13. “Many are the exquisite things of Seville: tobacco, stockings, women, and so forth” (Croce 27).
14. An allusion to “one of the stanze or chambers, very prevalent at the end of the century, in which the marvels of the century of voyages were collected and exhibited upon payment of an entrance ticket: embalmed animals, automatons, magic lanterns, and so forth” (Rak 71). These Wunderkammern, or “cabinets of curiosity,” were the prototypes of the modern museum.
15. A region in southwestern Tuscany.
16. Tyre was an ancient Mediterranean port; Tyrian purple is a rich purple tinged with crimson.
17. magriare (Neap.): “to color red, to apply rouge; but magriata also referred to the act of smearing walls and doors with dirty substances to insult or scorn those who lived there” (Guarini and Burani 43). This could lead to feuds and bloodshed, and a number of laws were written prohibiting the practice, such as the one issued by the viceroy of Toledo in 1549. Basile’s own sister, the famous singer Adriana, was the victim of a magriata (Croce 266).
18. Wordplay: vite (grapevine) vs. vita (life, or waist).
19. trionfiello and banco felluto (Neap.) were well-known card games, often played with tarots (Croce 28).
20. “Tow soaked in egg, rose oil and turpentine, which was put on wounds” (Croce 28).
21. lo necessario (Neap.): lit., “the necessary.” “The lack of hygienic services made it necessary for housewives to empty chamber pots in the sea, usually toward dusk, as many sources recount” (Rak 72).
22. pignato grasso (Neap.): “a soup made with cabbage, ham, lard, and other ingredients, and considered at this time the masterpiece of Neapolitan cuisine” (Croce 29).
23. I.e., jealous love.
24. “Or, in other words, depraved and infected prostitutes” (Guarini and Burani 47).
25. The character of a whore in the Defennemiento della Vaiasseide by Bartolomeo Zito (Rak 72).
26. “The inclined plane on which corpses were dried and their fluids drained off. The expression means, therefore, ‘to be dead.’ Even today the most atrocious of Neapolitan invectives, pozze sculà! (‘may you drain off!’) refers to this usage” (Guarini and Burani 47).
27. A town thirty kilometers from Naples vs. an impossible feat. “A very common expression used to indicate that things won’t happen according to one’s desires; Vaiano is a heavily populated town” (Rak 72).
28. “Allusion to the bells attached to quail nets” (Croce 31).
29. “Tow, or straw, beards were an accessory of buffoons and actors; the meaning is, therefore: ‘who tricked me?’” (Guarini and Burani 48).
30. The name of the prince.
31. Or red lead; a poisonous oxide of lead used as a pigment.
32. oro pimmiento (Neap.): arsenic trisulphide, which has golden yellow crystals and is used as a dye or artist’s pigment (orpimento) vs. “the false gold (oro pimmiento) obtained by an alloy of copper, zinc, and tin and that is used, in thin leaf, for gold-plating” (Guarini and Burani 49).
33. “The color of a sick Spaniard was proverbial. There was even a dye used for a certain fabric called ‘sick Spaniard’” (Croce 32).
34. lanterna a bota (Neap.): “‘A small oil lamp, invented by the Brescians, that allowed one to cover and uncover the light at will; today their use is prohibited almost everywhere,’ says Tomaso Garzoni [in his Piazza universale]. In fact, only the police were permitted to use them” (Croce 32).
35. “Typhon [the Egyptian Seth, brother also of Isis] plotted against his brother Osiris, and tricked him into getting into a chest upon which the other co-plotters threw themselves, pushing the top closed, hammering it with nails, pouring molten lead into the holes, and finally throwing it to sea” (Croce 32). See Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 13.
36. carizze, vierre, gnuoccole e vruoccole (Neap.): gnuoccole are gnocchi and vruoccole broccoli, but both are also, metaphorically, caresses. “In Naples broccoli-vendors punningly call out ‘Get your broccoli; they’re good in bed!’” (Croce 33).
37. cernie (Neap.): “Metaphor used to indicate someone ugly, since the face of a grouper fish is horrible-looking; here in a moral sense” (Croce 33).
38. “Nero (37–68 AC) and Medea, the sorceress who stars in Euripides’ homonymous tragedy (431 AC), were both current exempla of cruelty” (Rak 73).
*. AT 675: The Lazy Boy. Penzer points out the principal motifs of this tale: “The first is the ‘gift of wishing,’ in this case awarded for kindness. It is one of the varieties of the ‘gratitude’ motif. The second is the ‘means of recognition,’ consisting of tricks by which it is hoped to show up the culprit—in this case the father of the child of the unmarried Princess” (1:42). He notes similarities with tales by Straparola (Le piacevoli notti 3.1, “Crazy Peter”), Afanasev, and the many affinities with the “Hanns Dumm” type. The “means of recognition” motif also appears in the famous tale of Rhampsinitus in Herodotus and in Ser Giovanni’s fourteenth-century rewriting of it, among others. Other variants of this tale can be found in Pitrè, Fiabe, nov. e racc. siciliani 188, “The Place of Raisins and Figs”; and Pitrè, Nov. pop. toscane 30, “The Tale of the Little Falcon.” See also Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, “The Dolphin” (in Zipes, Beauties, Beasts, and Enchantments).
