them to the tripe-seller’s room, placed them by the side of her bed; and the other went to the tripe-seller’s room and fetched her clothes, and took them and put them by the side of the queen’s bed. They also woke them very early, and when each got up she put on the things that were by the side of the bed, thinking they were the things she had left there the night before. Thus the queen was dressed like a tripe-seller, and the tripe-seller like a queen.Then one fairy took the queen, dressed like a tripe-seller, and put her down in the tripe-seller’s shop, and theother fairy took the tripe-seller, dressed like a queen, and placed her in the palace, and both of them did their work so swiftly that neither the queen nor the tripe-seller perceived the flight at all.The queen was very much astonished at finding herself in a tripe-shop, and began staring about, wondering how she got there.‘Here! Don’t stand gaping about like that!’ cried the tripe-man,4who was a very hot-tempered fellow; ‘Why, you haven’t boiled the coffee!’‘Boiled the coffee!’ repeated the queen, hardly apprehending what he meant.‘Yes; you haven’t boiled the coffee!’ said the tripe-man. ‘Don’t repeat my words, but do your work!’ and he took her by the shoulders, put the coffee-pot in her hand, and stood over her looking so fierce that she was frightened into doing what she had never done or seen done in all her life before.Presently the coffee began to boil over.‘There! Don’t waste all the coffee like that!’ cried the tripe-man, and he got up and gave her a slap, which made the tears come in her eyes.‘Don’t blubber!’ said the tripe-man; ‘but bring the coffee here and pour it out.’The queen did as she was told; but when she began to drink it, though she had made it herself, it was so nasty she didn’t know how to drink it. It was very different stuff from what she got at the palace; but the tripe-man had his eye on her, and she didn’t dare not to drink it.‘A halfp’th of cat’s-meat!’5sang out a small boy in the shop.‘Why don’t you go and serve the customer?’ said the tripe-man, knocking the cup out of the queen’s hand.Fearing another slap, she rose hastily to give the boy what he wanted, but not knowing one thing in the shopfrom another, she gave him a large piece of the best tripe fit for a prince.‘Oh, what fine tripe to-day!’ cried the small boy, and ran away as fast as he could.It was in vain the tripe-man halloed after him, he was in too great a hurry to secure his prize to think of returning.‘Look what you’ve done!’ cried the tripe-man, giving the queen another slap; ‘you’ve given that boy for a penny a bunch of tripe worth a shilling.’ Luckily, other customers came in and diverted the man’s attention.Presently all the tripe hanging up had been sold, and more customers kept coming in.‘What has come to you, to-day!’ roared the tripe-man, as the queen stood not knowing what to do with herself. ‘Do you mean to say you haven’t washed that other lot of tripe!’ and this time he gave her a kick.To escape his fury, the queen turned to do her best with washing the other tripe, but she did it so awkwardly that she got a volley of abuse and blows too.Then came dinner-time, and nothing prepared, or even bought to prepare, for dinner. Another stormy scene ensued at the discovery, and the tripe-man went to dine at the inn, leaving her to go without any dinner at all, in punishment for having neglected to prepare it.While he was gone she helped all the customers to the wrong things, and, when he came home, got another scolding and more blows for her stupidity. And all through the afternoon it was the same story.But the tripe-seller, when she found herself all in a palace, with half-a-dozen maids waiting to attend her, was equally bewildered. When they kept asking her if there was nothing she pleased to want, she kept answering, ‘No thank you,’ in such a gentle tone, the maids began to think that a reign of peace had come to them at last.By-and-by, when the ladies came, instead of saying, asthe queen had been wont, ‘What an ugly dress you have got; go and take it off!’ she said, ‘How nice you look; how tasteful your dress is!’Afterwards the king came in, bringing her a rare nosegay. Instead of throwing it on one side to vex him, as the queen had been wont, she showed so much delight, and expressed her thanks so many times, that he was quite overcome.The change that had come over the queen soon became the talk of the whole palace, and everyone congratulated himself on an improvement which made them all happy. The king was no less pleased than all the rest, and for the first time for many years he said he would drive out with the queen; for on account of her bad temper he had long given up driving with her. So the carriage came round with four prancing horses, and an escort of cavalry to ride before and behind it. The tripe-seller hardly could believe she was to drive in this splendid carriage, but the king handed her in before she knew where she was. Then, as he was so pleased with her gentle and grateful ways, he further asked her to say which way she would like to drive.The tripe-seller, partly because she was too much frightened to think of any other place, and partly because she thought it would be nice to drive in state through her own neighbourhood, named the broader street out of which turned the lane in which she lived, for the royal carriage could hardly have turned down the lane itself. The king repeated the order, and away drove the royalcortège.The circumstance of the king and queen driving out together was sufficient to excite the attention of the whole population, and wherever they passed the people crowded into the streets; thus a volley of shouts and comments ran before the carriage towards the lane of the tripe-man. The tripe-man was at the moment engaged in administering a severe chastisement to the queen forher latest mistake, and the roar of the people’s voices afforded a happy pretext for breaking away from him.She ran with the rest to the opening of the lane just as the royal carriage was passing.‘My husband! my husband!’ she screamed as the king drove by, and plaintive as was her voice, and different from her usual imperious tone, he heard it and turned his head towards her.‘My husband! my royal husband!’ pleaded the humbled queen.The king, in amazement, stopped the carriage and gazed from the queen in the gutter to the tripe-seller in royal array by his side, unable to solve the problem.‘This is certainly my wife!’ he said at last, as he extended his hand to the queen. ‘Who then can you be?’ he added, addressing the tripe-seller.‘I will tell the truth,’ replied the good tripe-seller. ‘I am no queen; I am the poor wife of the tripe-seller down the lane there; but how I came into the palace is more than I can say.’‘And how come you here?’ said the king, addressing the real queen.‘That, neither can I tell; I thought you had sent me hither to punish me for my bad temper; but if you will only take me back I will never be bad-tempered again; only take me away from this dreadful tripe-man, who has been beating me all day.’Then the king made answer: ‘Of course you must come back with me, for you are my wife. But,’ he said to the tripe-seller; ‘what shall I do with you? After you have been living in luxury in the palace, you will feel it hard to go back to sell tripe.’‘It’s true I have not many luxuries at home,’ answered the tripe-seller; ‘but yet I had rather be with my husband than in any palace in the world;’ and she descended from the carriage, while the queen got in.‘Stop!’ said the king. ‘This day’s transformation, howsoever it was brought about, has been a good day, and you have been so well behaved, and so truth-spoken, I don’t like your going back to be beaten by the tripe-man.’‘Oh, never mind that,’ said the good wife; ‘he never beats me unless I do something very stupid. And, after all, he’s my husband, and that’s enough for me.’‘Well, if you’re satisfied, I won’t interfere any further,’ said the king; ‘except to give you some mark of my royal favour.’So he bestowed on the tripe-man and his wife a beautiful villa, with a nice casino outside the gates, on condition that he never beat her any more.The tripe-man was so pleased with the gifts which had come to him through his wife’s good conduct, that he kept his word, and was always thereafter very kind to her. And the queen was so frightened at the thought that she might find herself suddenly transformed into a tripe-seller again, that she kept a strict guard over her temper, and became the delight of her husband and the whole court.1‘La Regina e la Triparola;’‘Triparola,’ female tripe-seller.↑2‘Vicolo,’ a narrow dirty street.↑3‘Due gocciette d’acqua,’ two little drops of water, the Roman equivalent for ‘as like as two peas.’↑4‘Triparolo,’ a male tripe-seller.↑5‘Un bajocco di tripa-gatto,’ the worst part of the tripe, sold for cats’ and dogs’ meat.↑THE BAD-TEMPERED QUEEN.1They say there was a queen who was so bad-tempered that no one who could help it would come near her. All the servants ran away when she came out of her apartment, for fear she should scold and maltreat them; all the people ran away when she drove out, for fear she should vex them with some tyrannical order.As she was rich and beautiful, and ruled over vast dominions, many princes—who in their distant kingdoms had heard nothing of her failing—came to sue for her hand, but she sent them all away and would have nothing to say to any of them. She used to say she did not want to have anyone to be her master; she had rather live and govern by herself, and have everything her own way.As time went on, however, the council of state grew dissatisfied with this resolution. They insisted that she must marry, that there might be a family of princes to carry on the succession to the throne without dispute. When the queen found that she could not help it she agreed she would marry; but she was determined she would not marry any of the princes who had come to court her, because, as they were equal to herself in birth and state, they would want to rule over her and expect obedience from her. She declared she would marry no one but a certain duke, who, as she had observed in the council and in the state banquets and balls, was always very quiet and hardly ever spoke at all. She thought he would make a nice quiet manageable sort of husband, and she would have him if she must have one at all.The duke was as silent as usual when he was spoken to about it; but as he made no objection he was reckoned to have consented, and the marriage was duly solemnised.As soon as the marriage was over the queen went on making her arrangements and ordering matters in the palace just as if nothing had happened, and she were still her own mistress. In particular she issued invitations for the grandest ball she had ever given, asking to it all the ministers and their families, and all the nobility of the kingdom.The husband said nothing to all this, only a few hours before the time appointed for the banquet he called to the queen, saying: ‘Put on your travelling dress, and make haste; the carriage will be round directly.’‘I’m not going to put on my travelling dress,’ answered the queen scornfully; ‘I am just seeing about my evening dress for the banquet this evening.’‘If you are not ready in your travelling dress in five minutes, when the carriage comes round, it will be worse for you. Mind I have warned you.’And he looked so determined that she quailed before him.‘How can we be going into the country, when I have invited half the kingdom to a banquet?’ exclaimed the queen.‘Ihave invited no one,’ answered the husband quietly. ‘Don’t stand hesitating when I tell you to do a thing; go and get ready directly! we are going into the country!’ he added in his most positive voice, and, though she shed many secret tears over the loss of the banquet, she ventured to oppose nothing more to his orders, but went up and dressed, and when the carriage came round she was nearly ready. In about five minutes she came down.‘I won’t say anything this time about your keeping me waiting,’ he said when she appeared; ‘but mind it does not happen again, or you will be sorry for it.’The queen had a favourite little dog, which she fondled and talked to all the way, to show she was offended with her husband and independent of his conversation.Watching an opportunity when she was silent, the husband said to the little dog, ‘Jump on to my lap.’‘He’s not going to obey you,’ said the queen contemptuously; ‘he’smydog!’‘I keep no one about me who does not obey me,’ said her husband quietly; and he took out his pistol and shot the dog through the head.The queen began to understand that the husband she had chosen was not a person to be trifled with, nor did she venture even to utter a complaint.When they arrived at the villa, as the queen was goingto her apartment to undress, her husband called her to him into his room and bade her pull off his boots.The queen’s first impulse was to utter a haughty refusal; but by this time she had learnt that, as she would certainly have to give in to him in the end, it was better to do his bidding with a good grace at the first. So she said nothing, but knelt down and pulled off his boots.When she had done this he got up and said: ‘Now sit down in this armchair and I will take off your shoes; for my way is that one should help the other. If you behave to me asawife should, you need never fear but that I shall behave to you as a husband should.’By the time their visit to the country was at an end, and when they returned to the capital, everybody found their naughty queen had become the most angelic being imaginable.[After people’s bad tempers, their follies form the most prolific subject of theCiarpe.]1‘La Regina Cattiva.’↑THE SIMPLE WIFE.1There was a man and his wife who had a young daughter to marry; and there was a man who was seeking a wife. So the man who was seeking a wife came to the man who had a daughter to marry, and said, ‘Give me your daughter for a wife.’‘Yes,’ said the man who had a daughter to marry;2‘you’ll do very well; you’re just about the sort of son-in-law I want.’ And then he added: ‘If our daughter is to be betrothed to-day, it is the occasion for a feast.’ So to the wife he said, ‘Prepare the table;’ and to the daughter he said, ‘Draw the wine.’The daughter went down into the cellar to draw thewine. But as she drew the wine she began to cry, saying: ‘If I am to be married I shall have a child, and the child will be a son, and the son will be a priest, and the priest will be a bishop, and the bishop will be a cardinal, and the cardinal will be a pope.’ And she cried and cried, and the wine was running all the time, so that the bottle3she was filling ran over, and went on running over.Then said the father and mother: ‘What can the girl be doing down in the cellar so long?’ But the mother said: ‘I must go and see.’So the mother went down to see why she was so long, but the moment she came into the cellar she, too, began to cry; so that the wine still went on running over.Then the father said: ‘What can the girl and her mother both be doing so long down in the cellar? I must go and see.’So the father went down into the cellar; but the moment he got into the cellar he, too, began to cry, and could do nothing for crying; so the wine still went on running over.Then he who had come to seek a wife said: ‘What can these people all be doing so long down in the cellar?’ So he, too, went down to see, and found them all crying in the cellar and the wine running over. Only when the wine was all run out they left off crying and came upstairs again.Then the betrothal and the marriage were happily celebrated.One day after they were married the husband went into the market to buy meat, and he bought a large provision because he had invited a friend to dinner. When the wife saw him buy such a quantity of meat she began to cry, saying: ‘What can we do with such a lot of meat?’‘Oh, never mind, don’t make a misery of it,’ said the husband; ‘put it behind you.’4The simple wife took the meat and went home, saying to her parents,5and crying the while: ‘My husband says I am to put all this meat behind me! Do tell me whatcanI do?’‘You can’t put the whole lot of it behind you, that’s certain,’ replied the equally simple mother; ‘but we can manage it between us.’Then she took the meat and put all the hard, bony part on one chair, where she made the father sit down on it; all the fat, skinny part she put on another chair, and made the wife sit down on it; and the fleshy, meaty part she put on another chair, and sat down on that herself.Presently the husband came with his friend, ready for dinner, knocking at the door. None of the three dared to move, however, that they might not cease to be fulfilling his injunctions. Then he looked through the keyhole, and, seeing them all sitting down without moving when he knocked, he thought they must all be dead; so he ran and fetched a locksmith, who opened the door for him.‘What on earth are you all doing there,’ exclaimed the hungry husband, ‘instead of getting dinner ready?’‘You told me to put the meat behind me, and I have done so,’ answered the simple wife.Then he saw they were sitting on the meat. Out of all patience with such idiocy, he exclaimed: ‘This is the last you’ll ever see of me. At least I promise you not to come back till I have met three other people as idiotic as you, and that’s hardly likely to occur.’With that he took his friend to a tavern to dine, and then put on a pilgrim’s dress and went wandering over the country.In the first city he came to there was great public rejoicing going on. The princess had just been married, and the court was keeping high festival. As he came up to the palace the bride and bridegroom were just come back from church. The bride wore one of those very highround headdresses that they used to wear in olden time, with a long veil hanging from it. It was so very high that she could not by any means get in at the door, and there she stuck, not knowing what to do. Then she began to cry, saying: ‘What shall I do? what shall I do?’‘Shall I tell you what to do?’ said the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.‘Oh, pray do, if you can; I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me how to get in.’So he went and made her go a few steps backward, and then bow her head very low, and so she could pass under the door.‘Really, I have found one woman as simple as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as he sat down to the banquet at the special invitation of the princess, in reward for his services. Afterwards she counted out a hundred scudi to him, and he went further.Further along the road he came to a farm, with barns and cattle and plenty of stock about, and a large well at which a woman was drawing water. Instead of dipping in the pail, she had got the well-rope knotted into a huge knot, which she kept dipping into the water and squeezing out into the pail, and she kept crying as she did so: ‘Oh, how long shall I be filling the pail! The pail will never be full!’‘Shall I show you how to fill it?’ asked the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.‘Oh, yes, do show me if you can. I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me.’Then he took all the knots out of the rope and let down the pail by it, and filled it in a minute.‘Here’s a second woman as stupid as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as the farmer’s wife asked him in to dinner in reward for his great services; ‘if I go on at this rate I shall have to return to her at last, in spite of my protestations.’After that the farmer’s wife counted out the hundred scudi of the promised reward, and he went on further, having first packed six eggs into his hollow staff as provision for the journey.Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage. Here he knocked and asked a bed for his night’s lodging.‘I can’t give you that,’ said a voice from the inside; ‘for I am a lone widow. I can’t take a man in to sleep here.’‘But I am a pilgrim,’ replied he; ‘let me in at least to cook a bit of supper.’‘ThatI don’t mind doing,’ said the good wife, and she opened the door.‘Thanks, good friend!’ said the pilgrim-husband as he sat down by the stove; ‘now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan.’6So she gave him a pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan, too.Presently, when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs swimming in the pan instead of two, she said: ‘Lack-a-day! you must surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know so-and-so there’ (naming her dead husband)?‘Oh, yes,’ said the pilgrim-husband, enjoying the joke; ‘I know him very well; he lives just next to me.’‘Only to think of that!’ replied the poor woman. ‘And do tell me, how do you get on in the other world? What sort of a life is it?’‘Oh, not so very bad; it depends what sort of a place you get. The part where we are is not very bad, except that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly starved.’‘No, really!’ cried the good wife, clasping her hands; ‘only fancy! my good husband starving out there; so fond as he was of a good dinner, too!’ Then she added, coaxingly: ‘As you know him so well, perhaps youwouldn’t mind doing him the charity of taking him a little somewhat to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could easily send him.’‘O, dear no, not at all; I’ll do it with great pleasure,’ answered he; ‘but I’m not going back till to-morrow; and if I don’t sleep here I must go on further, and then I shan’t come by this way.’‘That’s true,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, I mustn’t mind what the folks say, for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning I’ll load a donkey with provisions for my poor dear husband.’‘Oh, no,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you shan’t be disturbed in your bed; only let me sleep on the hearth, that will do for me; and as I’m an early riser I can be gone before anyone’s astir, so folks won’t have anything to say.’So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up loading the donkey with the best of her stores. There were ham, and maccaroni, and flour, and cheese, and wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying: ‘You’ll send the donkey back, won’t you?’‘Of course I would send him back; he’d be no use to us out there: but I shan’t get out again myself for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won’t find his way back alone, for it’s no easy way to find.’‘To be sure not; I ought to have thought of that,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, so as my poor husband gets a good meal never mind the donkey.’So the pretended pilgrim from the other world went his way. He hadn’t gone a hundred yards before the widow called him back.‘Ah, she’s beginning to think better of it!’ said he to himself; and he continued his way, pretending not to hear.‘Good pilgrim!’ shouted the widow; ‘I forgot one thing. Would any money be of use to my poor dear husband?’‘Oh dear yes, all the use in the world,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you can always get anything for money everywhere.’‘Oh, do come back then, and I’ll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him.’The pretended pilgrim came back willingly for the hundred scudi, and the widow counted them out to him.‘There is no help for it,’ soliloquised he as he went his way; ‘I must go back to those at home. I have actually found three women each more stupid than they.’So he went home to live, and complained no more of the simplicity of his wife.[We have the German of this story in ‘Die Klugen Leute,’ Grimm, p. 407, and again the beginning of it in ‘Die Kluge Else’ (Clever Lizzie), Grimm, p. 137 (which ends with the desperation of the wife as the second Roman version ends with the death of the husband); in some variants given in the ‘Russian Folk Tales,’ pp. 53–4; in an Italian-Tirolese tale, ‘Le donne matte’ (the title resembling that of the next Roman version); and the ending, in the Norse ‘Not a pin to choose between them.’ Senhor de Saraiva told me the following Portuguese story entitled ‘Pedro da Malas Artes’ (Tricky Peter), which embodies these incidents, but opens with a different purport.Tricky Peterwas a knowing blade; so he went out on his travels to set all the world straight; and he found plenty to do.In the very first town he came to there was a great commotion. A bride had come to church to be married, and there she stuck at the church door, mounted on her mule, while the people deliberated whether they should facilitate her ingress by cutting off some of her head or some of the mule’s legs.‘Let her alight and walk in,’ said Tricky Peter; ‘and the door will be high enough.’ And all the people applauded his wisdom.At the next town he found the people all full of discontent, because one of them had to sit up by turns to tell the others when the sun rose.‘I’ll give you a bird to perform that office,’ said Tricky Peter; and he went home and fetched a cock, and then they could all rest comfortably.After this the story has no more silly people to deal with; but Peter fools a giant, and overcomes his strength with craft. He does not seem, either, to get paid for his services, as do the heroes of ‘La Sposa Cese,’ and all the others.I have also another Roman story (too long to print here) of a man who sets out with a different purpose again, who meets with three sets of people afflicted with similar follies, and who also makes a good deal of money by his counsel; together with various stories in which men go to fetch their wives back from the devil’s kingdom, get three commissions of a similar nature by the way, for executing which they get richly paid on their return.There is a story in the 5th Tantra given as ‘Le Brahme aux vains projets’ in Abbé Dubois’ translation of the ‘Pantcha-Tantra,’ which has an analogous opening to that of ‘La Sposa Cece.’ There is another among the ‘Contes Indiens’ published at the end of it, in which four Brahmans have a great dispute as to which of them can claim to be the greatest idiot—a strife only second in folly to that of the ‘Three Indolent Boys’ in Grimm, p. 551—and they each narrate such proof of having acted with consummate folly that the decision given is that there is not a pin to choose between them.In a somewhat analogous story, which he calls ‘Aventures duGourou Paramarta,’ one of the disciples commits the counting mistake ‘of the well-known Irishman,’ in omitting to reckon himself in his computation, also found in the Russian ‘Folk Tales,’ p. 54, and they go to buy a foal’s egg, just as do certain peasants of the Trentino in an Italian-Tirolese ‘storiella da rider’7(laughable story).]LA SPOSA CECE.2Another version of this story was told me, or rather an entirely different story embodying the same purport, which, though full of fun, turned on the double meanings of common words of household use too homely for the most part, and some too coarse to please the English reader. The husband, among other things, tells his wife to prepare dinner for a friend and to mind she has ‘brocoli strascinati’ and ‘uovi spersi,’8as they are his favourite dishes. ‘Strascinare’ is to drag anything along, but is technically used to express brocoli chopped up and fried, the commonest Roman dish. ‘Spergere’ is to scatter, but the word is used among common people to express eggs poached in broth, a favourite delicacy; (eggs poached as in England are called ‘uova in bianco’). The wife, taking the words literally, drags the brocoli all over the house and all over the yard, till it is so nasty it cannot be eaten, instead of frying it, and scatters the eggs all about the place instead of poaching them, and so on through a number of other absurdities difficult to explain in detail. In the end the husband falls ill, partly from her bad cooking and partly from annoyance; a doctor is called in, who tells her (among other directions which she similarly misunderstands), that he must have nothing but ‘brodo,’9but she is to make it ‘alto, alto.’ ‘Alto’ is literally ‘high,’ but he uses it for ‘good,’ ‘strong;’ she, however, understands him to mean her to make it in a high place, and goes up on the roof to make it. When the husband asks for it she says she cannot get it for him then as it is up on the roof.Ultimately the husband dies of vexation.There is a very familiar German story which everyone who hasany acquaintance with the people must have met, of a lady who complains to her servant that the tea has not ‘drawn,’ and the simple girl answers, ‘It is not my fault, I havedrawnit all about the place enough I’m sure’ (Ich hab’ es genug umhergezogen).1‘La Sposa Cece,’the simple wife. ‘Cece’ among the common people seems to mean pretty nearly the same as ‘tonto,’ ‘silly,’ ‘idiotic;’ in this place more exactly ‘simple’ or ‘half-witted.’↑2It is a characteristic of the Roman people that as a rule they never call people by their names; the ‘casato’ or married name, and the ‘cognome’ or family name, are used indifferently when such a name is called in request at all, by married people. If they must give a name to a stranger it is always the Christian name that comes first to their lips; among themselves, however, it is seldom the genuine name that is used. They have some ‘sopranome’ or nick-name for everybody, or at least a shortening of the Christian name, as ‘Checca’ and ‘Checco’ for Francesca and Francesco; ‘Pippo’ for Filippo; ‘Pepe’ for Giuseppe; ‘Cola’ for Niccola; ‘Maso’ for Tomaso; ‘Teta’ for Teresa; ‘Lalla’ for Adelaide; ‘Lina’ for Carolina; ‘Tuta’ for Geltrude; the abbreviations for Giovanni are innumerable.But what they most love to designate people by is a description of their persons. When you come home from your walk, your servant does not tell you Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so have called, but it will be ‘Quel signore vecchio ingobbato’ (that old hump-backed kind of gentleman), if he be the least grey and high-shouldered, however young he may be; or ‘Quel bel giovane alto’ (that tall, handsome, young gentleman), whatever his age, if he be onlybien conservé. Then ‘Quella signora alta, secca, che veste di lutto’ (that tall thin lady dressed in mourning). ‘Quella signora bella bionda, giovane’ (that lady, pretty, fair, young). Or ‘Quello che porta il brillante’ (he who wears a brilliant), because the same friend happened to have a diamond stud in his cravat one day; or ‘Quella contessa che veste di cilestro,’ because the lady happened once to wear a blue dress, and so on, with all manner of signs and tokens which it may take you half-an-hour to recognise a person by, if you ever make it out at all. Or, if there is no distinctive mark of the kind to seize upon, it will be‘Quel signore,’ or ‘quella signora di Palazzo,’ or ‘Via,’ or ‘Piazza’ So-and-so. And this not from the difficulty of catching a foreign name, because it is still more in vogue when designating their own people; if you are asking for the address of a servant, a tailor, a dressmaker, &c., it is in vain you try to make them out by the name, you must do your best to describe them, and then they will break out with an exclamation hitting it off for themselves: ‘Ah! si, quel scimunito’ (that silly-looking fellow); ‘quel gobbo’ (that high-shouldered fellow—lit. ‘hunchbacked’); ‘quella strega’ (that ugly old woman, cunning woman—lit. ‘witch’); ‘quella bella giovane alta’ (that tall handsome girl); ‘quella donna bassetta’ (that short little woman), for with their descriptions as with their names they must super-add a diminutive or a qualification, and ‘basso’ (short) is pretty sure to be rendered by ‘bassetto,’ ‘piccola’ (little) by ‘piccinina,’ ‘vecchio’ (old) by ‘vecchietto.’ ‘Quella scimia’ or ‘scimietta’ (that old woman, or that little old woman who looks like a monkey). ‘Quella donna anziana’ (that respectable old woman). ‘Quella donniciuola’ (that nasty little old woman, contemptible old woman). ‘Quel ragazzino, tanto carino, tanto caruccio’ (that nice boy, that very nice boy). ‘Quel vecchietto’ (that nice old man); and in this way the hero of this story is designated as ‘The man who has a daughter to marry.’↑3‘Boccione,’ a large coarse glass bottle commonly used in Rome for carrying wine. When it is covered with twisted rushes—like the oil-flasks that come to England—it is called a ‘damigiana,’ a young lady, a little lady.↑4‘Mettetevelo addietro.’ Lit. ‘Put it behind you,’ a way of saying ‘Never mind it,’ ‘don’t care about it.’ But the woman is supposed to be so foolish that she understands it literally.↑5The Italian custom of the newly married couples continuing to live with the parents of one or other of them is here brought in.↑6‘Tegame,’ a flat earthen pan much in vogue in Roman kitchens; ‘ova in tegame’ is a favourite and not a bad dish. A little fresh butter is oiled, and the eggs are dropped into it as for poaching, and very slowly cooked in it; when scarcely set they are reckoned done.↑7Such notions are not altogether so impossible as they seem. I myself heard a very intelligent little boy one day say to his mother, ‘Mama, I should so like to see a horse’s egg.’ ‘A horse’s egg, my dear—there are no such things,’ was the reply of course. ‘Oh yes, theremustbe,’ rejoined the child, ‘because I’ve heard Pa several times talk about finding a mare’s nest.’↑8‘Uovo,’ by the way, is a word with which great liberties are taken. The correct singular is ‘uovo’ and the plural ‘uova,’ but it is very common to make the plural in ‘i’ and also to say ‘uova’ for the singular, and ‘uove’ for plural, while the initial ‘u’ is most usually dropped out.↑9‘Brodo’ is beef-tea or clear broth with nothing in it; broth with vermicelli or anything else in it is ‘minestra;’ ‘zuppa,’ which sounds most like ‘soup,’ is rather ‘sop,’ and when applied to broth, means strictly only broth with bread in it, from ‘inzuppare,’ to steep, soak, or sop; but it is also used for broth with anything else in it besides bread, but never without anything in it.↑

