The Collected Sicilian

Folk and Fairy Tales of

Giuseppe Pitrè
Volume 1 & 2
Figure 1. Photo of Giuseppe Pitrè as an older man.

Figure 11. Drawing of Giuseppe Pitrè.

 The Collected
Sicilian Folk and
Fairy Tales of
Giuseppe Pitrè
Volume 1 & 2

Translated and Edited by

Jack Zipes and Joseph Russo
Illustrated by Carmelo Lettere
First published 2009
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Simultaneously published in the UK

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Pitrè, Giuseppe, 1841–1916.
[Selections. English 2008]
The collected Sicilian folk and fairy tales of Giuseppe Pitrè / translated and edited by Jack
Zipes and Joseph Russo ; illustrated by Carmelo Lettere.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–415–98032–6 (the set. : alk. paper) – ISBN 978–0–415–98030–2 (volume 1 : alk.
paper) – ISBN 978–0–415–98031–9 (volume 2 : alk. paper)
1. Tales – Italy – Sicily. 2. Folklore – Italy – Sicily. I. Zipes, Jack David. II. Russo, Joseph. III.
Title.
GR177.S5P425 2008
398.209458 – dc22 2007051729

ISBN 0-203-92790-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–98030–5 (hbk volume 1)

ISBN10: 0–415–98031–3 (hbk volume 2)
ISBN10: 0–415–98032–1 (hbk 2-volume set)
ISBN10: 0–203–92790–7 (ebk 2-volume set)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–98030–2 (hbk volume 1)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–98031–9 (hbk volume 2)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–98032–6 (hbk 2-volume set)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–92790–8 (ebk 2-volume set)
To the memory of my grandfather, Vittorio Pollina, who first told me some of
these tales, and to my grandchildren, Maisie Wise Guzi and Phineas
Butterworth O’Brien, to whom I pass them on.
Joseph Russo
To Pier Carlo Bontempelli, friend and bodyguard, and to my sisters, Phyllis
Lakow and Iris Egan, great storytellers in their own right.
Jack Zipes
 Contents

Preface xviii
Acknowledgments xx

The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 1

Jack Zipes
The Sicilian Folk Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè 21
Joseph Russo

I. Popular Fairy Tales 33

1. The Tale Told Time and Again—Lu cuntu di “Si raccunta” 35
2. The Parrot with Three Tales to Tell—Lu pappagaddu chi cunta tri
cunti 37
3. The King of Spain’s Daughters—Li figghi di lu Re di Spagna 48
4. Pretty Poor-Girl—Povira-bedda 50
5. The Pot of Basil—La grasta di lu basilicò 52
6. Catarina the Wise—Catarina la sapienti 59
7. The Count’s Sister—La soru di lu conti 65
8. The Talking Belly—La panza chi parra 68
9. The Three Cottages—Li tri casini 74
10. Water and Salt—L’acqua e lu sali 75
11. My Three Beautiful Crowns—Li tri belli curuni mei 78
12. King Dead Horse—Lu Re Cavaddu-mortu 81
13. Snow White, Flaming Red—Bianca-comu-nivi-russa-comu-focu 86
14. Mandruni and Mandruna—Mandruni e Mandruna 90
15. The King of Spain—Lu Re di Spagna 96
16. The Three Obedient Children—Li tri figghi obbidienti 101
17. Marvizia—Marvizia 104
18. The King of Love—Lu Re d’amuri 112
19. The Slave—Lu scavu 120
20. The Old Woman of the Garden—La vecchia di l’ortu 123
21. The Marriage of a Queen with a Robber—Lu spunsaliziu di ’na
riggina c’un latru 127
22. The Seven Robbers—Li setti latri 131
23. The Thirteen Bandits—Li tridici sbannuti 135

vii
viii Contents

24. White Onion—Bianca cipudda 138

25. The Silversmith—L’arginteri 140
26. Pietro the Farm Steward—Petru lu massariotu 144
27. Peppi, Who Wandered Out into the World—Peppi, spersu pri lu
munnu 150
28. The Magic Purse, Cloak, and Horn—La vurza, lu firriolu e lu
cornu ’nfatatu 158
29. The Poor Shoemaker Dying of Hunger—Lu scarpareddu mortu
di fami 163
30. The Little Nun—La munachedda 166
31. The Empress Trebisonna—La ’Mperatrici Trebisonna 168
32. King Animmulu—Lu Re d’Anìmmulu 171
33. Tridicinu—Tridicinu 176
34. The Enchanted Horse—Lu cavaddu ’nfatatu 180
35. The Story of a Queen—Lu cuntu di ’na riggina 183
36. The Herb-Gatherer’s Daughters—Li figghi di lu cavuliciddaru 189
37. Rosemary—Rosamarina 198
38. The Magic Balls—Li palli magichi 201
39. The Empress Rosina—Rusina ’Mperatrici 205
40. The Little Mouse with the Stinky Tail—Lu surciteddu cu la cuda
fitusa 209
41. The Little Lamb—La picuredda 213
42. Date, Oh Beautiful Date—Gràttula-Beddàtula 214
43. Pilusedda—Pilusedda 223
44. The Little Magpie—La ciaulidda 227
45. The Doe—La cerva 228
46. The Humpback—La jimmuruta 229
47. The Tailor and the Dung-Maiden—Lu custrïeri 232
48. Angelica’s Ring—L’aneddu d’Ancelica 234
49. The Barber’s Clock—Lu roggiu di lu varveri 235
50. Give Me the Veil!—Dammi lu velu! 238
51. The Little Monk—Lu munacheddu 242
52. The Tuft of Wild Beet—La troffa di la razza 243
53. Virgil the Sorcerer—Lu magu Virgillu 248
54. The Devil—Lu diavulu Zuppiddu 251
55. The Fairy Princess’s Midwife—La mammana di la
Principissa-fata 253
56. The Serpent—Lu sirpenti 255
57. Child Margarita—La ’nfanti Margarita 260
58. Sun, Pearl, and Moon—Suli, Perna e Anna 263
 Contents ix

59. Biancuciuri’s Daughter—La figghia di Biancuciuri 268

60. Ciciruni—Ciciruni 273
61. Baldellone—Burdilluni 279
62. The Two Sisters—Li dui soru 287
63. Mamma-draga the Ogress—La Mamma-dràa 289
64. The Devils and the Shoemaker—Lu scarparu e li diavuli 292
65. The Two Good Friends—Li dui cumpari 294
66. The Blood Sausage—Lu sangunazzu 296
67. The Fairy Who Wouldn’t Speak—La fata muta 299
68. The Ragamuffin—Lu tignusu 302
69. The Fisherman—Lu piscaturi 304
70. Filippeddu—Filippeddu 309
71. The Cyclops—Lu ciclòpu 313
72. The Daughter of the Merchant of Palermo—La figghia di lu
mircanti di Palermu 318
73. White Flower—Ervabianca 320
74. The King of Spain and the English Lord—Lu Re di Spagna e lu
milordu ’nglisi 325
75. The Jewel-Studded Boot—La stivala 333
76. The Left Hand Squire—Lu braccieri di manu manca 339
77. The Great Narbuni—Lu gran Narbuni 342
78. Old Man Truth—Lu zu Viritati 346
79. The King of Naples—Lu Re di Napuli 348
80. The Cistern—La jisterna 351
81. The Magic Lantern—La lanterna magica 356
82. The Emperor Scursuni—Lu ’Mperaturi Scursuni 358
83. The Rogue—Lu malacunnutta 362
84. The Beauty of the Seven Mountains of Gold—La bedda di li
setti muntagni d’oru 372
85. The Merchant—Lu mircanti 378
86. The Unfortunate Princess—Sfurtuna 382
87. Don Giovanni Misiranti—Don Giuvanni Misiranti 387
88. Count Joseph Pear—Don Giuseppi Piru 391
89. The Enchanted Dog—Lu cani ’nfatatu 396
90. The Prince and the Charcoal Burner—Lu principi e lu carbunaru 398
91. The Old Miser—Lu vecchiu avaru 402
92. The Prince of Messina—Lu Principi di Missina 404
93. The Gluttonous Wife—La ghiuttuna 407
94. The Seven Little Heads—Li setti tistuzzi 409
95. The Symphonic Eagle—L’acula chi sona 411
x Contents

96. The Golden Eagle—L’acula d’oru 416

97. The Abbot without Worries—L’abbati senza pinseri 419
98. The Pregnant Lieutenant—Lu tinenti prenu 421
99. Ardanti and Fiurina—Ardanti e Fiurina 423
100. Giumentu, the Ishmaelite Merchant—Lu mercanti ’Smailitu
Giumentu 428
101. The Dove—La palumma 433
102. The Red Fish—Lu pisci russu 437
103. The Three Stories of the Three Merchants’ Sons—Li tri cunti
di li tri figghi di mircanti 438
104. Beauty with the Gold Star—La bedda di la stidda d’oru 442
105. The Finicky Princess—La rigginotta sghinfignusa 448
106. The King—Lu Re 453
107. The Three Impoverished Brothers—Li frati scarsi 457
108. Master Joseph—Mastru Juseppi 458
109. Death and her Godson—La morti e sò figghiozzu 463
110. The Companion of St. John—Lu cumpari di S. Giuvanni 464
111. The Baker’s Apprentice—Lu giuvini di lu furnaru 464
112. The Poor Young Man—Lu puvireddu 467
113. The Holy Hermit—Lu santu rimitu 471
114. The Betrayal—Lu tradimentu 472
115. St. Joseph—Lu S. Giusippuzzu 475
116. The Archangel St. Michael and his Devotee—
S. Michaeli Arcangilu e un sò divotu 478
117. Pope Gregory—Grigòliu Papa 484
118. Holy Pope Sylvester—Lu Santu Papa Silvestru 487
119. Pilate—Pilatu 489
120. Malchus the Desperate—Marcu dispiratu 491
121. St. Peter and the Thieves—S. Petru e li latri 491
122. St. Peter and the Tavern-Keeper—S. Petru e lu tavirnaru 494
123. The Lord, St. Peter, and the Apostles—Lu Signuri, S. Petru e li
apostuli 494
124. Motive—Accaciùni 496
125. Brother John—Fra Giugannuni 498
126. St. Peter’s Mama—Lu porru di S. Petru 501
127. Master Francesco Sit-Down-and-Eat—Mastru Franciscu
Mancia-e-Sedi 501
128. Saddaedda—Saddaedda 504
129. The Sliced Rooster—Lu menzu-gadduzzu 506
130. Don Firriulieddu—Don Firriulieddu 511
 Contents xi

131. Pitidda—Pitidda 512

132. Godmother Fox—Cummari vurpidda 514
133. The Goat and the Nun—La crapa e la monaca 515
134. The Cat and the Mouse—La gatta e lu surci 516
135. The Sexton’s Nose—Lu nasu di lu sagristanu 519
136. The Old People—Li vecchi 522
137. Parrineddu—Parrineddu 523
138. The Treasure—La truvatura 524
139. The Riddle—Lu ’nniminu 525
140. King Ridiculous—Lu Re-befè 526
141. The Tale about the Barber—Lu cuntu di lu varveri 526

II. Tall Tales and Anecdotes 527

142. The Prince’s Last Will and Testament—Lu tistamentu di lu
principi 529
143. Tìppiti Nnàppiti—Tìppiti Nnàppiti 530
144. The Four Numskulls—Li quattru minchiuna 532
145. The Three Numskulls of Palermo—Li tri minchiuna di Palermu 533
146. Three Clever Palermitans—La scartizza di li tri Palermitani 536
147. The Peddler from Palermo—Lu pignataru di Palermu 536
148. The Rustic from Larcara—Lu viddanu di Larcàra 538
149. The Man from Larcara—Lu Larcarisi 542
150. The Man from Partanna—Lu Partannisi 543
151. The Peasant from Capaci—Lu Capaciotu 544
152. The Simpleton from Calabria—Lu Calavrisi 545
153. The Petralian—Lu Pitralisi 547
154. The Sicilian Thief and the Neapolitan Thief—Lu latru di Sicilia e
lu latru di Napuli 548
155. The Neapolitan and the Sicilian—Lu Napulitanu e lu Sicilianu 550
156. Firrazzanu—Firrazzanu 553
1. Firrazzanu’s Wife and the Queen—La mugghieri di Firrazzanu
e la Riggina 553
2. The Tailor Who Twisted his Mouth—Lu custureri chi torci
lu mussu 554
3. The Smuggled Goods at the Gate of Castro—Lu
contrabbannu di Porta di Crastu 555
4. Firrazzanu and the Swineherd—Firrazzanu e lu purcàru 555
5. The Partridges—Li pirnicani 559
6. The Music of the Asses—La musica di li scecchi 559
7. The Twenty Percent—Lu vinti pir centu 560
xii Contents

8. Firrazzanu’s Message—La ’mmasciata di Firrazzanu 560

9. When Firrazzanu was Banished to the Soil of Monreale—
Quannu Firrazzanu fu mannatu a la terra di Murriali 561
10. The Hundred Beatings—Li centu lignati 562
11. Firrazzanu and the Household Utensils—Firrazzanu e chiddu
di la ruttami 562
12. Firrazzanu and the Egg Dealer—Firrazzanu e chiddu di l’ova 563
13. How Firrazzanu Spoke into the Ear of an Ass—Firrazzanu
chi parra a l’arricchia a lu sceccu 563
14. Firrazzanu and the Spices—Firrazzanu e li spézii 564
15. Firrazzanu and the Father Confessor—Firrazzanu e lu
Cunfissuri 564
157. Uncle Capriano—Lu zu Caprianu 565
158. The Man Who Mended Old Shoes—Lu solichianeddu 571
159. Hook and Crook—’Mbroglia e Sbroglia 577
160. The Mason and his Son—Lu muraturi e sò figghiu 580
161. The Shoemaker—Lu scarpareddu 585
162. The Shoemaker and the Monks—Lu scarparu e li monaci 587
163. The Headstrong Son—Lu figghiu tistardu 596
164. The Three Hunchbacks—Li tri ghimmuruti 599
165. Brother Ghiniparo—Frà Ghinìparu 602
166. Three Good Friends—Li tri cumpari 605
167. The Fortune-Teller—Lu zannu 611
168. The Prince—Lu principi 616
169. Never Trust a Woman!—Va criditi a fimmini! 617
170. Two Close Friends—Li dui cumpari 619
171. Settilanzati—Settilanzati 622
172. Master Bacù—Mastru Bacù 627
173. The Monk and the Brother—Lu monacu e lu fratellu 628
174. The Priest and his Shepherd Friends—Lu parrinu e li cumpara
picurara 630
175. The Bourgeois Gentleman and the Preacher—Lu burgisi e lu
pridicaturi 633
176. The Tailor—Lu custureri 635
177. The Two Swindlers—Li dui capi-mariola 638
178. The Poor Shoemaker—Lu scarparieddu 639
179. The Two Blind Men—Li dui orvi 641
180. The Doctor’s Apprentice—L’apprinnista di lu medicu 643
181. The Bet—La scummissa 644
182. The Hypocritical Peasant—Lu viddanu santòcchiu 645
 Contents xiii

