The Tale of Tales

by Giambattista Basile

  “After they came to an agreement, they went to the king and told him the whole story. He immediately sent for Rosella and said to her, ‘Where did you learn to trick my courtiers like this? Don’t think I won’t have you put on the tax lists,13 you perch, you little slut, you ragged ass!’ And Rosella, without changing color a bit, answered him, ‘What I did was for the purpose of avenging myself on a member of your court for a wrong done me, even though nothing in the world would be enough to compensate for the affront that I have received!’ And when she was ordered by the king to tell of the offense that had been done her, she recounted in third person how much she had done to serve the prince, how she had removed him from slavery, freed him from death, rescued him from the dangers of a sorceress, and brought him back safe and sound to his land, only to be paid with a turn of the back and a piece of cheese, which was hardly appropriate for her status, since she was a woman of great blood and the daughter of one who commanded kingdoms.

  “When he heard this the king immediately had her seated at a place of great honor and begged her to reveal who the indifferent one was, the ingrate who had played this fine joke on her. Taking a ring off her finger, she said, ‘Whomever this ring goes to is the unfaithful traitor that tricked me!’ And when she threw down the ring, it went and slipped onto the finger of the prince, who was standing there like a doorpost. The ring’s power immediately entered his brain and his lost memory returned, his eyes opened, his blood began to circulate again, and his spirits woke back up. He ran to embrace Rosella, and could neither get his fill of pulling tight the chain of her soul nor tire of kissing the vase of his happiness.

  “And when he begged her pardon for the displeasure he had given her, she answered, ‘There’s no use begging pardon for those mistakes not generated by will. I know why you forgot your Rosella, since the curse that the lost soul of my mother put on you has not left my mind, and for this reason I forgive you and sympathize with you.’ And as a thousand words of love thus passed between them, the king heard of Rosella’s lineage and the debt he owed her for the good that she had done his son, and he was delighted that they should unite. And after Rosella was made a Christian the king gave her to his son for his wife, and they were more satisfied than anyone who has ever borne the yoke of matrimony, at the end realizing that given time and straw, you can see that medlars always ripen.”

  10

  THE THREE FAIRIES*

  Tenth Entertainment of the Third Day

  Cicella, badly treated by her stepmother, receives gifts from three fairies. The envious stepmother then sends them her own daughter, who receives only humiliation. For this reason the stepmother sends Cicella to look after pigs, and a great lord falls in love with her. But with a ruse the stepmother gives him her ugly daughter instead, and leaves her stepdaughter in a barrel with the intention of boiling her to death. The lord discovers the foul play and puts the daughter in the barrel; the stepmother arrives and boils her own daughter’s flesh off with hot water. When she discovers her mistake, she kills herself.

  Ciommetella’s tale was judged to be one of the best told so far, so that when Iacova saw that everyone was struck with amazement she said, “If it were not for the prince and princess’s order, which is the winch that hoists me up and the towline that pulls me, I would put an end to my chatter, for it seems like too much of a stretch to compare the busted lute1 of my mouth to the arch-viola2 of Ciommetella’s words. But since it is my lord’s wish, I will force myself to play for you a little composition3 on the punishment of an envious woman who, although she wanted to sink her stepdaughter, instead led her up to the stars.

  “In the village of Marcianise4 there was a widow named Caradonia, who was the mother of all envy. She could never see anything go well for a neighbor without getting a lump in her throat; she could never hear of the good fortune of an acquaintance without it going down the wrong way; nor could she see any woman or man happy without getting the hiccups.

  “This woman had a daughter named Grannizia, who was the quintessence of all cankers, the prime cut of all sea orcas, and the cream of all cracked barrels. Her head was full of nits, her hair a ratty mess, her temples plucked, her forehead like a hammer, her eyes like a hernia, her nose a knotty bump, her teeth full of tartar, and her mouth like a grouper’s; she had the beard of a goat, the throat of a magpie, tits like saddlebags, shoulders like cellar vaults, arms like a reel, hooked legs, and heels like cabbages. In short, she was from head to toe a lovely hag, a fine spot of plague, an unsightly bit of rot, and above all she was a midget, an ugly goose, and a snot nose. But in spite of all this, the little cockroach looked like a beauty to her mother!

