The Tale of Tales

by Giambattista Basile

  “And after walking some more they arrived at Bel Flower, where there lived a king who had a daughter who ran like the wind and could have run through a field of broccoli in flower without bending their tops. The king had issued a proclamation that he would give her in marriage to the man able to beat her in a race, but that he who remained behind would have his throat cut. Upon arriving in this land and hearing of the contest, Moscione went to the king and offered to race against his daughter, and when they had come to a fine agreement—either he kicked up his heels or left his noodle—he sent word to the king the following morning that he had come down with a sudden illness and, since he couldn’t run in person, would send another young man in his place. ‘Let whoever wants to come, come,’ answered Ciannetella, the king’s daughter. ‘I don’t give a hoot and there’s enough for everyone.’

  “And so when the square was full of people eager to see the race—men were crowded at windows like ants and the balconies were as full as eggs—Flash appeared and positioned himself in one corner of the square to wait for the starting signal. And then Ciannetella came out, with her skirt tucked halfway up her legs and wearing a lovely little close-fitting, single-soled slipper, no bigger than a size ten.8 They lined up shoulder to shoulder and when the ‘ta-ta-ta-ta’ and ‘toot toot’ of the trumpet had sounded, they started running so fast that their heels touched their shoulders. Let’s just say that they looked like hares chased by greyhounds, horses escaped from their stalls, dogs with bladders on their tails,9 donkeys with clubs up their behinds. But Flash, who was just that in name and in fact, left her more than a span behind, and when they reached the finish line you should have heard the shouts, the racket, the uproar, the shrieks, the whistles, the hand clapping and foot stomping of the people, who yelled, ‘Long live the foreigner!’ And Ciannetella’s face turned the color of a schoolboy’s ass after a good spanking, so humiliated and offended she was at having been beaten. Since the race had to be run twice, though, she decided that she would avenge herself of this affront, and as soon as she got home she cast a spell on a ring so that the legs of whoever wore it on his finger would fall asleep until he could no longer walk, let alone run. And she sent the ring as a gift to Flash, asking him to wear it on his finger out of love for her.

  “Hare’s-Ear, who heard daughter and father thus conspiring, kept quiet and waited for the deal to be closed, and when—as to the sound of the birds’ trumpeting the Sun whipped the Night, who rode the donkey of shadows10—they took the field again, the usual starting signal was given, and they began to shake their heels. But if Ciannetella looked like a new Atalanta,11 Flash had become a feeble donkey and a hollow-flanked horse unable to take even one step. When Sharpshooter saw what danger his friend was in and heard from Hare’s-Ear how they had been tricked, he took his crossbow in hand, shot a pellet, and hit Flash’s finger with great precision, causing the stone, wherein lay the power of the spell, to break off the ring. And so Flash’s knotted-up legs came untied, and in four goat leaps he passed Ciannetella and won the race.

  “Upon seeing that the victory had gone to a booby head, the palm to a featherbrain, and the triumph to a big sheep, the king thought long and hard about giving his daughter to Moscione. He called the wise men of his court to council, and they told him that Ciannetella was not a morsel for the teeth of a scoundrel and a good-for-nothing birdbrain, and that without the stain of going against his word he could commute the promise of his daughter into a monetary gift, which would satisfy this big ugly ragamuffin more than all the women in the world. The king liked this suggestion, and when Moscione was asked how much money he wanted in exchange for the wife that had been promised to him, he consulted the others and then answered, ‘I want as much gold and silver as my friend is able to carry on his back.’ The king agreed, and they brought in Strongback and began to load him up with piles of trunks of gold ducats, sacks of brass coins, huge bags of scudos, barrels of coppers, and jewelry boxes full of necklaces and rings. But the more they loaded on the more firmly Strongback stood there, like a tower, and since the stores of the treasury, banks, usurers, and money changers of the city were not sufficient, the king sent all his knights off to ask for loans of chandeliers, basins, jugs, saucers, dishes, trays, baskets, and even silver chamber pots, and all of that still wasn’t enough to bring up the weight. Finally, not entirely laden but satisfied and restless to go, they left.