183. The Master Shoemaker and the Ghosts—Lu mastru scarparu e li

spirdi 646
184. The Desperate Shoemaker—Lu scarparu dispiratu 647
185. The Teacher and the Ghosts—Lu mastru e li spirdi 649
186. “For the Long May”—Maju longu 650
187. The Stupid Wife—La mugghieri babba 651
188. The Fig-and-Raisin Fool—Lu loccu di li pàssuli e ficu 652
189. Sdirrameddu—Sdirrameddu 654
190. Giufà—Giufà 657
1. Giufà and the Plaster Statue—Giufà e la statua di ghissu 657
2. Giufà and the Piece of Cloth—Giufà e la pezza di tila 659
3. Giufà and the Judge—Giufà e lu judici 660
4. Giufà and the Man with the Cap—Giufà e chiddu di la
birritta 660
5. Giufà and the Morning Singer—Giufà lu Canta-matinu 662
6. Giufà and the Semolina—Giufà e la simula 664
7. Giufà and the Washed Goatskin—Giufà e la ventri lavata 664
8. Eat, My Fine Clothing—Manciati, rubbiceddi mei! 666
9. “Giufà, Pull the Door!”—“Giufà, tirati la porta!” 666
10. Giufà and the Hen—Giufà e la hjocca 666
11. Giufà and the Thieves—Giufà e li latri 667
12. “Owl’s Eyes.” “Oww! Oww!”—“Occhi di cucca.” “Ahi! Ahi!” 667
13. Giucà and the Bet—Giucà e chiddu di la scummissa 668
191. The Man with the Bet—Chiddu di la scummissa 669
192. The Man with the Donkeys—Chiddu di li scecchi 670
193. Go Bring in the Horse!—Va’ trasi lu cavaddu 671
194. The Peasant and the Master—Lu burgisi e lu patruni 672
195. The Madman—Lu foddi 672
196. The Riddle—Lu ’nniminu 673
197. Three Good Pieces of Advice—Li tri rigordi 675
198. The Story of the Riddle—Lu cuntu di lu ’nniminu 677
199. The Story of the Song—Lu cuntu di la canzuna 678
200. Peter Fullone and the Egg—Petru Fudduni e l’ovu 679
III. Legends and Ghost Stories 681
201. The Fisherman Vitu Lùcchiu—Ràisi Vitu Lùcchiu 683
202. The Captain and the General—Lu capitanu e lu ginirali 684
203. The Tuna Viceroy—Lu viciarrè tunnina 688
204. The King and the Prisoners—Lu re e li carzarati 690
205. The Beauty of Icara—La bedda di Lìccari 690
206. Mohammed—Maumettu 691
207. The Evil King Guglielmo—Lu malu Gugghiermu 692
208. Guglielmo the Good—Gugghiermu lu bonu 693
209. Frederick the Emperor—Fidiricu ’Mperaturi 694
210. The Sicilian Vespers—Lu vèspiru Sicilianu 694
211. The Slaughter of the French at Trapani—Lu tagghia-tagghia di li
francisi ’n Trapani 697
212. The Rock of the Bad Council—Lu schiogghiu di lu malu
cunsigghiu 698
213. The Gallic Tomb—Tumma-Gallia 698
214. Beautiful Angiolina—La bella Angiolina 698
215. The Society of the Holy Pauls—Li biati Pauli 700
216. The Devils of the Zisa—Li diavuli di la Zisa 701
217. The Judges’ Slope—La calata di li judici 701
218. The Gambler’s Stone—La petra di lu Jucaturi 704
219. The Courtyard of the Seven Fairies—Lu curtigghiu di li setti fati 705
220. The Cross of Santa Croce Church—La cruci di la chiesa
di S. Cruci 705
221. Sabbedda’s Cave—La grutta di Sabbedda 706
222. Valley of the Woman—Vaddi di la donna 706
223. Motta Rock, Summit of the Flag, and Valley of the Woman—
La rocca di la Motta, serra di la bannera, e vaddi di la donna 707
224. The Haunted Cave of Beautiful Peak—La grutta di lu pizzu beddu 707
225. The Captain’s Olive Tree—Lu pedi d’aliva di lu capitanu 707
226. Marabedda Peak—Lu pizzu di Marabedda 708
227. The Mountain of the Country Fair—La muntagna di la fera 708
228. The Sacks of Gold on the Mountain—Li vèrtuli di la muntagna
di la fera 709

xi v
xv Contents

229. Three Brothers Peak—Lu pizzu di li tri frati 710

230. The Bank of Ddisisa—Lu bancu di Ddisisa 710
231. The Rock of Antedda—Rocca d’Antedda 711
232. The Mountain of Saint Cuonu—Lu muntagna di Santu Cuonu 711
233. The Rock of Pizziddu—La rocca di lu Pizziddu 712
234. The Little Church of Our Savior—La chisulidda di lu Sarvaturi 713
235. The Stone of the Seven Mules—La petra di li setti muli 714
236. The Church of the Holy Annunciation—La crèsia di la
S. Nunziata 715
237. The Tower of Saint Brancatu—La turri di S. Brancatu 716
238. The Peak—Lu pizzareddu 717
239. The Basin of the Crows—La stràmula di lu corvu 717
240. The Mountain of the Rajah—La muntagna di lu Raja 718
241. The Throne of the Turk—La sèggia di lu turcu 718
242. The Castle of Ficarazzi—Lu casteddu di Ficarazzi 718
243. The Plain of the Threshing Floor—Lu chianu di l’aria 719
244. The Chasm—Xöni 720
245. Keep Up your Courage, Don Mennu!—Curaggiu Don Mennu! 720

IV. Proverbial Tales 721

246. Live and Learn—Cchiù si campa e cchiù si sapi 723
247. For a Great Person, a Small Gift—A gran signuri picculu prisenti 723
248. Between One Horn and the Other, You Can’t Get at the
Truth—D’un cornu all’àutru ’un si pò sapiri la viritati 724
249. Navarra Can’t Hear the Words to this Song—Navarra nun la
senti sta canzuna 725
250. He Who Got Fire Survived, He Who Got Bread Died—Cu’appi
focu campau, cu’appi pani muriu 726
251. God Will Send Help, and This Will Do the Rest!—Diu ti la
manna bona! 726
252. Don’t Tell Secrets to Women, Have Policemen as Friends, or Live
in a House with a Trellis—Sigretu a fimmini ’un cunfidari,
cumpari sbirri nun pigghiari, casa cu prèula ’un adduari 727
253. A Big Fight over a Bedspread—Tutta la sciarra è pi la cutra 729
254. Don’t Say “Four” Till It’s in the Bag—Nun diri quattru s’un
l’hai ’nta lu saccu 730
255. “Let the Good Times Roll,” Said the Mother-in-Law to the
Daughter-in-Law—“Pigghia lu bon tempu e ’nfilatillu dintra,”
dissi la sòggiera a la nora 731
256. The Caresses of Tinchiuni—Li carizzii di Tinchiuni 731
 Contents xvi

257. With the Scissors—Fòrfici fòru 732

258. You’re Taking Me from Cave to Cave, from North to South,
Like a Yawn that Passes from Mouth to Mouth—Mi vai
purtannu di grutta ’n grutta, comu lu badàgghiu di vucca ’n vucca 733
259. The Man Who Had Scruples about a Drop of Milk—Fàrisi
scrupulu di la stizza di lu latti 736
260. Save the Goat and the Cabbages—Sarvari crapa e cavuli 736
261. The Old Woman Said to King Nero: “The Worst Is Yet to
Come”—Dissi la vecchia a Niruni: “A lu peju nun cc’è fini’ ” 737
262. As a Pear Tree You Never Produced Pears, and as a Saint You
Don’t Produce Miracles—Piraru mai fascisti pira,
E mancu santu fai miraculi 737
263. Anything Can Happen Except for a Man Getting Pregnant; And
Yet, There Was this Pregnant Man of Monreale—Tutti cosi
ponnu succediri, fora d’omini preni; eppuru cci fu lu prenu di
Murriali 738
264. Like the Fiancée with the Shaved Eyebrows—Arristari comu la
zita cu lu gìgghiu rasu 738
265. For a Single Calabrian Onion, Four Calabrians Lost their
Lives—Pi ’na cipudda di Calàvria si persiru quattru calavrisi 739
266. Losing Both the Donkey and the Carobs—Cci appizau lu
sceccu e li carrubbi 740
267. With God On My Side, I Can Laugh at the Saints—Mi vogghia
beni Diu, ca di li santi mi nni jocu e rju 740
268. In Palermo, You Need a Sack This Big!—Palermu, un saccu tantu! 741
269. In Jibbisu, They Whip Roosters—Jibbisoti, frustajaddi 742
270. The Carinisi Are Dogs!—Cani Carinisi! 742

V. Brief Tales, Fables, and Animal Stories 743

271. Brancaliuni!—Brancaliuni! 745
272. The Two Mice—Li dui surci 747
273. The Man, the Wolf, and the Fox—L’omu, lu lupu e la vurpi 749
274. Wind, Water, and Honor—Lu ventu, l’aqua e l’onuri 751
275. Friend Wolf and Friend Fox—Cumpari lupu e cummari vurpi 752
276. The King of the Animals, the Wolf, and the Fox—Lu re di
l’armali, lu lupu e la vurpi 754
277. The Fox—La vurpi 755
278. The Little Bird—L’Acidduzzu 756
279. The Wolf and the Cardinal—Lu lupu e lu cardidduzzu 759
280. The Grasshopper and the Ant—La cicala e la frummìcula 761
xvii Contents

281. King Crystal—Lu Re Cristallu 762

282. The Curious Wife—La muglieri curiusa 767
283. The Stepmother—La parrastra 770
284. The Hermit—Lu rimitu 772
285. The Lovely Maiden—La bedda picciotta 774
286. The Dropped Spindle—Lu fusu cadutu 777
287. The Faithful Little Horse—Lu cavadduzzu fidili 782
288. The Little Doll—La pupidda 785
289. The Lion—Lu liuni 789
290. Art Departs, and Nature Will Prevail—L’Arti si parti e la natura
vinci 792
291. Even Pirollu Was Destroyed!—Nni l’annittaru a Pirollu! 793
292. By Making his Point, St. Martin Lost his Cloak—Pi lu puntu
S. Martinu persi la cappa 794
293. By One Point, Martin Lost “The Cape”—Pri un puntu Martinu
pirdiu la cappa 794
294. Without a Good Knot, the Stitch Won’t Hold—Pi ’un fari lu
gruppiddu si perdi lu puntiddu 795
295. What a Disaster for the Three Ladies!—Tri donni e chi mali cci
abbinni! 796
296. The Treasure of the Zisa—Lu tisoru di la Zisa 796
297. The Peasant and the King—Lu viddanu e lu re 798
298. Pinnìculu Pinnàculu Pinnía—Pinnìculu pinnàculu pinnía 800
299. The Devotee—La divota 800
300. A Rare King—Un re raru 803

Endnotes 805
Bibliography 979
A–Z List of the Tales 995
Index 1001
 Preface

There is always a tale to tell about most projects involving folk tales,
especially the translation of unusual Sicilian folk tales that have been
undeservedly neglected for such a long time. This project began in 2002, when
I decided to translate Laura Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen (1870) from
German into English as a preparation for translating Giuseppe Pitrè’s collec-
tion, Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari siciliani (1875) from different Sicilian
dialects into English. Neither the Gonzenbach nor the Pitrè collection had
ever been translated into English before, and I believed—and still believe—
that they were great treasures of European folklore and more valuable than
the tales of the Brothers Grimm for understanding the breadth and depth of
the oral tradition in European and Mediterranean countries. Since my know-
ledge of Italian at that time was in its formative stage, and since I was com-
pletely fluent in German, I decided first to translate the Sicilian tales that
Laura Gonzenbach had published in German, and I began studying Sicilian in
Rome and making trips to Palermo.
By the time the Gonzenbach collection was published in two volumes as
Beautiful Angiola (2004) and The Robber with a Witch’s Head (2005), I had
become fluent in Italian and had a reading knowledge of Sicilian. So, I turned
my attention to the indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè and was faced with the daunt-
ing task of translating well over 300 dialect tales and of doing research on
Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari siciliani and Pitrè, who is barely known in
English-speaking countries. As luck would have it—and Fortune always plays
a major role in Sicilian tales—I received a letter from Joseph Russo, an emi-
nent scholar of Greek and Roman classical literature at Haverford College,
inquiring about my project and asking whether I needed any assistance. Joe
was born in Brooklyn into a Sicilian-American family the same year I had
been born in Manhattan into a Russian-Jewish American family, and he had
grown up with a profound knowledge of Sicilian. Both of us were from
immigrant families, and there was an immediate elective affinity not only with
each other, but also with the tales. At the time Joe contacted me, he had
rediscovered Pitrè’s tales that he had read to his mother while she was dying.
They revived his deep connection to Sicily, and he felt strongly that the tales
needed to be translated. Thanks to Dan Ben-Amos, chair of the folklore
program at the University of Pennsylvania, he discovered that I had begun

xviii
 Preface xix

work on translating Pitrè’s Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari and asked whether
he could join the project.
To make a long story short, I thought the fates had sent him to me, and the
collaboration we began early in 2004 has turned into a close friendship.
Without Joe’s erudition and special affinity for the tales, this book might
never have been completed. We divided the task of translating all 300 tales
and the endnotes equally, and we have consulted each other continually over
the past three years. As Joe has explained in his introductory essay, it is
virtually impossible to translate these Sicilian tales into English and to cap-
ture their style, flavor, and spirit. Nevertheless, we both believed and believe
passionately that these tales deserve to be known in English and are a testi-
mony to the creativity and imagination of the Sicilian people and to one of
the greatest folklorists of the nineteenth century, namely Giuseppe Pitrè. Our
translation is thus a modest endeavor to interpret and preserve these marvel-
ous Sicilian tales that are steeped in the history of the common people of
Sicily.
We would not have been able to accomplish what we set out to do without
the assistance of numerous generous friends and colleagues, and we would
like to express our gratitude to the many people who have contributed to this
book.
 Acknowledgments

Joseph Russo
My colleague and friend, Professor Dan Ben-Amos of the University of
Pennsylvania, invited me to attend his Folklore courses in the 1970s and
1980s as part of my self-training in a new discipline, and more recently made
the fruitful suggestion that I collaborate with Jack Zipes. I thank Pietro Citati,
distinguished critic and extraordinary man of letters, himself descended from
a Sicilian grandfather, who saw the importance of this project at an early
stage. Professor Salavatore Nicosia of the University of Palermo was always
ready to help me solve the meaning of obscure passages of Sicilian dialect and
elaborate word-play. Professor William F. Hansen of the University of Indi-
ana has long been a great inspiration to those who would combine Classics
with Folklore. I have a long-standing debt to the University of Pennsylvania’s
Graduate Program in Folklore and Folklife, which thirty years ago welcomed
me as a neighbor from a nearby institution and made me a folklorist. I am
grateful to Haverford College for its generous support of travel and research,
and especially to Elaine Hansen, President of Bates College, who as former
Provost of Haverford was a strong supporter of my scholarly ventures. I am
grateful to Jack Zipes who has been prime mover of this project and a great
instructor in the art of translation. In memoriam, I owe a special tribute to that
quartet of old Sicilian ladies, my mother Marianna P. Russo, my aunt Jose-
phine Cambria-Curia, and my cousins Saveria and Anna Pacimeo, to whom I
repeatedly read these tales and whose reactions and comments were crucial in
drawing me back into the world of my youth. I also must acknowledge the
courage and tenacity of my grandparents, Marianna and Vittorio Pollina, who
in 1912 braved a long crossing to a new land where they created a piccolo
mondo antico of Sicilian language and culture. And finally I thank my wife
Sally Wise Russo, who journeyed with me to the ancestral town of Ciminna
in 1961 and again in 2005. She has always been my Muse and best friend.

Jack Zipes
My good friend, Professor Pier Carlo Bontempelli, accompanied me to Pal-
ermo on two occasions and provided great help and guidance throughout my

xx
 Acknowledgments xxi

years in Rome. His acumen and sense of humor enabled me to overcome all
sorts of obstacles while I conducted my research. In Palermo, I benefited from
the warm hospitality and advice of my friends, Professors Rita Calabrese, Elio
Calderaros and Michele Cometa at the University of Palermo, and Maria
Concetta (Cetti) Sinosa, translator and theater administrator. All three intro-
duced me to aspects of Sicilian culture that I might have never learned about.
Professor Aurelio Rigoli, one of the leading folklorists in Sicily, kindly made
all the resources of the Centro Internazionale di Etnostoria (University of
Palermo) available to me. In addition, Professor Annamaria Amitrano, cur-
rent director of the Centro, made all the facilities of the center and library
available to me. Dr. Giuseppina Bongiorno and Dr. Giuseppe D’Anna were
particularly helpful at the Biblioteca Vittorietti del Centro Internazionale
di Etnostoria in the last stages of my research. The resources at the Museo
Etnografico Siciliano “G. Pitrè” were especially significant for my research,
and I benefited from the counsel of Eliana Calandra and from reading the
numerous issues of Il Pitrè—Quaderni del Museo Etnografico Siciliano. My
friends and colleagues in America and Italy, Cristina Bacchilega, Donatella
Izzo, Wolfgang Mieder, Bill Germano, Nancy Canpea, and Carmelo Lettere,
encouraged me and assisted me at various stages of the project. Without
the joie de vivre of my wife, Carol Dines, and without her faith in me and my

Figure 2. Photo of Professor Aurelio Rigoli of the Centro Internazionale di

Etnostoria at the University of Palermo.
xxii Acknowledgments

work, I would never have discovered the wonders of Italian life and culture,
nor would I have ever dared to translate these tales that have become part of
our lives.
Last but not least, Joe and I want to thank Matt Byrnie for his sound
editorial advice and strong backing of this project, and Stan Spring (New
York) and Siân Findlay (London) for carefully overseeing the production of
the book. We are also most grateful to Alice Stoakley for her extraordinary
and thorough copy editing of such a huge and complex manuscript.
Figure 3. Photo of Giuseppe Pitrè as a younger man.
 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè
Jack Zipes

The people who were the slowest and most difficult to be per-
suaded about the unique if not extraordinary merits of Giuseppe
Pitrè were not the illiterates, but the cultivated people. For some
time it seemed to them that the good doctor of Palermo, also a
folklorist, had lowered the dignity of scholarship, humiliating him-
self by collecting scattered little stories that formed the domestic
and traditional lore of the Sicilian people. . . . But the determin-
ation, constancy, and seriousness of Pitrè’s studies ended up by
generating a unanimous appreciation that, perhaps because it was
so slow and gradual, reached the university, where it seems that a
new science of comparative psychology of popular customs
and traditions was born. Due to Pitrè’s merits it was worthy of
assuming this high office.
(Angelo De Gubernatis, Italia illustre. Giuseppe Pitrè)

I
f one were to name the greatest European folklorists of the nineteenth
century, one might begin with the Brothers Grimm and move through
the ranks of the enterprising British, German, Italian, and French pion-
eers and probably end with the names of James George Frazier, Arnold van
Gennep, Joseph Bédier, Theodor Benfrey, Max Müller, Edward Tylor, Angelo
De Gubernatis, Paul Sébillot, Jerome Curtin, Andrew Lang, Edward Clodd,
Edwin Sidney Hartland, or Joseph Jacobs. Probably no one would list
Giuseppe Pitrè, the versatile and brilliant Sicilian, whose works are totally
neglected in the English-speaking world. Yet, Pitrè, more than the Grimms or
any other folklorist of the nineteenth century, made greater contributions to
laying the solid groundwork for major developments in collecting and pre-
serving oral tales, songs, legends, anecdotes, and proverbs than any other
scholar of his time.