  “Now it happened that one day this good widow married a certain Micco Antuono, a very wealthy farmer from Panecuocolo5 who had twice been bailiff and mayor of that village and was much esteemed by all the Panecuocolese, who set great store by him. Micco Antuono had a daughter, too, by the name of Cicella, who was the most marvelous and beauteous creature in the world: her twinkling eyes cast a spell on you, her little mouth made for kissing put you in a state of ecstasy, and her cream-colored throat sent you into spasms. She was, in short, so charming, savory, gay, and mouth watering, and she possessed so many little graces, lovely airs, dainty little mannerisms, and so much allure and appeal that she stole hearts from their breasts. But what’s the use of all these ‘let me tell you’s’ and ‘I told you’s’! May it suffice to say that she was as pretty as a picture and you couldn’t find the slightest defect in her.

  “When Caradonia saw that her daughter, compared to Cicella, looked like a kitchen rag next to a cushion of the finest velvet, the bottom of a greasy pan in front of a Venetian mirror, a harpy face-to-face with a Fata Morgana, she began to scowl at her and have trouble keeping her down. Nor did the matter end there; spitting out the abscess that had formed in her heart and no longer able to stay hanging,6 Caradonia began to torment the poor girl with an open show of her cards. She dressed her daughter in a little twill skirt with a fringed hem and a gauzy top, and the poor stepdaughter in the worst rags and tatters in the house; she gave her daughter bread as white as flowers, and her stepdaughter hard and moldy crusts; she let her daughter stand around like the ampulla of the Savior, and forced her stepdaughter to rush to and fro like the shuttle on a loom and to sweep the house, wash the dishes, make the beds, do the laundry, feed the pig, take care of the donkey, and empty the chamber pot, all of which the good girl, always eager and able, did in most timely fashion, saving herself no effort in order to make her evil stepmother happy.

  “But as her good fortune would have it, the poor girl was on her way to dump the trash off a large cliff near the house when her basket fell, and while she was trying to figure out how she could fish it out of that precipice, all of a sudden—what’s this? what’s this?—she saw a monster so horrible that it was hard to say whether he was the original of Aesop7 or a copy of Old Horny. He was an ogre who had hair like the blackest of pig bristles that reached down to the little bones in his feet; a wrinkled brow, on which every fold looked like a plowed furrow; stiff and hairy eyelashes; shriveled and sunken eyes full of what’s-it-called that looked like two filthy workshops under the wide awnings of his eyelids; a twisted and drooling mouth that sprouted two tusks like those of a wild boar; and a warty chest that was such a forest of hair you could have stuffed a mattress with it. And above all, he had a tall hump, a round belly, thin legs, and crooked feet, and he made your mouth twist with fear.

  “But even if Cicella had in front of her an evil shadow that would have spooked anyone, she summoned up all her courage and said to him, ‘My good man, hand me that basket that fell, and may you find yourself richly married!’ The ogre answered, ‘Come down, my dear girl, and get it yourself.’ Grabbing onto roots and grasping at stones, the dear little girl tried her hardest until she finally got down there, where, incredibly, she found three fairies, one more beautiful than the other. They had hair of spun gold, fac
es like full moons, eyes that spoke to you, and mouths that petitioned, according to the terms of the contract, to be satisfied with sugary kisses. What else? Tender throats, delicate breasts, soft hands, dainty feet, and, in short, a grace that was the honorable frame of all that beauty.

  “Cicella received more caresses and kindness from the fairies than can be imagined, and they took her by the hand and led her to a house located underneath the precipice, which could have accommodated a ruling king. When they arrived, they sat down on Turkish carpets and cushions of smooth velvet tied with wool and moleskin bows, and the sorceresses then put their heads in Cicella’s lap and had her comb their hair. And while she most delicately performed her task with a comb of gleaming buffalo horn, the fairies asked her, ‘My lovely girl, what are you finding on this little head?’ And she answered, with great politeness, “I’m finding little nits, tiny lice, and pearls and garnets!’ The fairies were ever so pleased with Cicella’s fine manners, and once their disheveled hair was all arranged those great ladies took her with them around the enchanted palace, showing her, bit by bit, all the extraordinary beauty it had to offer. There were splendidly carved writing desks of chestnut and hornbeam topped by boxes covered with horse skin and decorated in tin plate, walnut tables in which you could see your reflection, pantries with batteries of pots and pans so shiny they blinded you, draperies of flowered green cloth, leather chairs with backrests, and so many other lavish things that anyone else would have been in a stupor at the mere sight of it all. But, as if it had nothing to do with her, Cicella admired the grandeur of the house without marveling or letting her mouth hang open like a bumpkin.

