17. “Playful proverbs, still in existence today, referring to the various towns of the Sorrento peninsula” (Croce 426).
18. “Off the cape of Posillipo various maps of the 18th century indicate a rock with the name of ‘Pietra salata,’ probably the one Basile is thinking of. Basile himself seems to have been born in Posillipo, since in his Avventurose disavventure, which is set in Posillipo, he says: ‘I first opened my eyes to daylight on this very shore’” (Croce 587).
*. AT 516: Faithful John. This tale bears similarities to Grimm 6 (“Faithful Johannes”), has variants in Eastern collections (see Penzer 2:81), and was the source of Carlo Gozzi’s Il corvo, a theatrical fairy tale first performed in Venice in 1761.
1. Parody of the verses pronounced by Tisiphone, one of the Furies and the virgin soothsayer appointed by Hecate to guard Avernus: “If I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths, / and an iron voice, I would not be able to describe all the types of misdeeds there are, / nor to number all the kinds of suffering” (Aeneid 6.625–27; cit. Guarini and Burani 485).
2. See tale 4.2 n28.
3. The motif of desiring another person (usually a spouse or child) as red, white, and black as certain elements that appear in a character’s surroundings (blood, animals, rocks, and so forth) also appears in 5.9, as well as in Chrétien de Troyes’s story of Perceval and the Grimms’ “Snow White,” among others.
4. Plautus’s comedy. See introduction to day 1 n17.
5. “As in inlay work” (Croce 428).
6. The stone used by painters to grind their pigments.
7. See eclogue 1 (“The Crucible”) n5.
8. Venice is also praised in 3.8 and was often the subject of similar literary accolades. Basile was quite familiar with the city since as a young man he had spent a number of years there and served as a soldier in its territories.
9. The story of Darius, king of Persia from 521 to 486 BC, and his groom Oebares is told by Herodotus (Histories 3.85–87; cit. Croce 430).
10. The reference is to the tears of Olimpia, abandoned by Bireno, in Ludovico’s Orlando furioso (10.25–33). The source here is, however, Giambattista della Porta’s L’Olimpia (1589) (Rak 836).
11. A plant used as a remedy for intestinal worms (Rak 836).
12. “One of the columns that would have supported the canopy of a typical Neapolitan bed of this period” (Rak 836).
13. I.e., with a shaved head. See tale 2.6 n14.
14. I.e., he had an erection. For a similar motif, see Giambattista Marino’s poem “Amori notturni” (in the Lira collection; cit. Croce 436).
15. Penzer notes that the choice of a brother to survive, over a husband or a child, is found in Greek and Indian classics: the episode of Intaphernes in Herodotus, Histories 3.19; Antigone’s explanation of her actions at her brother’s death (Sophocles, Antigone 909ff.); and so forth (2:81–82).
16. “The pholas dactilu, or lithophagous mollusk” (Croce 438).
*. AT 900: King Thrushbeard. This tale is quite similar to Grimm 52 (“King Thrushbeard”); see also Straparola 1.4 (“Tebaldo and Doralice”) and 9.1 (“Galafro, King of Spain”), and Gonzenbach 18.
1. A contest similar to that of the ring. See tale 2.10 n19. The target mentioned here (vastaso) is that of the quintana, “a joust of medieval origin in which the competitors, armed with lances, galloped on horseback towards a revolving silhouette dressed like a Saracen and tried to hit its shield without getting knocked off their horses by the club attached to the other hand of the figure” (Guarini and Burani 498).
2. Allusion to the proverb “Clubs and bread make children nice; bread without clubs make them crazy” (Croce 440).
3. Two measures of weight in use at the time in various European countries. The dram was the eighth part of an ounce, the pound slightly over 300 grams (Rak 852).
4. See tale 2.7 n6.
5. Verses from Petrarch, Rime sparse 207 (“Ben mi credea passar mio tempo omai”), following the Durling edition.
6. corbona (Neap.): literally, the bag in which offerings are collected in places of worship (Croce 445).
7. Rosemary was used to purify the air in contaminated rooms (Rak 852).
*. A vorpora (Neap.) is “a hook with one or more sharp, curved prongs used to remove buckets which have fallen into a well” (Croce 448).
1. composta (Neap.): “Bandits or brigands would sometimes constitute themselves as a group; that is, they came to a compromise with the governing authorities whereby they would receive pensions or military offices” (Croce 450).
2. As explained in eclogue 1, “The Crucible,” n12, the exchange of lodging cards for cash.
3. It is not clear who this is.
4. Nasone (Neap.): one of Ovid’s nicknames.
5. The questions of literary imitation and plagiary were widely debated in the seventeenth century. See, e.g., Giambattista Marino’s letter to Claudio Achillini, which prefaces Marino’s Sampogna (1621). Marino comments that he “‘learned to read with a hook always present, drawing to himself everything that served his purpose, entering it into his notebook, and making use of it in his own time.’ . . . He also protests, however, against ‘certain little harpies with hooked talons who go around stealing the ideas of others’” (cit. Croce 588).