1
2 Jack Zipes

Who, then, was Giuseppe Pitrè? Why has he been neglected?

Well, he was certainly not neglected in his time. In an obituary published in
The Nation soon after Pitrè’s death in 1916, the extraordinary American
scholar Thomas Frederick Crane, a gifted folklorist in his own right, made
this comment in comparing Pitrè to the Grimms:
Wide as the scope of their [the Grimms’] labors, it did not equal in extent the field
cultivated by Pitrè, and after the Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children and Household
Tales) and the Deutsche Sagen (German Legends) the interests of the brothers became
almost exclusively linguistic and lexicographical. Pitrè, on the other hand, was all
his life a practicing physician, and took a prominent part in the civic affairs of
Palermo, being Syndic, or Mayor, for many years. The Grimms were chiefly con-
cerned with the tales and legends of Germany and its medieval literature: Pitrè
throughout his long life devoted himself to every branch of folk-lore—popular
tales, legends, songs, children’s games, proverbs, riddles, customs, etc.—and col-
lected himself an astounding mass of material, only a part of which is represented
in the twenty-five volumes of the Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane (The
Library of Sicilian Folklore, Palermo, 1871–1914).1

Born in Borgo, a lower-class district in Palermo, on December 22, 1841,

Pitrè came from a family with a strong maritime tradition. His father Salva-
tore was a sailor and worked on transatlantic ships, and his mother, Maria
Stabile, was the daughter of a seafaring family. Unfortunately, Pitrè’s father
died in 1847 from yellow fever while he was in New Orleans, and Pitrè and his
younger brother Antonio were compelled to move into their maternal grand-
father’s house in Borgo. This early death brought the young Pitrè closer to his
grandfather Giuseppe Stabile, and it also strengthened his mother’s desire to
further her son’s education rather than to encourage him to become a sailor.
Thanks to the support of her tightly-knit extended family and the help of a
priest, she was able to provide educational opportunities and security for her
two sons. Indeed, these close and warm relations among his relatives and
friends in the Borgo district stamped Pitrè’s positive attitude toward the
common people his entire life.
Already, as a young boy, he began collecting proverbs, maritime expres-
sions, and songs, and it soon became clear that he had a literary bent and was
especially curious about the history of the common customs and beliefs of
Sicilians mainly from the lower classes. When he turned thirteen, he entered a
Jesuit seminary, San Francisco di Paola, where he received a rigorous classical
education. He was among the best students at this school and had begun

1 Thomas Frederick Crane, “Giuseppe Pitrè and Sicilian Folk-Lore,” The Nation 103. 2671 (1916): 234.
 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 3

seriously to collect proverbs and to study the history of Sicily. During this
time, however, the Italian insurrection against the Austrians erupted, and
Pitrè, who, like many of his schoolmates, was a dedicated patriot, was
inspired by the idea of an independent united Italy, which also included a
liberated Sicily. So, he left school in 1860 to enlist in Garibaldi’s navy, even
though he disliked the sea and suffered from sea sickness. During the spring
of 1860 he traveled to different port cities such as Marseilles, Genoa, and
Naples, the only time he ever left the island of Sicily, and fortunately, he was
not involved in any battles. When the uprising was quelled and the Italians
defeated, he returned to Sicily to finish his studies and enrolled as student of
medicine at the University of Palermo in 1861. His mother, her family, and a
priest Francesco Coniglio continued to further his education, and Pitrè did
not disappoint them. In fact, he surpassed their expectations. Not only did he
excel in his study of medicine, but he also became an accomplished scholar of
literature and history. During the five years of his studies, he began publishing
articles on proverbs in the Sicilian journals Borghini and Favilla and taught
Italian literature at the Conservatore di Musica. It was also during this time,
in 1865 to be precise, that he made the acquaintance of Salvatore Salomone-
Marino, also a young student of medicine, who became one of his most
intimate friends and his closest collaborator in folklore research until they
had a falling out some time toward the end of the nineteenth century.
When Pitrè completed his studies in 1866, he began teaching Italian litera-
ture almost immediately at the Ginnasio Vittorio Emanuele, a high school in
Palermo, because he could not find work as a physician and because he now
wanted to help support his mother and her family in return for all the help
that they had provided him. However, he soon lost this teaching position
because of a dispute with a vindictive official, who was later punished for
indiscriminate behavior. As a result of this incident, Pitrè decided to begin
practice as a private doctor just when a major cholera epidemic spread
throughout Sicily between 1866 and 1867. He dedicated himself to helping
hundreds of people stricken with cholera and soon came to realize how
important it was to continue practicing medicine while pursuing his interests
as a folklorist.
Pitrè either walked or traveled by horse and buggy to his patients, and it
was often through contact with them and their relatives and friends that he
collected and wrote down songs, proverbs, and tales. From this point on until
his death, he became widely known in Palermo as the little doctor, who took
notes and even wrote entire books while riding in his horse and buggy.
Nobody dared disturb him while he concentrated on his work. In a revealing
reminiscence of a visit with Pitrè, the Swiss folklorist, Walter Keller wrote:
4 Jack Zipes

And so we went down the stairs where his servant was already waiting for us in front
of the house with an old-fashioned coach drawn by a single horse. “Please allow me
to introduce my traveling study,” Pitrè said to me and asked me to climb in.
“Padrone,” the servant said to the doctor, “I’ve put the mail on the table in the
coach for you.”
Indeed he had! The inside of the coach had been transformed into a small study
with a desk, and the walls contained all kinds of shafts, secret folders, and invisible
pockets from which Pitrè took out manuscripts, books, magazines, and letters.
“You see,” he explained to me, “for years I’ve taken care of almost all my
correspondence in this traveling study.”
“Aha!” I thought. “That’s why the handwriting of his letters is so unclear and
shaky.”
“And it’s inside here that I’ve written a good part of my books, always on the way
from one sick person to the next. I can’t conceive of how I could have otherwise
completed my large collections and wrapped up everything during my lifetime. This
coach bounces softly, as you can see, and Old Fritz, my faithful horse, doesn’t trot
very fast so that I can work here very nicely. You can get used to anything.”2

And Pitrè always seemed to get used to everything. By 1868, he had gath-
ered enough folk songs to publish his first major book, Canti popolari siciliani
(Sicilian Folk Songs), based on a work that had influenced him as a young
man, Giuseppe Giusti’s Raccolta dei proverbi toscani (The Collection of Tuscan
Proverbs, 1853). Pitrè’s collection became the first in his twenty-five volume
series, Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane (1871–1913), supported by
Luigi Pedone Lauriel, one the first great publishers in Palermo, who was
dedicated to Sicilian history and folklore. Their meeting was serendipitous,
and their collaboration, exceptional. Pitrè never demanded money or royalty
in these early years for his work, and Lauriel totally supported all his
endeavors.
When Pitrè began his serious work in the field of folklore, he was not given
much credit because folklore was not considered a respectable or significant
field of research, even though numerous scholars in Sicily and Italy had
begun publishing important works. In fact, he was often ridiculed by journal-
ists and educators. When volumes four through seven of the Biblioteca
appeared in 1875, published as Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari siciliani (Sicil-
ian Fairy Tales, Folk Tales and Stories), they were dismissed as vulgar, indecent,
and trivial by many journalists, critics, and academicians, especially since the
tales and stories were published in Sicilian dialect. Yet, it was precisely Pitrè’s
devotion to the neglected “authentic” traditions of the Sicilian people that

2 Walter Keller, “Zum Andenken an Giuseppe Pitrè,” SAVk 21 (1917): 94–96.

 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 5

made his work so valuable. Unlike many of his predecessors in Europe, Pitrè
endeavored to provide accurate renditions of the spoken word and also wrote
historical studies about the customs and belief systems of the Sicilian people
to provide a cultural and historical context for his work. Not only did Pitrè
collect materials from his patients and friends, but he also recruited his own
family to work with him—his mother, who had often sung sea ballads to him
when he was a child, contributed to his collections—and he began corres-
ponding with interested scholars on the island and on the Continent. Many
of them sent him tales or information that he included in various collections.
In 1877, he married Francesca Vitrano and had three children with her, Maria
(b.1878), Rosina (b.1885), and Salvatore (b.1887). Although all the children
helped him with his research, it was mainly Maria who assisted him in all
his work until she married an Italian diplomat in 1904 and then went to
Brazil. Pitrè was always in need of collaborators, for his historical research
and collecting were phenomenal, and he was always grateful for the least bit
of information that pertained to Sicilian folklore.
As early as 1869, he co-founded the literary journal Nuove effemeridi sicili-
ane with Vincenzo Di Giovanni and Salvatore Salomone-Marino, and this
publication enabled him to share his work and to develop a greater under-
standing of the latest folklore research on the Continent and in England. The
journal lasted until 1882. The year before publication was stopped, Pitrè had
been seriously ill, but during his convalescence, Lauriel persuaded him to
start a new journal dealing mainly with folklore. So, together with Salomone-
Marino, he founded the journal, Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari
in 1882, and this famous publication, international in scope, lasted until 1907
and contained a wealth of folklore material. Moreover, as editor, he came into
contact with many of the leading folklorists in Europe and America. Among
his correspondents were Domenico Comparetti, Alessandro D’Ancona,
Ernesto Monaci, Constantino Nigra, Angelo De Gubernatis, Pio Rajna,
Michele Barbi, Benedetto Croce, Ernest Renan, Wilhelm Manhardt, Paul
Sébillot, Hugo Schuchardt, Menéndez y Pelayo, Gaston Paris, Karl Krohn,
Francis James Child, Rachel Busk, William Ralston, and Thomas Frederick
Crane, to name but a few. This vast correspondence is significant because the
letters (over 7,000) that he wrote and received reveal how erudite and know-
ledgeable Pitrè had become with regard to other folklore traditions, how
astute he had become in interpreting the immense amount of materials and
documents that he had gathered, and how helpful he was when other scholars
turned to him for assistance. While he was editing the Archivio, he also
developed another series, Curiosità popolari tradizionali (Folklore Curiosities,
1885–90), in 16 volumes, which contained songs, proverbs, customs, and tales.
6 Jack Zipes

Impressive though these accomplishments may be, they almost pale in com-
parison to the 25 volumes he published in his Biblioteca between 1871 and
1913. In a certain sense, all these books constitute a major collaborative effort
between Pitrè and the people of Sicily with the help of friends, scholars, and
assistants. But the major responsibility for the conception of the Biblioteca—
the notes, the editing of folklore, all the songs, poetry, legends, folk tales,
proverbs, ghost stories, anecdotes, idioms, customs, medicine, clothes,
utensils, and regional history—lay with Pitrè.
At the same time that he carried out his extensive folklore research and
worked as a medical doctor, he was gradually drawn into politics. While Pitrè
never joined a party and disingenuously considered himself unpolitical, the
tenor of his work and his social background show how disposed he was to
support the causes of the common people. And certainly, they had great trust
in Pitrè, who had always prided himself on being frank and honest in all his
relations. So, given his sincerity and popularity, he was “drafted” as a candi-
date and elected as an independent councilor (consigliere) of the Comune di
Palermo and was soon regarded as one of the most beloved representatives of
the people in his district. (Eventually, in 1915, he became a senator.) But his
major passion remained the study of folklore. In 1909 he established the first
folklore museum, Il Museo Etnografico Siciliano, in a former convent on the
outskirts of Palermo, and it housed all the tools, costumes, pottery, etchings,
and other artifacts that Pitrè had personally collected over the years. Finally,
thanks to Pitrè, the first chair in folklore, which he called Demopsicologia
(psychology of the people), was founded in 1911 at the University of Pal-
ermo, and he taught an introductory course on the history of demopsicologia
in 1911–12; his lectures were only recently published as La demopsicologia e
la sua storia (The Psychology of the People and its History) in 2001, ninety years
after he had delivered them.
Yet, despite all the honors Pitrè received at the beginning of the twentieth
century, he was devastated by personal tragedies in his latter years. His daugh-
ter Rosina, who had married in 1906 and had become pregnant the following
year, perished in the Messina earthquake of 1908. His son Salvatore, who had
graduated from the University of Palermo in 1911 and had become a medical
doctor, died from food poisoning in 1912. His elder daughter, Maria d’Alia
Pitrè, was his only child to survive him when he died in 1916.

Pitrè’s Concept of Folklore

Pitrè’s attachment to the Sicilian people was profound and boundless, and
because of this, he has often been criticized for romanticizing the Sicilian folk
 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 7

and their traditions. Some scholars have charged him with creating an image
of common Sicilians as pure, innocent, and noble “primitives,” downplaying
many crude and deplorable aspects of the Sicilian folk and even the role of
the Mafia as a criminal organization. Others have complained that he edited
and censored some texts that he gathered with the purpose of establishing
respect and honor for the Sicilian folk. In other words, his view as folklorist
was allegedly skewed, and one critic has argued that his representation of the
evolution of Sicilian culture resulted from many fixed binary divisions such
as rural/urban and non-literate/educated that he conceived to uncover what
he perceived to be the “authentic” Sicilian spirit. Some of these charges may,
indeed, be true, but they are also simplistic, for it was precisely this passionate
love for the common people, almost an obsession, that drove him to become
more and more scientific in his research to grasp not only the “Sicilian”
qualities in the habits, customs, rituals, and mentality of the folk, but also the
similar modes of oral narrative representation and thinking that the Sicilians
shared with other European peoples. Paradoxically, Pitrè’s romanticism led
him to become more international, rational, and comprehensive in his
research and resulted in his producing a huge treasure of materials that do not
romanticize the Sicilian people or lead to their “romanticization.” If any-
thing, his collections, historical commentary, and anthropological research
reveal checkered and diverse traditions that demand a nuanced and careful
analysis, even though it may be true that Pitrè, like all folklorists of his time,
sought to fulfill his own personal mission to preserve the essence of the
Sicilian folk and to open other people’s eyes, especially those of the educated
classes in Sicily, to what he thought they were missing. At one point in the
preface to Fiabe, novelle e racconti, he remarked that when common people in
villages and cities were asked to explain the history of certain names, loca-
tions, or events, they always knew a great deal, but the educated people were
at a loss because they never bothered to become intimately acquainted with
this history. Pitrè wanted to compensate (perhaps over-compensate) for this
neglect and sought to celebrate the accomplishments of common Sicilians.
Certainly there was and still is a social class “split vision” in the way history is
recorded and remembered in all cultures. In Pitrè’s times he saw himself as an
educated scholar who wanted to turn over the smallest stone to see what was
beneath it, for he believed that the hidden history of the Sicilian folk consti-
tuted the hidden treasure of Sicilian culture. Moreover, he came to believe
that this culture had unusual links to other “primitive” cultures that revealed
how the common people throughout the world thought, preserved customs
and habits, and disseminated them through their stories.
As a young man Pitrè did not begin his work with a concept but with
8 Jack Zipes

intuition, great curiosity, and a deep attraction to Sicilian songs and sayings
that grew from his experiences in the Borgo district of Palermo. As he began
to write down Sicilian songs and proverbs and began studying them, he also
started to take a great interest in contemporary writers and Sicilian history.
His early publications Profili (Profiles, 1864), Nuovi profili (New Profiles, 1868),
and Saggi di critica letteraria (Essays of Literary Criticism, 1871) reveal how
broad his interests were, but there was a common thread in all these writings
and in his reviews and articles in journals: he wanted to restore the signifi-
cance of oral literature and live expressions in Sicilian history; more precisely,
he sought to document the “authentic” art and history of the common
people. This is clear in three of his other early books, Sopra i proverbi (On
Proverbs, 1863), Saggio di un vocabolario di marina (Essay on a Maritime Vocabu-
lary, 1863), and Studio critico sui canti siciliani (A Critical Study of Sicilian
Songs, 1868). Perhaps the greatest influence on his work at this time was, as I
have already mentioned, Giusti’s Raccolta di proverbi toscani (1853), which laid
the basis for his comparative method and philosophy of collecting. But Giusti
was not the only important scholar who stamped Pitrè’s development as a
folklorist. In one of the most comprehensive and insightful essays on Pitrè’s
work, Alberto Mario Cirese has emphasized that, though self-educated and
driven by his passionate dedication to the Sicilian folk, Pitrè’s phenomenal
personal development and work as a folklorist did not come out of nowhere.
The period between 1850 and 1875 in which Pitrè began taking an interest in
folklore—a revolutionary and nationalistic period—was also the formative
phase of this field on the Continent and in England, and once Pitrè decided to
embark on a career as folklorist, he read widely and voraciously. By the early
1870s, when he was still a young man, he had already learned German,
French, and English, and his knowledge of international folklore and scholar-
ship was extraordinary, literally breathtaking. He was familiar with all the
most recent debates, discoveries, and publications in several different lan-
guages. As Cirese notes, the foremost Italian scholars and folklorists such as
Constantino Nigra, Alessandro D’Ancona, Domenico Comparetti, and
Vittorio Imbriani had already begun publishing significant collections and
essays.
But there were also contributions closer to home in Sicily that were not lacking. We
should not omit the possibility that Pitrè might have known or eventually dis-
covered much earlier precedents (the Cantania collection of Giuseppe Leopardi
Cilia that appeared in manuscript form approximately 1817 but was not published
until recently; the notes furnished by Giuseppe La Farina in 1834 to Niccolò
Tommaseo’s Gita nel Pistoiese; the few songs published by V. Navarro and G. R.
Abati in 1843–1845); between 1857 and 1870 Sicilian culture manifested a lively
 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 9

interest in popular poetry and literature, and Pitrè was certainly influenced by this
development. Lionardo Vigo’s Canti popolari siciliani appeared in 1857, and
between 1870 and 1874 he transformed them in Raccolta amplissima; from 1865 to
1867 Letterio Lizio Bruno published texts and tales that prefigured his Canti popo-
lari delle isole Eolie in 1871; in 1867 Salvatore Salomone-Marino (who had just
turned twenty-one and was six years younger than Pitrè) notably expanded the
horizon of the publications and the other works that were then common in Sicily
with his book, Canti popolari siciliani in aggiunta a quelli del Virgo; in 1868 a Sicilian
journal published Niccolò Tommaseo’s letter, Sui canti popolari; in the same year
Salomone-Marino showed how dedicated he was as an accurate researcher of the
dates, facts and documents as he began to study the history of the popular Sicilian
songs.3