THE ROOT.There was a rich count who married an extravagant wife. As he had plenty of money he let her spend whatever she liked. But he had no idea what a woman could spend, and very much surprised was he when he found that dressmakers,and milliners, and hairdressers, and shoemakers had made such a hole in his fortune that there was very little left. He saw it was high time to look after it, and he ventured to tender some words of remonstrance; but the moment he began to speak about it she went into hysterics. There was such a dreadful scene that he feared to approach the subject again, but the matter became so serious that at last he was obliged to do so. The least allusion, however, brought on another fit of hysterics.What was he to do? To go on at this extravagant rate was impossible; equally impossible was it to endure the terrible scenes which ensued when he attempted to make her more careful.At last he went to a doctor whom he knew, and asked him if he could give him any remedy for hysterics, telling him the whole story of what he wanted it for.‘Oh, yes!’ replied the doctor; ‘I have an infallible cure. It is a certain root which must be applied very sharply to the back of the neck. If it doesn’t succeed with the first half-dozen applications, you must go on till it does. It never fails in the end.’ So saying, he gave him a stout root, as thick as a walking stick, with a knobbed end.Strong with the promised remedy, the husband went home, and sent word to all the dressmakers, milliners, hairdressers, and shoemakers that he would pay for nothing more except what he ordered himself. Indeed he met the shoemaker on the step of the door, who had just come to take the measure for a pair of velvet slippers.‘Don’t bring them,’ he said; ‘she has seven or eight pairs already, and that is quite enough.’Then he went up to his wife, and told her what he had done. Such a scene of hysterics as he had never imagined before awaited him now, but he, full of confidence in his remedy, took no notice further than to go upto her and apply the root very smartly to the back of her neck as he had been directed.‘But to me it seems that was all one with beating her with a stick,’ exclaimed another old woman who was sitting in the room knitting.‘Of course! That’s just the fun of it!’ replied the narrator. ‘And the beauty of it was that he was so simple that he thought it was some virtue in the root that was to effect the cure.’The hysterics stopped, and he ran off to the doctor to thank him for the capital remedy. The wife ran off, too, and went to her friends crying with terrible complaints that her husband would not allow her a single thing to put on, and, moreover, had even been beating her.When the count got back from the doctor, he found the father and half the family there ready to abuse him for making his wife go about with nothing on, and beating her into the bargain.‘It is all a mistake,’ said the count. ‘I will allow her everything that is right, only I will order myself what I pay for; and, as to beating her, I only applied this root which I got from the doctor to cure hysterics; nothing more.’‘Oh! it’s a case of hysterics is it!’ said the father; ‘then it is all quite right,’ and he and the rest went away; and the count and his wife got on very well after that, and he never had to make use of the doctor’s root again.

THE ROOT.

