Italian Folktales (54 page)

In the morning they found three shotguns next to their beds. There was food in the kitchen, but it had not yet been cooked. They decided, therefore, that two of them would go hunting while the third friend stayed behind to cook. The baker was one of the two to go hunting. The friend to stay behind went to light the fire. While he was putting in the coal, out of the fireplace bounded a golden ball and went capering around his feet. No matter what he did, the man couldn't get out of its way. He tried kicking it off, only to have it bounce right back between his feet. The more he kicked, the harder it was to dodge the ball. Finally, at the hardest kick yet, the ball burst open, and out jumped a little hunchback brandishing a cudgel. He was a tiny hunchback who could just reach up to the man's knees with his cudgel, but he dealt such furious blows that the man soon fell to the ground, his legs one solid bruise. Then the hunchback reentered the ball, which closed and disappeared up the chimney.

Half dead, the man dragged himself on his hands and knees to his room and fell onto his bed. Cooking was the furthest thing from his mind. And being a wicked-hearted man, he thought to himself, Since I took a beating, my friends ought to take a beating. So when the other two returned and found him in bed and no dinner on the table, he explained, “Nothing's wrong with me, the bad coal of this region just made me dizzy.”

The next morning he felt better and went hunting with the baker. The other friend who stayed behind to cook went to light the fire, and out of the fireplace bounced the golden ball. This friend also tried kicking it out of the way until the little hunchback finally jumped out and beat him so badly that he, too, had to take to his bed half dead.

“The coal made me dizzy too,” he explained when his companions came home and found no dinner waiting for them.

“I don't understand this,” said the baker. “I'll try tomorrow myself and see how I feel.”

“By all means, do! You'll certainly be dizzy too!” said the two who had already taken the lickings.

The next day the baker remained behind. He went to light the fire, and the ball began rolling about between his feet. He walked forward and backward, with the ball constantly bouncing around him. He stood up on a chair and the ball hopped up on the chair. He stood on top of a table, and the ball hopped up on the table. He put the chair on top of the table and then, standing on the chair, calmly plucked a chicken, allowing the ball to bounce freely in and out of the chair legs.

In no time the ball grew tired of bouncing. It opened, and out stepped the little hunchback. “Young man,” he said, “I like you. Your friends kicked me, and you didn't. I beat them, but I will help you.”

“Wonderful,” said the baker. “Help me cook, then, since you've already made me waste enough time. Go get the wood for me and hold it while I chop it up.”

The hunchback bent over to steady a log and the baker raised his ax, but instead of bringing it down on the log, he struck the hunchback as hard as he could on the neck and cut off his head. Then he threw the remains into the well.

The friends returned, and the baker said, “You poor things. It was a far cry from coal! The blows are what hurt you!”

“What! You didn't receive any?”

“Not a one; and what's more, I beheaded the hunchback and threw him into the well.”

“Go on, you don't mean it!”

“If you don't believe it, let me down into the well, and I'll bring him up to you.”

The friends tied a rope around his waist and lowered him into the well. Halfway down the well was a large window all lit up, through which the baker saw the king's three daughters sewing and embroidering in a locked room. Just imagine the joy of the lovers over this reunion. But the king's daughter said to him, “Flee for your life! It's time for the sorcerer to return. Come back tonight while he's asleep and free us!”

Overjoyed, the baker continued on down to the bottom of the well, picked up the hunchback's body, and carried it up to show to his friends.

That same night, he had them lower him into the well with a saber to free the king's daughters. He entered by the big window, and there was the sorcerer asleep on a sofa, with the king's three daughters fanning him. Should they stop fanning for one instant, he would awaken. “Let's try fanning him with the saber,” proposed the baker. The sorcerer awakened, but he was already dead, with his head cut off by a sweep of the saber and sent flying to the bottom of the well.

The king's daughters opened the dresser drawers, which were full of sapphires, diamonds, and rubies. The baker filled a basket with them, tied it to the rope, and had his friends draw it up. Then he had the girls pulled up one by one.

