4. See Ovid, Fasti 5.251ff. “In the Olenian fields lay the garden of Flora, overflowing with flowers, some of which had been born from the blood of beautiful young boys wounded to their death, like Hyacinth and Adonis. In this garden Juno discovered the way to give birth without having any contact except with a flower, and it was in this way that Ares and his sister Eris were born” (Guarini and Burani 118). “Thus was Juno avenged upon Jove for the previous birth of Minerva without her aid” (Penzer 1:92).
5. Wordplay: bullets vs. the pellets of feces that a certain type of beetle forms and rolls along the ground (Croce 93).
6. Marco-sfila (Neap.): “One of the nicknames of a famous bandit of the time, Marco Sciarra” (Rak 197).
7. requie scarpe e zuoccole (Neap.): “mangled form of ‘reqiescat in pace,’ in which the syllable ‘scat’ becomes ‘scarpe’ and, in a logical conclusion of the associative enumeration, ‘zoccoli’ [clogs] is added” (Croce 94).
8. “All common occurrences while traveling during Basile’s time” (Croce 94).
9. Probably an oversight on Basile’s part, since Long Pergola is Canneloro’s own kingdom.
10. “The shout of scorn or warning to an insolvent debtor before he was arrested” (Rak 197). Debtors were touched on the leg before being imprisoned (Croce 94).
11. “Countrymen entering the city had to keep their rifles unloaded, and probably their other arms in their sheaths” (Rak 197).
12. In Roman mythology, the goddess of the moon, the hunt, and chastity.
13. “The motif of the sword that a knight, forced to go to bed with another knight’s lady, puts between himself and the woman in order to protect their honor, derives from the legend of Tristan” (Guarini and Burani 124). The sword is also a metaphor for the phallus, here and elsewhere.
14. Purgative pills (Croce 550).
*. AT 877: The Old Woman Who Was Skinned. See Penzer’s discussion of the appearance of a number of the motifs in this tale in legend, religious traditions, folklore, and the literary fairy tale tradition. These include a man marrying a hag who then turns into a beautiful lady (“The Weddynge of Syr Gawayne,” the legend of Perceval); the “false sybarite” motif; and the flaying of the sister. With regard to the latter, he notes that the “terrible end of the other sister is rather surprising when we remember that the lucky sister had been given gifts by the fairies to make her beautiful, noble, and virtuous. Yet as soon as she is married, she proceeds to treat her less lucky sister in the most heartless and cruel way imaginable.” The similarities with Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Claus and Big Claus” and Grimm 61, “Little Farmer,” are also noted (1:103–04). Gonzenbach 73, “The King Who Wanted a Beautiful Wife,” is in essence identical to “The Old Woman.” Croce mentions a similar tale by Pitrè (6 in Fiabe e legg. pop. sic.) and cites corresponding Sicilian, Venetian, Abbruzzese, and Tyrolean versions (Lo cunto de li cunti, 287).
1. The introduction to the tale contains an antifeminist diatribe against the use of cosmetics and other instruments of false beautification that was common in disquisitions on the proper comportment of women, as well as in writings on rhetoric, where the celebration of what lies under the merely cosmetic—in body or words—was often linked to the topos of “naked truth.” This passage, in particular, brings to mind the preamble to tale 1.10 of the Decameron, which criticizes the same female “vice.”
2. no vascio (Neap.): street-level apartments were usually inhabited by members of the lower classes and were “at this time already a phenomenon connected to the growth in population and lack of housing” (Rak 218).
3. A Neapolitan children’s song, probably of ritual origin. The complete text of this song appears in the introduction to day 4, in which the company of tale-tellers and audience engages in song, dance, and merrymaking before the day’s tales start. Recently (1976) this same song became the prologue to a musical based on Basile’s “La gatta cenerentola” (Cinderella) created by Roberto de Simone and the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare, a well-known group of Neapolitan “ethno-musicians.”
4. Two more children’s games: “Open the Doors” is a circle game, and “Give Me an Offering” is a song children sang on New Year’s Eve as they went from door to door. See also Eclogue 1 n31.
5. For this belief on Pontine sheep, Basile refers to Pliny’s Natural History (book 27): “Absinthi genera plura . . . Ponticum, e Ponto, ubi pecora pinguescent illo, et ob id sine felle reperiuntur” (cit. Croce 100).
6. faceva . . . lo sparpetuo (Neap.): “playful deformation of the formula used in the mass for the dead: lux perpetua eis; a sperpetua is a whiny lament” (Guarini and Burani 129).
7. See tale 1.7 n28.
8. Another children’s game, of the hide-and-seek variety.
9. Boiled pig snout, served in its own gelatin, was commonly sold by street vendors in Basile’s time, as it still is today (Rak 218).
10. mantrullo (Neap.): “pigpen, also the cell of those condemned to death” (Guarini and Burani 131).