There was a rich count who married an extravagant wife. As he had plenty of money he let her spend whatever she liked. But he had no idea what a woman could spend, and very much surprised was he when he found that dressmakers,and milliners, and hairdressers, and shoemakers had made such a hole in his fortune that there was very little left. He saw it was high time to look after it, and he ventured to tender some words of remonstrance; but the moment he began to speak about it she went into hysterics. There was such a dreadful scene that he feared to approach the subject again, but the matter became so serious that at last he was obliged to do so. The least allusion, however, brought on another fit of hysterics.What was he to do? To go on at this extravagant rate was impossible; equally impossible was it to endure the terrible scenes which ensued when he attempted to make her more careful.At last he went to a doctor whom he knew, and asked him if he could give him any remedy for hysterics, telling him the whole story of what he wanted it for.‘Oh, yes!’ replied the doctor; ‘I have an infallible cure. It is a certain root which must be applied very sharply to the back of the neck. If it doesn’t succeed with the first half-dozen applications, you must go on till it does. It never fails in the end.’ So saying, he gave him a stout root, as thick as a walking stick, with a knobbed end.Strong with the promised remedy, the husband went home, and sent word to all the dressmakers, milliners, hairdressers, and shoemakers that he would pay for nothing more except what he ordered himself. Indeed he met the shoemaker on the step of the door, who had just come to take the measure for a pair of velvet slippers.‘Don’t bring them,’ he said; ‘she has seven or eight pairs already, and that is quite enough.’Then he went up to his wife, and told her what he had done. Such a scene of hysterics as he had never imagined before awaited him now, but he, full of confidence in his remedy, took no notice further than to go upto her and apply the root very smartly to the back of her neck as he had been directed.‘But to me it seems that was all one with beating her with a stick,’ exclaimed another old woman who was sitting in the room knitting.‘Of course! That’s just the fun of it!’ replied the narrator. ‘And the beauty of it was that he was so simple that he thought it was some virtue in the root that was to effect the cure.’The hysterics stopped, and he ran off to the doctor to thank him for the capital remedy. The wife ran off, too, and went to her friends crying with terrible complaints that her husband would not allow her a single thing to put on, and, moreover, had even been beating her.When the count got back from the doctor, he found the father and half the family there ready to abuse him for making his wife go about with nothing on, and beating her into the bargain.‘It is all a mistake,’ said the count. ‘I will allow her everything that is right, only I will order myself what I pay for; and, as to beating her, I only applied this root which I got from the doctor to cure hysterics; nothing more.’‘Oh! it’s a case of hysterics is it!’ said the father; ‘then it is all quite right,’ and he and the rest went away; and the count and his wife got on very well after that, and he never had to make use of the doctor’s root again.

There was a rich count who married an extravagant wife. As he had plenty of money he let her spend whatever she liked. But he had no idea what a woman could spend, and very much surprised was he when he found that dressmakers,and milliners, and hairdressers, and shoemakers had made such a hole in his fortune that there was very little left. He saw it was high time to look after it, and he ventured to tender some words of remonstrance; but the moment he began to speak about it she went into hysterics. There was such a dreadful scene that he feared to approach the subject again, but the matter became so serious that at last he was obliged to do so. The least allusion, however, brought on another fit of hysterics.

What was he to do? To go on at this extravagant rate was impossible; equally impossible was it to endure the terrible scenes which ensued when he attempted to make her more careful.

At last he went to a doctor whom he knew, and asked him if he could give him any remedy for hysterics, telling him the whole story of what he wanted it for.

‘Oh, yes!’ replied the doctor; ‘I have an infallible cure. It is a certain root which must be applied very sharply to the back of the neck. If it doesn’t succeed with the first half-dozen applications, you must go on till it does. It never fails in the end.’ So saying, he gave him a stout root, as thick as a walking stick, with a knobbed end.

Strong with the promised remedy, the husband went home, and sent word to all the dressmakers, milliners, hairdressers, and shoemakers that he would pay for nothing more except what he ordered himself. Indeed he met the shoemaker on the step of the door, who had just come to take the measure for a pair of velvet slippers.

‘Don’t bring them,’ he said; ‘she has seven or eight pairs already, and that is quite enough.’

Then he went up to his wife, and told her what he had done. Such a scene of hysterics as he had never imagined before awaited him now, but he, full of confidence in his remedy, took no notice further than to go upto her and apply the root very smartly to the back of her neck as he had been directed.

‘But to me it seems that was all one with beating her with a stick,’ exclaimed another old woman who was sitting in the room knitting.

‘Of course! That’s just the fun of it!’ replied the narrator. ‘And the beauty of it was that he was so simple that he thought it was some virtue in the root that was to effect the cure.’

The hysterics stopped, and he ran off to the doctor to thank him for the capital remedy. The wife ran off, too, and went to her friends crying with terrible complaints that her husband would not allow her a single thing to put on, and, moreover, had even been beating her.

When the count got back from the doctor, he found the father and half the family there ready to abuse him for making his wife go about with nothing on, and beating her into the bargain.

‘It is all a mistake,’ said the count. ‘I will allow her everything that is right, only I will order myself what I pay for; and, as to beating her, I only applied this root which I got from the doctor to cure hysterics; nothing more.’

‘Oh! it’s a case of hysterics is it!’ said the father; ‘then it is all quite right,’ and he and the rest went away; and the count and his wife got on very well after that, and he never had to make use of the doctor’s root again.

THE QUEEN AND THE TRIPE-SELLER.1They say there was a queen who had such a bad temper that she made everybody about her miserable. Whatever her husband might do to please her, she was always discontented, and as for her maids she was always slapping their faces.There was a fairy who saw all this, and she said to herself, ‘This must not be allowed to go on;’ so she went and called another fairy, and said, ‘What shall we do to teach this naughty queen to behave herself?’ and they could not imagine what to do with her; so they agreed to think it over, and meet again another day.When they met again, the first fairy said to the other, ‘Well, have you found any plan for correcting this naughty queen?’‘Yes,’ replied the second fairy; ‘I have found an excellent plan. I have been up and all over the whole town, and in a little dirty back lane2I have found a tripe-seller as like to this queen as two peas.’3‘Excellent!’ exclaimed the first fairy. ‘I see what you mean to do. One of us will take some of the queen’s clothes and dress up the tripe-seller, and the other will take some of the tripe-seller’s clothes and dress up the queen in them, and then we will exchange them till the queen learns better manners.’‘That’s the plan,’ replied the second fairy. ‘You have said it exactly. When shall we begin?’‘This very night,’ said the first fairy.‘Agreed!’ said the second fairy; and that very night, while everyone else was gone quietly to bed they went, one into the palace and fetched some of the queen’s clothes, and, bringing them to the tripe-seller’s room, placed them by the side of her bed; and the other went to the tripe-seller’s room and fetched her clothes, and took them and put them by the side of the queen’s bed. They also woke them very early, and when each got up she put on the things that were by the side of the bed, thinking they were the things she had left there the night before. Thus the queen was dressed like a tripe-seller, and the tripe-seller like a queen.Then one fairy took the queen, dressed like a tripe-seller, and put her down in the tripe-seller’s shop, and theother fairy took the tripe-seller, dressed like a queen, and placed her in the palace, and both of them did their work so swiftly that neither the queen nor the tripe-seller perceived the flight at all.The queen was very much astonished at finding herself in a tripe-shop, and began staring about, wondering how she got there.‘Here! Don’t stand gaping about like that!’ cried the tripe-man,4who was a very hot-tempered fellow; ‘Why, you haven’t boiled the coffee!’‘Boiled the coffee!’ repeated the queen, hardly apprehending what he meant.‘Yes; you haven’t boiled the coffee!’ said the tripe-man. ‘Don’t repeat my words, but do your work!’ and he took her by the shoulders, put the coffee-pot in her hand, and stood over her looking so fierce that she was frightened into doing what she had never done or seen done in all her life before.Presently the coffee began to boil over.‘There! Don’t waste all the coffee like that!’ cried the tripe-man, and he got up and gave her a slap, which made the tears come in her eyes.‘Don’t blubber!’ said the tripe-man; ‘but bring the coffee here and pour it out.’The queen did as she was told; but when she began to drink it, though she had made it herself, it was so nasty she didn’t know how to drink it. It was very different stuff from what she got at the palace; but the tripe-man had his eye on her, and she didn’t dare not to drink it.‘A halfp’th of cat’s-meat!’5sang out a small boy in the shop.‘Why don’t you go and serve the customer?’ said the tripe-man, knocking the cup out of the queen’s hand.Fearing another slap, she rose hastily to give the boy what he wanted, but not knowing one thing in the shopfrom another, she gave him a large piece of the best tripe fit for a prince.‘Oh, what fine tripe to-day!’ cried the small boy, and ran away as fast as he could.It was in vain the tripe-man halloed after him, he was in too great a hurry to secure his prize to think of returning.‘Look what you’ve done!’ cried the tripe-man, giving the queen another slap; ‘you’ve given that boy for a penny a bunch of tripe worth a shilling.’ Luckily, other customers came in and diverted the man’s attention.Presently all the tripe hanging up had been sold, and more customers kept coming in.‘What has come to you, to-day!’ roared the tripe-man, as the queen stood not knowing what to do with herself. ‘Do you mean to say you haven’t washed that other lot of tripe!’ and this time he gave her a kick.To escape his fury, the queen turned to do her best with washing the other tripe, but she did it so awkwardly that she got a volley of abuse and blows too.Then came dinner-time, and nothing prepared, or even bought to prepare, for dinner. Another stormy scene ensued at the discovery, and the tripe-man went to dine at the inn, leaving her to go without any dinner at all, in punishment for having neglected to prepare it.While he was gone she helped all the customers to the wrong things, and, when he came home, got another scolding and more blows for her stupidity. And all through the afternoon it was the same story.But the tripe-seller, when she found herself all in a palace, with half-a-dozen maids waiting to attend her, was equally bewildered. When they kept asking her if there was nothing she pleased to want, she kept answering, ‘No thank you,’ in such a gentle tone, the maids began to think that a reign of peace had come to them at last.By-and-by, when the ladies came, instead of saying, asthe queen had been wont, ‘What an ugly dress you have got; go and take it off!’ she said, ‘How nice you look; how tasteful your dress is!’Afterwards the king came in, bringing her a rare nosegay. Instead of throwing it on one side to vex him, as the queen had been wont, she showed so much delight, and expressed her thanks so many times, that he was quite overcome.The change that had come over the queen soon became the talk of the whole palace, and everyone congratulated himself on an improvement which made them all happy. The king was no less pleased than all the rest, and for the first time for many years he said he would drive out with the queen; for on account of her bad temper he had long given up driving with her. So the carriage came round with four prancing horses, and an escort of cavalry to ride before and behind it. The tripe-seller hardly could believe she was to drive in this splendid carriage, but the king handed her in before she knew where she was. Then, as he was so pleased with her gentle and grateful ways, he further asked her to say which way she would like to drive.The tripe-seller, partly because she was too much frightened to think of any other place, and partly because she thought it would be nice to drive in state through her own neighbourhood, named the broader street out of which turned the lane in which she lived, for the royal carriage could hardly have turned down the lane itself. The king repeated the order, and away drove the royalcortège.The circumstance of the king and queen driving out together was sufficient to excite the attention of the whole population, and wherever they passed the people crowded into the streets; thus a volley of shouts and comments ran before the carriage towards the lane of the tripe-man. The tripe-man was at the moment engaged in administering a severe chastisement to the queen forher latest mistake, and the roar of the people’s voices afforded a happy pretext for breaking away from him.She ran with the rest to the opening of the lane just as the royal carriage was passing.‘My husband! my husband!’ she screamed as the king drove by, and plaintive as was her voice, and different from her usual imperious tone, he heard it and turned his head towards her.‘My husband! my royal husband!’ pleaded the humbled queen.The king, in amazement, stopped the carriage and gazed from the queen in the gutter to the tripe-seller in royal array by his side, unable to solve the problem.‘This is certainly my wife!’ he said at last, as he extended his hand to the queen. ‘Who then can you be?’ he added, addressing the tripe-seller.‘I will tell the truth,’ replied the good tripe-seller. ‘I am no queen; I am the poor wife of the tripe-seller down the lane there; but how I came into the palace is more than I can say.’‘And how come you here?’ said the king, addressing the real queen.‘That, neither can I tell; I thought you had sent me hither to punish me for my bad temper; but if you will only take me back I will never be bad-tempered again; only take me away from this dreadful tripe-man, who has been beating me all day.’Then the king made answer: ‘Of course you must come back with me, for you are my wife. But,’ he said to the tripe-seller; ‘what shall I do with you? After you have been living in luxury in the palace, you will feel it hard to go back to sell tripe.’‘It’s true I have not many luxuries at home,’ answered the tripe-seller; ‘but yet I had rather be with my husband than in any palace in the world;’ and she descended from the carriage, while the queen got in.‘Stop!’ said the king. ‘This day’s transformation, howsoever it was brought about, has been a good day, and you have been so well behaved, and so truth-spoken, I don’t like your going back to be beaten by the tripe-man.’‘Oh, never mind that,’ said the good wife; ‘he never beats me unless I do something very stupid. And, after all, he’s my husband, and that’s enough for me.’‘Well, if you’re satisfied, I won’t interfere any further,’ said the king; ‘except to give you some mark of my royal favour.’So he bestowed on the tripe-man and his wife a beautiful villa, with a nice casino outside the gates, on condition that he never beat her any more.The tripe-man was so pleased with the gifts which had come to him through his wife’s good conduct, that he kept his word, and was always thereafter very kind to her. And the queen was so frightened at the thought that she might find herself suddenly transformed into a tripe-seller again, that she kept a strict guard over her temper, and became the delight of her husband and the whole court.1‘La Regina e la Triparola;’‘Triparola,’ female tripe-seller.↑2‘Vicolo,’ a narrow dirty street.↑3‘Due gocciette d’acqua,’ two little drops of water, the Roman equivalent for ‘as like as two peas.’↑4‘Triparolo,’ a male tripe-seller.↑5‘Un bajocco di tripa-gatto,’ the worst part of the tripe, sold for cats’ and dogs’ meat.↑