  “At the end they brought her into a wardrobe stuffed with sumptuous clothing, and they showed her petticoats of Spanish cloth; dresses of velvet gold-cloth, with leg-of-mutton sleeves; coverlets of thick silk trimmed with little enamel pendants; delicate shifts of bias-cut taffeta; tiaras made of real little flowers; baubles of oak leaves, seashells, half-moons, and serpent tongues; collars decorated with blue and white glass and ears of wheat; lilies and plumes to be worn on the head; chips of enamel set in silver; and a thousand other tidbits and doodads to wear around your neck. And they told the girl to choose whatever she liked and to take as many of those things as she wanted.

  “Cicella, who was as humble as oil, ignored the most valuable things and decided on a tattered little skirt that wasn’t worth three cents. When the fairies saw this they said, ‘From which door would you like to leave, my little sweetie?’ Bowing down so low that she almost dragged herself in the dirt, the girl said, ‘Going out through the stable is good enough for me.’ Then the fairies, hugging and kissing her a thousand times, dressed her in a magnificent gown embroidered all over in gold and did her hair in Scottish fashion, with braids that circled her head and so many ribbons and frills that it looked like a meadow of flowers. And with her padded rooster’s crest8 and her rolled braids, they accompanied her to the door, which was made of solid gold and had a frame inlaid with carbuncles, and said to her, ‘Go, my dear Cicella, and may you find yourself well married! Go, and when you’re out the door, lift your eyes and see what’s above you!’ The girl paid her proper respects and left, and when she was under the door she lifted her head and a golden star fell onto her forehead, and it was a beauteous thing to behold. And so, star-marked like a horse, she returned to her stepmother all neat and shiny, and told her what had happened from the beginning to the end.

  “This was no fairy tale but a beating for the gouty woman, who was not able to find peace until she had gotten directions to where the fairies lived and sent her grouper fish of a daughter there. When the second girl arrived at the enchanted palace and found those three jewels, they first and above all had her look in their hair, and when they asked her what she had found, she said, ‘Every louse is as big as a chickpea and every nit as big as a spoon.’ The fairies were outraged and felt a lump in their throats at the coarse manners of this ugly lout, but they feigned indifference and recognized the bad day from the morning. In fact, when they took her to the room of sumptuous clothing and told her to pick out the best things, Grannizia, seeing herself offered a finger, took the whole hand and grabbed the most beautiful cloak that the wardrobes held. The sorceresses saw that the matter was getting out of hand and were taken aback; nevertheless, they wanted to see how far she would go and said to her, ‘From which door would you like to leave, O lovely girl of mine, the golden door or the garden door?’ And she answered brazenly, ‘From the best there is!’ When they saw how presumptuous that little ragamuffin was, the fairies gave her not one grain of salt and sent her away with these words: ‘When you’re under the stable door, lift your face to the sky and see what you get.’ After the girl passed through the manure and went out, she lifted up her head, and a donkey’s testicle fell onto her forehead, where it stuck to her skin and looked like a birthmark caused by a pregnant mother’s cravings. And with this nice reward she returned, ever so slowly, to Caradonia.

  “Foaming at the mouth like a bitch that’s just given birth, Caradonia made Cicella get undressed, threw a filthy rag on her bare ass, and sent her to look after some pigs, after which she decked out her own daughter in Cicella’s clothes. And with great calm and a patience worthy of Orlando, Cicella tolerated that wretched life. Oh, the cruelty! It was enough to move the stones in the street! That mouth, worthy of pronouncing amorous conceits, was forced to play a conch horn9 and to shout, ‘Here, oinky, oinky, here, oinky’; that beauty, which should have attracted the noblest of suitors, was relegated to the pigs; that hand, which deserved to halter a hundred souls, prodded along a hundred sows with a stick. And damn a thousand times over the wickedness of the person who ordered her to those woods, where under the canopy of the shadows fear and silence found refuge from the Sun!