  “But when the king’s counselors saw the bottomless treasure that that company of scoundrels was carrying off, they told the king that it was pure asininity to allow the very backbone of his kingdom to be carted away, and that therefore it would be a good idea to send his men after them to lighten the great load of that Atlantis12 who carried on his shoulders a sky of treasures. The king submitted to this counsel and immediately dispatched a bunch of armed men, on feet and on horse, to go and find them. Hare’s-Ear, who had heard them in counsel, warned his companions, and while the pounding of the feet of those who were coming to unload their rich burden sent clouds of dust into the sky, Blowboy, who saw that things were going badly, began to blow so hard that not only did he cause all of their enemies to fall flat on their faces, but he sent them flying for more than a mile, as the north winds do to people walking in the country.

  “And so without encountering other obstacles they arrived at the father’s house, and after Moscione divided the earnings up among his companions—since, as the saying goes, ‘When someone helps you win a cake, you give him a piece’—he sent them off, satisfied and content, and lived the rest of his days with his father, rolling in money. And thus he found that he had become a gold-laden ass, proving that the following saying is not a lie: God sends biscuits to those who have no teeth.”

  9

  ROSELLA*

  Ninth Entertainment of the Third Day

  The Grand Turk has a prince captured so that he can bathe in a lord’s blood. His daughter falls in love with the prince and they run away, but the girl’s mother comes after them and her hands are cut off by the prince. The Grand Turk dies of a broken heart; when his daughter is put under a curse by her mother the prince forgets about her. But after the girl performs some trickery, she returns to her husband’s memory and they live happily ever after.

  They listened to Paola’s tale with great satisfaction, and everyone said that the father was right to want a son who knew something, even if in this case the cuckoo had sung for him,1 since if the others had kneaded the pasta he had taken off with the macaroni. But then it was Ciommetella’s turn to have her say and she began speaking in this manner: “Those who live badly cannot die well, and whoever eludes this sentence is a white crow, for those who sow rye grass cannot reap wheat, and those who plant spurge cannot pick broccoli florets. The tale with which I now come to you will prove that I am not a liar. I beg you to pay me for it by allowing your ears to fly wide open and your mouths to hang while I make all efforts to satisfy you.

  “There once was a Grand Turk who had leprosy and could find no cure for it. His doctors were unable to find an expedient to get this patient, with his insistent requests, off their back, and decided to propose something impossible to him, telling him that it was necessary to bathe in the blood of a great prince.2

  “The Grand Turk wanted his health back, and when he heard this savage prescription he immediately sent a large fleet to sea, commanding them to scour every corner of the earth and with spies and the promise of great rewards to try to get their hands on a prince. And as they sailed along the coast of Clear Fountain they ran into a little pleasure boat that was carrying Paoluccio, son of the king of that land, whom they stole away and carried off to Constantinople.

  “When the doctors saw him they acted not so much out of compassion for the poor prince as in their own interest, for since the bath was not to bring any improvement, they would be the ones to shit their penance. Intending to play for time and draw the matter out as long as they could, they explained to the Grand Turk that thi
s prince was angry about the freedom he had lost playing at tressette, and that his torpid blood would cause more harm than benefits; it was therefore necessary to suspend the cure until the melancholy humor had left the prince and to keep him happy and feed him hearty food that would enrich his blood. When the Grand Turk heard this, he decided to make him live happily by closing him in a beautiful garden on which spring had a perpetual lease and where the fountains competed with the birds and the cool breezes to see which could gurgle and murmur the best. He also put his daughter Rosella in there, so as to have the prince believe that he intended to give her to him for his wife. As soon as Rosella saw the beauty of the prince, she was tied tight to the towrope of love and, making a lovely inlay of her longings with those of Paoluccio, they were both set in the ring of the same desire.