THE QUEEN AND THE TRIPE-SELLER.1

They say there was a queen who had such a bad temper that she made everybody about her miserable. Whatever her husband might do to please her, she was always discontented, and as for her maids she was always slapping their faces.There was a fairy who saw all this, and she said to herself, ‘This must not be allowed to go on;’ so she went and called another fairy, and said, ‘What shall we do to teach this naughty queen to behave herself?’ and they could not imagine what to do with her; so they agreed to think it over, and meet again another day.When they met again, the first fairy said to the other, ‘Well, have you found any plan for correcting this naughty queen?’‘Yes,’ replied the second fairy; ‘I have found an excellent plan. I have been up and all over the whole town, and in a little dirty back lane2I have found a tripe-seller as like to this queen as two peas.’3‘Excellent!’ exclaimed the first fairy. ‘I see what you mean to do. One of us will take some of the queen’s clothes and dress up the tripe-seller, and the other will take some of the tripe-seller’s clothes and dress up the queen in them, and then we will exchange them till the queen learns better manners.’‘That’s the plan,’ replied the second fairy. ‘You have said it exactly. When shall we begin?’‘This very night,’ said the first fairy.‘Agreed!’ said the second fairy; and that very night, while everyone else was gone quietly to bed they went, one into the palace and fetched some of the queen’s clothes, and, bringing them to the tripe-seller’s room, placed them by the side of her bed; and the other went to the tripe-seller’s room and fetched her clothes, and took them and put them by the side of the queen’s bed. They also woke them very early, and when each got up she put on the things that were by the side of the bed, thinking they were the things she had left there the night before. Thus the queen was dressed like a tripe-seller, and the tripe-seller like a queen.Then one fairy took the queen, dressed like a tripe-seller, and put her down in the tripe-seller’s shop, and theother fairy took the tripe-seller, dressed like a queen, and placed her in the palace, and both of them did their work so swiftly that neither the queen nor the tripe-seller perceived the flight at all.The queen was very much astonished at finding herself in a tripe-shop, and began staring about, wondering how she got there.‘Here! Don’t stand gaping about like that!’ cried the tripe-man,4who was a very hot-tempered fellow; ‘Why, you haven’t boiled the coffee!’‘Boiled the coffee!’ repeated the queen, hardly apprehending what he meant.‘Yes; you haven’t boiled the coffee!’ said the tripe-man. ‘Don’t repeat my words, but do your work!’ and he took her by the shoulders, put the coffee-pot in her hand, and stood over her looking so fierce that she was frightened into doing what she had never done or seen done in all her life before.Presently the coffee began to boil over.‘There! Don’t waste all the coffee like that!’ cried the tripe-man, and he got up and gave her a slap, which made the tears come in her eyes.‘Don’t blubber!’ said the tripe-man; ‘but bring the coffee here and pour it out.’The queen did as she was told; but when she began to drink it, though she had made it herself, it was so nasty she didn’t know how to drink it. It was very different stuff from what she got at the palace; but the tripe-man had his eye on her, and she didn’t dare not to drink it.‘A halfp’th of cat’s-meat!’5sang out a small boy in the shop.‘Why don’t you go and serve the customer?’ said the tripe-man, knocking the cup out of the queen’s hand.Fearing another slap, she rose hastily to give the boy what he wanted, but not knowing one thing in the shopfrom another, she gave him a large piece of the best tripe fit for a prince.‘Oh, what fine tripe to-day!’ cried the small boy, and ran away as fast as he could.It was in vain the tripe-man halloed after him, he was in too great a hurry to secure his prize to think of returning.‘Look what you’ve done!’ cried the tripe-man, giving the queen another slap; ‘you’ve given that boy for a penny a bunch of tripe worth a shilling.’ Luckily, other customers came in and diverted the man’s attention.Presently all the tripe hanging up had been sold, and more customers kept coming in.‘What has come to you, to-day!’ roared the tripe-man, as the queen stood not knowing what to do with herself. ‘Do you mean to say you haven’t washed that other lot of tripe!’ and this time he gave her a kick.To escape his fury, the queen turned to do her best with washing the other tripe, but she did it so awkwardly that she got a volley of abuse and blows too.Then came dinner-time, and nothing prepared, or even bought to prepare, for dinner. Another stormy scene ensued at the discovery, and the tripe-man went to dine at the inn, leaving her to go without any dinner at all, in punishment for having neglected to prepare it.While he was gone she helped all the customers to the wrong things, and, when he came home, got another scolding and more blows for her stupidity. And all through the afternoon it was the same story.But the tripe-seller, when she found herself all in a palace, with half-a-dozen maids waiting to attend her, was equally bewildered. When they kept asking her if there was nothing she pleased to want, she kept answering, ‘No thank you,’ in such a gentle tone, the maids began to think that a reign of peace had come to them at last.By-and-by, when the ladies came, instead of saying, asthe queen had been wont, ‘What an ugly dress you have got; go and take it off!’ she said, ‘How nice you look; how tasteful your dress is!’Afterwards the king came in, bringing her a rare nosegay. Instead of throwing it on one side to vex him, as the queen had been wont, she showed so much delight, and expressed her thanks so many times, that he was quite overcome.The change that had come over the queen soon became the talk of the whole palace, and everyone congratulated himself on an improvement which made them all happy. The king was no less pleased than all the rest, and for the first time for many years he said he would drive out with the queen; for on account of her bad temper he had long given up driving with her. So the carriage came round with four prancing horses, and an escort of cavalry to ride before and behind it. The tripe-seller hardly could believe she was to drive in this splendid carriage, but the king handed her in before she knew where she was. Then, as he was so pleased with her gentle and grateful ways, he further asked her to say which way she would like to drive.The tripe-seller, partly because she was too much frightened to think of any other place, and partly because she thought it would be nice to drive in state through her own neighbourhood, named the broader street out of which turned the lane in which she lived, for the royal carriage could hardly have turned down the lane itself. The king repeated the order, and away drove the royalcortège.The circumstance of the king and queen driving out together was sufficient to excite the attention of the whole population, and wherever they passed the people crowded into the streets; thus a volley of shouts and comments ran before the carriage towards the lane of the tripe-man. The tripe-man was at the moment engaged in administering a severe chastisement to the queen forher latest mistake, and the roar of the people’s voices afforded a happy pretext for breaking away from him.She ran with the rest to the opening of the lane just as the royal carriage was passing.‘My husband! my husband!’ she screamed as the king drove by, and plaintive as was her voice, and different from her usual imperious tone, he heard it and turned his head towards her.‘My husband! my royal husband!’ pleaded the humbled queen.The king, in amazement, stopped the carriage and gazed from the queen in the gutter to the tripe-seller in royal array by his side, unable to solve the problem.‘This is certainly my wife!’ he said at last, as he extended his hand to the queen. ‘Who then can you be?’ he added, addressing the tripe-seller.‘I will tell the truth,’ replied the good tripe-seller. ‘I am no queen; I am the poor wife of the tripe-seller down the lane there; but how I came into the palace is more than I can say.’‘And how come you here?’ said the king, addressing the real queen.‘That, neither can I tell; I thought you had sent me hither to punish me for my bad temper; but if you will only take me back I will never be bad-tempered again; only take me away from this dreadful tripe-man, who has been beating me all day.’Then the king made answer: ‘Of course you must come back with me, for you are my wife. But,’ he said to the tripe-seller; ‘what shall I do with you? After you have been living in luxury in the palace, you will feel it hard to go back to sell tripe.’‘It’s true I have not many luxuries at home,’ answered the tripe-seller; ‘but yet I had rather be with my husband than in any palace in the world;’ and she descended from the carriage, while the queen got in.‘Stop!’ said the king. ‘This day’s transformation, howsoever it was brought about, has been a good day, and you have been so well behaved, and so truth-spoken, I don’t like your going back to be beaten by the tripe-man.’‘Oh, never mind that,’ said the good wife; ‘he never beats me unless I do something very stupid. And, after all, he’s my husband, and that’s enough for me.’‘Well, if you’re satisfied, I won’t interfere any further,’ said the king; ‘except to give you some mark of my royal favour.’So he bestowed on the tripe-man and his wife a beautiful villa, with a nice casino outside the gates, on condition that he never beat her any more.The tripe-man was so pleased with the gifts which had come to him through his wife’s good conduct, that he kept his word, and was always thereafter very kind to her. And the queen was so frightened at the thought that she might find herself suddenly transformed into a tripe-seller again, that she kept a strict guard over her temper, and became the delight of her husband and the whole court.

They say there was a queen who had such a bad temper that she made everybody about her miserable. Whatever her husband might do to please her, she was always discontented, and as for her maids she was always slapping their faces.

There was a fairy who saw all this, and she said to herself, ‘This must not be allowed to go on;’ so she went and called another fairy, and said, ‘What shall we do to teach this naughty queen to behave herself?’ and they could not imagine what to do with her; so they agreed to think it over, and meet again another day.

When they met again, the first fairy said to the other, ‘Well, have you found any plan for correcting this naughty queen?’

‘Yes,’ replied the second fairy; ‘I have found an excellent plan. I have been up and all over the whole town, and in a little dirty back lane2I have found a tripe-seller as like to this queen as two peas.’3

‘Excellent!’ exclaimed the first fairy. ‘I see what you mean to do. One of us will take some of the queen’s clothes and dress up the tripe-seller, and the other will take some of the tripe-seller’s clothes and dress up the queen in them, and then we will exchange them till the queen learns better manners.’

‘That’s the plan,’ replied the second fairy. ‘You have said it exactly. When shall we begin?’

‘This very night,’ said the first fairy.

‘Agreed!’ said the second fairy; and that very night, while everyone else was gone quietly to bed they went, one into the palace and fetched some of the queen’s clothes, and, bringing them to the tripe-seller’s room, placed them by the side of her bed; and the other went to the tripe-seller’s room and fetched her clothes, and took them and put them by the side of the queen’s bed. They also woke them very early, and when each got up she put on the things that were by the side of the bed, thinking they were the things she had left there the night before. Thus the queen was dressed like a tripe-seller, and the tripe-seller like a queen.

Then one fairy took the queen, dressed like a tripe-seller, and put her down in the tripe-seller’s shop, and theother fairy took the tripe-seller, dressed like a queen, and placed her in the palace, and both of them did their work so swiftly that neither the queen nor the tripe-seller perceived the flight at all.

The queen was very much astonished at finding herself in a tripe-shop, and began staring about, wondering how she got there.

‘Here! Don’t stand gaping about like that!’ cried the tripe-man,4who was a very hot-tempered fellow; ‘Why, you haven’t boiled the coffee!’

‘Boiled the coffee!’ repeated the queen, hardly apprehending what he meant.

‘Yes; you haven’t boiled the coffee!’ said the tripe-man. ‘Don’t repeat my words, but do your work!’ and he took her by the shoulders, put the coffee-pot in her hand, and stood over her looking so fierce that she was frightened into doing what she had never done or seen done in all her life before.

Presently the coffee began to boil over.

‘There! Don’t waste all the coffee like that!’ cried the tripe-man, and he got up and gave her a slap, which made the tears come in her eyes.

‘Don’t blubber!’ said the tripe-man; ‘but bring the coffee here and pour it out.’

The queen did as she was told; but when she began to drink it, though she had made it herself, it was so nasty she didn’t know how to drink it. It was very different stuff from what she got at the palace; but the tripe-man had his eye on her, and she didn’t dare not to drink it.

‘A halfp’th of cat’s-meat!’5sang out a small boy in the shop.

‘Why don’t you go and serve the customer?’ said the tripe-man, knocking the cup out of the queen’s hand.

Fearing another slap, she rose hastily to give the boy what he wanted, but not knowing one thing in the shopfrom another, she gave him a large piece of the best tripe fit for a prince.

‘Oh, what fine tripe to-day!’ cried the small boy, and ran away as fast as he could.

It was in vain the tripe-man halloed after him, he was in too great a hurry to secure his prize to think of returning.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ cried the tripe-man, giving the queen another slap; ‘you’ve given that boy for a penny a bunch of tripe worth a shilling.’ Luckily, other customers came in and diverted the man’s attention.

Presently all the tripe hanging up had been sold, and more customers kept coming in.

‘What has come to you, to-day!’ roared the tripe-man, as the queen stood not knowing what to do with herself. ‘Do you mean to say you haven’t washed that other lot of tripe!’ and this time he gave her a kick.

To escape his fury, the queen turned to do her best with washing the other tripe, but she did it so awkwardly that she got a volley of abuse and blows too.

Then came dinner-time, and nothing prepared, or even bought to prepare, for dinner. Another stormy scene ensued at the discovery, and the tripe-man went to dine at the inn, leaving her to go without any dinner at all, in punishment for having neglected to prepare it.

While he was gone she helped all the customers to the wrong things, and, when he came home, got another scolding and more blows for her stupidity. And all through the afternoon it was the same story.

But the tripe-seller, when she found herself all in a palace, with half-a-dozen maids waiting to attend her, was equally bewildered. When they kept asking her if there was nothing she pleased to want, she kept answering, ‘No thank you,’ in such a gentle tone, the maids began to think that a reign of peace had come to them at last.

By-and-by, when the ladies came, instead of saying, asthe queen had been wont, ‘What an ugly dress you have got; go and take it off!’ she said, ‘How nice you look; how tasteful your dress is!’

Afterwards the king came in, bringing her a rare nosegay. Instead of throwing it on one side to vex him, as the queen had been wont, she showed so much delight, and expressed her thanks so many times, that he was quite overcome.

The change that had come over the queen soon became the talk of the whole palace, and everyone congratulated himself on an improvement which made them all happy. The king was no less pleased than all the rest, and for the first time for many years he said he would drive out with the queen; for on account of her bad temper he had long given up driving with her. So the carriage came round with four prancing horses, and an escort of cavalry to ride before and behind it. The tripe-seller hardly could believe she was to drive in this splendid carriage, but the king handed her in before she knew where she was. Then, as he was so pleased with her gentle and grateful ways, he further asked her to say which way she would like to drive.

The tripe-seller, partly because she was too much frightened to think of any other place, and partly because she thought it would be nice to drive in state through her own neighbourhood, named the broader street out of which turned the lane in which she lived, for the royal carriage could hardly have turned down the lane itself. The king repeated the order, and away drove the royalcortège.

The circumstance of the king and queen driving out together was sufficient to excite the attention of the whole population, and wherever they passed the people crowded into the streets; thus a volley of shouts and comments ran before the carriage towards the lane of the tripe-man. The tripe-man was at the moment engaged in administering a severe chastisement to the queen forher latest mistake, and the roar of the people’s voices afforded a happy pretext for breaking away from him.

She ran with the rest to the opening of the lane just as the royal carriage was passing.

‘My husband! my husband!’ she screamed as the king drove by, and plaintive as was her voice, and different from her usual imperious tone, he heard it and turned his head towards her.

‘My husband! my royal husband!’ pleaded the humbled queen.

The king, in amazement, stopped the carriage and gazed from the queen in the gutter to the tripe-seller in royal array by his side, unable to solve the problem.

‘This is certainly my wife!’ he said at last, as he extended his hand to the queen. ‘Who then can you be?’ he added, addressing the tripe-seller.

‘I will tell the truth,’ replied the good tripe-seller. ‘I am no queen; I am the poor wife of the tripe-seller down the lane there; but how I came into the palace is more than I can say.’

‘And how come you here?’ said the king, addressing the real queen.

‘That, neither can I tell; I thought you had sent me hither to punish me for my bad temper; but if you will only take me back I will never be bad-tempered again; only take me away from this dreadful tripe-man, who has been beating me all day.’

Then the king made answer: ‘Of course you must come back with me, for you are my wife. But,’ he said to the tripe-seller; ‘what shall I do with you? After you have been living in luxury in the palace, you will feel it hard to go back to sell tripe.’

‘It’s true I have not many luxuries at home,’ answered the tripe-seller; ‘but yet I had rather be with my husband than in any palace in the world;’ and she descended from the carriage, while the queen got in.

‘Stop!’ said the king. ‘This day’s transformation, howsoever it was brought about, has been a good day, and you have been so well behaved, and so truth-spoken, I don’t like your going back to be beaten by the tripe-man.’

‘Oh, never mind that,’ said the good wife; ‘he never beats me unless I do something very stupid. And, after all, he’s my husband, and that’s enough for me.’

‘Well, if you’re satisfied, I won’t interfere any further,’ said the king; ‘except to give you some mark of my royal favour.’

So he bestowed on the tripe-man and his wife a beautiful villa, with a nice casino outside the gates, on condition that he never beat her any more.

The tripe-man was so pleased with the gifts which had come to him through his wife’s good conduct, that he kept his word, and was always thereafter very kind to her. And the queen was so frightened at the thought that she might find herself suddenly transformed into a tripe-seller again, that she kept a strict guard over her temper, and became the delight of her husband and the whole court.

1‘La Regina e la Triparola;’‘Triparola,’ female tripe-seller.↑2‘Vicolo,’ a narrow dirty street.↑3‘Due gocciette d’acqua,’ two little drops of water, the Roman equivalent for ‘as like as two peas.’↑4‘Triparolo,’ a male tripe-seller.↑5‘Un bajocco di tripa-gatto,’ the worst part of the tripe, sold for cats’ and dogs’ meat.↑

1‘La Regina e la Triparola;’‘Triparola,’ female tripe-seller.↑

2‘Vicolo,’ a narrow dirty street.↑

3‘Due gocciette d’acqua,’ two little drops of water, the Roman equivalent for ‘as like as two peas.’↑

4‘Triparolo,’ a male tripe-seller.↑

5‘Un bajocco di tripa-gatto,’ the worst part of the tripe, sold for cats’ and dogs’ meat.↑