  “But the heavens, which trample the arrogant and raise the humble up high, sent a most noble lord named Cuosemo to those parts. When he saw that jewel in the mud, that phoenix among pigs, and that lovely sun in the broken clouds of those rags, he became so infatuated with her that after he asked who she was and where she lived, without wasting a minute he went to talk with her stepmother and requested her for his wife, promising that he would give her a counter-dowry of thousands of ducats. But Caradonia set her eyes on him for her own daughter, and told him to come back that night since she wanted to invite the relatives. Full of joy, Cuosemo left, and it seemed like every hour was a thousand years until the Sun retired to the silvery bed prepared by the river of India10 and he could in his turn retire with the Sun that inflamed his heart. In the meantime Caradonia threw Cicella into a barrel and sealed it up, with the intention of giving her a nice hot scalding: since she had abandoned the pigs, she wanted to skin her like a pig in boiling water.

  “The air had already grown dark and the sky like a wolf’s mouth when Cuosemo, who was having convulsions and dying of the desire to expand his impassioned heart by squeezing the beauties of his beloved, set off with great joy, saying, ‘The hour has finally come to tap the tree that Love has planted in this breast so that it may send forth the sap of amorous sweetness; the hour has finally come to go and dig for the treasure that Fortune has promised me. And so waste no time, Cuosemo; when you’ve been promised a suckling pig go running with your rope! O night, O happy night, O friend of lovers, O body and soul, O ladle and pot; O Love, run, run head over heels, so that under the tent of your shadows I may find relief from the heat that is consuming me!’

  “As he was saying this he arrived at Caradonia’s house and found Grannizia instead of Cicella—an owl in the place of a goldfinch, a weed in the place of an overblown rose. For although she had put on Cicella’s clothes and you could have said, ‘Dress Darin and he’ll look like a baron,’11 she still looked like a cockroach wrapped in golden cloth. Neither the rouge, nor the other makeup, nor the poultices, nor the smoothing down administered by her mother could remove the dandruff from her hair, the bleariness from her eyes, the freckl
es from her face, the tartar from her teeth, the warts from her throat, the pustule from her chest, and the grit from her heels; you could smell the stench of bilge a mile away. When the bridegroom saw this fairy of a girl, he couldn’t understand what had happened, and backing away as if the Old Serpent himself had materialized before him, he said to himself, ‘Am I awake, or did I put my eyes on backward? Am I myself or not? What do you see, poor Cuosemo? Have you shit in your pants? This is not the face that yesterday morning caught me by my throat; this is not the image that was painted in my heart! What can this be, O Fortune? Where, where is the beauty, the hook that caught me, the winch that pulled me, the arrow that pierced me? I knew that neither women nor canvases could be seen well by candlelight, but I bagged this one in sunlight! Alas, this morning’s gold has revealed itself to be copper, its diamonds to be glass, and my beard to be little more than sideburns!’

  “Although he muttered and grumbled these and other words under his breath, at the end he was forced by need to give Grannizia a kiss. But as if he were kissing an ancient vase, he brought his lips close and then pulled them away more than three times before he touched the bride’s mouth, and when he drew near to her it was like finding himself at the Chiaia marina in the evening, when those illustrious women offer the sea a tribute quite different from Arabian perfume.12 But since the sky had dyed its white beard black to appear younger and his lands were quite distant, that night Cuosemo was forced to bring her to a house at a short distance from the Panecuocolo border, where after a straw mattress was laid upon two chests he went to bed with his bride.

  “Who can tell of the awful night spent by the two of them, which, even if it was summer and lasted barely eight hours, seemed like the longest night of winter? On one side of the bed the restless bride spat, coughed, gave a kick now and then, sighed, and with silent words went in search of the rent on the house she had leased out. Cuosemo, on the other hand, pretended to snore, and he had moved so far over to the edge of the bed in order not to touch Grannizia that he fell right off the mattress and ended up on top of a chamber pot, and the whole thing came to a stinky and embarrassing conclusion. Oh, how many times the bridegroom damned the ancestors of the Sun,13 which was taking its sweet time so that it could keep him in that tight spot for as long as possible! How often he prayed that Night might break its neck and the stars fall from the sky so that he could remove that bad day from his side with the arrival of the new one! And no sooner had Dawn come out to shoo away the Pleiades14 and awaken the roosters than Cuosemo jumped out of bed and, barely fastening his trousers, raced off to Caradonia’s house to repudiate her daughter and pay her for the sample taste with a broom handle.