  “But when the time came for cats to be in heat and the Sun to have fun playing billy goat with the heavenly sheep,3 Rosella discovered that since it was spring, when blood is of better quality, the doctors had decided to cut Paoluccio’s throat and make the bath for the Grand Turk. For although her father had kept it hidden from her, she nonetheless knew about the treachery being plotted against her beloved, since she had been enchanted by her mother. And so she gave him a fine sword and said to him, ‘My darling face, if you want to save your freedom, which is so dear, and your life, which is so sweet, waste no time; with the feet of a hare go to the seashore, where you’ll find a boat. Get in and wait for me, and by the power of this enchanted sword you will be received by the sailors with the honor you deserve, as if you were an emperor.’ When Paoluccio saw such a fine road to his salvation opening up he took the sword and set off for the seashore, where he found the boat and was welcomed with great deference by those manning it. In the meantime Rosella cast a certain spell on a piece of paper and then, without being seen or heard, slipped it into the pocket of her mother, who immediately fell into a sleep so deep she could feel nothing from head to toe. When this was done she took a bundle of jewels and ran off to the boat, and they set sail.

  “Meanwhile, the Grand Turk went into the garden and, finding neither his daughter nor the prince, put the whole world in a state of alarm. And when he ran to look for his wife and could wake her neither by screaming nor by pulling her nose, he thought that some sort of sudden indisposition had caused her to lose her senses and, calling her ladies-in-waiting, he had her undressed. Once her skirt was taken off, though, the spell ended and she woke up, yelling, ‘Alas, that traitor of your daughter has put one over on us and run away with the prince! But don’t you worry; I’ll fix her legs and shorten her steps!’ Saying this, she rushed off to the seashore, where she threw a tree branch into the sea; it became a light felucca4 in which she began to race after the young fugitives. Although her mother followed them invisibly, Rosella, whose eyes were touched by magic and thus saw the ruin that was about to befall them, said to Paoluccio, ‘Hurry, my heart, put this blade in your hand; don’t move from the stern, and as soon as you hear the sound of chains and hooks being thrown onto the boat, fire with a pig’s eye;5 and whoever you hit you hit, and too bad for the loser! Otherwise we’re lost and our escape will be blocked!’

  “Since his own hide was at stake, the prince heeded the warning, and as soon as the sloop pulled up alongside the boat and the Grand Turkess threw out the hooked chains, he gave a huge backhand swipe of his sword, which fortunately for him cut off the sultaness’s hands in one blow. Shrieking like a damned soul, she put a curse on her daughter: after the first step the prince took in his land, he would forget her. She then rushed back to Turkey and presented herself to her husband with blood dripping from her stumps, and after she showed him this sorrowful spectacle she said to him, ‘There you have it, my husband: you and I have gambled ourselves away at the table of fortune; you your health and me my life!’ As she was saying this her spirit and her last breath left her, and she went off to recompense the master who had taught her the art. The Grand Turk, diving like a billy goat after her into the sea of desperation, followed after his wife’s footsteps and left, as cold as snow, for the house of flames.

  “When Paoluccio arrived at Clear Fountain he told Rosella to wait for him in the boat, because he was going to get people and carriages to bring her triumphantly to his home. But no sooner had he put his foot on the ground than Rosella left his mind, and when he arrived at the royal palace he was received by his father and his mother with more caresses than it is possible to imagine, and there were festivities and light displays that would have astounded the whole world. After she spent three days waiting in vain for Paoluccio, Rosella remembered the curse and bit her lips for not having thought of finding an antidote. And so, like a desperate woman, as soon as she landed she took a palace facing the king’s house to see if in some way she could make the prince’s obligation to her return to his memory.

  “When the lords of the court, eager to put their noses everywhere, caught sight of the new bird who had come to live in that house and contemplated her beauty, which surpassed all limits, went beyond every measure, crossed every boundary, reached nine6 on the scale of marvel, was a full house in the deck of astonishment, and an ‘out’ in the game of amazement, they began to buzz around her like gnats, and not a day went by without them promenading around and performing curvets in front of her house. Sonnets arrived in a frenzy, messages in floods, musical compositions in stupefying quantities, and there was enough hand kissing to make your asshole itch. And since not one of them knew of the others, they all aimed at the same target and they all tried, drunk on love, to tap that lovely barrel. Rosella, who knew where to moor the boat, showed a pleasant face to them all, treated them all well, and kept all their hopes up.