THE BAD-TEMPERED QUEEN.1They say there was a queen who was so bad-tempered that no one who could help it would come near her. All the servants ran away when she came out of her apartment, for fear she should scold and maltreat them; all the people ran away when she drove out, for fear she should vex them with some tyrannical order.As she was rich and beautiful, and ruled over vast dominions, many princes—who in their distant kingdoms had heard nothing of her failing—came to sue for her hand, but she sent them all away and would have nothing to say to any of them. She used to say she did not want to have anyone to be her master; she had rather live and govern by herself, and have everything her own way.As time went on, however, the council of state grew dissatisfied with this resolution. They insisted that she must marry, that there might be a family of princes to carry on the succession to the throne without dispute. When the queen found that she could not help it she agreed she would marry; but she was determined she would not marry any of the princes who had come to court her, because, as they were equal to herself in birth and state, they would want to rule over her and expect obedience from her. She declared she would marry no one but a certain duke, who, as she had observed in the council and in the state banquets and balls, was always very quiet and hardly ever spoke at all. She thought he would make a nice quiet manageable sort of husband, and she would have him if she must have one at all.The duke was as silent as usual when he was spoken to about it; but as he made no objection he was reckoned to have consented, and the marriage was duly solemnised.As soon as the marriage was over the queen went on making her arrangements and ordering matters in the palace just as if nothing had happened, and she were still her own mistress. In particular she issued invitations for the grandest ball she had ever given, asking to it all the ministers and their families, and all the nobility of the kingdom.The husband said nothing to all this, only a few hours before the time appointed for the banquet he called to the queen, saying: ‘Put on your travelling dress, and make haste; the carriage will be round directly.’‘I’m not going to put on my travelling dress,’ answered the queen scornfully; ‘I am just seeing about my evening dress for the banquet this evening.’‘If you are not ready in your travelling dress in five minutes, when the carriage comes round, it will be worse for you. Mind I have warned you.’And he looked so determined that she quailed before him.‘How can we be going into the country, when I have invited half the kingdom to a banquet?’ exclaimed the queen.‘Ihave invited no one,’ answered the husband quietly. ‘Don’t stand hesitating when I tell you to do a thing; go and get ready directly! we are going into the country!’ he added in his most positive voice, and, though she shed many secret tears over the loss of the banquet, she ventured to oppose nothing more to his orders, but went up and dressed, and when the carriage came round she was nearly ready. In about five minutes she came down.‘I won’t say anything this time about your keeping me waiting,’ he said when she appeared; ‘but mind it does not happen again, or you will be sorry for it.’The queen had a favourite little dog, which she fondled and talked to all the way, to show she was offended with her husband and independent of his conversation.Watching an opportunity when she was silent, the husband said to the little dog, ‘Jump on to my lap.’‘He’s not going to obey you,’ said the queen contemptuously; ‘he’smydog!’‘I keep no one about me who does not obey me,’ said her husband quietly; and he took out his pistol and shot the dog through the head.The queen began to understand that the husband she had chosen was not a person to be trifled with, nor did she venture even to utter a complaint.When they arrived at the villa, as the queen was goingto her apartment to undress, her husband called her to him into his room and bade her pull off his boots.The queen’s first impulse was to utter a haughty refusal; but by this time she had learnt that, as she would certainly have to give in to him in the end, it was better to do his bidding with a good grace at the first. So she said nothing, but knelt down and pulled off his boots.When she had done this he got up and said: ‘Now sit down in this armchair and I will take off your shoes; for my way is that one should help the other. If you behave to me asawife should, you need never fear but that I shall behave to you as a husband should.’By the time their visit to the country was at an end, and when they returned to the capital, everybody found their naughty queen had become the most angelic being imaginable.[After people’s bad tempers, their follies form the most prolific subject of theCiarpe.]1‘La Regina Cattiva.’↑

THE BAD-TEMPERED QUEEN.1

They say there was a queen who was so bad-tempered that no one who could help it would come near her. All the servants ran away when she came out of her apartment, for fear she should scold and maltreat them; all the people ran away when she drove out, for fear she should vex them with some tyrannical order.As she was rich and beautiful, and ruled over vast dominions, many princes—who in their distant kingdoms had heard nothing of her failing—came to sue for her hand, but she sent them all away and would have nothing to say to any of them. She used to say she did not want to have anyone to be her master; she had rather live and govern by herself, and have everything her own way.As time went on, however, the council of state grew dissatisfied with this resolution. They insisted that she must marry, that there might be a family of princes to carry on the succession to the throne without dispute. When the queen found that she could not help it she agreed she would marry; but she was determined she would not marry any of the princes who had come to court her, because, as they were equal to herself in birth and state, they would want to rule over her and expect obedience from her. She declared she would marry no one but a certain duke, who, as she had observed in the council and in the state banquets and balls, was always very quiet and hardly ever spoke at all. She thought he would make a nice quiet manageable sort of husband, and she would have him if she must have one at all.The duke was as silent as usual when he was spoken to about it; but as he made no objection he was reckoned to have consented, and the marriage was duly solemnised.As soon as the marriage was over the queen went on making her arrangements and ordering matters in the palace just as if nothing had happened, and she were still her own mistress. In particular she issued invitations for the grandest ball she had ever given, asking to it all the ministers and their families, and all the nobility of the kingdom.The husband said nothing to all this, only a few hours before the time appointed for the banquet he called to the queen, saying: ‘Put on your travelling dress, and make haste; the carriage will be round directly.’‘I’m not going to put on my travelling dress,’ answered the queen scornfully; ‘I am just seeing about my evening dress for the banquet this evening.’‘If you are not ready in your travelling dress in five minutes, when the carriage comes round, it will be worse for you. Mind I have warned you.’And he looked so determined that she quailed before him.‘How can we be going into the country, when I have invited half the kingdom to a banquet?’ exclaimed the queen.‘Ihave invited no one,’ answered the husband quietly. ‘Don’t stand hesitating when I tell you to do a thing; go and get ready directly! we are going into the country!’ he added in his most positive voice, and, though she shed many secret tears over the loss of the banquet, she ventured to oppose nothing more to his orders, but went up and dressed, and when the carriage came round she was nearly ready. In about five minutes she came down.‘I won’t say anything this time about your keeping me waiting,’ he said when she appeared; ‘but mind it does not happen again, or you will be sorry for it.’The queen had a favourite little dog, which she fondled and talked to all the way, to show she was offended with her husband and independent of his conversation.Watching an opportunity when she was silent, the husband said to the little dog, ‘Jump on to my lap.’‘He’s not going to obey you,’ said the queen contemptuously; ‘he’smydog!’‘I keep no one about me who does not obey me,’ said her husband quietly; and he took out his pistol and shot the dog through the head.The queen began to understand that the husband she had chosen was not a person to be trifled with, nor did she venture even to utter a complaint.When they arrived at the villa, as the queen was goingto her apartment to undress, her husband called her to him into his room and bade her pull off his boots.The queen’s first impulse was to utter a haughty refusal; but by this time she had learnt that, as she would certainly have to give in to him in the end, it was better to do his bidding with a good grace at the first. So she said nothing, but knelt down and pulled off his boots.When she had done this he got up and said: ‘Now sit down in this armchair and I will take off your shoes; for my way is that one should help the other. If you behave to me asawife should, you need never fear but that I shall behave to you as a husband should.’By the time their visit to the country was at an end, and when they returned to the capital, everybody found their naughty queen had become the most angelic being imaginable.[After people’s bad tempers, their follies form the most prolific subject of theCiarpe.]

They say there was a queen who was so bad-tempered that no one who could help it would come near her. All the servants ran away when she came out of her apartment, for fear she should scold and maltreat them; all the people ran away when she drove out, for fear she should vex them with some tyrannical order.

As she was rich and beautiful, and ruled over vast dominions, many princes—who in their distant kingdoms had heard nothing of her failing—came to sue for her hand, but she sent them all away and would have nothing to say to any of them. She used to say she did not want to have anyone to be her master; she had rather live and govern by herself, and have everything her own way.

As time went on, however, the council of state grew dissatisfied with this resolution. They insisted that she must marry, that there might be a family of princes to carry on the succession to the throne without dispute. When the queen found that she could not help it she agreed she would marry; but she was determined she would not marry any of the princes who had come to court her, because, as they were equal to herself in birth and state, they would want to rule over her and expect obedience from her. She declared she would marry no one but a certain duke, who, as she had observed in the council and in the state banquets and balls, was always very quiet and hardly ever spoke at all. She thought he would make a nice quiet manageable sort of husband, and she would have him if she must have one at all.

The duke was as silent as usual when he was spoken to about it; but as he made no objection he was reckoned to have consented, and the marriage was duly solemnised.

As soon as the marriage was over the queen went on making her arrangements and ordering matters in the palace just as if nothing had happened, and she were still her own mistress. In particular she issued invitations for the grandest ball she had ever given, asking to it all the ministers and their families, and all the nobility of the kingdom.

The husband said nothing to all this, only a few hours before the time appointed for the banquet he called to the queen, saying: ‘Put on your travelling dress, and make haste; the carriage will be round directly.’

‘I’m not going to put on my travelling dress,’ answered the queen scornfully; ‘I am just seeing about my evening dress for the banquet this evening.’

‘If you are not ready in your travelling dress in five minutes, when the carriage comes round, it will be worse for you. Mind I have warned you.’

And he looked so determined that she quailed before him.

‘How can we be going into the country, when I have invited half the kingdom to a banquet?’ exclaimed the queen.

‘Ihave invited no one,’ answered the husband quietly. ‘Don’t stand hesitating when I tell you to do a thing; go and get ready directly! we are going into the country!’ he added in his most positive voice, and, though she shed many secret tears over the loss of the banquet, she ventured to oppose nothing more to his orders, but went up and dressed, and when the carriage came round she was nearly ready. In about five minutes she came down.

‘I won’t say anything this time about your keeping me waiting,’ he said when she appeared; ‘but mind it does not happen again, or you will be sorry for it.’

The queen had a favourite little dog, which she fondled and talked to all the way, to show she was offended with her husband and independent of his conversation.

Watching an opportunity when she was silent, the husband said to the little dog, ‘Jump on to my lap.’

‘He’s not going to obey you,’ said the queen contemptuously; ‘he’smydog!’

‘I keep no one about me who does not obey me,’ said her husband quietly; and he took out his pistol and shot the dog through the head.

The queen began to understand that the husband she had chosen was not a person to be trifled with, nor did she venture even to utter a complaint.

When they arrived at the villa, as the queen was goingto her apartment to undress, her husband called her to him into his room and bade her pull off his boots.

The queen’s first impulse was to utter a haughty refusal; but by this time she had learnt that, as she would certainly have to give in to him in the end, it was better to do his bidding with a good grace at the first. So she said nothing, but knelt down and pulled off his boots.

When she had done this he got up and said: ‘Now sit down in this armchair and I will take off your shoes; for my way is that one should help the other. If you behave to me asawife should, you need never fear but that I shall behave to you as a husband should.’

By the time their visit to the country was at an end, and when they returned to the capital, everybody found their naughty queen had become the most angelic being imaginable.

[After people’s bad tempers, their follies form the most prolific subject of theCiarpe.]