1. Town in a swampy area six kilometers northeast of Naples.
2. “Nickname that derives from the dialect term peruontolo, which in southern Italy has various meanings: a large fava bean, a bell clapper, or the phallus” (De Simone 65–67).
3. sarchiopo . . . sarchiapone (Neap.): “hoer (from the Latin sarculus, a small hoe used for weeding). The character of the boorish and dense peasant became proverbial with this same name of Sarchiapone” (Guarini and Burani 53).
4. “‘To come out of the knee’ was used euphemistically in place of ‘to be born’” (Croce 36).
5. Men who assisted those condemned to death (Croce 36).
6. “That is, with the cautious pace of a magpie; or [according to another interpretation of the word picca] reluctantly, like a soldier condemned to ‘pass down the pike line,’ a torture introduced by the Swiss” (Guarini and Burani 54).
7. “The breed of horses raised by the Sanseverino family of Bisignano was esteemed and celebrated in all of Europe” (Croce 542).
8. Wordplay: kindling (sarcena) vs. galoppo sarcinesco (where sarcinesco may also mean “of a Saracen”).
9. “The lump of sourdough used to make bread rise, or the rennet for fermenting cheese” (Guarini and Burani 55).
10. The topic of the “cornuto,” the “horned one” or cuckold, is omnipresent in the Italian novella tradition. Rak cites B. Zito’s more theoretical discussion of cuckoldry in his Defennemiento della Vaiasseide: “In Naples those whose wives spin them on crooked spindles are called billy goats, big sheep, or the horned. A billy goat is one who knows that his wife is betraying him and who eats and chats with the men she associates with, and this is in conformity with the nature of the animal, since, as Aristotle writes, the billy goat wants other billy goats to go, in his presence, with the she-goat that was his. A big sheep is one whose wife wrongs him without his being able to defend himself; this alludes to the fact that a sheep doesn’t defend itself from wrongs committed by members of its own species. And horned is he who has a wife who shames him. This is not because he has horns on his head, but because the infamy and dishonor is public; and so in ancient times proclamations were publicly issued to the sound of a horn” (Rak 91). In Basile we find a number of cases of exaggerated preoccupation with “horns,” though it is usually of a curiously misguided sort (as in this tale, where a father feels cuckolded by his daughter), as well as a good deal of punning on the subject.
11. “Horn was used to make inkwells” (Croce 38).
12. “An illusion to the contemporary debate
regarding the passages from Tacitus on Tiberius’ political thought (Annales I–VI)” (Rak 91).
13. “One of the doors of Sleep in the Latin imaginary; see Virgil, Aeneid VI 893–94” (Rak 91). From one door exited deceptive dreams and from the other truthful ones; the latter was of horn.
14. “It was common for women in labor to blow hard into a flask, which helped in the exertion of giving birth” (Croce 542).
15. “I.e., to make sure that no cats or dogs run off with the meat” (Penzer 1:37).
16. “The famous dog of Alexander [the Great], killed because it wouldn’t fight with bears and boars, after which its donor sent the last of its breed to Alexander, with the warning that it not be allowed to fight unless with beasts of a strength equal to its own: elephants and lions” (Pliny, Natural History 8.61; Rak 91).
17. spogliampise (Neap.): these undressers of the hanged either stole the clothes right off the bodies, or bought the clothes from the executioners. Sellers of used clothing were also often called spogliampise.
18. “The copeta is a pastry made of hazelnuts and honey, covered with sprinkles. On the day of Epiphany a sugar bean is put inside it, and whoever finds it is celebrated as ‘king of the bean.’ This custom still exists in many European countries” (Croce 543).
19. “The Bolognese Leonardo Fioravanti, doctor and charlatan of the sixteenth century, wrote, among other things, Segreti medicinali (Venice 1561) and Compendio dei segreti razionali intorno alla medicina, chirurgia ed alchimia (Venice 1564)” (Croce 543).
20. “During Carnival women masked as fisherwomen would throw out hooks with sweets hanging on them, and play other games” (Croce 42).
21. “Phrase from a children’s game and, in general, used when someone takes a seat left empty by another person, and the first person comes back and finds it taken” (Croce 42).
22. tre cavalle (Neap.): see introduction to day 1 n22.
23. In Greek mythology, the boy, son of a river god and a nymph, who was insensitive to the desires of maidens and nymphs, among whom was Echo. Aphrodite punished Narcissus by making him fall in love with his own image reflected in the water of a fountain; he died as a result of this passion, and was later transformed into a flower.
24. colascione (Neap.): “A wide-necked lute with two or three strings, very popular in southern Italy in Basile’s time” (Guarini and Burani 63).
25. “The masculine of fairy, not infrequently used at this time. [. . .] In medieval Latin fada and fadus are used. In Sicilian folklore there are fatuzzi [little male fairies]” (Croce 543).