“Here, take this walnut,” said the first girl as he tied the rope around her.

“Here, take this almond,” said the second girl when her turn came.

The third girl was his beloved and, being the last, she was able to give him a nice kiss in addition to a hazelnut.

It was now the baker's turn to be pulled up, but he distrusted his two friends who had already proved untrue to him by their silence about the hunchback, so instead of tying the rope around himself, he attached it to the beheaded sorcerer. Up, up went the body, then all of a sudden crashed to the bottom of the well, since the friends had let go of the rope in order to take the king's daughters home and tell the king they had freed them.

Noticing that the friends had ceased pulling, the king's daughters began shouting. “What! You're going to leave him down there after he set us free?”

“Hush, dears!” replied the two rogues, “if you know what's good for you! You'll go back to the palace with us like good girls and say yes to everything we say.”

Thinking the men had actually rescued his daughters, the king embraced them and made a big to-do over them; although they were scarcely to his liking, he promised each of them one of his daughters. But the daughters found all kinds of excuses for putting off the wedding and waited day after day for the poor baker to return.

Abandoned down in the well, the baker remembered the three gifts from the king's daughters. He broke open the walnut and found the glittering clothes of a prince. He cracked the almond, and out rolled a carriage drawn by six horses. He broke open the hazelnut, and out marched a regiment of soldiers.

So, dressed as a prince, riding one of the horses in the team, and followed by the regiment of soldiers, he journeyed from the world below ground to the world above ground and came to the city of the king.

Learning of the arrival of such an important nobleman, the king sent ambassadors to him. “Do you come in the name of peace, or of war?”

“Peace to those who love me, war to those who have betrayed me,” replied the baker.

“There he is, there he is, that's our deliverer!” shouted the king's three daughters, who had climbed to the top of the tower to look through the telescope.

“That's my bridegroom, that's my bridegroom!” exclaimed the eldest girl.

“What does that peasant in disguise want?” said the two friends, who armed themselves and went onto the field.

The entire regiment fired, and the two traitors fell to the ground, dead.

The king welcomed the newcomer as the victor and the rescuer of his daughters.

“I am the baker you dismissed, Majesty!” said the young man.

The king was so taken aback that he abdicated, and the baker reigned happily from then on with his bride.

 

(
Pisa
)

79

A king getting on in years, with a grown son unwilling to learn a thing, grew worried and sent for the boy. “Fioravante,” he said, “I'm taking great pains to instruct you in important matters, but it's like beating my head against a wall. How can I leave the crown to you?”

“Dear Father,” replied Fioravante, “I'm in love with a certain maiden, and all you tell me goes in one ear and out the other.”

Now the maiden was Sandrina, a poor weaver, which displeased the king. “But what will people say? A king's son in love with a weaver? Have you no sense of decorum?” He decided to write his brother, the king of Paris, to let Fioravante come to his court for a while and that way forget the weaver.

Fioravante chose a sleek horse and set out on the journey. He was going through a dark and dense forest inhabited by wolves when the sky suddenly filled with clouds, followed by distant thunder, then lightning, and a heavy downpour. Fioravante dismounted and took shelter under his horse; he stretched out, lit his pipe, and waited for the rain to stop. When the storm was finally over he made out a small light in the distance, which led him to a cottage; he knocked and was met at the door by an old woman.

“You have come to a place, sir, where . . . ” she began in a wheezy voice, when behind her appeared a huge man with a beard down to his chest.

He happened to be a murderer, and asked the youth, “Who are you?”

Fioravante replied, “I am the son of the king of London, and I'm going to my uncle, the king of Paris, to get an education.”

“If you want me to spare you, change clothes with me and pretend I am you and that you are my servant, so that the king of Paris will take me for his nephew. But give me away, and I'll kill you. Is that clear?”

“Quite!”