1‘La Regina Cattiva.’↑

1‘La Regina Cattiva.’↑

THE SIMPLE WIFE.1There was a man and his wife who had a young daughter to marry; and there was a man who was seeking a wife. So the man who was seeking a wife came to the man who had a daughter to marry, and said, ‘Give me your daughter for a wife.’‘Yes,’ said the man who had a daughter to marry;2‘you’ll do very well; you’re just about the sort of son-in-law I want.’ And then he added: ‘If our daughter is to be betrothed to-day, it is the occasion for a feast.’ So to the wife he said, ‘Prepare the table;’ and to the daughter he said, ‘Draw the wine.’The daughter went down into the cellar to draw thewine. But as she drew the wine she began to cry, saying: ‘If I am to be married I shall have a child, and the child will be a son, and the son will be a priest, and the priest will be a bishop, and the bishop will be a cardinal, and the cardinal will be a pope.’ And she cried and cried, and the wine was running all the time, so that the bottle3she was filling ran over, and went on running over.Then said the father and mother: ‘What can the girl be doing down in the cellar so long?’ But the mother said: ‘I must go and see.’So the mother went down to see why she was so long, but the moment she came into the cellar she, too, began to cry; so that the wine still went on running over.Then the father said: ‘What can the girl and her mother both be doing so long down in the cellar? I must go and see.’So the father went down into the cellar; but the moment he got into the cellar he, too, began to cry, and could do nothing for crying; so the wine still went on running over.Then he who had come to seek a wife said: ‘What can these people all be doing so long down in the cellar?’ So he, too, went down to see, and found them all crying in the cellar and the wine running over. Only when the wine was all run out they left off crying and came upstairs again.Then the betrothal and the marriage were happily celebrated.One day after they were married the husband went into the market to buy meat, and he bought a large provision because he had invited a friend to dinner. When the wife saw him buy such a quantity of meat she began to cry, saying: ‘What can we do with such a lot of meat?’‘Oh, never mind, don’t make a misery of it,’ said the husband; ‘put it behind you.’4The simple wife took the meat and went home, saying to her parents,5and crying the while: ‘My husband says I am to put all this meat behind me! Do tell me whatcanI do?’‘You can’t put the whole lot of it behind you, that’s certain,’ replied the equally simple mother; ‘but we can manage it between us.’Then she took the meat and put all the hard, bony part on one chair, where she made the father sit down on it; all the fat, skinny part she put on another chair, and made the wife sit down on it; and the fleshy, meaty part she put on another chair, and sat down on that herself.Presently the husband came with his friend, ready for dinner, knocking at the door. None of the three dared to move, however, that they might not cease to be fulfilling his injunctions. Then he looked through the keyhole, and, seeing them all sitting down without moving when he knocked, he thought they must all be dead; so he ran and fetched a locksmith, who opened the door for him.‘What on earth are you all doing there,’ exclaimed the hungry husband, ‘instead of getting dinner ready?’‘You told me to put the meat behind me, and I have done so,’ answered the simple wife.Then he saw they were sitting on the meat. Out of all patience with such idiocy, he exclaimed: ‘This is the last you’ll ever see of me. At least I promise you not to come back till I have met three other people as idiotic as you, and that’s hardly likely to occur.’With that he took his friend to a tavern to dine, and then put on a pilgrim’s dress and went wandering over the country.In the first city he came to there was great public rejoicing going on. The princess had just been married, and the court was keeping high festival. As he came up to the palace the bride and bridegroom were just come back from church. The bride wore one of those very highround headdresses that they used to wear in olden time, with a long veil hanging from it. It was so very high that she could not by any means get in at the door, and there she stuck, not knowing what to do. Then she began to cry, saying: ‘What shall I do? what shall I do?’‘Shall I tell you what to do?’ said the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.‘Oh, pray do, if you can; I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me how to get in.’So he went and made her go a few steps backward, and then bow her head very low, and so she could pass under the door.‘Really, I have found one woman as simple as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as he sat down to the banquet at the special invitation of the princess, in reward for his services. Afterwards she counted out a hundred scudi to him, and he went further.Further along the road he came to a farm, with barns and cattle and plenty of stock about, and a large well at which a woman was drawing water. Instead of dipping in the pail, she had got the well-rope knotted into a huge knot, which she kept dipping into the water and squeezing out into the pail, and she kept crying as she did so: ‘Oh, how long shall I be filling the pail! The pail will never be full!’‘Shall I show you how to fill it?’ asked the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.‘Oh, yes, do show me if you can. I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me.’Then he took all the knots out of the rope and let down the pail by it, and filled it in a minute.‘Here’s a second woman as stupid as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as the farmer’s wife asked him in to dinner in reward for his great services; ‘if I go on at this rate I shall have to return to her at last, in spite of my protestations.’After that the farmer’s wife counted out the hundred scudi of the promised reward, and he went on further, having first packed six eggs into his hollow staff as provision for the journey.Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage. Here he knocked and asked a bed for his night’s lodging.‘I can’t give you that,’ said a voice from the inside; ‘for I am a lone widow. I can’t take a man in to sleep here.’‘But I am a pilgrim,’ replied he; ‘let me in at least to cook a bit of supper.’‘ThatI don’t mind doing,’ said the good wife, and she opened the door.‘Thanks, good friend!’ said the pilgrim-husband as he sat down by the stove; ‘now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan.’6So she gave him a pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan, too.Presently, when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs swimming in the pan instead of two, she said: ‘Lack-a-day! you must surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know so-and-so there’ (naming her dead husband)?‘Oh, yes,’ said the pilgrim-husband, enjoying the joke; ‘I know him very well; he lives just next to me.’‘Only to think of that!’ replied the poor woman. ‘And do tell me, how do you get on in the other world? What sort of a life is it?’‘Oh, not so very bad; it depends what sort of a place you get. The part where we are is not very bad, except that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly starved.’‘No, really!’ cried the good wife, clasping her hands; ‘only fancy! my good husband starving out there; so fond as he was of a good dinner, too!’ Then she added, coaxingly: ‘As you know him so well, perhaps youwouldn’t mind doing him the charity of taking him a little somewhat to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could easily send him.’‘O, dear no, not at all; I’ll do it with great pleasure,’ answered he; ‘but I’m not going back till to-morrow; and if I don’t sleep here I must go on further, and then I shan’t come by this way.’‘That’s true,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, I mustn’t mind what the folks say, for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning I’ll load a donkey with provisions for my poor dear husband.’‘Oh, no,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you shan’t be disturbed in your bed; only let me sleep on the hearth, that will do for me; and as I’m an early riser I can be gone before anyone’s astir, so folks won’t have anything to say.’So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up loading the donkey with the best of her stores. There were ham, and maccaroni, and flour, and cheese, and wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying: ‘You’ll send the donkey back, won’t you?’‘Of course I would send him back; he’d be no use to us out there: but I shan’t get out again myself for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won’t find his way back alone, for it’s no easy way to find.’‘To be sure not; I ought to have thought of that,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, so as my poor husband gets a good meal never mind the donkey.’So the pretended pilgrim from the other world went his way. He hadn’t gone a hundred yards before the widow called him back.‘Ah, she’s beginning to think better of it!’ said he to himself; and he continued his way, pretending not to hear.‘Good pilgrim!’ shouted the widow; ‘I forgot one thing. Would any money be of use to my poor dear husband?’‘Oh dear yes, all the use in the world,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you can always get anything for money everywhere.’‘Oh, do come back then, and I’ll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him.’The pretended pilgrim came back willingly for the hundred scudi, and the widow counted them out to him.‘There is no help for it,’ soliloquised he as he went his way; ‘I must go back to those at home. I have actually found three women each more stupid than they.’So he went home to live, and complained no more of the simplicity of his wife.[We have the German of this story in ‘Die Klugen Leute,’ Grimm, p. 407, and again the beginning of it in ‘Die Kluge Else’ (Clever Lizzie), Grimm, p. 137 (which ends with the desperation of the wife as the second Roman version ends with the death of the husband); in some variants given in the ‘Russian Folk Tales,’ pp. 53–4; in an Italian-Tirolese tale, ‘Le donne matte’ (the title resembling that of the next Roman version); and the ending, in the Norse ‘Not a pin to choose between them.’ Senhor de Saraiva told me the following Portuguese story entitled ‘Pedro da Malas Artes’ (Tricky Peter), which embodies these incidents, but opens with a different purport.Tricky Peterwas a knowing blade; so he went out on his travels to set all the world straight; and he found plenty to do.In the very first town he came to there was a great commotion. A bride had come to church to be married, and there she stuck at the church door, mounted on her mule, while the people deliberated whether they should facilitate her ingress by cutting off some of her head or some of the mule’s legs.‘Let her alight and walk in,’ said Tricky Peter; ‘and the door will be high enough.’ And all the people applauded his wisdom.At the next town he found the people all full of discontent, because one of them had to sit up by turns to tell the others when the sun rose.‘I’ll give you a bird to perform that office,’ said Tricky Peter; and he went home and fetched a cock, and then they could all rest comfortably.After this the story has no more silly people to deal with; but Peter fools a giant, and overcomes his strength with craft. He does not seem, either, to get paid for his services, as do the heroes of ‘La Sposa Cese,’ and all the others.I have also another Roman story (too long to print here) of a man who sets out with a different purpose again, who meets with three sets of people afflicted with similar follies, and who also makes a good deal of money by his counsel; together with various stories in which men go to fetch their wives back from the devil’s kingdom, get three commissions of a similar nature by the way, for executing which they get richly paid on their return.There is a story in the 5th Tantra given as ‘Le Brahme aux vains projets’ in Abbé Dubois’ translation of the ‘Pantcha-Tantra,’ which has an analogous opening to that of ‘La Sposa Cece.’ There is another among the ‘Contes Indiens’ published at the end of it, in which four Brahmans have a great dispute as to which of them can claim to be the greatest idiot—a strife only second in folly to that of the ‘Three Indolent Boys’ in Grimm, p. 551—and they each narrate such proof of having acted with consummate folly that the decision given is that there is not a pin to choose between them.In a somewhat analogous story, which he calls ‘Aventures duGourou Paramarta,’ one of the disciples commits the counting mistake ‘of the well-known Irishman,’ in omitting to reckon himself in his computation, also found in the Russian ‘Folk Tales,’ p. 54, and they go to buy a foal’s egg, just as do certain peasants of the Trentino in an Italian-Tirolese ‘storiella da rider’7(laughable story).]LA SPOSA CECE.2Another version of this story was told me, or rather an entirely different story embodying the same purport, which, though full of fun, turned on the double meanings of common words of household use too homely for the most part, and some too coarse to please the English reader. The husband, among other things, tells his wife to prepare dinner for a friend and to mind she has ‘brocoli strascinati’ and ‘uovi spersi,’8as they are his favourite dishes. ‘Strascinare’ is to drag anything along, but is technically used to express brocoli chopped up and fried, the commonest Roman dish. ‘Spergere’ is to scatter, but the word is used among common people to express eggs poached in broth, a favourite delicacy; (eggs poached as in England are called ‘uova in bianco’). The wife, taking the words literally, drags the brocoli all over the house and all over the yard, till it is so nasty it cannot be eaten, instead of frying it, and scatters the eggs all about the place instead of poaching them, and so on through a number of other absurdities difficult to explain in detail. In the end the husband falls ill, partly from her bad cooking and partly from annoyance; a doctor is called in, who tells her (among other directions which she similarly misunderstands), that he must have nothing but ‘brodo,’9but she is to make it ‘alto, alto.’ ‘Alto’ is literally ‘high,’ but he uses it for ‘good,’ ‘strong;’ she, however, understands him to mean her to make it in a high place, and goes up on the roof to make it. When the husband asks for it she says she cannot get it for him then as it is up on the roof.Ultimately the husband dies of vexation.There is a very familiar German story which everyone who hasany acquaintance with the people must have met, of a lady who complains to her servant that the tea has not ‘drawn,’ and the simple girl answers, ‘It is not my fault, I havedrawnit all about the place enough I’m sure’ (Ich hab’ es genug umhergezogen).1‘La Sposa Cece,’the simple wife. ‘Cece’ among the common people seems to mean pretty nearly the same as ‘tonto,’ ‘silly,’ ‘idiotic;’ in this place more exactly ‘simple’ or ‘half-witted.’↑2It is a characteristic of the Roman people that as a rule they never call people by their names; the ‘casato’ or married name, and the ‘cognome’ or family name, are used indifferently when such a name is called in request at all, by married people. If they must give a name to a stranger it is always the Christian name that comes first to their lips; among themselves, however, it is seldom the genuine name that is used. They have some ‘sopranome’ or nick-name for everybody, or at least a shortening of the Christian name, as ‘Checca’ and ‘Checco’ for Francesca and Francesco; ‘Pippo’ for Filippo; ‘Pepe’ for Giuseppe; ‘Cola’ for Niccola; ‘Maso’ for Tomaso; ‘Teta’ for Teresa; ‘Lalla’ for Adelaide; ‘Lina’ for Carolina; ‘Tuta’ for Geltrude; the abbreviations for Giovanni are innumerable.But what they most love to designate people by is a description of their persons. When you come home from your walk, your servant does not tell you Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so have called, but it will be ‘Quel signore vecchio ingobbato’ (that old hump-backed kind of gentleman), if he be the least grey and high-shouldered, however young he may be; or ‘Quel bel giovane alto’ (that tall, handsome, young gentleman), whatever his age, if he be onlybien conservé. Then ‘Quella signora alta, secca, che veste di lutto’ (that tall thin lady dressed in mourning). ‘Quella signora bella bionda, giovane’ (that lady, pretty, fair, young). Or ‘Quello che porta il brillante’ (he who wears a brilliant), because the same friend happened to have a diamond stud in his cravat one day; or ‘Quella contessa che veste di cilestro,’ because the lady happened once to wear a blue dress, and so on, with all manner of signs and tokens which it may take you half-an-hour to recognise a person by, if you ever make it out at all. Or, if there is no distinctive mark of the kind to seize upon, it will be‘Quel signore,’ or ‘quella signora di Palazzo,’ or ‘Via,’ or ‘Piazza’ So-and-so. And this not from the difficulty of catching a foreign name, because it is still more in vogue when designating their own people; if you are asking for the address of a servant, a tailor, a dressmaker, &c., it is in vain you try to make them out by the name, you must do your best to describe them, and then they will break out with an exclamation hitting it off for themselves: ‘Ah! si, quel scimunito’ (that silly-looking fellow); ‘quel gobbo’ (that high-shouldered fellow—lit. ‘hunchbacked’); ‘quella strega’ (that ugly old woman, cunning woman—lit. ‘witch’); ‘quella bella giovane alta’ (that tall handsome girl); ‘quella donna bassetta’ (that short little woman), for with their descriptions as with their names they must super-add a diminutive or a qualification, and ‘basso’ (short) is pretty sure to be rendered by ‘bassetto,’ ‘piccola’ (little) by ‘piccinina,’ ‘vecchio’ (old) by ‘vecchietto.’ ‘Quella scimia’ or ‘scimietta’ (that old woman, or that little old woman who looks like a monkey). ‘Quella donna anziana’ (that respectable old woman). ‘Quella donniciuola’ (that nasty little old woman, contemptible old woman). ‘Quel ragazzino, tanto carino, tanto caruccio’ (that nice boy, that very nice boy). ‘Quel vecchietto’ (that nice old man); and in this way the hero of this story is designated as ‘The man who has a daughter to marry.’↑3‘Boccione,’ a large coarse glass bottle commonly used in Rome for carrying wine. When it is covered with twisted rushes—like the oil-flasks that come to England—it is called a ‘damigiana,’ a young lady, a little lady.↑4‘Mettetevelo addietro.’ Lit. ‘Put it behind you,’ a way of saying ‘Never mind it,’ ‘don’t care about it.’ But the woman is supposed to be so foolish that she understands it literally.↑5The Italian custom of the newly married couples continuing to live with the parents of one or other of them is here brought in.↑6‘Tegame,’ a flat earthen pan much in vogue in Roman kitchens; ‘ova in tegame’ is a favourite and not a bad dish. A little fresh butter is oiled, and the eggs are dropped into it as for poaching, and very slowly cooked in it; when scarcely set they are reckoned done.↑7Such notions are not altogether so impossible as they seem. I myself heard a very intelligent little boy one day say to his mother, ‘Mama, I should so like to see a horse’s egg.’ ‘A horse’s egg, my dear—there are no such things,’ was the reply of course. ‘Oh yes, theremustbe,’ rejoined the child, ‘because I’ve heard Pa several times talk about finding a mare’s nest.’↑8‘Uovo,’ by the way, is a word with which great liberties are taken. The correct singular is ‘uovo’ and the plural ‘uova,’ but it is very common to make the plural in ‘i’ and also to say ‘uova’ for the singular, and ‘uove’ for plural, while the initial ‘u’ is most usually dropped out.↑9‘Brodo’ is beef-tea or clear broth with nothing in it; broth with vermicelli or anything else in it is ‘minestra;’ ‘zuppa,’ which sounds most like ‘soup,’ is rather ‘sop,’ and when applied to broth, means strictly only broth with bread in it, from ‘inzuppare,’ to steep, soak, or sop; but it is also used for broth with anything else in it besides bread, but never without anything in it.↑