The Italians and Sicilians were not the only important collectors and
scholars for Pitrè. He also knew of Laura Gonzenbach, daughter of a Swiss
merchant, who was born and raised in Messina, and had published the first
and highly significant collection of Sicilian tales, Sicilianische Märchen
(Sicilian Fairy Tales, 1870) in German. Her work was introduced by the
German historian Otto Hartwig and edited by the meticulous scholar
Reinhold Köhler, whose approach to the categorization of the tale types may
have influenced Pitrè. Other German and Austrian scholars had already trans-
lated and edited noteworthy collections of Italian tales, and Pitrè was
acquainted with these books as well. For instance, Georg Widter and Adam
Wolf published Volksmärchen aus Venetien (Folktales from Venetia, 1866),
edited once again by the enterprising Köhler in the Jahrbuch für romanische
und englische Literatur (Yearbook for Romance and English Literature); Hermann
Knust compiled his translation, Italienische Märchen (Italian Fairy Tales,
1866), also in the Jahrbuch für romantische und englische Literatur, and
Christian Schneller produced Märchen und Sagen aus Wälschtirol (Fairy Tales
and Legends from Welsh Tyrol) in 1867.
Before Pitrè turned his full attention to folk tales, however, he focused
more on folk songs and published a revision of his Sui canti popolari siciliani,
studio critico (A Critical Study of the Sicilian Folk Songs, 1868), the first edition
of Canti popolari siciliani (1871) in two volumes, and Studi di poesia popolare
(Studies of Folk Poetry, 1872), a collection of his essays and reviews. These
three books constituted the first three volumes of his immense series, Biblio-
teca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane, and he had clearly determined that his
life’s work would be dedicated to recording every possible aspect of the art,
customs, and history of the Sicilian folk. This “patriotic” commitment was,

3 Alberto Mario Cirese, “Giuseppe Pitrè tra storia locale e antropologia,” in Pitrè e Salomone-Marino, 34.
10 Jack Zipes

of course, reinforced by the political climate of the times. Pitrè had sup-
ported Garibaldi’s efforts to unify Italy in the early 1860s, and of course, he
was gratified by the final triumph of Garibaldi’s army over the Austrian
forces in 1870 that eventually brought about Italian unification. For Pitrè this
unification also allowed the Sicilian people to gain a sense of national pride,
for the island would no longer be occupied and controlled by foreigners, and
his so-called “popolarismo romantico” was an expression of this pride.
At the same time that Pitrè sought to extol the “genius” of the Sicilian folk
and their culture, he was moving beyond this “romantic” glorification of the
common Sicilian people and began grounding his folk tale collecting on a
more concrete scientific and anthropological approach to understanding the
history, evolution, and significance of all types of folk tales. General theories
about the origins and spread of the folk tales leading to the formation of the
literary tales were first conceived only at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The Brothers Grimm, key figures in this development, believed that
fairy tales were derived from myths that had been religious at one time, but
storytellers had gradually discarded their religious connotations, and the tales
eventually became more secular, containing remnants of religious rites and
customs often referred to as buried motifs. Their views were expanded by
Theodor Benfey (1809–81), a scholar of Sanskrit, who argued in his introduc-
tion to the Indic Pantschatantra (1859) that the genre of the fairy tale origin-
ated in ancient India as an oral wonder tale and spread first to Persia and then
to the entire Arabic-speaking world. Eventually, they were transmitted to
Europe via Spain, Greece, and Sicily through trade, migration, and the
Crusades. The Grimms and Benfrey believed that there was one point of
origin or one place of birth (monogenesis) that led to the formation of differ-
ent kinds of folk tales. In contrast, Joseph Bédier (1864–1938), a French
folklorist, eventually opposed their views and developed his notion of poly-
genesis in Les fabliaux (1893); he maintained that the tales originated in
different places and were cultivated by gifted storytellers. The notion of poly-
genesis had already been at the basis of the works of British anthropological
scholars, Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917), Andrew Lang (1844–1912), and
James George Frazer (1854–1941),4 who maintained that, since the human
species was similar throughout the world, humans responded to their
environment in similar ways giving rise to identical tales that varied only
according to the customs developed by different cultures. They preceded and

4 See Richard Dorson, The British Folklorists: A History and Giuseppe Cocchiara, Storia del folklore in
Europa, translated by John N. McDaniel, as The History of Folklore in Europe.
 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 11

differed from Bédier in that they believed that the common people as well as
gifted storytellers cultivated the tales in their rituals and customs. For these
scholars, the oral wonder tale was one among different genres or types of tales
that were cultivated throughout the world, often with similar plots and
themes. In particular, Tylor’s two early works, Researches into the Early History
of Mankind (1865) and Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of
Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom (1871) left a deep
impression on Pitrè, and he often referred to Tylor’s notions in his writings
on folklore. In Aurelio Rigoli’s significant study of Tylor’s influence on Pitrè,
Il concetto di sopravvenza nell’opera di Pitrè (The Concept of Survival in the
Work of Pitrè), he points out that Pitrè agreed with the basic tenet of Tylor’s
notion that folklore was a conglomeration of relics that originated among
primitive peoples; they were kept alive and survived through the comport-
ment, belief systems, and customs of the common people. As Rigoli notes,
Pitrè was more cautious about attributing everything in folklore to relics of
survival. Yet, Tylor’s ideas form the underlying ideas in Pitrè’s work, and by
the time Pitrè concluded the last volume of his Bibiloteca in 1913, he noted:
Anthropology and psychology have replaced history in many points, and with a
precise and refined examination, these fields of study want now to explain the
deformed residues of myths, superstitions, and symbols from ancient times. That
which has existed in the human psyche for many years—that which has not been
fully recovered according to the intelligent ethnological theory of Tylor—consti-
tutes part of our own unconscious, transparent in our mental attitudes, in our
poetical metaphors as well as in our philosophical concepts. It is the basis or sub-
stratum that explains the survival of tendencies, of particular ways of feeling and
thinking in contention with all the other psychological manifestations.5

What is important to bear in mind is that Pitrè’s reading of Tylor and other
scholars reveals that, even by the early 1870s, though Pitrè left the island of
Sicily only once as a young man, and though it is uncertain how and when he
developed the capacity to read English, French, German, and Spanish, not to
mention many different Sicilian dialects, he had become an accomplished
international folklorist with a comprehensive theoretical knowledge of devel-
opments largely in Europe—and later in North America through his corre-
spondence with Thomas Frederick Crane. He was familiar with the most
important folklore collections and scholars of folklore, and his early small
publications such as Saggio di fiabe e novelle popolari siciliane (A Study of
Sicilian Fairy and Folk Tales, 1873), Nuovo saggio di fiabe e novelle popolari

5 Giuseppe Pitrè, La famiglia, la casa, la vita del popolo siciliano, 437–38.

12 Jack Zipes

siciliane (A New Study of Sicilian Fairy and Folk Tales, 1873), Otto fiabe e
novelle siciliane (Eight Sicilian Fairy and Folk Tales, 1873), and Novelline
popolari siciliane (Sicilian Folk Tales, 1873) indicate his wide interest in drawing
parallels between Sicilian tales and those published and disseminated on the
Continent. By the time he published the four volumes of Fiabe, novelle e
racconti popolari siciliani in 1875, he had come to realize that the Sicilian tales
were not only representative of Sicilian culture and could be connected to the
deeply entrenched customs, beliefs, superstitions, behaviors, and history of
the Sicilian people, but they were also linked to the tales of other cultures that
were engendered and evoked by comparatively similar natural experiences. If
there were similarities in the Sicilian tales that could be traced to other Euro-
pean and Oriental collections, he attributed them to the fact that humans
express themselves more or less in the same way when the conditions of
the environment and psychology are comparable. Here he was very much
in accord with Tylor’s Primitive Culture and other British anthropologists
who proposed that humans have the same instincts and thus tend to produce
similar tales. Though Pitrè did not discount communication, commerce, war,
travel, theater, professional storytellers, and religious ceremonies that can
account for the spread of particular tale types, he fundamentally believed that
it was human nature and the human response to the environment that led to
the same tale types. What was significant for Pitrè, and exciting, was the
manner in which people from different regions of Sicily—and for that matter,
the world—changed and varied the motifs of well-known tales or created tales
based on their peculiar and particular experiences to contribute to a so-called
“minor” history. For Pitrè the minor was major. As he wrote: “History
should not be a list of men, in which their outstanding acts are registered, but
the revelation of ideas, passions, customs and civil interests, in short, of the
life of a people, of a nation.”6 Moreover, he took a political stance:
The history of the people is confused with that of its oppressors . . . : their story
has been taken and made into the same history of its governments without taking
into consideration that they, the people, have a memory that is very different from
that which is often attributed to them, whether it be from the side of the institutions
or from the predominant powers.7

Collecting was for Pitrè a “subversive” act, and his diverse collections, taken
as a whole, were intended to offer an alternative to the official history of
Sicily.

6 Giuseppe Cocchiara, Pitrè, la Sicilia e il folklore, 142.

7 Ibid., 142.
 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 13

Collecting “relics” of the past that had survived into the present was thus
an ethical act, and his definition of “demopsicologia,” in his inaugural
address held at the University of Palermo on January 12, 1911 makes this
clear:
For us demopsychology studies the moral and material life of civil people and non-
civil people. The less civil they are, the more important the material is. This life is
documented by diverse genres of the oral and objective traditions. Fairy tales and
fables, stories and legends, proverbs and maxims, songs and melodies, puzzles and
riddles, games and amusements, toys and playthings, performances and festivals,
habits and customs, rituals and ceremonies, practices, beliefs, superstitions, fads, the
world of manifestations and the occult, the real and imaginative world. This world
moves, agitates, smiles, and moans at whoever knows how to draw near to it and to
understand it. Its smiles, moans, and voices, insignificant for most people, are revela-
tions for the man of science who senses the long echo of open-hearted and fading
generations of past centuries.8

Pitrè was not simply interested in resuscitating the past, but he wanted to
endow it with meaning in the present.
The demopsychologist, after having examined the current tradition, confronts
it with the primitive traditions that are still alive and establishes the entity, and in
this way he finds the solution to some obscure problem of the moral story of
humankind: two processes, one of psychic paleontology and the other critical
anthropology.9

In addition, Pitrè sought to contrast and compare all the “relics” of the past
with those from other cultures. If certain customs and belief systems
remained alive in the diverse regions of Sicily, they had very particular
reasons that needed historical explanation and could be best understood
when comparing them with similar traditions in other cultures. This is one of
the reasons he became so international in his research while remaining so
dedicated to the Sicilian people.

Pitrè’s Methods and the Historical Significance of his Collection

When Pitrè began professionally to collect songs, proverbs, and tales, he was a
young man in his twenties, and as I have emphasized, he did not have a clearly
defined method or concept of folklore. His approach to collecting oral tales,
proverbs, riddles, and songs evolved as he realized that the preservation of

8 Giuseppe Pitrè, La demopsicologia e la sua storia, 34–5.

9 Ibid., 36.
14 Jack Zipes

oral storytelling entailed a combination of meticulous research and a deep

theoretical understanding of the problems involved in the transformation of
the oral to the literary. It was clear from the beginning, however, that Pitrè
wanted to give voice to humble and neglected narrators, whom he saw as the
curators of Sicilian history.
Although there is not a great deal of documentation with regard to the
exact methods Pitrè used in recording and editing all the tales, there is enough
information to provide a reliable account of his work. As is well known, Pitrè
did a great deal of collecting himself, especially in the district of Borgo, where
he was well acquainted with two of his best informants, Agatuzza Messia,
whom he knew as a child, and who told him forty tales, and Rosa Brusca, who
worked as a weaver and eventually became blind. He had apparently also met
another important narrator, Elisabetta Sanfrantello, who worked as a servant
in Vallelunga. About 60 percent of the tales that he collected were narrated by
women. In this regard, his collection is more balanced than Laura Gonzen-
bach’s Sicilianische Märchen, which consisted of tales almost entirely told by
women and represented a particular feminine view of Sicilian culture. The
tales told by men tended to be different in style and content, and thus Pitrè’s
collection allows readers to compare and contrast the manner in which
women and men narrated their versions of well-known tales, legends,
anecdotes, and the proverbs that they include.
Pitrè generally took notes when he heard a tale told in dialect, and based on
a hearing and possibly two or three, he reconstructed the tale using a mixed
method that enabled him to keep the phonetic sounds while at the same time
keeping the dialect to make it as accessible as possible to a reading audience.
In other words, Pitrè favored the Palermo Sicilian dialect as his standard in
terms of spelling and grammar. However, colleagues, friends, and relatives
brought him or sent him tales in different Sicilian dialects from all parts of
the island, and he tried to remain as faithful to other unusual dialects and
would explain the differences in his footnotes that often included several
variants. Pitrè tried scrupulously to provide variants in his notes because he
regarded the tales as ethnological, historical, and social documents. His
erudition was so great by the time he put together the four volumes of his
collection that he could refer to variants in all parts of Europe and the Middle
East and could trace the history of certain tales to the Greco-Roman period,
often working like a detective to explain the derivation and deviation of a
particular tale. It is not clear to what extent Pitrè “censored” the tales or
selected only those tales that reflected positively on Sicilian culture. Those
critics who have asserted that Pitrè eliminated scatological references, brutal-
ity, and sexual innuendoes from the tales have clearly not read the entire
 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 15

collection. Not only did Pitrè allow for “vulgar” language and stories with
risqué and comical scenes, for instance, one in which a woman is made out of
shit, but he also explained the metaphorical references to sex in his notes. If
the majority of the tales are not as erotic, bawdy, and scatological as they
might have been, it may be due to the fact that many of the tales were told by
women with a different mindset than men. Yet, even the women did not shy
away from sexual innuendos.
Pitrè divided the four volumes of Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari siciliani
into five sections: I. Fiabe populari comuni, or common popular fairy tales,
which constitute the bulk of the collection and include numerous fairy tales
well-known in Europe and the Middle East; II. Scherzi e aneddoti, or tall tales
and anecdotes; III. Tradizioni storiche e fantastiche di luoghi e di persone, or
legends that deal with places and people; IV. Proverbi e modelli di dire pro-
verbiali spiegati con aneddoti e storielle, or proverbial tales with anecdotes; V.
Favolette e apologhi, or brief tales, fables, and animal tales. Altogether there are
approximately 400 tales, 300 in the main body of texts, and 100 variants in the
notes that immediately followed each tale. There is also an appendix with
seven Sicilian tales in Albanian dialect that we have not included in our
collection. Pitrè also wrote a preface to the four volumes and included two
long essays about this history of popular tales and about the grammar of
Sicilian dialect, which was later published separately as a small book.
If one considers that, after the publication of Fiabe, novelle e racconti popo-
lari siciliani in 1875, Pitrè published other significant collections of tales such
as Novelle popolari toscane (1878), Fiabe e leggende popolari siciliane (1888), and
La rondinella nelle tradizioni popolari (The Swallow in Folklore, 1903), not to
mention numerous tales that he printed in the Archivio and other journals, his
collections constitute one of the richest sources of European folk tales in the
nineteenth century, if not the richest. Pitrè was fully aware of just how fertile
the tales were for understanding how European tales originated and were
spread. Sicily had been a country that had been constantly attacked, invaded,
and occupied by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, French, and Spanish for
long and short periods of times. All of these occupations left their imprint on
Sicilian culture, and many of the tales can be traced to storytelling traditions
of these other cultures.
In her introduction to the late twentieth-century re-publication of Fiabe,
novelle e racconti popolari siciliani, Aurora Milillo maintains that the core of
Pitrè’s folklore program, and I would add, methods, can be ascertained in the
first two tales in the collection, “The Tale Told Time and Again,” told by the
8-year-old Maria Curatolo in Erice, and “The Parrot with Three Tales to Tell,”
told by Pitrè’s most gifted informant, Agatuzza Messia, in Palermo. Milillo
16 Jack Zipes