11. This is the first verse of a Neapolitan villanella.
12. Love or Cupid, the son of Venus and Vulcan, is “one of the recurrent figures of Greco-Roman mythology in these tales, in which sexual relationships are, directly or indirectly, a basic plot element” (Rak 219).
13. Common crimes of the time, in which Spaniards were considered to have the greatest expertise (Croce 103).
14. Mandracchio was an area of ill repute near the Dogana (Customs) in the port of Naples; the famous Neapolitan hill of Posillipo was, since ancient times, the site of aristocratic pastimes. A permonara (barge) was an “old, discarded ship that was kept at wet dock to house the crew, to hold prisoners, or for other uses”; the elegant Florentine galleys were often, at this time, used to guard the Mediterranean coasts against pirates (Croce 104).
15. fatto na ’ncammisata (Neap.): according to Croce, a reference to how, “during night-time attacks, soldiers would put shirts over their armor so that they could recognize each other in the dark” (104–05).
16. grazia de sieggio (Neap.): “Neapolitan nobility was divided into those ‘with a seat’ (i.e., assigned to one of six noble seats), and those ‘without a seat.’ The first, and more ancient group was of much greater prestige” (Croce 552). Ferrivecchi and Lavinaro were among the poorest streets in Naples.
17. la perdonanza (Neap.): “processions for the purchase of indulgences” (Rak 219).
18. See tale 1.2 n34.
19. Two famous wines from the area around Naples.
20. trucco (Neap.): “a game in which small balls (palle) were thrown and hit” (Rak 220).
21. Anything immersed in the waters of the Sarno River, it was said, would turn to stone; cane seeds were thought to have dangerous properties; sparrow feces was believed to cause blindness (as happened to Tobit in the Book of Tobit 2.17) (Croce 107).
22. The “ash cloth” (cennerale) was used to cover laundry basins in order to contain the ash therein (which was used as a detergent); lye is also a common detergent.
23. Neapolitan idiom meaning “to pass on to the other world.”
24. Words of another children’s game, here used as an augury.
25. fare na fico (Neap.): “A gesture of contempt, known in Italy, France, Germany, Holland, England, etc., and consisting of placing the thumb between the index and middle fingers. . . . [It] is held by some to be a sign-symbol of the vulva, and is used for example in Italy, as both an insulting gesture and a counter to the evil eye (a wish for good luck): one etymological theory holds that the expression originated in an Italian word meaning both the fruit and the pudendum muliebre, thus making of the gesture a punning symbol” (Leach and Fried 378). In this case, the potential ambivalence of the gesture (insult or wish for good luck), as well as the pun, are fully exploited by Basile. See also Giuseppe Pitrè,
Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane 17.244–45.
26. All traditional Neapolitan sweets. Pastidelle (pastries) were made with eggs, sugar, and cinnamon; neole (wafers; from the Latin nebulae) from flour and boiled must; tarallucce were small doughnut-shaped cookies (made with sugar) or crackers (made with pepper, anise, or other spices); iancomangiare (blancmange) was another sweet, a gelatinous pudding made with milk or almond milk, and produced in monasteries; franfellicche were little pieces of sweet brittle made with honey and syrup (see Rak 220).
27. Up to the very end; fennel is served at the end of the meal.
28. Barbers of the time performed multiple roles: “in barber shops one could have more or less complex surgical procedures done, such as teeth extraction, the application of leeches, and more” (Rak 220).
29. As patients at an insane asylum are accompanied by nurses (Croce 109).
30. colascione (Neap.): See tale 1.3 n24.
31. The rosa is the circular opening in the body of stringed instruments, from which derives the expression contrapuntiare fi’ a la rosa, or to take a long time with something.
32. The reference is to these verses from Iacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia (6.4–6): “Nel mondo oggi gli amici non si trovano, / la fede è morta e regnano le invidie / e i mal costumi ognor più si rinovano.” Rak comments that “envy was one of the most popular topics in court society, and was debated in numerous treatises” (220). One of the “authorities” frequently cited was Ovid, who in book 2 of the Metamorphoses describes Envy as an old hag not so dissimilar from Basile’s old woman: “Eyes wild, teeth thick with mold, gall dripping green . . . / Envy is sleepless, her heart anxiety, / And at the sight of any man’s success / She withers, is bitten, eats herself away” (Ovid 79).
33. “Allusion to the frequent eviction notices served to students residing in certain houses, or streets or neighborhoods.” In 1505 King Ferdinand the Catholic issued a decree that students could live only in certain parts of the city. One of the many stone tablets banning “prostitutes, students, or similarly dishonest persons” can be found in the Museum of San Martino in Naples (Croce 552).