*. AT 1381: The Talkative Wife and the Discovered Treasure, and AT 1381B: The Sausage Rain (or Rain of figs, fishes, or milk). Penzer notes that “this is one of the well-known ‘fool’ or ‘noodle’ stories.” Grimm 59 (“Freddy and Katy”) follows it closely, and nos. 7, 32, and 185 contain some similar motifs. The motif of “the trick by which the fool is made to appear mad” also appears in the “Tale of Sinbad” in Arabian Nights. There are numerous Italian versions of similar fool tales; in southern Italy, especially Sicily, the fool often goes by the name of Giufà. “The closest to ‘Vardiello’ is Gonzenbach 37 (‘Giufà’), where Giufà says, ‘Don’t you remember when I brought you home the pot, and in the night the Christ child rained figs and raisins from heaven into my mouth?’” (1:48). Croce also cites variants in Pitrè, Fiabe, nove. e racc. siciliani 190 (“Giufà”) and Nov. e legg. toscane 32 (“Giucca”), G. Morlini, Novellae, fabulae, comoedia (1528) 49, and Giulio Cesare Croce’s Bertoldino (Croce, Lo cunto de li cunti, 286).
1. A small town twenty kilometers from Naples, near Aversa.
2. “Allusion to the receptions and banquets that followed funerals” (Guarini and Burani 66).
3. A quarter of a Neapolitan cask (eleven liters) (Rak 106).
4. iorde [. . .] pipitola (Neap.): “two animal diseases, the first of a horse’s joints, the second of chicken’s tongues” (Rak 106).
5. See tale 1.1 n19.
6. “Today Gioi, an area in the province of Salerno, near Vallo della Lucania. [. . .] It had come . . . to stand for the roughest, wildest, and most primitive part of southern Italy” (Croce 49, 544).
7. bello vedere (Neap.): Belvedere (a castle at a short distance from Pozzuoli, built by Frederick II) or, more in general, a balustrade on a high castle or fort that looks out over a panorama vs. “a fine sight.”
8. Gold or silver coins introduced in the sixteenth century and current in many Italian states at Basile’s time.
9. “The ruotola, or roll, was a measure of weight whose value differed in various Italian cities; in southern Italy it was about 900 grams” (Guarini and Burani 70).
10. “An interval unexpected to the ear (which would normally expect a ‘perfect fifth’), just as Vardiello’s answer was unexpected for the judge” (Croce 51).
11. “A hospital for the mentally and terminally ill, which in Naples was the Hospital of the Incurable” (Rak 106).
*. AT 311: Rescue by the Sister, AT 513A: Six Go Through the Whole World, AT 621: The Louse-Skin, and AT 653: The Four Skillful Brothers. The tale consists of two distinct parts, each having many variants. The first, “the riddle as to what animal the skin belongs,” can be found in Grimm (124 and 134) and Gonzenbach (22), among others. “The second part contains one of the most widely diffused motifs in folk-tales, that of pursuers being hindered by magical obstacles thrown in their path. In some cases safety is finally reached by means of the ‘joint efforts’ of various people endowed with wonderful gifts. Thus, in the present tale, out of the seven sons, numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 produce ‘magic obstacles,’ while all seven form the ‘joint efforts’ motif as a whole. [. . .] [I]t will be noticed that the magic object resembles that which it forms. Thus spittle becomes a sea, a twig turns into a forest, and so on. This is merely the outcome of the belief in sympathetic magic” (Penzer 1:55). See also Grimm 71, Pitrè Fiabe e legg. sic. 2, Pitrè Fiabe, nov. e racc. sic. 21, Pitrè Nov. tosc. 10, and 5.7 of this collection.
1. ’n cordoana (Neap.): “of high quality, like the leather used in the refined and ancient traditional leatherworking of Cordoba” (Rak 122).
2. Literally, “he had grafted it onto a lotus tree,” or he had guessed it right. “This tree was once very common in Naples, and an alley near the Sedile di Porto and a point along the Materdei street take their name from it” (Croce 544).
3. “Terms from falconry, which had a great medieval tradition but was at this point in time in a phase of decadence due to the progressive improvements in firearms. There were, however, still numerous books on the subject” (Rak 122).
4. “[D]uris genuit te cautibus horrens Caucasus, Hycanaeque admorunt ubera tigres” (Virgil, Aeneid 4.366–67; cit. Croce 54).
5. “I.e., the defense is fragile: the brocchiere was a small wooden shield with a sharp spike (brocco) in the middle, used to wound the adversary in body-to-body combat” (Guarini and Burani 75).
6. The physician and philosopher Agostino Nifo da Sessa (1462–1538), the “inventor of that wonderful syrup without which it would seem to be impossible to make a perfect medicine, which is commonly called syrupus Domini Agustini by physicians and apothecaries” (Croce 544).
7. “In Naples and almost all of Italy capital punishment made use of the ‘blade,’ which fell from above and already had the form of a primitive and rough guillotine” (Croce 544).
8. “The right of fida [care] was paid by those who pastured their animals on land belonging to others, or on royal or communal land. Benevento was part of the pontifical state and was, therefore, a close and easy-to-reach ‘land of exile’ for Neapolitan outlaws” (Croce 55).
The Tale of Tales Page 58