notes that, in the first tale, Pitrè commented that nothing is arbitrary in a folk
tale, which does not mean that everything is fixed. Significantly, this tale
reveals that even the “infraction,” the breaking of formulaic rules, belongs to
the structure and function of the folk tale. In “The Tale Told Time and
Again,” the little girl Elisabetta wins the wager with the merchant and takes
over his shop by not beginning her tale with the formula, “this tale has been
told time and again.” By breaking with the rules, she shows that storytelling
includes infraction, and that breaking the rules may be necessary to gain what
one wants. The young protagonist of the story is opportunistic and clever,
and she uses an original way of starting her tale to enrich and empower
herself. There are other aspects of this tale that neither Pitrè nor Milillo
address that make it even more important as the initial tale of the collection.
Not only is the narrator a female, but she is only 8 years old and tells her tale
in an abrupt somewhat enigmatic manner that, for Pitrè, represented the
“pure” and “authentic” style of the folk. It is also a tale of assertion, a
takeover, by a young peasant girl, who stakes out a claim to her heritage using
a promissory note that entitles her to the property that the merchant occu-
pies. As an announcement, Pitrè’s first tale can be regarded in some ways as
his staking out a claim for the Sicilian folk to regain what belongs to them.
The second tale, again told by a woman, but a woman in her seventies, who
lives in the city of Palermo and not in the country, is a very different state-
ment about storytelling and folklore. “The Parrot with Three Tales to Tell”
ultimately derives from the fifteenth-century Sanskrit collection, Shuka Sap-
tatit: Seventy Tales of the Parrot, and it is unclear how many intermediary stages
and versions it went through in the oral tradition before it entered Agatuzza
Messia’s repertory. What is clear, however, is that Pitrè recognized its signifi-
cance as a frame tale that, similar to many collections like The Thousand and
One Nights, included several other tales that were connected to the meaning
of the frame narrative. Just as the first tale reflects some of the brutal struggles
over property and ownership and the necessity to tell one’s own story, so, too,
the second tale is a frank commentary on the amorality of courting, desire,
and seduction. Here storytelling is used by the devious notary transformed
into a parrot to gain a woman who does not belong to him. However, there is a
certain ambiguity in his tale-telling because in his three tales the notary
depicts a courageous princess, who accomplishes amazing feats while search-
ing for her lost doll. In the end she reclaims her doll and claims a husband at
the same time. The princess has a “moral” right to her doll and proves her
prowess by doing good deeds. On the other hand, the parrot or notary, who
has sold his soul to the devil, connives and kills to obtain what he desires.
While there is a simple and clear justice in the actions of the princess in the
 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 17

three internal tales, the conclusion of the frame tale leaves us with a more
complex sense of what is just. The notary winds up with the woman whom he
has protected from another seducer, and only because of his brilliant ability
to entertain through storytelling, he has won us over to some extent. We
cannot be too upset by the death of the overly possessive husband or by the
defeat of the other seducer. The art of telling stories, as Pitrè’s entire collec-
tion reveals, is more about learning how to survive under harsh conditions of
life than learning how to lead a moral life.
Sicilian storytellers of the nineteenth century, no matter how much magic,
fantasy, transformation, and humor were contained in their tales, always
brought their listeners back to reality at the end. The endings or codas reveal
how the storytellers were well aware of their own condition and the impossi-
bility of realizing their fantasies. The verses vary, but the messages are similar.

And so they lived on as husband and wife,

While we toil away without a life.
Now they are happy and content,
While we sit here without a cent.
My tale’s been written, my tale’s been told,
Now you tell yours, because mine is old.
They remained happy and content,
While we still can’t pay the rent.

Happiness was a fiction. Happiness was a wish that was bound not to be
fulfilled in the lives of most of the storytellers and their listeners. But the
stories were in and of themselves a fulfillment. The art of storytelling and
listening enabled both tellers and listeners to extract meaning, “revenge,” joy,
and important knowledge from the narratives, just as storytelling continues
to enable people today to confront their everyday vicissitudes. Though Pitrè
may have edited many of the tales in his collection, he did not negate their
essence that reflected the mode of thinking of common Sicilians about work,
sex, religion, law, other ethnic groups, money, and power.
One only has to read several of the Sicilian versions of “classical fairy
tales” such as “Cinderella,” “Donkey-Skin,” “Rapunzel,” “Beauty and the
Beast,” and “Puss in Boots” to grasp how Pitrè respected the narrators’
voices, and styles, and how he endeavored to record them as “authentically”
as possible. Since most of these tales were told by women, they tend to be
candid and stark depictions of extraordinary young women who cleverly
shape their own destinies, in contrast to the male literary versions of
18 Jack Zipes

Straparola, Basile, Perrault, and the Brothers Grimm. For instance in “Date,
Oh Beautiful Date,” the sprightly Ninetta (Cinderella) toys with a prince in
his garden until he falls desperately in love with her. She constantly evades
him at three different balls until he is at his wits’ end. The prince’s father must
intervene to save his son’s life, and he actually proposes to Ninetta for his son.
In “Pilusedda,” a version of “Donkey-Skin,” related to the Cinderella-type
tales, a clever young woman escapes her father’s lecherous desires and uses
three gifts from the fairies to entice a prince to marry her. In “The Old
Woman of the Garden” (“Rapunzel”), after the young girl is abandoned by
her mother, she is brutally treated by an ogress. However, instead of running
away from a tower with a prince, she shoves the ogress into an oven and
makes peace with her mother. There are several beast bridegroom tales such
as “Marvizia,” “The King of Love,” “King Dead Horse,” and “The Serpent,”
and in each one of the stories a young woman is put to severe tests to rescue
an enchanted prince or to tame a beast. In rare instances, as in the traditional
tale of “Beauty and the Beast” by Mme Leprince de Beaumont, she does this
as a sacrifice to save her father, but more often she does it to prove that she is
valiant, smart, and competent.
In classic fairy tales that feature men such as “Count Joseph Pear,” a com-
ical version of “Puss in Boots,” the episodes often involve ruthless struggles.
In this tale a peasant is helped by a female fox, not by a cat. And the fox helps
the peasant to pretend to be a count and fool a king and his daughter. But the
peasant is not grateful to the fox, and in the end he smashes her head so that
the fox will not be able reveal to the princess that he is really from the lower
classes. This brutal ending is not untypical in the Sicilian folk-tale tradition.
Other tales that have been widely diffused and become popular in western
culture such as “The Beauty of the Seven Mountains of Gold,” “The Magic
Purse, Cloak, and Horn,” “The Fig-and-Raisin Fool,” “Water and Salt,” and
“Master Joseph” do not mince words about the violent struggles experienced
by protagonists who set out into the world to improve their station in life. Life
was hard and cruel for most of the people from the lower classes, and the
“relics” of the past that surface transparently in all the tales reveal the hopes
and wishes for wealth, food, revenge, and power.
But there is also a lot of humor in the different types of tales collected by
Pitrè. Many of the comical stories about St. Peter reveal an irreverent attitude
toward this particular saint, who is often pompous and pretentious. In the
tales about St. Joseph and St. Michael, the saint is depicted more like a fairy, a
fata, than a biblical saint. The humor can also be very satirical. One of the
harshest tales in the collection is “The Shoemaker and the Monks,” in which
Peppi, a poor shoemaker, literally destroys a monastery and all the monks
 The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè 19

because they are so corrupt. In fact, there is a strong anti-clerical strain that
runs through many of the tales such as “The Monk and the Brother,” “The
Priest and his Shepherd Friends,” “The Bourgeois Gentleman and the
Preacher,” and “The Sexton’s Nose.” Though Sicilians tended to be religious
and revered God, they did not revere the local priests and sextons all that
much. They were also critical of each other and outsiders, that is, people from
other cities, towns, and regions. Some of the more comical tales like “The
Simpleton from Calabria” and “The Petralian,” deal with the gullibility
of country bumpkins. Other stories such as “The Sicilian Thief and the
Neapolitan Thief ” and “The Neapolitan and the Sicilian” extol the cleverness
of Sicilians, who always prove themselves smarter than the Neapolitans, just
as some tales reveal how city people from Palermo become lost souls in the
country.
Although there are some delightful nonsense tales such as “King Ridicu-
lous” and “The Four Numskulls,” the most biting and humorous tales by far
concern two “folk heroes,” Firrazzanu and Giufà. Though there are similar-
ities between the two protagonists, they stem from two different traditions,
and Pitrè pays homage to their roguish behavior that undermines the norms
of decency by including fifteen tales about Firrazzanu and fifteen about Giufà.
There may be some connection to the tales about the wise fool Hodja
Nasreddin that began circulating in the Mediterranean and Slavic countries
during the sixteenth century. Firrazzanu is also similar to the sly character
Bertoldo Bertoldino, who was a popular figure in many regions of Italy. He is
always conscious of what he is doing and generally profits from the pranks he
plays. On the other hand, Giufà stems from tales told about a noble protagon-
ist in the Arabic folk tradition of the medieval period, and he gradually took
on a much more complex character. Unlike Firrazzanu, Giufà is not conscious
or aware of what the consequences of his actions will be. He understands the
world in a literal sense that leads him to do very brutal things. Often his
mother must rectify his actions that cause the deaths of other people includ-
ing his own sister. Giufà is clearly a fool, but he is not a wise fool. He is
laughable because he always brings out the superstitions, amorality, and
injustice in Sicilian society.
Pitrè did not shy away from documenting the contradictions of the Sicilian
people. The latter part of his collection is filled with legends, stories based on
proverbs, and animal tales that tend to be more realistic and historical than
the fairy tales in the first two volumes. The legends read like landmarks of
Sicily, telling a history of occupation and survival. The proverbs—and Pitrè
assiduously collected hundreds in other books—ground the sayings in the
customs formed by Sicilians over centuries. Many are similar to parables as
20 Jack Zipes

are the animal tales that owe a debt to Aesop. However, tales such as
“Brancaliuni” and “Friend Wolf and Friend Fox” often end on a tragic note
or with hard justice.
In my estimation, the four volumes that constitute Fiabe, novelle e racconti
popolari siciliani are more important than the Grimms’ tales because there are
over 400 texts, originally in Sicilian dialect, that cover a wide range of tale
types often told in a rough and disjointed style. As a result, some of the tales
are jarring because they lack description and are crude. However, for the most
part, they have a charming earthy quality and reflect the customs, beliefs and
superstitions of the common people in Sicily more clearly than most Euro-
pean collections of the nineteenth century portray the experiences of com-
mon people in their respective countries. As a side effect, they expose just
how literary the Grimms’ tales are as well as other collections of tales written
down by educated collectors in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth
century. Since these tales of survival have been passed on for centuries, they
have a unique quality; their depiction of the world does not question the
magic and impossibility of the events. Pitrè felt great empathy with the people
who recounted these tales. He kept their simple, frank words in Sicilian dia-
lect and ironically felt compelled to instruct the educated on how to grasp
what the “popolo” said and did. Though much is lost in an English translation,
the tales can still offer insights into the power of the spoken word and can
preserve to a certain degree a great heritage, one that deserves to be known in
other languages.
 The Sicilian Folk Tales of
Giuseppe Pitrè
Joseph Russo

The Language and Style of the Tales

T
he tales collected by Giuseppe Pitrè were told in several different
Sicilian dialects and by many different tellers, so we cannot, strictly
speaking, discuss their language and style as one uniform phenom-
enon. There are, however, many features of language that deserve comment so
that the reader may appreciate the remarkable artistry of those who preserved
these tales in their memory and recited them for Pitrè and his collectors. The
tellers of these tales were non-literate, and so their style is oral rather than
written. It is fluent, lively, straightforward, highly idiomatic, and often play-
ful, a perfect medium for these flavorful stories.
The language of these tales contains several different kinds of speech. We
find many vivid folk idioms and metaphors;10 exclamations, intrusions, and
other self-referential comments by the narrators; direct questions from the
narrator to the audience; proverbs, onomatopoeia, rhymed verse, and some-
times even song. In some places we have detected or suspected a pun or
double entendre and have indicated this in a footnote. In addition, the tales
regularly use certain fixed formulas, especially to open and close the story.
The vast majority begin with the equivalent of “once upon a time,” ’na volta
c’era, “they tell the story,” si cunta, or “here’s a tale told time and again,” si

10 Many of these are commented on in the footnotes. As a sample, consider three that occur in close
succession in “The Headstrong Son”: “around 4 a.m., when not even a fly was walking around and you
could cut the darkness with a knife”; “you could hear such a snoring that it seemed they were sawing
tables”; “they scared him so shitless that people still talk about it to this day.”

21
22 Joseph Russo

cunta e s’arricunta. Those that are true Märchen or fairy tales usually end with
a rhymed couplet contrasting the happiness of the characters in the tale world
with the poverty in the real world of the tellers and their audience. These
formulaic openings and closings are clear markers that we are entering into
and departing from the make-believe world of the story. Within that world of
wishful imagination, the good are rewarded and they see the wicked punished;
whereas back in the everyday world, they have to live with the poverty and
unhappiness that are their daily lot. As a typical concluding couplet puts it,
“And so they lived on, happy and content, while we remain here without a
cent.”
We also find repeated formulas within the body of the tales, typically used
for making a transition, like “now let’s leave her and return to the prince,”
and for correcting an omission by inserting the missing element belatedly, like
“Incidentally, I forgot to say that . . . .” Besides these transition and correction
formulas, there frequently appears what we may call a “jump-forward”
formula, translated as “time passes quickly in a story” or “the tale moves
quickly,” literally “the tale doesn’t admit time,” lu cuntu ’un menti tempu. And
frequently, when a character is forced to make a hasty departure, we find the
special “escape” formula, “blessed feet, help me now!”—santi pedi, ajutatemi.
Besides all these special kinds of speech, the tales are greatly enlivened by a
heavy use of dialogue. Such exchanges often go on for several lines with no
change of speaker specified, since the storytellers could have acted out differ-
ent voices to make it clear who was speaking. Our translation sometimes adds
phrases like “he said” or “she replied” for the sake of clarity. This frequent
dialogue helps us imagine how effective these tales would have been in
performance.
We may imagine the normal performance situation as similar to what we
know from other living oral traditions: the tales would have been told in
private homes to small groups consisting primarily of family and close
friends. But what we have in Pitrè’s collection is something different. Pitrè
and a small number of associates sat down with the tellers, asked them to
recite a tale, and either took it down by dictation or wrote it down it from
memory shortly afterward. Hence we have the approximation of a perform-
ance but not the thing itself. Pitrè’s notes are invaluable testimony to a range
of supporting elements, both verbal and non-verbal, that the taletellers added
to enliven their performances. Hand gestures are a major example of such
“para-linguistic” enhancements, and it is fascinating to see Pitrè’s footnotes
mentioning that the narrator held her hand up waist high to indicate the
height at which a lantern was carried, or replaced a taboo word with a certain
suggestive gesture. What functions as the equivalent of a punch line at the end
 The Sicilian Folk Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè 23

of “With the Scissors” is a non-verbal signal, the hand gesture of the wife
who, while sinking to the bottom of the well, continues to insist that she is
right by making a scissors sign with her two fingers.
The texts that Pitrè printed contain a fair number of inconsistencies and
non sequiturs. It is impossible to determine which of these come from the
taletellers and were faithfully recorded and which may have been caused by
the collectors’ own memory lapses or failure to take perfectly accurate notes
or dictation. We have usually corrected small blemishes without calling
attention to them, but in a few instances we have left them standing and added
a footnote commenting on their value as evidence of what a live performance
might contain.
Any discussion of the language and style of the tales must call attention to
the exceptional verbal resourcefulness we find in some tales. Several contain a
large proportion of folk poetry of considerable, and at times even exquisite,
quality, and many have their most crucial moments expressed in verse. “The
Tale Told Time and Again,” which opens this collection with an important
statement about storytelling conventions and the license to break them,
resorts to verse for the heroine’s brilliant triumph over convention. “The
Left Hand Squire” concludes with a complex three-way dialogue in verse, in
which the squire’s unjustly accused wife first expresses her distress in the
form of a riddle rich in metaphor, her husband responds by continuing the
riddle’s metaphors and maintaining his accusation, and the king intervenes
with a verse statement that correctly solves the riddle and exonerates the good
wife. The outstanding tale, “The Pot of Basil,” has its entire structure built on
the clever contest in verse between Rusidda and the prince, and near its climax
the narrator breaks into poetry to describe the heroine’s appearance disguised
as a doctor to cure the lovesick prince. We can easily imagine how, in the
performance of these tales, dramatic verse recitation would have been a key
element of the entertainment. “The Barber’s Clock,” a brilliant mixture of
social satire and theological allegory,11 relies on clever verse to paint its vivid
satirical portraits of social types. “The Count’s Sister” and “Virgil the
Sorcerer” break into poetry at their dramatic conclusions, and this list could
go on at length.
While vivid idioms, metaphors, and poetry are scattered throughout all
these tales, in some places we find word play carried to a very high degree of
complexity. The tale “Pinnìculu Pinnàculu Pinnía” is meant to explain the

11 Italo Calvino was forcefully struck by the brilliance of this tale, saying it is “on the level of the great
moments of allegorical poetry” and “the poetic interpenetration of metaphysical space and the human
comedy is so precise and harmonious a construction, with a language so rich in invention, nobility, and
characterization” (Italian Folktales, p. 750).
24 Joseph Russo

origin of a riddle whose first line consists of these three words. At first
reading this seems to be no more than a euphonic sequence of nonsense
words, built on the syllable “pinn” to which various suffixes have been
attached. But when we reach the end of the tale in the original Sicilian, we
realize that the nonsense words contained hidden meaning. The story
describes pears hanging from a tree, and the verb “to hang” in Sicilian is
pinniri (Italian pendere), so that the idea of hanging is subtly evoked by these
three cleverly constructed words. The pure indulgence in word play for its
own sake achieves unique form in “King Ridiculous.” Here there is barely a
story line, as we are swept up in a creative intoxication with rhythm, rhyme
and punning innuendo resulting in a fine comic absurdity. It sounds like the
James Joyce of Finnegan’s Wake mixed up with Chico Marx, and anyone who
understands Sicilian or Italian should find the original and read it aloud.
Verbal wit of this quality is the despair of the translator, and what we offer is
our humble attempt to capture some similar effects in English.