  “But finally, when she wanted to squeeze the sacks shut, she came to a secret agreement with a gentleman of high rank: if he gave her a thousand ducats and an elegant outfit of clothes, when night came she would refund the deposit of his affection. The poor window impregnator,7 blindfolded by passion, immediately borrowed the money and, going into debt with a merchant, procured a rich cut of double-piled decorated brocade; and he couldn’t wait for the sun to change places with the moon so that he could pick the fruit of his desires. When night came he went in secret to Rosella’s house, where he found her lying in a lovely bed like a Venus in a field of flowers. Full of charm, she told him not to come to bed without first closing the door. It seemed to the gentleman that this was a small thing to do to serve such a beautiful jewel, and he went to close the door, which, however, as many times as it was closed opened wide again. He pushed and the door opened, so that he played this game of seesaw8 and waged this tug-of-war all night—until the Sun sowed with its golden light the fields that Aurora had plowed. And thus he fought for a night, in all of its length and breadth, with an accursed door, without having been able to use his key; and as an addendum to this commission he got a good tongue-lashing from Rosella, who called him a pathetic thing who hadn’t been up to closing a door but expected to open the chest of Love’s pleasures. Finally the unfortunate fellow, tricked, confused, and put to shame, went off with a hot head and a cold tail to attend to his business.

  “The second evening Rosella made an appointment with another baron, asking him for another thousand ducats and another outfit of clothes, and this one pawned all his silver and gold at the Jews’9 to satisfy a desire that would transform regret into the heights of pleasure. And—as soon as Night, like a shamefaced pauper,10 had covered its face with a cloak to beg the alms of silence—he presented himself at Rosella’s house, where she had already retired; she told him to put out the candle and then come to bed. The gentleman took off his cloak and sword and began to blow on the candle, but the more he huffed and puffed the brighter it became, so that the wind emanating from his mouth had the same effect as a bellows on a blacksmith’s fire. And he spent the whole night blowing like that and consumed himself like a candle in order to put out a candle. But—when Night hid itself so as not to have to see t
he various follies of men—the poor fellow, derided with another syrup of insults, went off like the first one.

  “When the third night arrived a third lover came forward with another thousand ducats borrowed on usury and an outfit of clothes he had scrounged up, and when he had gone up on the quiet to Rosella’s, she said to him, ‘I do not intend to go to bed unless I comb my hair first.’ ‘Let me do it,’ answered the gentleman, and he had her sit with her head in his lap. Thinking that it was a matter of smoothing out French cloth, he began to untangle her hair with the ivory comb, but the more he tried to get the knots out of that disheveled head the more he entangled the terrain, so that he dangled there all night without doing one thing right, and for having tried to neaten a head he put his own head into such a state of disorder that he was about to bang it on the wall. And—when the Sun came out to hear the lesson recited by the birds and with the whip of its rays beat the crickets that had infected the school of the fields—with another generous scolding he left the house, all cold and icy.

  “Finding himself in conversation in the king’s antechamber, where things are cut and sewn, where every mother who keeps a daughter there is to be pitied, where the bellows of adulation blow, the canvases of deception are woven, the keys of gossip are played, and ignorance is sliced like a melon so that it may be tasted,11 this last gentleman recounted everything that had happened to him and told of the trick played on him. To this the second gentleman answered, saying, ‘You be quiet, for if Africa cried,12 Italy did not laugh! I’ve passed through this eye of the needle myself; a shared tribulation is half a jubilation.’ To which the third one answered, ‘You see, we’re all stained by the same tar and we can shake hands without envy on anyone’s part, for this traitoress has rubbed us all the wrong way! But it won’t do to swallow the pill without resentment. We’re not men to be deceived and put in a bag! So let’s make her repent, this freeloader who fleeces little kids!’