*. The four eclogues that divide the days are all recited by two characters, members of Tadeo’s court but otherwise not involved in the tale-telling activities. The eclogues are in verse: an irregular alternation between hendecasyllable and seven-syllable lines (two of the most common in Italian verse) and a rhyme pattern that is also irregular, which I have translated in prose. Historically, the eclogue is a verse dialogue, often between shepherds, that treats pastoral themes (Virgil’s are perhaps the best-known examples). Basile’s intent appears ironic, since the actors in his eclogues are court servants and their topics of conversation are the social ills (specifically, the various hypocrisies) of urban civic society. Indeed, they have much in common with the tradition of satire in verse; after the Roman masters of this genre, one of the most important Renaissance satirists was Ludovico Ariosto, with whose Satire Basile was certainly familiar. With the choice of “staged” eclogues to divide the days of telling Basile also makes reference, although once again in a topsy-turvy sort of way, to the established tradition of intermezzi, or interludes, that were inserted between the acts (five) of a play. During the Renaissance these compositions could be pastoral or love poems (see, e.g., Machiavelli’s Mandragola), though they could also be theatrical in form themselves (e.g., comic scenes), and in subject matter were generally extraneous (at least explicitly so) to the action in the principal play.
A coppella (Neap.) is “a type of porous crucible used for purifying or testing metals” (Rak 270).
1. “Fabiello had thought that this crucible could be used to make counterfeit money, the most common crime in Naples at the time, and the most ruthlessly punished, with hangings and quarterings occurring on an almost daily basis, as the chronicles of the time document” (Croce 111).
2. decinco (Neap.): the cinquina was a coin of low value (Croce 112).
3. The gallows.
4. “In chivalric epics, Ferrau’s oath on his mother’s head (see, for example, Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso I.30). Here it is used with the meaning of swearing on the life of a stranger whose fate is of no interest” (Rak 270).
5. All mythological figures condemned to punishment. Tityus, the giant son of Gaia, was punished by Apollo and Artemis for attempting to rape their mother, Leto, by being made eternally immobile while two vultures gnawed at his liver (recounted in book 11 of the Odyssey); Tantalus was punished with insatiable hunger and thirst as he sat in the middle of a lake with a fruit tree above him, both unattainable; Ixion was tied by Zeus with serpents to a fiery wheel in perpetual motion for having made sexual advances to Hera; and Sisyphus (founder of Corinth) was condemned for eternity to push a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll to the bottom again each time before it reached the top (Rak 270; Guarini and Burani 146–47).
6. Town in Basilicata (Trecchina), in the area around Lagonegro (Croce 117).
7. See tale 1.5 n2.
8. iettarielle (Neap.): “counters in the form of coins, used to mark points in a game” (Croce 117).
9. Iodeca (Neap.): “A street of Naples where Jews once lived. After they were expelled, the area was taken over by rag-sellers” (Croce 117).
10. A derogative term for sword, as in tale 1.7 n24.
11. Ceuze (Neap.): See tale 1.7 n17.
12. cartelle (Neap.): “Soldiers received papers that authorized them to find lodging in a private home, but it was common to give up this right in exchange for a payment that the potential hosts often willingly paid, considering the difficulties involved in living with soldiers” (Rak 271).
13. The Saracen king who appears in Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato (1.4ff.) and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (2.45ff.).
14. “That is, whether the rope with which he is hanged (for deserting) is thick or thin” (Croce 118).
15. aiuto de costa (Neap.): from the Spanish “ayudo de costa,” a subsidy given to travelers when sent on missions (Croce 553).
16. chiazza morta (Neap.): See tale 1.7 n29.
17. le Zazzare (Neap.): Francesco Zazzera was the author of Della nobilità d’Italia (Naples, 1610). “At this time Naples, as other places, had an abundance of writers, more or less venal and unreliable, of books on nobility” (Croce 120). Pun on zazzere, long shocks of hair that fell to the shoulders, in vogue among seventeenth-century men (Guarini and Burani 151).
18. li Campanile (Neap.): Filiberto Campanile, author of Delle armi overo delle imprese dei nobili (Naples, 1618), and Historia della famiglia di Sangro (Naples, 1615) (Croce 120). Pun on campanili (bell towers), which were often built by private families as a status symbol.
19. le Prete (Neap.): Francesco de Pietri, author of Dell’Historia Napolitana (Naples, 1634), of which a large part is dedicated to the history of noble families (Croce 120). Pun on preta (Neap.), rock.
20. In Greek mythology, the beautiful Trojan prince carried off to Olympus by Zeus to be cup bearer to the gods.
21. “Someone who acquires favor by means of his wife, who does not refuse her favors to the powerful (the husband comes in one door as his wife’s lover goes out the other)” (Croce 554).
22. “A popular custom; to urge a servant or boy to run an errand quickly, you spit on the ground and told him to be back before the spit dried” (Croce 124).
23. n’arravoglia-Cuosemo (Neap.): lit., “a wrapping up of Cosimo”; a robbery in which the booty is quickly taken care of (Guarini and Burani 156).
24. mesesca (Neap.): chunks of salted meat (Croce 126).
25. liberanze (Neap.): “a part of a debtor’s assets allotted to him by a judge for his personal expenses” (Petrini 722).
26. I.e., bruises.
The Tale of Tales Page 60