THE SIMPLE WIFE.1

There was a man and his wife who had a young daughter to marry; and there was a man who was seeking a wife. So the man who was seeking a wife came to the man who had a daughter to marry, and said, ‘Give me your daughter for a wife.’‘Yes,’ said the man who had a daughter to marry;2‘you’ll do very well; you’re just about the sort of son-in-law I want.’ And then he added: ‘If our daughter is to be betrothed to-day, it is the occasion for a feast.’ So to the wife he said, ‘Prepare the table;’ and to the daughter he said, ‘Draw the wine.’The daughter went down into the cellar to draw thewine. But as she drew the wine she began to cry, saying: ‘If I am to be married I shall have a child, and the child will be a son, and the son will be a priest, and the priest will be a bishop, and the bishop will be a cardinal, and the cardinal will be a pope.’ And she cried and cried, and the wine was running all the time, so that the bottle3she was filling ran over, and went on running over.Then said the father and mother: ‘What can the girl be doing down in the cellar so long?’ But the mother said: ‘I must go and see.’So the mother went down to see why she was so long, but the moment she came into the cellar she, too, began to cry; so that the wine still went on running over.Then the father said: ‘What can the girl and her mother both be doing so long down in the cellar? I must go and see.’So the father went down into the cellar; but the moment he got into the cellar he, too, began to cry, and could do nothing for crying; so the wine still went on running over.Then he who had come to seek a wife said: ‘What can these people all be doing so long down in the cellar?’ So he, too, went down to see, and found them all crying in the cellar and the wine running over. Only when the wine was all run out they left off crying and came upstairs again.Then the betrothal and the marriage were happily celebrated.One day after they were married the husband went into the market to buy meat, and he bought a large provision because he had invited a friend to dinner. When the wife saw him buy such a quantity of meat she began to cry, saying: ‘What can we do with such a lot of meat?’‘Oh, never mind, don’t make a misery of it,’ said the husband; ‘put it behind you.’4The simple wife took the meat and went home, saying to her parents,5and crying the while: ‘My husband says I am to put all this meat behind me! Do tell me whatcanI do?’‘You can’t put the whole lot of it behind you, that’s certain,’ replied the equally simple mother; ‘but we can manage it between us.’Then she took the meat and put all the hard, bony part on one chair, where she made the father sit down on it; all the fat, skinny part she put on another chair, and made the wife sit down on it; and the fleshy, meaty part she put on another chair, and sat down on that herself.Presently the husband came with his friend, ready for dinner, knocking at the door. None of the three dared to move, however, that they might not cease to be fulfilling his injunctions. Then he looked through the keyhole, and, seeing them all sitting down without moving when he knocked, he thought they must all be dead; so he ran and fetched a locksmith, who opened the door for him.‘What on earth are you all doing there,’ exclaimed the hungry husband, ‘instead of getting dinner ready?’‘You told me to put the meat behind me, and I have done so,’ answered the simple wife.Then he saw they were sitting on the meat. Out of all patience with such idiocy, he exclaimed: ‘This is the last you’ll ever see of me. At least I promise you not to come back till I have met three other people as idiotic as you, and that’s hardly likely to occur.’With that he took his friend to a tavern to dine, and then put on a pilgrim’s dress and went wandering over the country.In the first city he came to there was great public rejoicing going on. The princess had just been married, and the court was keeping high festival. As he came up to the palace the bride and bridegroom were just come back from church. The bride wore one of those very highround headdresses that they used to wear in olden time, with a long veil hanging from it. It was so very high that she could not by any means get in at the door, and there she stuck, not knowing what to do. Then she began to cry, saying: ‘What shall I do? what shall I do?’‘Shall I tell you what to do?’ said the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.‘Oh, pray do, if you can; I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me how to get in.’So he went and made her go a few steps backward, and then bow her head very low, and so she could pass under the door.‘Really, I have found one woman as simple as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as he sat down to the banquet at the special invitation of the princess, in reward for his services. Afterwards she counted out a hundred scudi to him, and he went further.Further along the road he came to a farm, with barns and cattle and plenty of stock about, and a large well at which a woman was drawing water. Instead of dipping in the pail, she had got the well-rope knotted into a huge knot, which she kept dipping into the water and squeezing out into the pail, and she kept crying as she did so: ‘Oh, how long shall I be filling the pail! The pail will never be full!’‘Shall I show you how to fill it?’ asked the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.‘Oh, yes, do show me if you can. I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me.’Then he took all the knots out of the rope and let down the pail by it, and filled it in a minute.‘Here’s a second woman as stupid as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as the farmer’s wife asked him in to dinner in reward for his great services; ‘if I go on at this rate I shall have to return to her at last, in spite of my protestations.’After that the farmer’s wife counted out the hundred scudi of the promised reward, and he went on further, having first packed six eggs into his hollow staff as provision for the journey.Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage. Here he knocked and asked a bed for his night’s lodging.‘I can’t give you that,’ said a voice from the inside; ‘for I am a lone widow. I can’t take a man in to sleep here.’‘But I am a pilgrim,’ replied he; ‘let me in at least to cook a bit of supper.’‘ThatI don’t mind doing,’ said the good wife, and she opened the door.‘Thanks, good friend!’ said the pilgrim-husband as he sat down by the stove; ‘now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan.’6So she gave him a pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan, too.Presently, when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs swimming in the pan instead of two, she said: ‘Lack-a-day! you must surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know so-and-so there’ (naming her dead husband)?‘Oh, yes,’ said the pilgrim-husband, enjoying the joke; ‘I know him very well; he lives just next to me.’‘Only to think of that!’ replied the poor woman. ‘And do tell me, how do you get on in the other world? What sort of a life is it?’‘Oh, not so very bad; it depends what sort of a place you get. The part where we are is not very bad, except that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly starved.’‘No, really!’ cried the good wife, clasping her hands; ‘only fancy! my good husband starving out there; so fond as he was of a good dinner, too!’ Then she added, coaxingly: ‘As you know him so well, perhaps youwouldn’t mind doing him the charity of taking him a little somewhat to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could easily send him.’‘O, dear no, not at all; I’ll do it with great pleasure,’ answered he; ‘but I’m not going back till to-morrow; and if I don’t sleep here I must go on further, and then I shan’t come by this way.’‘That’s true,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, I mustn’t mind what the folks say, for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning I’ll load a donkey with provisions for my poor dear husband.’‘Oh, no,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you shan’t be disturbed in your bed; only let me sleep on the hearth, that will do for me; and as I’m an early riser I can be gone before anyone’s astir, so folks won’t have anything to say.’So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up loading the donkey with the best of her stores. There were ham, and maccaroni, and flour, and cheese, and wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying: ‘You’ll send the donkey back, won’t you?’‘Of course I would send him back; he’d be no use to us out there: but I shan’t get out again myself for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won’t find his way back alone, for it’s no easy way to find.’‘To be sure not; I ought to have thought of that,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, so as my poor husband gets a good meal never mind the donkey.’So the pretended pilgrim from the other world went his way. He hadn’t gone a hundred yards before the widow called him back.‘Ah, she’s beginning to think better of it!’ said he to himself; and he continued his way, pretending not to hear.‘Good pilgrim!’ shouted the widow; ‘I forgot one thing. Would any money be of use to my poor dear husband?’‘Oh dear yes, all the use in the world,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you can always get anything for money everywhere.’‘Oh, do come back then, and I’ll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him.’The pretended pilgrim came back willingly for the hundred scudi, and the widow counted them out to him.‘There is no help for it,’ soliloquised he as he went his way; ‘I must go back to those at home. I have actually found three women each more stupid than they.’So he went home to live, and complained no more of the simplicity of his wife.[We have the German of this story in ‘Die Klugen Leute,’ Grimm, p. 407, and again the beginning of it in ‘Die Kluge Else’ (Clever Lizzie), Grimm, p. 137 (which ends with the desperation of the wife as the second Roman version ends with the death of the husband); in some variants given in the ‘Russian Folk Tales,’ pp. 53–4; in an Italian-Tirolese tale, ‘Le donne matte’ (the title resembling that of the next Roman version); and the ending, in the Norse ‘Not a pin to choose between them.’ Senhor de Saraiva told me the following Portuguese story entitled ‘Pedro da Malas Artes’ (Tricky Peter), which embodies these incidents, but opens with a different purport.Tricky Peterwas a knowing blade; so he went out on his travels to set all the world straight; and he found plenty to do.In the very first town he came to there was a great commotion. A bride had come to church to be married, and there she stuck at the church door, mounted on her mule, while the people deliberated whether they should facilitate her ingress by cutting off some of her head or some of the mule’s legs.‘Let her alight and walk in,’ said Tricky Peter; ‘and the door will be high enough.’ And all the people applauded his wisdom.At the next town he found the people all full of discontent, because one of them had to sit up by turns to tell the others when the sun rose.‘I’ll give you a bird to perform that office,’ said Tricky Peter; and he went home and fetched a cock, and then they could all rest comfortably.After this the story has no more silly people to deal with; but Peter fools a giant, and overcomes his strength with craft. He does not seem, either, to get paid for his services, as do the heroes of ‘La Sposa Cese,’ and all the others.I have also another Roman story (too long to print here) of a man who sets out with a different purpose again, who meets with three sets of people afflicted with similar follies, and who also makes a good deal of money by his counsel; together with various stories in which men go to fetch their wives back from the devil’s kingdom, get three commissions of a similar nature by the way, for executing which they get richly paid on their return.There is a story in the 5th Tantra given as ‘Le Brahme aux vains projets’ in Abbé Dubois’ translation of the ‘Pantcha-Tantra,’ which has an analogous opening to that of ‘La Sposa Cece.’ There is another among the ‘Contes Indiens’ published at the end of it, in which four Brahmans have a great dispute as to which of them can claim to be the greatest idiot—a strife only second in folly to that of the ‘Three Indolent Boys’ in Grimm, p. 551—and they each narrate such proof of having acted with consummate folly that the decision given is that there is not a pin to choose between them.In a somewhat analogous story, which he calls ‘Aventures duGourou Paramarta,’ one of the disciples commits the counting mistake ‘of the well-known Irishman,’ in omitting to reckon himself in his computation, also found in the Russian ‘Folk Tales,’ p. 54, and they go to buy a foal’s egg, just as do certain peasants of the Trentino in an Italian-Tirolese ‘storiella da rider’7(laughable story).]LA SPOSA CECE.2Another version of this story was told me, or rather an entirely different story embodying the same purport, which, though full of fun, turned on the double meanings of common words of household use too homely for the most part, and some too coarse to please the English reader. The husband, among other things, tells his wife to prepare dinner for a friend and to mind she has ‘brocoli strascinati’ and ‘uovi spersi,’8as they are his favourite dishes. ‘Strascinare’ is to drag anything along, but is technically used to express brocoli chopped up and fried, the commonest Roman dish. ‘Spergere’ is to scatter, but the word is used among common people to express eggs poached in broth, a favourite delicacy; (eggs poached as in England are called ‘uova in bianco’). The wife, taking the words literally, drags the brocoli all over the house and all over the yard, till it is so nasty it cannot be eaten, instead of frying it, and scatters the eggs all about the place instead of poaching them, and so on through a number of other absurdities difficult to explain in detail. In the end the husband falls ill, partly from her bad cooking and partly from annoyance; a doctor is called in, who tells her (among other directions which she similarly misunderstands), that he must have nothing but ‘brodo,’9but she is to make it ‘alto, alto.’ ‘Alto’ is literally ‘high,’ but he uses it for ‘good,’ ‘strong;’ she, however, understands him to mean her to make it in a high place, and goes up on the roof to make it. When the husband asks for it she says she cannot get it for him then as it is up on the roof.Ultimately the husband dies of vexation.There is a very familiar German story which everyone who hasany acquaintance with the people must have met, of a lady who complains to her servant that the tea has not ‘drawn,’ and the simple girl answers, ‘It is not my fault, I havedrawnit all about the place enough I’m sure’ (Ich hab’ es genug umhergezogen).

There was a man and his wife who had a young daughter to marry; and there was a man who was seeking a wife. So the man who was seeking a wife came to the man who had a daughter to marry, and said, ‘Give me your daughter for a wife.’

‘Yes,’ said the man who had a daughter to marry;2‘you’ll do very well; you’re just about the sort of son-in-law I want.’ And then he added: ‘If our daughter is to be betrothed to-day, it is the occasion for a feast.’ So to the wife he said, ‘Prepare the table;’ and to the daughter he said, ‘Draw the wine.’

The daughter went down into the cellar to draw thewine. But as she drew the wine she began to cry, saying: ‘If I am to be married I shall have a child, and the child will be a son, and the son will be a priest, and the priest will be a bishop, and the bishop will be a cardinal, and the cardinal will be a pope.’ And she cried and cried, and the wine was running all the time, so that the bottle3she was filling ran over, and went on running over.

Then said the father and mother: ‘What can the girl be doing down in the cellar so long?’ But the mother said: ‘I must go and see.’

So the mother went down to see why she was so long, but the moment she came into the cellar she, too, began to cry; so that the wine still went on running over.

Then the father said: ‘What can the girl and her mother both be doing so long down in the cellar? I must go and see.’

So the father went down into the cellar; but the moment he got into the cellar he, too, began to cry, and could do nothing for crying; so the wine still went on running over.

Then he who had come to seek a wife said: ‘What can these people all be doing so long down in the cellar?’ So he, too, went down to see, and found them all crying in the cellar and the wine running over. Only when the wine was all run out they left off crying and came upstairs again.

Then the betrothal and the marriage were happily celebrated.

One day after they were married the husband went into the market to buy meat, and he bought a large provision because he had invited a friend to dinner. When the wife saw him buy such a quantity of meat she began to cry, saying: ‘What can we do with such a lot of meat?’

‘Oh, never mind, don’t make a misery of it,’ said the husband; ‘put it behind you.’4

The simple wife took the meat and went home, saying to her parents,5and crying the while: ‘My husband says I am to put all this meat behind me! Do tell me whatcanI do?’

‘You can’t put the whole lot of it behind you, that’s certain,’ replied the equally simple mother; ‘but we can manage it between us.’

Then she took the meat and put all the hard, bony part on one chair, where she made the father sit down on it; all the fat, skinny part she put on another chair, and made the wife sit down on it; and the fleshy, meaty part she put on another chair, and sat down on that herself.

Presently the husband came with his friend, ready for dinner, knocking at the door. None of the three dared to move, however, that they might not cease to be fulfilling his injunctions. Then he looked through the keyhole, and, seeing them all sitting down without moving when he knocked, he thought they must all be dead; so he ran and fetched a locksmith, who opened the door for him.

‘What on earth are you all doing there,’ exclaimed the hungry husband, ‘instead of getting dinner ready?’

‘You told me to put the meat behind me, and I have done so,’ answered the simple wife.

Then he saw they were sitting on the meat. Out of all patience with such idiocy, he exclaimed: ‘This is the last you’ll ever see of me. At least I promise you not to come back till I have met three other people as idiotic as you, and that’s hardly likely to occur.’

With that he took his friend to a tavern to dine, and then put on a pilgrim’s dress and went wandering over the country.

In the first city he came to there was great public rejoicing going on. The princess had just been married, and the court was keeping high festival. As he came up to the palace the bride and bridegroom were just come back from church. The bride wore one of those very highround headdresses that they used to wear in olden time, with a long veil hanging from it. It was so very high that she could not by any means get in at the door, and there she stuck, not knowing what to do. Then she began to cry, saying: ‘What shall I do? what shall I do?’

‘Shall I tell you what to do?’ said the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.

‘Oh, pray do, if you can; I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me how to get in.’

So he went and made her go a few steps backward, and then bow her head very low, and so she could pass under the door.

‘Really, I have found one woman as simple as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as he sat down to the banquet at the special invitation of the princess, in reward for his services. Afterwards she counted out a hundred scudi to him, and he went further.

Further along the road he came to a farm, with barns and cattle and plenty of stock about, and a large well at which a woman was drawing water. Instead of dipping in the pail, she had got the well-rope knotted into a huge knot, which she kept dipping into the water and squeezing out into the pail, and she kept crying as she did so: ‘Oh, how long shall I be filling the pail! The pail will never be full!’

‘Shall I show you how to fill it?’ asked the pilgrim-husband, drawing near.

‘Oh, yes, do show me if you can. I will give you a hundred scudi if you will only show me.’

Then he took all the knots out of the rope and let down the pail by it, and filled it in a minute.

‘Here’s a second woman as stupid as my people at home,’ said the pilgrim-husband, as the farmer’s wife asked him in to dinner in reward for his great services; ‘if I go on at this rate I shall have to return to her at last, in spite of my protestations.’

After that the farmer’s wife counted out the hundred scudi of the promised reward, and he went on further, having first packed six eggs into his hollow staff as provision for the journey.

Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage. Here he knocked and asked a bed for his night’s lodging.

‘I can’t give you that,’ said a voice from the inside; ‘for I am a lone widow. I can’t take a man in to sleep here.’

‘But I am a pilgrim,’ replied he; ‘let me in at least to cook a bit of supper.’

‘ThatI don’t mind doing,’ said the good wife, and she opened the door.

‘Thanks, good friend!’ said the pilgrim-husband as he sat down by the stove; ‘now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan.’6

So she gave him a pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan, too.

Presently, when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs swimming in the pan instead of two, she said: ‘Lack-a-day! you must surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know so-and-so there’ (naming her dead husband)?

‘Oh, yes,’ said the pilgrim-husband, enjoying the joke; ‘I know him very well; he lives just next to me.’

‘Only to think of that!’ replied the poor woman. ‘And do tell me, how do you get on in the other world? What sort of a life is it?’

‘Oh, not so very bad; it depends what sort of a place you get. The part where we are is not very bad, except that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly starved.’

‘No, really!’ cried the good wife, clasping her hands; ‘only fancy! my good husband starving out there; so fond as he was of a good dinner, too!’ Then she added, coaxingly: ‘As you know him so well, perhaps youwouldn’t mind doing him the charity of taking him a little somewhat to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could easily send him.’

‘O, dear no, not at all; I’ll do it with great pleasure,’ answered he; ‘but I’m not going back till to-morrow; and if I don’t sleep here I must go on further, and then I shan’t come by this way.’

‘That’s true,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, I mustn’t mind what the folks say, for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning I’ll load a donkey with provisions for my poor dear husband.’

‘Oh, no,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you shan’t be disturbed in your bed; only let me sleep on the hearth, that will do for me; and as I’m an early riser I can be gone before anyone’s astir, so folks won’t have anything to say.’

So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up loading the donkey with the best of her stores. There were ham, and maccaroni, and flour, and cheese, and wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying: ‘You’ll send the donkey back, won’t you?’

‘Of course I would send him back; he’d be no use to us out there: but I shan’t get out again myself for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won’t find his way back alone, for it’s no easy way to find.’

‘To be sure not; I ought to have thought of that,’ replied the widow. ‘Ah, well, so as my poor husband gets a good meal never mind the donkey.’

So the pretended pilgrim from the other world went his way. He hadn’t gone a hundred yards before the widow called him back.

‘Ah, she’s beginning to think better of it!’ said he to himself; and he continued his way, pretending not to hear.

‘Good pilgrim!’ shouted the widow; ‘I forgot one thing. Would any money be of use to my poor dear husband?’

‘Oh dear yes, all the use in the world,’ replied the pilgrim; ‘you can always get anything for money everywhere.’

‘Oh, do come back then, and I’ll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him.’

The pretended pilgrim came back willingly for the hundred scudi, and the widow counted them out to him.

‘There is no help for it,’ soliloquised he as he went his way; ‘I must go back to those at home. I have actually found three women each more stupid than they.’

So he went home to live, and complained no more of the simplicity of his wife.

[We have the German of this story in ‘Die Klugen Leute,’ Grimm, p. 407, and again the beginning of it in ‘Die Kluge Else’ (Clever Lizzie), Grimm, p. 137 (which ends with the desperation of the wife as the second Roman version ends with the death of the husband); in some variants given in the ‘Russian Folk Tales,’ pp. 53–4; in an Italian-Tirolese tale, ‘Le donne matte’ (the title resembling that of the next Roman version); and the ending, in the Norse ‘Not a pin to choose between them.’ Senhor de Saraiva told me the following Portuguese story entitled ‘Pedro da Malas Artes’ (Tricky Peter), which embodies these incidents, but opens with a different purport.

Tricky Peterwas a knowing blade; so he went out on his travels to set all the world straight; and he found plenty to do.

In the very first town he came to there was a great commotion. A bride had come to church to be married, and there she stuck at the church door, mounted on her mule, while the people deliberated whether they should facilitate her ingress by cutting off some of her head or some of the mule’s legs.

‘Let her alight and walk in,’ said Tricky Peter; ‘and the door will be high enough.’ And all the people applauded his wisdom.

At the next town he found the people all full of discontent, because one of them had to sit up by turns to tell the others when the sun rose.

‘I’ll give you a bird to perform that office,’ said Tricky Peter; and he went home and fetched a cock, and then they could all rest comfortably.

After this the story has no more silly people to deal with; but Peter fools a giant, and overcomes his strength with craft. He does not seem, either, to get paid for his services, as do the heroes of ‘La Sposa Cese,’ and all the others.

I have also another Roman story (too long to print here) of a man who sets out with a different purpose again, who meets with three sets of people afflicted with similar follies, and who also makes a good deal of money by his counsel; together with various stories in which men go to fetch their wives back from the devil’s kingdom, get three commissions of a similar nature by the way, for executing which they get richly paid on their return.