Contents and Typical Themes

While the special qualities of language to which we have called attention are
inevitably lost in translation, the contents of the tales can be fully appreciated
by the English reader. We enjoy the tales’ clever and adventurous heroines and
heroes, the satirically depicted social hierarchies within which they must
operate, and their abundant fantasy, humor, irony, and sense of justice—a
justice often achieved through that cardinal Sicilian virtue, the talent for
revenge.
We may, however, be risking a different kind of loss in translation—not a
linguistic loss but a cultural one—if we fail to see these tales in their historical
and social context. The Sicily in which these tales were created and transmit-
ted was an island populated largely by poor country folk and tradesmen, with
a tiny aristocracy holding most of the wealth. While some merchants might
become wealthy, the vast majority of people lived off the land, growing what
food they could and maintaining what animals they could afford. This rural
economy turns up often in the tales, many of whose protagonists are living
hand to mouth and looking for ways to get a bit of food or money. Indeed, it
is striking how often the tales mention food, hunger, and eating.
The society pictured in these tales is a mixture of realism and idealistic
fantasy, populated by peasants, shepherds, shoemakers, wagon-drivers and
other tradesmen, and by kings and queens, princes and princesses, abbots,
monks, priests, and holy hermits. Monasteries and abbeys become sources of
opportunity and adventure, as do the royal courts that are conveniently
 The Sicilian Folk Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè 25

accessible to the traveling hero or heroine. Spain and Portugal appear often as
kingdoms reachable by a ship that is always at hand when a character needs it,
and their royal courts often serve as places of refuge and support. The royal
courts in our tales usually include a Council of Advisors, summoned by the
king—along with doctors or astrologers—whenever advice is needed.
Stewards and other courtiers may play a role in the plot, sometimes as
untrustworthy characters.
While the tales normally present kings and royalty in a more or less posi-
tive light, they offer a mixed view of the church and clergy. “The Shoemaker
and the Monks,” for example, presents an entire monastery conniving to
cheat and physically maltreat an innocent shoemaker, and “The Poor Young
Man” even has the Lord come down from his cross to describe how corrupt
the clergy are, enriching themselves at the expense of the poor. While monks
and abbots may appear as good or bad, priests more consistently appear as
corrupt and greedy. Hermits, on the other hand, are unequivocally virtuous, a
rare exception being the hermit who lets himself be corrupted by the devil in
“The Holy Hermit.”
Viewed from a comparative perspective, these tales run a wide gamut of
international tale types. We find magic tales, tales of adventure, local and
historical legends, religious tales, ghost stories, and humorous tales including
their sub-type the numskull tale. The magic tales, or Märchen, include splen-
did examples of the best-known international types, such as Cinderella
(“Date, Oh Beautiful Date”), Snow White (“Child Margarita”), The Animal
Bridegroom (“The Little Mouse with the Stinky Tail”), and The Boy Steals
the Giant’s Treasure (“Tridicinu,” a Sicilian equivalent of “Jack and the
Beanstalk”). All of these, while conforming closely to the general type,
possess a distinctly Sicilian flavor.
Among the most amusing of the humorous tales are those featuring hus-
band–wife rivalry and real or imagined infidelity, and the anti-clerical tales,
which embody the traditional Sicilian suspicion of an often-corrupt clergy.
Occasionally these two themes overlap, depicting the priest as the wife’s
seducer. It is worth noting that in “Three Good Pieces of Advice,” even
though the priest is unjustly suspected, the suspicion itself is presented as not
unreasonable. Another main category of humorous tales features the notori-
ous Sicilian trickster-heroes Firrazzanu and Giufà, already discussed in the
introduction “The Indomitable Giuseppe Pitrè.” As for the adventure tales,
they conform to type by featuring a youthful protagonist who leaves home
and achieves great success, most often through a royal marriage. But our
collection is noteworthy for tales from female narrators that feature a bold
heroine who is as adventurous as any male protagonist. This may seem
26 Joseph Russo

surprising given the patriarchal culture of Sicily; but we must realize that
every force produces a counter-force, and in these tales we are seeing the
female reaction to male domination, the creation of a fantasy-world where
women out-maneuver men and repeatedly gain the upper hand. Prime
examples are “Catarina the Wise,” “Date, Oh Beautiful Date,” “The Pot
of Basil,” “Pilusedda,” “The Parrot with Three Tales to Tell,” “The Seven
Robbers,” and “The Thirteen Bandits,” among many others.
These tales also reflect a distinctly Sicilian world-view in their representa-
tion of social, economic, geographical, and political realities. Although we
view these, to some extent, through the distorting lens of fantasy and exag-
geration, certain realities emerge clearly. The most vivid memory in Sicilian
political history is The Sicilian Vespers, a popular uprising against occupying
French forces which took place in 1282. Several tales in this collection show
how the folk memory preserved and elaborated upon this historical reality,
turning the historically ambiguous figure of John of Procida into a folk-hero
and supposed organizer of the uprising.
The agrarian economy is reflected in the frequent mention of food gather-
ing and the importance of grain, which in some tales appears alongside pre-
cious gems as if belonging to the same category. Horses, donkeys, mules, hens,
and roosters are the animals most frequently mentioned, while cats some-
times appear as household pets, and dogs less often. Mountains are often
mentioned, as is the sea. Frequent use of travel by boat reminds us that Sicily
is an island. Kings are assumed to rule everywhere, as they often did in medi-
eval and early modern Sicily, and when they are not in Palermo they are most
commonly in Spain and Portugal, and much more rarely in France, England,
or Russia. Turkey is mentioned with some frequency as an alien land, and
Turks are routinely used as “fall-guys” in these tales, sometimes specifically
mocked as followers of Mohammed and for their pidgin-Sicilian. Thus we see
reflected the historical reality of Turkish power in the Mediterranean in early
European history. “The Devils of the Zisa” and “The Treasure of the Zisa”
reflect the mixture of admiration and awe aroused by the presence of
sophisticated Arab culture in Sicily.
Royal palaces occur frequently in these tales, and often have big gardens
and stables managed by a resident staff. They also have underground cham-
bers, where prisoners may be kept or passageways found. That some real
history underlies this fancy may be seen from “What a Disaster for the Three
Ladies!” The architecture of palaces as well as ordinary houses is such that
they may face one another so closely that conversation can be held from one
balcony to another. Here it seems a feature of ordinary people’s lives has been
transferred to royal palaces, serving narrative convenience and also bringing
 The Sicilian Folk Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè 27

royal families down to the level of the folk. One common theme closer to
pure fantasy is the appearance of a hole in the ground that leads to a magical
creature’s dwelling—although even here, we must remember that Sicily is a
land of mountains and caves, where tunnels and secret passageways were not
as rare as they are in our own world.
While many of these tales have themes that can be found in the wider
European tradition, a small number are unusual in the way they echo themes
from Greek mythology. Given the widespread Greek colonization of Sicily
beginning in the eighth century B.C. and the persistence of the Greek lan-
guage and culture there for centuries afterward, it is possible that some of
these themes survived from that early period, and passed from Greek to Latin
and into the post-Latin vernacular that evolved into medieval and modern
Sicilian. It is also possible that some of this story material entered Sicily at a
later date, brought by Roman colonizers beginning in the second to first
centuries B.C. A third possibility is that these stories were introduced into the
local oral tradition much later by people who knew them from books, or who
had heard them told by others whose ultimate source—perhaps going back
over several generations of oral transmission—was a written version. There is
no way to decide between these alternatives, or to say which themes from
classical mythology came from which of these possible sources. What is clear
is that these tales drew on material that had been in oral circulation long
before Pitrè collected them, and that some curious and interesting survivals
of Greek myths still existed as living story material in late nineteenth-century
Sicily.
The most conspicuous ancient Greek motif is the presence of the Cyclops
in two of our tales, “The Cyclops” and “The Little Monk.” The most familiar
Cyclops figure in Greek tradition, in book nine of Homer’s Odyssey, is a giant
with a single eye who feeds on human flesh and lives an isolated, asocial
existence in a cave, where he keeps a flock of sheep. Odysseus and his men
escape by blinding the giant in his vulnerable single eye. “The Little Monk”
derives directly from this source, by whatever channel of transmission it
reached the teller. This tale was collected from an eight-year-old girl who is
an unskilled narrator, and the story line moves forward awkwardly with an
absence of connections and transitions. Yet all the key dramatic incidents of
the original Greek tale are present and vividly told. The other tale, “The
Cyclops,” keeps the name and attaches it to a cannibalistic ogre, so there is
some glimmer of the ancient tradition, but in no other details does it reflect
the Homeric model.
Another Greek mythic story, less visible on the surface than the Cyclops
tale, is found in “The Enchanted Horse.” We have a cruel king who demands
28 Joseph Russo

that golden hair be brought back to him from where it sits high in a tree, sends
a hero on this quest, and attempts to murder him when he returns with the
prize. The king is killed when the hero convinces him to seek magical rejuven-
ation by jumping into a boiling cauldron. This is the essential plot of the tale
of Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece. In the Greek version the tree is
guarded by a serpent, whom Jason drugs with the help of Medea; and king
Pelias is tricked by seeing an old ram thrown into the cauldron and success-
fully rejuvenated thanks to the magical herbs of Medea. In our Sicilian tale
the tree is guarded by fierce lions, and Medea has been replaced by the
enchanted horse as magical helper. The horse helps the hero get the “fleece”
and also supplies the equivalent of Medea’s magical herbs in the form of his
own sweat, which performs the magical rejuvenation necessary to trick the
king into throwing himself into the cauldron. It is no less than amazing to
discover this ancient plot structure still being used in the oral tradition of the
Mediterranean. By how many intermediaries, oral and written, it survived
and entered the repertoire of the anonymous storyteller in Noto, who gave us
this tale, is a true mystery to ponder.
Still another well-known Greek story is found in “Hook and Crook,” this
time not a myth but a folk tale. The historian Herodotus (mid-fifth century
B.C.) recounts essentially this same tale as having happened in Egypt. This
wonderful story was fully assimilated into the European folk tale tradition,
and versions have been found in many different countries. Its international
tale type bears the name “Rhampsinitus” after the Egyptian king whose treas-
ure house was broken into. Again, we can only guess at the trajectory by
which this widely circulating tale came to Sicily.
Roman tradition may have had some influence on the tales like “The King
of Love” and “King Anìmmulu,” which belong to the same type as the
“Cupid and Psyche” story told by Apuleius (second century A.D.). Apuleius’
story is clearly based on folk tale sources, although he has imbued it with
strong elements of philosophical allegory.12 While our Sicilian versions
derive from two widespread European tale types, “The Search for the Lost
Husband” and “The Animal Bridegroom,” they contain specific details that
seem to come from Apuleius’ version. Both tales feature a supernatural
bridegroom who resides in a sumptuous palace, and in “The King of Love” he
is a winged creature whose very name makes him a version of Cupid.

12 See Graham Anderson, Greek and Roman Folklore, pp. 75–77.

 The Sicilian Folk Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè 29

Our Aims and Choices as Translators

Given the rich linguistic texture of these tales, there is no way to capture their
full flavor in English or any other language. What we have attempted is a re-
creation of the tales in idiomatic contemporary American English, to make
them as natural-sounding here as they were in their own time and place.
Therefore we have freely substituted modern idioms for those of the original,
when those would seem odd or make poor sense if translated literally. For
instance, we have said “he found himself in hot water” where the original says
“he found himself in water of oranges,” si truvau ’ntra l’acqua di l’aranci; or
“she gave him a thorough tongue-lashing” where the original says “she filled
him up with so many curse words,” lu jinchiu di tanti parulazzi. We used the
English idiom “Hook and Crook” for the Sicilian title “ ’Mbroglia e
Sbroglia,” which involves word play that defies translation. In a very few cases
we have altered the title of a tale to make better English sense or to better
reflect the story’s contents—e.g., we changed “Lu custrïeri,” literally “The
Tailor,” to “The Tailor and the Dung-Maiden.”
These tales, as already noted, often use formal verse with strict meter and
rhyme, and the majority close with a formulaic rhymed couplet, for which we
have found English formulaic and rhymed equivalents. Since the Sicilian for-
mulas vary slightly, we have allowed the same small variation in English. We
have done our best to match verse with verse, although we have not been able
to use rhyme in all cases where the original does. Often the Sicilian verse is
folk poetry of impressive quality, and we have done what we can to capture its
directness and verve. In many cases we have quoted the original in footnotes,
where it can be enjoyed by the reader who may know some Sicilian or Italian
or has a serious interest in languages and poetry.
Proverbs frequently appear in these tales, some spoken by characters in the
story and others as titles of those tales that are meant to explain the origin of
a familiar saying. Occasionally we have been able to match a Sicilian proverb
with a familiar English one, but in most cases we have simply created the kind
of concise and memorable phrase in English that might resemble a proverb.
Among our biggest challenges as translators was dealing with the narrators’
tendency to sometimes omit the kind of small connective words that make
causal and temporal sequences easy to follow. We took the liberty of adding
words like “then,” “afterwards,” “eventually,” “consequently,” and “he (she)
said” to clarify connections, and of adding resumptive words like “now,”
“well,” and “so” at the beginning of sentences to smooth the narrative flow.
In a few tales told by less skillful narrators, in which episodes were uncon-
nected and logical sequence was confused, we patched over these small gaps
30 Joseph Russo

and inconsistencies with no comment. In a few instances where the awkward-

ness could be instructive about the nature of narrative performance and the
challenge of collecting tales like these, we made an observation to that effect
in the notes.
We used footnotes, for the most part, to supply cultural or historical
information important to the narrative, to make comments on extraordinary
features of the texts, and to supply the Sicilian originals when the language
was especially vivid or poetic. In our endnotes we used Pitrè’s notes as our
base, citing all the important parallels he noted in the works of scholars
before him and giving English translations of every variant tale that he
printed. Therefore, there are more than 400 tales in the entire collection. In
addition, we cite parallels from European folk and literary traditions that
were unknown to Pitrè or post-date him, and we sometimes offer interpretive
and evaluative comments on the tale at hand. Every endnote begins by citing
the appropriate tale type, if one exists, from Hans-Jörg Uther’s recent The
Types of International Folktales, abbreviated as ATU (Aarne-Thompson-
Uther). Several Sicilian tales seem to be idiosyncratic and not related to the
international types.
Folk tales do not shy away from crude expressions and scatological con-
tent, and these Sicilian tales offer their share of what some would see as
vulgarity. It was noted in the preceding introduction that Pitrè tended to
remove or mitigate sexual references in his editing of the tales, and yet these
tales still do contain some coarse everyday language, which we have translated
exactly as we found it.
One of our constant challenges was the rendering of proper names. Names
were often kept in Sicilian, rather than normalized to Italian spelling, in order
to retain the flavor of the original, so that Vicenzu does not become Vincenzo
and Filippeddu does not become Filippello. Full consistency, however, was
impossible, and if we thought a Sicilian name seemed too unusual or
unrecognizable we used the Italian version, so that Sarvatori, for example,
becomes Salvatore and Petru becomes Pietro. In some cases we resorted to
the English equivalent, especially for names of saints and popes, where we
have St. Joseph, St. John, and Pope Gregory. For status designations, cavaleri
(Italian cavaliere), a standard honorific for gentleman status, was translated
“gentleman” in “bourgeois” contexts, but in courtly contexts we have trans-
lated it as “cavalier” or “knight.” The most challenging word to translate with
consistency was cumpari (Italian compare), with its feminine cummari (comare).
Originating as the term used to designate the person who stands with the
parent in support of a child at baptism—hence godfather or godmother—it
comes to denote anyone held in close affection, and can mean good friend,
 The Sicilian Folk Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè 31

crony, partner, or accomplice. We have used a variety of these renderings,

letting context be our guide.
The goal we kept constantly before us was to respect the quality of the
storytellers’ language by reproducing it in English with nothing omitted and
implicit meanings filled out to ensure they would not be overlooked. Com-
parison with the forty-three tales from Pitrè’s collection that Italo Calvino
included in his Italian Folktales will make it clear how different our concep-
tion of the translator’s task is from his. Not only did Calvino abbreviate by
omitting details and repetitions, but he routinely suppressed signs of a living
voice, such as the narrator’s asides to the audience (“and what do you think he
did next?” “and what do you imagine they found?” “now let’s return to the
prince,” “time passes quickly in a story”). He also smoothed out the occa-
sional syntactic irregularities and dramatic word order characteristic of oral
style, so that his tales all read as if they were carefully written, and by the same
author. The reader of Calvino’s versions will find little of the variation in
storytellers’ styles, penchant for details, and rich use of homey idioms, meta-
phors, exclamations, and other expressions that we have sought to preserve in
our English versions or mention in our notes. We make this point not to
denigrate the achievement of Calvino, who in the mid-1950s did a heroic job
of assembling and translating tales from all over Italy into standard Italian so
that they could be appreciated by his country’s reading public; but to make
clear to our own reading public how rich and multi-textured the language of
this folk tradition really is. The women and men who told these stories to
Pitrè and his friends and collectors were verbal artists, often of a very high
caliber. We feel fortunate to be able to preserve their names for the historical
record as custodians of their rich cultural heritage, along with the names of
those who made the effort to collect them.
If some of our readers find family names of their ancestors, relatives or
friends among the tellers and collectors of these tales—as I did—the dis-
covery will bring home all the more forcefully the strength and tenacity of
Sicilian traditions and the tough-minded people who maintained them in the
Old Country and carried them into the New World.