6. Alexander the Great.
7. verrinie (Neap.): the breast of a sow vs. Cicero’s Verrine.
8. fare arravoglia-Cuosemo (Neap.): “corrupted form of arravoglia quaesumus. It was pretended that there was an oration of the breviary that began in this manner, since many of them begin with a word followed by quaesumus [. . .] it also means a theft” (Galiani, Vocabolario; cit. Rak 874).
9. See tale 1.2 n19.
10. I.e., the pious.
11. Each of the phrases in this speech contains alliterative punning: i.e., chi no arrobba non ha robba (the second phrase), chi non piglia non ha paglia (the third), and so forth.
12. tre cavalle (Neap.): play on the two meanings of cavallo: a coin (caallo) vs. a beating inflicted on schoolchildren (Guarini and Burani 512).
13. I.e., Piazza del Mercato in Naples. “Like Piazza Greve, capital executions were carried out here. In a 1566 map of Naples there is a drawing of the scaffold and gallows in this square” (Croce 454). See also tale 1.7 n21.
14. Here, too, puns abound: rimmo (oar) vs. ramma (copper); legna (wood) vs. l’ogna (fingernail); pennone (the banner that accompanied those condemned to death) vs. penne (plumes).
15. The literalization of this figure of speech, connoting an impossible situation, appears in tale 1.4, “Vardiello.”
16. “Basile served a number of times (below he says ‘about twelve’) as baronial governor in the fiefs of the Kingdom of Naples, and he knew from experience that cases like the one he describes here and below were frequent” (Croce 456).
17. “Like in those card games in which a seven, especially of denari [coins; one of the suits in the Neapolitan deck], has a higher value than the other cards” (Guarini and Burani 514).
18. patiente (Neap.): “licenses, or the office itself, of a governor or captain” (Croce 457).
19. “A dignified way to receive the fee for a medical visit without seeming to receive payment like just any vendor of goods or services” (Croce 457).
20. lo ruotolo (Neap.): about 900 grams.
21. A white wine of Campania (Aversa).
22. “A signal of recognition to the merchant, who would understand that the price of the goods was to be made higher so that the tailor could be paid his part” (Rak 875).
23. See eclogue 1 (“The Crucible”) n9.
24. December 26.
1. This was a sort of truth-telling society game, also called the “game of blunders.” See, e.g., Lorenzo Lippi, Il Malmantile racquistato
2.47. The “game of solitude” mentioned in Stefano Guazzo’s La civil conversatione has a similar structure (Rak 886). The concept of gaming as a hermeneutic tool is present in countless Renaissance texts, especially those, like Baldassar Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, that have as their subject social and intellectual life at court. See also Michelangelo Picone, ed., Passare il tempo: La letteratura del gioco e dell’intrattenimento dal XII al XVI secolo (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1993).
2. Lit., “little triumph.” These and the following are names of card games, here used as pretext for wordplay.
3. pubreche (Neap.): See tale 1.2 n2. Once again, play on pubreca: coin vs. “public woman” or prostitute.
4. Play on gabella: in general, tax, but also a special tax imposed on prostitutes vs. the name of a game.
5. The text reads “Iacova,” an apparent error, since Iacova is absent from this day of telling due to illness (as specified at the beginning of the day), and Zoza will take her place as the teller of the last tale of the day.
6. cianfrone (Neap.): originally worth a ducat, and later a patacca (a coin of little value) (Croce 468).
7. See tale 1.9 n10.
8. “This villanella contains many proverbial sayings, most of which have already been referred to, and in its general sense expresses a disdainful farewell to a person who was once loved but from whose yoke the lover now feels himself freed” (Croce 469).
*. AT 571: All Stick Together, and AT 571C: The Biting Doll. This tale is quite similar to Straparola 5.2 (“Adamantina”), and recalls Grimm 64 (“The Golden Goose”). See also Pitrè, Fiabe, nov. e racc. sic. 25, 288.
1. Hesiod, Opera et dies 25–26 (Croce 471).
2. Metaphor deriving from the game of billiards.
3. The miraculous stone, the object of medieval alchemists’ quest and central to the alchemical opera, which was believed could transform metals into gold.
4. Croce does not see a direct descendance from the famous episode in Rabelais (Gargantua 13); others (Guarini and Burani) think it possible. In the passage in question, Gargantua concludes, after listing various ways of cleaning oneself, that “there is no ass-wiper like a fluffy goose” (37).
5. “The nymph Salmacis fell in love with Hermaphrodites and, wrapping herself around him, she implored the gods never to be separated from him, forming a single body” (Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.361–76; Guarini and Burani 529).
6. “Mercury dissolves gold and other metals” (Guarini and Burani 529).
7. All are authorities of ancient medicine. For Mesua, See tale 2.2 n5. The full title of Aristotle’s work, here burlesqued, is Analytica posteriora.