There is a story in the 5th Tantra given as ‘Le Brahme aux vains projets’ in Abbé Dubois’ translation of the ‘Pantcha-Tantra,’ which has an analogous opening to that of ‘La Sposa Cece.’ There is another among the ‘Contes Indiens’ published at the end of it, in which four Brahmans have a great dispute as to which of them can claim to be the greatest idiot—a strife only second in folly to that of the ‘Three Indolent Boys’ in Grimm, p. 551—and they each narrate such proof of having acted with consummate folly that the decision given is that there is not a pin to choose between them.

In a somewhat analogous story, which he calls ‘Aventures duGourou Paramarta,’ one of the disciples commits the counting mistake ‘of the well-known Irishman,’ in omitting to reckon himself in his computation, also found in the Russian ‘Folk Tales,’ p. 54, and they go to buy a foal’s egg, just as do certain peasants of the Trentino in an Italian-Tirolese ‘storiella da rider’7(laughable story).]

LA SPOSA CECE.2Another version of this story was told me, or rather an entirely different story embodying the same purport, which, though full of fun, turned on the double meanings of common words of household use too homely for the most part, and some too coarse to please the English reader. The husband, among other things, tells his wife to prepare dinner for a friend and to mind she has ‘brocoli strascinati’ and ‘uovi spersi,’8as they are his favourite dishes. ‘Strascinare’ is to drag anything along, but is technically used to express brocoli chopped up and fried, the commonest Roman dish. ‘Spergere’ is to scatter, but the word is used among common people to express eggs poached in broth, a favourite delicacy; (eggs poached as in England are called ‘uova in bianco’). The wife, taking the words literally, drags the brocoli all over the house and all over the yard, till it is so nasty it cannot be eaten, instead of frying it, and scatters the eggs all about the place instead of poaching them, and so on through a number of other absurdities difficult to explain in detail. In the end the husband falls ill, partly from her bad cooking and partly from annoyance; a doctor is called in, who tells her (among other directions which she similarly misunderstands), that he must have nothing but ‘brodo,’9but she is to make it ‘alto, alto.’ ‘Alto’ is literally ‘high,’ but he uses it for ‘good,’ ‘strong;’ she, however, understands him to mean her to make it in a high place, and goes up on the roof to make it. When the husband asks for it she says she cannot get it for him then as it is up on the roof.Ultimately the husband dies of vexation.There is a very familiar German story which everyone who hasany acquaintance with the people must have met, of a lady who complains to her servant that the tea has not ‘drawn,’ and the simple girl answers, ‘It is not my fault, I havedrawnit all about the place enough I’m sure’ (Ich hab’ es genug umhergezogen).

LA SPOSA CECE.2

Another version of this story was told me, or rather an entirely different story embodying the same purport, which, though full of fun, turned on the double meanings of common words of household use too homely for the most part, and some too coarse to please the English reader. The husband, among other things, tells his wife to prepare dinner for a friend and to mind she has ‘brocoli strascinati’ and ‘uovi spersi,’8as they are his favourite dishes. ‘Strascinare’ is to drag anything along, but is technically used to express brocoli chopped up and fried, the commonest Roman dish. ‘Spergere’ is to scatter, but the word is used among common people to express eggs poached in broth, a favourite delicacy; (eggs poached as in England are called ‘uova in bianco’). The wife, taking the words literally, drags the brocoli all over the house and all over the yard, till it is so nasty it cannot be eaten, instead of frying it, and scatters the eggs all about the place instead of poaching them, and so on through a number of other absurdities difficult to explain in detail. In the end the husband falls ill, partly from her bad cooking and partly from annoyance; a doctor is called in, who tells her (among other directions which she similarly misunderstands), that he must have nothing but ‘brodo,’9but she is to make it ‘alto, alto.’ ‘Alto’ is literally ‘high,’ but he uses it for ‘good,’ ‘strong;’ she, however, understands him to mean her to make it in a high place, and goes up on the roof to make it. When the husband asks for it she says she cannot get it for him then as it is up on the roof.Ultimately the husband dies of vexation.There is a very familiar German story which everyone who hasany acquaintance with the people must have met, of a lady who complains to her servant that the tea has not ‘drawn,’ and the simple girl answers, ‘It is not my fault, I havedrawnit all about the place enough I’m sure’ (Ich hab’ es genug umhergezogen).

Another version of this story was told me, or rather an entirely different story embodying the same purport, which, though full of fun, turned on the double meanings of common words of household use too homely for the most part, and some too coarse to please the English reader. The husband, among other things, tells his wife to prepare dinner for a friend and to mind she has ‘brocoli strascinati’ and ‘uovi spersi,’8as they are his favourite dishes. ‘Strascinare’ is to drag anything along, but is technically used to express brocoli chopped up and fried, the commonest Roman dish. ‘Spergere’ is to scatter, but the word is used among common people to express eggs poached in broth, a favourite delicacy; (eggs poached as in England are called ‘uova in bianco’). The wife, taking the words literally, drags the brocoli all over the house and all over the yard, till it is so nasty it cannot be eaten, instead of frying it, and scatters the eggs all about the place instead of poaching them, and so on through a number of other absurdities difficult to explain in detail. In the end the husband falls ill, partly from her bad cooking and partly from annoyance; a doctor is called in, who tells her (among other directions which she similarly misunderstands), that he must have nothing but ‘brodo,’9but she is to make it ‘alto, alto.’ ‘Alto’ is literally ‘high,’ but he uses it for ‘good,’ ‘strong;’ she, however, understands him to mean her to make it in a high place, and goes up on the roof to make it. When the husband asks for it she says she cannot get it for him then as it is up on the roof.

Ultimately the husband dies of vexation.

There is a very familiar German story which everyone who hasany acquaintance with the people must have met, of a lady who complains to her servant that the tea has not ‘drawn,’ and the simple girl answers, ‘It is not my fault, I havedrawnit all about the place enough I’m sure’ (Ich hab’ es genug umhergezogen).

1‘La Sposa Cece,’the simple wife. ‘Cece’ among the common people seems to mean pretty nearly the same as ‘tonto,’ ‘silly,’ ‘idiotic;’ in this place more exactly ‘simple’ or ‘half-witted.’↑2It is a characteristic of the Roman people that as a rule they never call people by their names; the ‘casato’ or married name, and the ‘cognome’ or family name, are used indifferently when such a name is called in request at all, by married people. If they must give a name to a stranger it is always the Christian name that comes first to their lips; among themselves, however, it is seldom the genuine name that is used. They have some ‘sopranome’ or nick-name for everybody, or at least a shortening of the Christian name, as ‘Checca’ and ‘Checco’ for Francesca and Francesco; ‘Pippo’ for Filippo; ‘Pepe’ for Giuseppe; ‘Cola’ for Niccola; ‘Maso’ for Tomaso; ‘Teta’ for Teresa; ‘Lalla’ for Adelaide; ‘Lina’ for Carolina; ‘Tuta’ for Geltrude; the abbreviations for Giovanni are innumerable.But what they most love to designate people by is a description of their persons. When you come home from your walk, your servant does not tell you Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so have called, but it will be ‘Quel signore vecchio ingobbato’ (that old hump-backed kind of gentleman), if he be the least grey and high-shouldered, however young he may be; or ‘Quel bel giovane alto’ (that tall, handsome, young gentleman), whatever his age, if he be onlybien conservé. Then ‘Quella signora alta, secca, che veste di lutto’ (that tall thin lady dressed in mourning). ‘Quella signora bella bionda, giovane’ (that lady, pretty, fair, young). Or ‘Quello che porta il brillante’ (he who wears a brilliant), because the same friend happened to have a diamond stud in his cravat one day; or ‘Quella contessa che veste di cilestro,’ because the lady happened once to wear a blue dress, and so on, with all manner of signs and tokens which it may take you half-an-hour to recognise a person by, if you ever make it out at all. Or, if there is no distinctive mark of the kind to seize upon, it will be‘Quel signore,’ or ‘quella signora di Palazzo,’ or ‘Via,’ or ‘Piazza’ So-and-so. And this not from the difficulty of catching a foreign name, because it is still more in vogue when designating their own people; if you are asking for the address of a servant, a tailor, a dressmaker, &c., it is in vain you try to make them out by the name, you must do your best to describe them, and then they will break out with an exclamation hitting it off for themselves: ‘Ah! si, quel scimunito’ (that silly-looking fellow); ‘quel gobbo’ (that high-shouldered fellow—lit. ‘hunchbacked’); ‘quella strega’ (that ugly old woman, cunning woman—lit. ‘witch’); ‘quella bella giovane alta’ (that tall handsome girl); ‘quella donna bassetta’ (that short little woman), for with their descriptions as with their names they must super-add a diminutive or a qualification, and ‘basso’ (short) is pretty sure to be rendered by ‘bassetto,’ ‘piccola’ (little) by ‘piccinina,’ ‘vecchio’ (old) by ‘vecchietto.’ ‘Quella scimia’ or ‘scimietta’ (that old woman, or that little old woman who looks like a monkey). ‘Quella donna anziana’ (that respectable old woman). ‘Quella donniciuola’ (that nasty little old woman, contemptible old woman). ‘Quel ragazzino, tanto carino, tanto caruccio’ (that nice boy, that very nice boy). ‘Quel vecchietto’ (that nice old man); and in this way the hero of this story is designated as ‘The man who has a daughter to marry.’↑3‘Boccione,’ a large coarse glass bottle commonly used in Rome for carrying wine. When it is covered with twisted rushes—like the oil-flasks that come to England—it is called a ‘damigiana,’ a young lady, a little lady.↑4‘Mettetevelo addietro.’ Lit. ‘Put it behind you,’ a way of saying ‘Never mind it,’ ‘don’t care about it.’ But the woman is supposed to be so foolish that she understands it literally.↑5The Italian custom of the newly married couples continuing to live with the parents of one or other of them is here brought in.↑6‘Tegame,’ a flat earthen pan much in vogue in Roman kitchens; ‘ova in tegame’ is a favourite and not a bad dish. A little fresh butter is oiled, and the eggs are dropped into it as for poaching, and very slowly cooked in it; when scarcely set they are reckoned done.↑7Such notions are not altogether so impossible as they seem. I myself heard a very intelligent little boy one day say to his mother, ‘Mama, I should so like to see a horse’s egg.’ ‘A horse’s egg, my dear—there are no such things,’ was the reply of course. ‘Oh yes, theremustbe,’ rejoined the child, ‘because I’ve heard Pa several times talk about finding a mare’s nest.’↑8‘Uovo,’ by the way, is a word with which great liberties are taken. The correct singular is ‘uovo’ and the plural ‘uova,’ but it is very common to make the plural in ‘i’ and also to say ‘uova’ for the singular, and ‘uove’ for plural, while the initial ‘u’ is most usually dropped out.↑9‘Brodo’ is beef-tea or clear broth with nothing in it; broth with vermicelli or anything else in it is ‘minestra;’ ‘zuppa,’ which sounds most like ‘soup,’ is rather ‘sop,’ and when applied to broth, means strictly only broth with bread in it, from ‘inzuppare,’ to steep, soak, or sop; but it is also used for broth with anything else in it besides bread, but never without anything in it.↑

1‘La Sposa Cece,’the simple wife. ‘Cece’ among the common people seems to mean pretty nearly the same as ‘tonto,’ ‘silly,’ ‘idiotic;’ in this place more exactly ‘simple’ or ‘half-witted.’↑

2It is a characteristic of the Roman people that as a rule they never call people by their names; the ‘casato’ or married name, and the ‘cognome’ or family name, are used indifferently when such a name is called in request at all, by married people. If they must give a name to a stranger it is always the Christian name that comes first to their lips; among themselves, however, it is seldom the genuine name that is used. They have some ‘sopranome’ or nick-name for everybody, or at least a shortening of the Christian name, as ‘Checca’ and ‘Checco’ for Francesca and Francesco; ‘Pippo’ for Filippo; ‘Pepe’ for Giuseppe; ‘Cola’ for Niccola; ‘Maso’ for Tomaso; ‘Teta’ for Teresa; ‘Lalla’ for Adelaide; ‘Lina’ for Carolina; ‘Tuta’ for Geltrude; the abbreviations for Giovanni are innumerable.

But what they most love to designate people by is a description of their persons. When you come home from your walk, your servant does not tell you Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so have called, but it will be ‘Quel signore vecchio ingobbato’ (that old hump-backed kind of gentleman), if he be the least grey and high-shouldered, however young he may be; or ‘Quel bel giovane alto’ (that tall, handsome, young gentleman), whatever his age, if he be onlybien conservé. Then ‘Quella signora alta, secca, che veste di lutto’ (that tall thin lady dressed in mourning). ‘Quella signora bella bionda, giovane’ (that lady, pretty, fair, young). Or ‘Quello che porta il brillante’ (he who wears a brilliant), because the same friend happened to have a diamond stud in his cravat one day; or ‘Quella contessa che veste di cilestro,’ because the lady happened once to wear a blue dress, and so on, with all manner of signs and tokens which it may take you half-an-hour to recognise a person by, if you ever make it out at all. Or, if there is no distinctive mark of the kind to seize upon, it will be‘Quel signore,’ or ‘quella signora di Palazzo,’ or ‘Via,’ or ‘Piazza’ So-and-so. And this not from the difficulty of catching a foreign name, because it is still more in vogue when designating their own people; if you are asking for the address of a servant, a tailor, a dressmaker, &c., it is in vain you try to make them out by the name, you must do your best to describe them, and then they will break out with an exclamation hitting it off for themselves: ‘Ah! si, quel scimunito’ (that silly-looking fellow); ‘quel gobbo’ (that high-shouldered fellow—lit. ‘hunchbacked’); ‘quella strega’ (that ugly old woman, cunning woman—lit. ‘witch’); ‘quella bella giovane alta’ (that tall handsome girl); ‘quella donna bassetta’ (that short little woman), for with their descriptions as with their names they must super-add a diminutive or a qualification, and ‘basso’ (short) is pretty sure to be rendered by ‘bassetto,’ ‘piccola’ (little) by ‘piccinina,’ ‘vecchio’ (old) by ‘vecchietto.’ ‘Quella scimia’ or ‘scimietta’ (that old woman, or that little old woman who looks like a monkey). ‘Quella donna anziana’ (that respectable old woman). ‘Quella donniciuola’ (that nasty little old woman, contemptible old woman). ‘Quel ragazzino, tanto carino, tanto caruccio’ (that nice boy, that very nice boy). ‘Quel vecchietto’ (that nice old man); and in this way the hero of this story is designated as ‘The man who has a daughter to marry.’↑

3‘Boccione,’ a large coarse glass bottle commonly used in Rome for carrying wine. When it is covered with twisted rushes—like the oil-flasks that come to England—it is called a ‘damigiana,’ a young lady, a little lady.↑

4‘Mettetevelo addietro.’ Lit. ‘Put it behind you,’ a way of saying ‘Never mind it,’ ‘don’t care about it.’ But the woman is supposed to be so foolish that she understands it literally.↑

5The Italian custom of the newly married couples continuing to live with the parents of one or other of them is here brought in.↑

6‘Tegame,’ a flat earthen pan much in vogue in Roman kitchens; ‘ova in tegame’ is a favourite and not a bad dish. A little fresh butter is oiled, and the eggs are dropped into it as for poaching, and very slowly cooked in it; when scarcely set they are reckoned done.↑

7Such notions are not altogether so impossible as they seem. I myself heard a very intelligent little boy one day say to his mother, ‘Mama, I should so like to see a horse’s egg.’ ‘A horse’s egg, my dear—there are no such things,’ was the reply of course. ‘Oh yes, theremustbe,’ rejoined the child, ‘because I’ve heard Pa several times talk about finding a mare’s nest.’↑

8‘Uovo,’ by the way, is a word with which great liberties are taken. The correct singular is ‘uovo’ and the plural ‘uova,’ but it is very common to make the plural in ‘i’ and also to say ‘uova’ for the singular, and ‘uove’ for plural, while the initial ‘u’ is most usually dropped out.↑

9‘Brodo’ is beef-tea or clear broth with nothing in it; broth with vermicelli or anything else in it is ‘minestra;’ ‘zuppa,’ which sounds most like ‘soup,’ is rather ‘sop,’ and when applied to broth, means strictly only broth with bread in it, from ‘inzuppare,’ to steep, soak, or sop; but it is also used for broth with anything else in it besides bread, but never without anything in it.↑

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