The Meaning and Wisdom of the Tales

Pitrè’s Sicilian tales, like all folk tales, represent a vision of life shared by an
entire population. Life is seen as a continuing struggle to survive and get
ahead, while at the same time it is a theater of entertaining fantasies and
amusing incidents, as well as a repository of traditional wisdom, often
deliberately couched in the form of proverbs and historical memories. These
32 Joseph Russo

Sicilian tales reflect the vision of most nineteenth-century Sicilians, a mixture

of realistic assessments and wish-fulfilling fantasies. Life is hard and material
comfort difficult to achieve and sustain, so that in the tale world success often
comes to us through the fantasy of marrying a prince or princess or the lucky
encounter with a magical helper. But the hard realism of the tales will not
allow the fantasy of royal marriage to have the final word. “Happy endings”
are usually followed by one of our “back-to-reality” formulas, like “so they
lived on, happy and content, while we sit here without a cent.”
Given the harshness of this real world with which we must contend, how
do the tales enable us to live in it and achieve what we desire? By the exercise
of our native wit, by seeking out every advantage we can get and making the
most of it—that is what the protagonists of these tales do. They usually begin
with little power and have to face established authorities like royalty, clergy, or
the wealthy bourgeoisie. But these adversaries are presented as sufficiently
foolish or arrogant that they can be vanquished by the tenacity and cleverness
with which the humble folk are richly endowed. While kings may be cruel
and enjoy imposing difficult tasks—as in the folk tales of other nations—here
we often find kings who are easily duped by our shrewd and enterprising
protagonists. Princes are often petty and weak, prone to falling lovesick
over the heroine and needing to be restored by some clever ploy devised
by that enterprising young woman. That other source of power and
authority, the church and clergy, is usually too concerned with self-interest
to give ordinary folk any significant help, although the saints often come to
their rescue. People who have achieved middle-class prosperity are also
shown in an unflattering light, often as objects of outright ridicule, as in
“Tìppiti-Nnàppiti.”
The message of these Sicilian tales, then, contains a strong subversive elem-
ent. Society is a hierarchical structure in which we, the folk (and we all remain
folk at some basic level) must contend with authority that is habitually selfish
and arbitrary. But while the deck is stacked against us, native wit and tenacity
will allow us to cope successfully with those to whom society has given more
power but less brains. It is impossible for us, even as modern readers from a
different time and place, not to enjoy the subversive and comic energy that
drives many of these tales and to identify with their resourceful protagonists.
Giuseppe Pitrè’s achievement, then, in collecting and publishing this great
cultural treasure from his own time and place has certainly exceeded his most
ambitious expectations. He has given us a timeless treasure which, even today,
offers us enjoyment and no small portion of wisdom.
 1

Popular Fairy Tales

 1. T H E T A L E T O L D T I M E AND AG A I N 1 3

I
t’s been told time and again that there was once a mother and daughter.
Well, this mother had many chickens, and whenever she went to mass,
she left them with her daughter. One day she said to her, “Elisabetta,
Elisabetta, I’m leaving the chickens with you. See that you sweep the house
and make the bed before I come back.”
Elisabetta put the bed in order and swept the house, and after she picked up
a little chick, she began looking for fleas and lice. One of the chicks had a
note14 stuck in its feathers that fell into her hand.
Now there was a merchant, and this merchant sold all sorts of stuff that
made him a rich man, and he promised to give his shop to anyone who could
tell him a story that began without “it’s been told time and again.” Many
people came and tried, but they all began their tales with “it’s been told time
and again,” and he always won the wager. Then the girl arrived with the note
and said to him, “Signor merchant, I’ve come here to tell you a tale that will
begin without ‘it’s been told time and again.’ ”
“Get out of here, you dirty brat!” he said. “How can you possibly know
how to tell a tale that doesn’t begin with ‘it’s been told time and again?’ ”
And then she began:
“Once there was a little note,
And this note spoke and said:
Get out of here, merchant, this shop is mine.”
And this is how the girl became the owner of the shop, and the merchant
had to leave.
So, she remained happy and content
While we still can’t pay the rent.
And now my tale is done.
Told by Mara (Maria) Curatolo, 8 years old, in Erice.

13 Significantly, Pitrè wrote: “I am opening the collection with this tale to show that nothing is arbitrary in
folk tales. But there are certain formulas consecrated to the use of the tales that perpetuate the oral
tradition.”
14 The narrator uses the word pulisedda, which is the diminutive of pòlisa (Sicilian) or polizza (Italian). The
note is more than likely a policy or deed to a house/shop. The girl takes the note or deed of the property
to claim the shop. The written document appears to take precedence over the oral tradition, an interest-
ing comment on the rise of literacy and the significance of documents in Sicily.

35
 Popular Fairy Tales 37

2. T H E P A R R O T WITH TH R E E TA L E S TO TE L L

H
ere’s a tale people like to tell . . .
There once was a wealthy merchant, and he wanted to marry. Well,
he found himself a wife who loved him dearly, a wife as beautiful as
the morning. But one day he came home looking troubled.
“What’s bothering you?” his wife asked.
“I have important business that requires a long trip,” he said, “and I don’t
like leaving you by yourself.”
“Is that all? Well then, here’s what you should do. Gather all the provisions
I might need, and lock me inside. Have all the doors and windows nailed,
except for one window high up, and then put a basket there with a wheel and
pulley for me. Once you do all this, you can leave without worrying.”
“That’s an excellent plan,” said the husband, and immediately he had her
supplied with bread, flour, oil, coal, and the rest. Then he had everything
nailed shut except for one window. Finally he had a pulley installed—just like
in a convent—and he took his leave, while his wife stayed behind with her
maid.
The next morning, the servant came and called up from the pulley to ask
what she wanted him to buy, and off he went.
It went on like this for ten days, and then the woman began to feel
suffocated. Indeed, she was seized by a fit of crying beyond description.
“My lady, there’s a remedy for everything,” her maid said to her. “Let’s pull
the little table under the window and climb up on it, and we’ll enjoy the
beautiful view of the Corso.”15
So they pulled the table under the window, and the woman looked out. She
heaved a big sigh, saying “Thank the Lord!”
In the house opposite hers was a notary’s office, and just at that very
moment the notary was there with a gentleman friend. The two men turned
and saw the lovely young woman. “Oh what a beauty!” said the gentleman. “I
simply must speak to her.”
“No, I want to speak to her first,” said the notary. And they went at it with
“Me first!” and “No, me first!” until they decided to make a bet—four hun-
dred gold pieces to the one that spoke to her first. Just then the woman
noticed them and immediately withdrew so that her face was not seen again at
that window.

15 The Sicilian term Càsseru indicates the main avenue in nineteenth-century Palermo.
38 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

The notary and the gentleman were both intent on winning the wager and
went running about town, each one seeking a way to speak to the lady. Finally,
the notary became desperate and went out of town and into the fields, where
he called upon his demon. When the demon appeared, the notary told him
the whole story and added, “And this gentleman wants to be able to boast
that he spoke to her first!”
“And you, what can you offer me?” said the demon.
“My soul.”
“Good. Now here’s what you have to do. I’ll turn you into a parrot, and
you’ll fly and land on the lady’s window. Then the maid will take you and put
you in a silver cage. Your gentlemen friend is going to hire the services of an
old woman, who will be clever enough to lure the lady out of her house. Your
job is to keep her from leaving, do you understand? You must say to her,
‘Pretty Mamma, sit down, and I’ll tell you a story.’ The old woman is going to
come three times. Each time, you must ruffle your feathers, flail around
making a great ruckus, and say:
Mamma Mia Bella,
Don’t go with the old woman.
She’s bound to betray you.
Sit down while I tell you a story.
And then tell her whatever story comes into your mind.”
When the demon was finished, he pronounced these words: “Man you are,
may you now become a parrot!”
The parrot flew off and went straight to the open window. The maid saw it,
threw her handkerchief, and snared it. When the young woman saw the
parrot, she said,
“How beautiful you are! Now you will be my consolation!”
“Yes, pretty Mamma, I will love you, too.”
So the woman had a silver cage made, and there she kept the parrot.

Now, let’s leave the parrot in his cage and return to the gentleman, who was
still trying desperately to see the lady. Finally, he met an old crone who asked
him what his problem was.
“Why should I tell you my problems?” he said. But the old woman
persisted, and he couldn’t keep from telling her the whole story.
“I can arrange for her to talk to you,” she said. “First, you must get me two
baskets filled with beautiful fruit, rare and out of season.”
The gentleman was so intent and anxious to see the lady that he had the
baskets of fruit prepared as the old woman had asked. She picked them up,
 Popular Fairy Tales 39

carried them to the spot where the wheel and pulley were, and pretended to be
the lady’s grandma. The lady believed her, and one word led to another.
“So tell me,” the old woman said, “since you are always shut in, how do
you hear Sunday mass?”
“How could I, shut in like this?”
“Ah, my daughter, this is a serious mistake. A person must hear mass on
Sunday. Since today is a holiday, why don’t we go to church together?”
As the young lady was being persuaded, the parrot began to lament, and
when she opened her chest of drawers to dress for church, the bird sang out:
Mamma Mia Bella, please don’t go.
That old woman intends to betray you.
Stay here with me, and I’ll tell you a story.16
This plea caught the lady’s fancy, and she said “Granny, you’ll have to go
without me. I’m staying here.”
And so the old woman had to depart. When she was gone, the lady went to
the parrot, and he told her the following tale.

First Tale of the Parrot

Once upon a time there was a king who had an only daughter, and this
daughter was very fond of dolls. She had one special favorite that she would
dress and undress and put to bed. In short, she did everything you do with
children. One day the king decided they would go to the countryside, and the
princess took her doll with her. She set her doll down on a hedge and played
so much that she became distracted. Then it was meal time, and they all went
to eat. After the meal, they climbed into the royal carriage and returned to the
palace. And what do you think the princess forgot? Her doll of course! She
thought of it the moment they reached the palace. So what did she do? Instead
of going upstairs, she turned right around and went off looking for her doll.
But once outside the gates, she got lost and began wandering from village to
village, as if lost in a fog.
Finally she came to a royal palace and asked who the king was.
“The King of Spain,” they said.
So she asked for lodging and was admitted. The king, who was childless,
treated her as if she was his daughter. Once the princess felt at home in the
palace, she began acting like the mistress of the place. Indeed, the king had

16 The words here vary slightly from the “formula” given by the demon.
40 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

given her the freedom to act as she pleased and even gave her twelve royal
damsels to wait on her
Now it’s a well known saying that “there is always envy among equals,”17
and these damsels began to talk against her.
“Look at this girl,” they said, “we don’t even know who she is, and yet she’s
become our princess! It’s time we put an end to this!”
So the next day they said to her, “Would you like to come with us?”
“Not without papa’s permission,” she answered.
“Well, here’s how to get his permission. Just say, ‘By the soul of your
daughter, allow me to go!’ The second he hears these words, he’ll allow you to
go.”
So the princess did just this. But when the king heard her say, “By the soul
of your daughter,” he cried, “Ah you wicked thing, you! Throw her down the
trap-door!”
When the princess was thrown down the trap-door, she found a doorway,
then another and another, always groping her way. At a certain point, feeling
her way like a blind person, she found tinder and matches. Using the tinder to
light a candle that she had discovered there, she saw a beautiful young girl
with a padlock over her mouth that kept her from speaking. But she managed
to indicate with gestures that the key to open the padlock was under the
pillow of the bed. The princess found it and unlocked the padlock. As soon
as the girl could talk, she told her that she was the king’s daughter, but a
wizard had kidnapped her. At midnight every day the wizard brought her
food, but then he locked up her mouth, and she had to wait until the next day
to have it opened again.
“Tell me, isn’t there any way to free you?” asked the princess.
“I have no idea. But I can try asking the wizard when he comes to open my
mouth. Why don’t you hide under the bed and listen, and then we might
figure something out.”
“Good! Good!”
So the princess locked up her mouth again, put the key back under the
pillow, and hid under the bed. When midnight came, there was a great com-
motion: the earth shook, there were lightning flashes, smoke, the stench of
sulfur—and the wizard appeared, wrapped in a sorcerer’s cloak. He was
accompanied by a giant with a platter of food and two servants with torches
to light his way. After the wizard sent the servants away, he locked the door,

17 A familiar proverb, lit. “envy is amongst peers,” la ’mmidia è ’nta li pari. Pitrè’s Proverbi Siciliani, v. 2,
cites versions from many other regions and dialects of Italy, and the apparent source, the Latin invidia
inter pares.
 Popular Fairy Tales 41

took the key, and opened the mouth of the king’s daughter. While they were
eating, she said to him “Wizard, I’ve been thinking and have become
curious—what would it take for me to get out of here?”
“You want to know a great deal, my girl.”
“Never mind. I don’t really need to know.”
“Oh no, I don’t mind telling you. It would require, first, laying a mine all
around the palace. Then on the dot of midnight, just as I’m about to enter,
someone would have to ignite it. There would be a terrific explosion, and I
would go flying through the air. All at once you would find yourself back with
your father.”
“You certainly can trust me with your secret,” said the king’s daughter.
After the wizard put on his cloak and departed, the princess waited a little
while before she came out from under the bed. Then she said goodbye to her
little sister—she was already calling her that—and off she went.
She continued walking underground until she came to the trap-door
where she stopped and called for help. The king heard her and had a rope
lowered for her to climb up. Once in the king’s presence, she told him
everything. He was amazed and immediately ordered his men to lay down
the mine and fill it with gunpowder, cannonballs, and grapeshot. When it
was packed as full as could be, the princess took a cloak and went back to
find the girl.
“We’re in this together, dead or alive!” she told her.
Then she took the little padlock off her mouth, and after they made their
plans, she got under the bed again without leaving a trace behind her. The
hour came, the wizard arrived, and the king was waiting with a watch in his
hands. At the stroke of midnight he ignited the mine and Boom!—there was a
tremendous blast. The wizard was blown to smithereens, and the two girls
were in each other’s arms, both free.
When the king saw them, he cried out, “Oh, my children! My daughter,
your misfortune was your good fortune! And you,” he said to the girl he had
adopted, “you will have my crown.”
“No need, my lord. I have my own crown, because I, too, am the daughter
of a king.”
News of this event spread the whole world over. As the people in different
kingdoms heard about it, everyone had nothing but praise for the great cour-
age and goodness of the princess who freed the other princess from the
wizard. And they remained happy and enjoyed blessed peace for ever after.

“Well, pretty Mamma, what did you think of my story?”

“It was beautiful,” said the lady to the parrot.
42 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

A week passed after the parrot had told the story, and the old woman came
again to visit her “granddaughter,” carrying two more baskets of fruit.
“Oh-oh!” said the parrot. “You’d better watch yourself, pretty Mamma,
because that old woman is here again.”
The old woman asked again, “Will you come with me to mass?”
“Yes, Granny,” said the lady, and she began dressing.
When the parrot saw this, he made a big ruckus, tearing off his feathers and
weeping.
“No, pretty Mama, don’t go to mass, that old woman will be the ruin of
you! Stay here with me, and I’ll tell you another story.”
“You’d better leave,” said the lady to the old woman. “I can’t let my dear
little parrot die just for a mass!”
“Oh you wicked woman! For the sake of a mere bird, you’re ready to lose
your soul!”
But the old woman had to leave. Meanwhile, the lady stayed with the
parrot, and he told her the following tale.