They went to Paris. The uncle welcomed the murderer, thinking him to be the nephew he was expecting. Fioravante was put in the stable to curry the horses and eat fodder with them.

One day the murderer said to the king, “All kings have fine teams for their carriages, and you don't How come?”

“I could have the finest teams of all the kings in the world,” explained the king, “but the horses are wild and graze in a herd in the meadows. No one has ever managed to capture a team for my carriage.”

“My servant,” answered the murderer, “can capture all the teams you want, or at least he boasts he can.”

“Let him try,” said the king, “but if he fails, his head will roll!”

The murderer ran to Fioravante and said, “The king has decided you are to get him a team of horses from his herd grazing in the meadows. And if you fail, you will be beheaded.”

Fioravante, who was tired of staying in the stable all the time, saddled a horse and rode to the meadows. On the way he passed through a garden full of all kinds of flowers and plants; riding near an oak he heard a voice that sounded like a woman's saying, “Fioravante! Fioravante!”

He was quite surprised, for this was the first time he had ever been in these parts, and he didn't see how anybody could know his name. “Who is it?” he asked, and out of the oak's trunk walked a beautiful filly, who said, “Don't be afraid! If you want to carry off a team from the herd, leave your horse and get on my back.”

Fioravante tied his horse to a tree, mounted the filly, and rode bareback to the meadows. He went up to the herd, threw out his lasso, caught two horses, and put a halter on them as easily as you please.

When the king saw the team, which was the most beautiful anybody had ever beheld, he said to the murderer, “That's a superior man you have there for a servant. But let's see now if he can break them.”

Following the filly's advice, Fioravante by means of a beater used in threshing grain taught the horses to be quiet and obedient.

The king said, “I'm going to have that servant of yours to dinner.”

But the murderer objected. “Sovereign uncle, it is better not to do that, since he's accustomed to eating fodder like the horses, and if he tastes something different, there's no telling what ideas he might get.” He thus persuaded the king not to invite Fioravante, and every chance he got he would say, “Sovereign uncle, you are getting on in years, unfortunately. Who will inherit your crown? You have no sons, and I would hate to end up with it myself . . . ”

“Sons have I none,” replied the king. “But I had a daughter as fair as day, who died when she was fourteen. I've never even visited her tomb, as she's buried in a convent far, far away, in India. And I still mourn her.”

“Don't cry, Majesty,” said the false nephew. “My servant says he can bring your daughter back safe and sound.”

“But who on earth is this servant to raise the dead?”

“I'm just going by what he says,” replied the murderer.

“Your servant boasts too much. Tell him he'd better make good his boast, for his head will surely roll if he fails to bring me Isolina.”

Fioravante had his filly, who said to him, “Don't be discouraged. Go to your master and ask him for a goblet of pure crystal; a solid gold cage with gold sticks, bars, and drinking trough; and a ship that doesn't leak the least bit.”

Fioravante went to the murderer and explained it all to him, and the king ordered everything readied.

Fioravante set sail for India, with his faithful filly aboard the ship. In the middle of the sea he saw a fish jumping up out of the water. “Catch it!” said the filly, and Fioravante reached out and grabbed the fish at its next leap. “Put it in the crystal goblet now,” said the filly.

After disembarking in India, they set out for the convent. A bird swooped down, and the filly said, “Catch it!” Fioravante seized it and was then told: “Put it in the gold cage.”

They reached the convent, and Fioravante asked the abbess where Isolina, the daughter of the king of Paris, was buried. The abbess lit a taper, led him into church, pointed to the tomb, and left him there. Fioravante began digging. He dug and dug, and under the earth appeared the king's daughter adorned in gold and diamonds and as fresh as a sleeping maiden. He went to lift her from the tomb, but she stuck fast, as though she had become part of the stone. He then sought advice from the filly waiting outside the church. The filly said, “Isolina is missing a blond tress from around her head. Without it she cannot be torn from the tomb. Ask the nuns where they put it. When she gets it back, she will come off the stone as easily as a rose petal.”