*. AT 480: The Kind and the Unkind Girls, and AT 563: The Table, the Ass, and the Stick. Penzer mentions Grimm 13 (“The Three Little Gnomes in the Forest”) and other tales, for the moral of “always be polite”; and Grimm 7 (“The Good Bargain”) for the equivocation regarding the whip lashes (2:113). See also Grimm 24 (“Mother Holle”).
1. See tale 1.10 n31.
2. I.e., “letters as large as those used to write the names of the defunct on funeral catafalques, at this time often grandiose and full of pomp” (Guarini and Burani 531).
3. Samson was the judge of the tribe of Dan, which was at war with the Philistines. The source of his incredible strength was his hair (Rak 908). See eclogue 1 (“The Crucible”) n28.
4. “Yet another satirical reference to having ‘horns’” (Croce 477). The sun enters into the constellation of Aries on March 21.
5. che non deva prattica (Neap.): “Reference to the pratique that was or was not granted to vessels in arrival, and to the quarantines to which suspicious ships were subject” (Croce 477). In this case the “suspicious place” is the East, from which Turks and Barbary pirates hailed (Rak 908).
6. “Since those suffering from syphilis (the ‘French disease’) suffer more in March” (Croce 478).
7. “Current sayings on the damage that the month of March caused” (Rak 908).
8. scorriato (Neap.): an instrument for pounding grain similar to a threshing flail, “formed by two bars held together by a leather strap” (Guarini and Burani 535).
*. AT 403: The Black and the White Bride, AT 425: The Search for the Lost Husband, and AT 533: The Speaking Horsehead. This tale shares several motifs with Grimm 88 (“The Singing, Springing Lark”). In the original the title reads “Pinto Smauto”; literally, “Painted Enamel,” though “pinto” can also mean “pretty” or “elegant.”
1. che steva a cavalletto (Neap.): the cavalletto was a fork used to support a harquebus or other firearm (Croce 481).
2. recercate (Neap.): a type of musical composition (See tale 1.1 n17 and tale 3.10 n3) vs. “searches.”
3. I.e., Pygmalion.
4. “Like the ‘phenomena’ or ‘monsters of nature’ in booths at a fair” (Croce 483).
5. For the last two, which are words from children’s games, see the introduction to day 2. The first is also probably the name of a game; the triccaballacco was a rudimentary wooden instrument of Moorish origin (Croce 484). “Ca la casa chiove” means “for the house is raining”; on the whole the expressions are nonsensical. There is a discrepancy in form between the formulas as they appear here and their appearance later in the tale. Here, in the original, the second and the third read: “ariola tranza, pizza fontanza” and “tafate tammuzzo, pizza ’ngongole, e cemmino.”
6. “The common practice of blowing or spitting in the mouth of a person who has fainted, connected with the belief that by doing so the life-spirit would be restored” (Rak 922).
7. l’acqua de spartire (Neap.): aquaforte, or nitric acid (lit., “dividing water”).
*. AT 425A: The Monster (Animal) as Bridegroom. See Penzer for motifs in common with Grimm 88 (“The Singing, Springing Lark”) and other tales (2:128). See also Gonzenbach 15. This is one of several tales of The Tale of Tales that bear close resemblance to the story of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Apuleius in The Golden Ass.
1. scire da pane a vennere (Neap.): a play on words (“to go from Pan to Venus”) (Rak 942) vs., perhaps, “to go from [consuming] bread to selling it.”
2. “This recalls the bridge ‘al sirât,’ which spanned the middle of hell, and was narrower than a hair and flatter than a sword blade. Every soul had to pass the test of going over it, according to some Islamic belief” (Croce 491). It also appears in the dream of the converted thief in Franciscan legend (see Francesco d’Assisi, Fioretti 26; cit. Rak 942).
3. a la lava (Neap.): See tale 1.8 n10.
4. See introduction to day 1 n21.
5. “Branches and wreathes of flowers and leaves identified taverns, and especially recently opened ones” (Rak 942).
*. AT 410: Sleeping Beauty. This is an early version of the “Sleeping Beauty” tale, which was followed subsequently by Charles Perrault’s “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” with which it bears close resemblance, and Grimm 50 (“Brier Rose”), which eliminates the whole second part and ends with the heroine waking up to her prince.
1. This is one of the few tales missing a moralizing introduction, which typically follows the description of the reactions of the listeners to the preceding tale. Although there is not one in the original edition of 1636 and its reprint in 1644, in subsequent editions a new paragraph is added, which Croce includes in his 1925 translation. It reads: “It has been seen again and again that, for the most part, cruelty serves as an executioner to he who exercises it, nor has it ever been seen that he who spits at the heavens does not get it back on his own face. And the other side of this coin, innocence, is a shield made of the wood of the fig tree on which every sword of malice is broken and leaves its tip, so that just when a poor man believes himself to be dead and buried he finds himself being reborn in flesh and bones, as you will hear in the tale that I am about to
tap from the barrel of memory with the spigot of this tongue” (cit. Croce 498).
The Tale of Tales Page 67