Second Tale of the Parrot

Once upon a time, my lady, there was a king with an only child, a daughter as
beautiful as the sun and the moon. When she reached the age of eighteen and
was ready for marriage, her first suitor was a Turkish king. When she learned
who he was, she showed her contempt by saying, “I want nothing to do with
Turks!”18
A short time passed, and she was overcome by a terrible illness. The
doctors could offer no explanation. She had convulsions, and her body
became twisted like a coil. Her eyes rolled almost to the back of her head, and
no one could diagnose her malady. Her poor, confused father summoned his
council.
“My councilors,” he said, “my poor daughter is losing ground every day.
What advice can you give me?”
“Your Majesty,” the wise men replied, “have you heard about the maiden
who rescued the King of Spain’s lost daughter? If you can find her, she can tell
you what your daughter needs.”
“Excellent!” he said. “This is perfect advice.”
So the king ordered ships to go and bring this maiden to him. “And if the

18 Throughout all the Sicilian tales, the Turks and Moors tend to be represented in a negative light. There
were many prejudices especially against the Turks in Sicily during the nineteenth and early part of the
twentieth centuries.
 Popular Fairy Tales 43

King of Spain doesn’t want to release her, give him this iron gauntlet as a
declaration of war!”
The king’s vessels left, and one fine morning they arrived in Spain. They
fired a great salvo, and when the ambassador disembarked, he met the king
and handed him a sealed letter. The king opened it, read it, and began to weep.
“Since I refuse to give up my daughter, I have no choice but to go to war.”
Just at this moment his daughter happened to enter the room.
“What’s wrong, your Majesty?” she asked, and once she read the letter, she
said, “Why are you so scared? Let me go and visit this king.”
“What? How can you leave me, daughter?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll just go and see what’s wrong with this maiden, and soon
I’ll be back.”
Then she went to say good-bye to her sister and departed. When she
arrived in the other country, the king came to meet her.
“Young lady, if you can cure this sick daughter of mine, I’ll give you my
crown.”
“Here’s another king offering me a crown!” she thought to herself. But
what she said aloud was, “My Lord, I already have a crown of my own. Let us
address the problem at hand and not speak of crowns.”
When they showed her the princess, and she saw how wasted and wan she
looked, she said to the king, “Your Majesty, I will need to have all kinds of
broth and hearty dishes brought here.”
Once they arrived, she said, “Now I’m going to lock myself in with your
daughter, and there will be no need for you to open because, after three days,
either I’ll give her back to you alive, or you’ll find her dead. And you must
heed these words of mine: even if I knock for you, you are not to open.”
Everything was prepared, and she locked herself in with iron bars and
chains. But what did she forget? She forgot tinder for lighting the night candle!
So, that night she had a problem because she knew she couldn’t knock to ask
for anything. As she looked out of the room’s large window, she saw a light
far away. So she took a silken ladder and climbed down with a candle, think-
ing she could get it lit. When she reached the light, she discovered a giant
cauldron set on large stones with a kiln underneath and a Turk, who was
stirring with a metal rod.
“What are you doing, Turk?”
“My king, he want daughter of king. She not want him. Do enchantment.”19

19 Pitrè notes the Sicilian stereotyping of Turks and other foreigners. They are caricatured by their
ungrammatical speech—in this tale, by the use of infinitive verb forms in place of properly inflected
ones.
44 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

“Oh, my poor little Turkie, you must be so tired by now. Why don’t you
just take a short rest, and leave the stirring to me?”
“Yes, by Mohammed.”
So he got down and she got up and began stirring with the rod. “Am I
doing it right this way?”
“By Mohammed, yes!”
“All right then, you sleep, and I’ll do the stirring.”
After he was asleep, she climbed down, grabbed him, and dumped him in
the boiling cauldron. Poor fellow, he was done for! When she saw he was
dead, she lit the candle, returned to the palace, and entered the room. She
found the sick girl on the floor, lost to the world. But when she gave her
scented water, the girl regained consciousness. After three days she was com-
pletely recovered. Then she knocked for the king, and he was astonished to
find his daughter well again.
“Ah, young lady,” he said to the princess, “how can I ever repay you? Won’t
you stay here with me?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. You threatened my father with war if he
didn’t allow me to come. Now my father will threaten you with the same if
you don’t send me back to him.”
So she stayed for some two weeks, and when she finally departed, the king
showered her with riches and jewels. And that’s how she returned to the
palace of the King of Spain.
And so the tale is done.

“How did you like this story, pretty Mamma?” asked the parrot.
“Oh, it was perfectly lovely.”
“But you must remember never to go with that old woman because she is
nothing but a deceiver.”
Well, a week went by and—whoosh! can you believe it?!—there was the old
woman again with her baskets of fruit.
“Daughter of mine, today I must insist on this favor! You must come with
me to hear holy mass.”
“All right, I’ll come.”
When the parrot heard this, he began crying and tearing out his
feathers.
“No, pretty Mamma, don’t go with the old woman! If you stay, I’ll tell you
another story.”
“Granny of mine,” she said, “It’s time you stopped coming here. I’m not
willing to lose this parrot just because of you.”
So she turned the wheel and shut the window, and the old woman went off
 Popular Fairy Tales 45

muttering and cursing. Meanwhile, the lady sat down next to the parrot, and
the parrot told her the following tale.

Third Tale of the Parrot

Once upon a time there was a king and a queen, and they had an only son
whose greatest pastime was hunting. One day he decided to go hunting for a
whole month in a faraway place, and he took all his entourage with him. After
much traveling, where do you think they landed? They arrived at the very spot
where the princess had left her doll. Well, when the prince saw that doll, he
said, “I’ve found my quarry! Let’s go home!”
He picked up the doll and placed her directly in front of him on his horse.
And the whole journey long he kept saying, “If the doll is so beautiful,
imagine the maiden who owns her! If the doll is so beautiful, imagine the
maiden who owns her!”
When he came to his palace, what did he do? He went right to his room and
had an opening made in the wall to serve as a window-niche for the doll. Then
he just gazed upon her all around the clock, twenty-four hours a day, repeating
to himself, “If the doll is so beautiful, imagine the owner!”
Finally this young man lost all interest in seeing anyone but the doll. He was
overcome by such melancholy that his father had to summon a group of
doctors. When the doctors came, they looked at him and said, “Your Majesty,
we don’t have the faintest idea what this illness could be, but it’s evident that
he’s obsessed with this doll.”
The king went to see his son, but all the young man could do was to gaze at
the doll and repeat, “If the doll is so beautiful, imagine the maiden who owns
her!” So the doctors came and went, and the prince, gulping painful breaths
and sighs, just kept repeating, “If the doll is so beautiful, imagine the maiden
who owns her!”
By now the king was really at his wits’ end. He rang the bell summoning his
Grand Council, and cried out,
“Do you see what a sorry state my son is in? He has no fever, no headaches,
but he is wasting away day by day, and my kingdom will be left for someone
else to enjoy. I need your advice!”
“Your Majesty, why are you so worried? Don’t you remember that girl, the
one who rescued the King of Spain’s daughter and then went on to cure
another princess? Send for this maiden at once—and if her father won’t
release her, threaten him with war.”
So the king ordered his ambassadors to deliver this threatening message:
“You must send us your daughter, otherwise there will be war.” But just as the
46 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

ambassadors had conveyed the message, the princess herself entered the
room, and when she saw the king at a loss, she asked him, “What’s troubling
you?”
“Nothing, my child. It’s just that another envoy has arrived, and now
another king wants you. It seems that I can no longer have you at my beck and
call.”
“There’s no problem in sending me, your Majesty. I’ll be back before you
know it.”
So the princess embarked with her entourage, came to this new kingdom,
and went to see the prince. She found him swallowing sigh after sigh and
repeating, “Oh! If the doll is so beautiful, imagine the maiden who owns her!”
“Well, you called me just in the nick of time,” she said to the king. “Give
me one week, and have unguents and food brought to me each day, and after a
week you’ll find him either alive and well, or dead and gone.”
Once she was locked in with the prince, she paid close attention to what he
was saying. At first she could not understand his words because he was so
feeble and on the brink of death. But when she finally heard what he was
murmuring and saw the doll, she burst out, “Oh, you scoundrel! You’re the
one who stole my doll! I’ll see that you get what you deserve!”
When the prince heard these words, he revived and said, “Are you the
doll’s mistress?”
“Yes, it’s me!”
Well, you can imagine how that prince came back to life. She began feeding
him broth and soon had him fully restored to life. When he was feeling better,
she asked, “Now tell me how you got this doll?” and the prince told her the
whole story. In less than a week the prince was himself again, and soon it was
announced that he and the maiden would wed.
The king, beside himself with joy at his son’s recovery, began writing let-
ters. The first one was to the King of Spain, telling him that the girl finally
found her doll; the second was to the king who was her father, telling him that
his daughter had been found; and the third was to the king whose daughter
she had made well again. Then all of these monarchs came together and held
festivities on a grand scale, and the prince took the princess as his wife, and
they lived in blessed peace.”

“Did you enjoy this story, pretty Mamma?”

“Oh yes, very much.”
“Good. But don’t forget, you must never go with the old woman.”
After the third tale was done, the servant came and announced: “My lady,
my lady, the master has returned!”
 Popular Fairy Tales 47

“Really?” said the lady. “Well then, listen, my parrot, I’m going to have a
new cage made for you.”
The master arrived, opened all the windows, and embraced his wife. Dinner
time came, and they placed the parrot in the middle of the table. At the high
point of the meal, the parrot sprayed some soup right into the master’s eyes.
When the master reached up and covered his burning eyes with his hands, the
parrot seized him by the throat, strangled him, and flew away.
Once the bird reached a valley, it landed on the ground and said, “Parrot I
am, and man I shall become!” All at once the bird turned back into the notary
he was, all neatly combed and dressed, and went walking along the Corso,
where he met the gentleman, who had made the bet with him.
“Did you hear the news?” the gentleman asked. “That poor lady’s husband
is dead. A parrot strangled him!”
“Really? Poor, poor thing!” said the notary, and they went their separate
ways with no mention of their wager.
The notary learned that the lady had a mother, and so he went to her and
asked for her daughter’s hand in marriage. There was maybe yes and maybe
no, and some hemming and hawing, but in the end the mother said yes. So the
notary and the woman were married.
That night, the notary asked the lady, “Now tell me, who killed your
husband?”
“A parrot.”
“And what about this parrot? Tell me the whole story.”
And so the woman told him the whole story up to the point where the
parrot sprayed the hot soup into the master’s eyes and flew away.
“That’s exactly right!” said the notary. “Because that parrot was none other
than myself!”
“You? I can’t believe it!”
“Yes it was me, and it was all for your sake that I had myself turned into a
parrot!”
The next morning the notary went to visit the gentleman and collected his
four hundred gold pieces, and he enjoyed them together with his wife.
They remained happy living in peace,
While we sit here still picking our teeth.
Told by Agatuzza Messia at Palermo.
48 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

3. T H E K I N G OF S PA I N ’ S D A U G H T E R S

G
entlemen, let me tell you a tale that’s been told time and again about a
king of Spain, who had two daughters. One of them had been carried
off by the fairies, and the other was still with him in his palace. The
daughter who was still with him had a doll, which resembled the princess
down to the last hair. This is why she liked to dress the doll in her own
clothing and place this pretty creature in her big window that looked out on
the city garden.
Well, one day the son of the King of Portugal happened to go into the
garden, and when he saw this dazzling beauty, he became totally enthralled.
But then he looked more closely and noticed that she had a tiny crack in her
forehead, and that she was really just a doll. So what did he do? He went and
got a ladder, set it against the wall, climbed up to the window, and took the
doll home to his own palace. He locked himself in his room, lit some candles,
and was constantly on his knees revering this doll night and day. As for food,
he simply had the servants slip it through a crack in the door.
Now let’s leave the prince and return to the King of Spain’s daughter.
When she came in the evening to get her doll, she found it missing and burst
into tears. She pounded her chest, tore her hair, and made such a huge uproar
that her father came and asked, “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter? The matter is that someone came and stole my doll
from the window!”
Hearing this, the king announced that a reward of a thousand gold coins
would be granted to whoever could find the doll. But not a single person
appeared to collect the reward. The princess, in her despair, decided to leave
the palace. After she went away, she ended up finding work as a servant in the
household of the King of Portugal.
One day, as she happened to be bringing the king’s son his meal, she looked
through the door and saw that her doll was right there inside the prince’s
room. Poor girl! Her blood froze in her veins at the sight of it. So what did she
do? She forced open the door, seized the doll, and ran off quick as lightning
back to her father’s palace. But her father did not recognize her any longer
because smoke had blackened her face. So he gave her a job as his doorkeeper.
Now in the king’s garden there was a fountain, and one side had a broken
bottom that provided space for a dark underground chamber. It was the
custom for all the poor people to come to the king and beg for alms, which
irritated him. So he told his doorkeeper that if she allowed one more poor
person to enter, he would have her thrown down into the fountain’s deep
 Popular Fairy Tales 49

chamber. But she paid no attention to this and continued to let the poor
people in. Finally, the king carried out his threat and had her thrown into that
dark chamber.
Once she was there, she began looking around and saw a little hole. She dug
at it until it turned into a great big hole, big enough to enter. When she walked
through it, she came into a room where she saw two cooked doves, piping hot,
sitting on a cabinet. She took them and ate them. The next day she found two
more and did the same. The third day she grew curious about who was bring-
ing these doves, so she made her way into the adjacent room, but she didn’t
see anybody. She went into a third room, and there she saw—you can’t
imagine it!—she saw a lovely woman, beautiful as the sun, and all in chains.
“How did you get here?” asked the woman. “Who brought you?”
So the princess recounted her entire story from beginning to end.
“Do you realize,” said the woman, “that you are my sister? I am the
daughter of the King of Spain.”
Well, you would have loved to have seen it, the two of them embracing,
kissing one another, and crying out of sheer joy! When they finished, the
sister in chains said, “It’s the fairies that have me in their power. You must go
to our father and tell him that if he wants to free me, he has to have eight
matrons with flowers and powerful incense, and ten men of marvelous
strength, each strong enough to hold and swing a hundred-pound hammer to
crack the skulls of whomever I say.”
They hugged and kissed again, and the sister who had been punished by the
king went back to her underground chamber. When the servants came to
bring her food, she insisted she had to speak to the king. He agreed, and when
the two of them were alone, she proposed that, if he promised to grant her
freedom, she would bring back his daughter who had been taken by the
fairies, as well as his other daughter who had run away. The king could hardly
believe he was hearing such a promise. Not only would he grant her freedom,
he replied, he would also give her whatever else she wanted. She answered
that she needed eight matrons with flowers and powerful incense, and ten men
of marvelous strength, each strong enough to hold and swing a hundred-
pound hammer. The king ordered all of this to be prepared without the
slightest delay.
While these preparations were being made, the King of Portugal’s son, who
had been vexed when he found out that the doll had been taken from him,
arrived in Spain and went directly to the royal court.
Meanwhile, the king’s daughter had the eight matrons and ten powerful
men come down to her room beneath the fountain, and this is what she did:
she took the matrons with their canisters of flowers and incense that smelled
50 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

so sweet as to seem paradisiacal and placed them in front. Behind them, she
arranged the men who had their hammers ready at hand. The fairies, smelling
the lovely aroma, lost their senses, and at that very moment the strong men
swung the hammers and cracked their skulls. Once the king’s imprisoned
daughter was set free, they took her out of that dark underground place and
brought her to her father the king.
You can’t imagine what a celebration the king held! At the height of the
festivities, he sent for the doorkeeper again and said to her,
“Now I want you to find my other daughter for me.”
“You are talking to the very daughter you are seeking,” she answered.
At last the king recognized her and began hugging and kissing her. Now the
celebration grew and grew, and when the festivities were at their height, the
prince of Portugal entered and asked, “Princess, aren’t you the one who
owned the doll, the one I stole?”
“Yes,” she answered.
Then he turned to the King of Spain and said, “Your Majesty, I am the son
of the King of Portugal, and I’m in love with your daughter. Therefore I am
asking for her hand in marriage.”
“You have my consent,” replied the king. And thus they were married.
So they remained, content and at peace,
While we just sit here, picking our teeth.
Told by Rosa Brusca in Palermo.

4. P R E T T Y P O O R -G I R L , OR PO V I R A - B E D D A

O
nce upon a time, so the story goes, there was an old woman with a
beautiful granddaughter. They were so poor that their survival
depended on whatever people were willing to give them. The girl
was called Povira-bedda, “Pretty Poor-Girl.”
One day a fortune-teller came along, one of those charlatans, who travels
around offering to tell the fortune of any woman who’d believe him, just to
make some money. He was so insistent that Povira-bedda agreed to have her
fortune told. The poor child had no money to give him, but he had noticed a
little bed quilt spread out in the sun outside the house, and he agreed to take
this as payment.
He began making the usual sign of the cross in the girl’s palm, and then
he predicted that she would get a king for a husband. Povira-bedda’s first
 Popular Fairy Tales 51

reaction was to laugh, but the idea stayed in her head, and she began to think
about it.
Well, it so happened that Povira-bedda’s house stood just below the king’s
palace. At the very moment the fortune-teller was reciting her future, the
young prince happened to be looking out and listening. He was very amused,
and as he laughed, he called out to her:

“You lost the little quilt from your bed,

But a prince like me you’ll never wed!”

Povira-bedda answered him:

“Why should I worry?

There’s one that’s above and one that’s below,
And I’ll be the prince’s wife, I know;
And as I trust in the Lord divine,
The son of the king is sure to be mine.
As I trust in God and the saints alone,
The prince will soon be my very own.”

The prince chuckled at hearing this, but inside him a little love wound had
opened and would never heal.
Now let’s turn to the old woman, who came back home and found her little
quilt missing. She uttered such a howl and tore her hair so much that the
prince had one of his own quilts sent over to appease her. But then, as the
days passed, the prince found that he couldn’t take his mind off Povira-bedda
and thought of ways how he might keep teasing her and reciting the same
taunt. Deep in his heart, the flame of his love for her was burning more
brightly every day.
The prince’s mother, the queen, was fully aware of what was happening to
her son. So she made the shrewd decision to ease his soul by having him
marry. When she suggested this, he answered that he would marry only when
she brought him a young woman who was the exact image of Povira-bedda.
Upon hearing this, the queen felt like someone caught in a thorn-bush, but
she quickly thought of a way to disentangle herself, and came up with the
following plan.
She arranged to marry her son to a certain princess and had her brought to
the palace. Then she summoned the old grandmother and told her that she
wanted Povira-bedda to come and be her son’s bride, in place of the intended
spouse, since he insisted that he would only marry a girl who was the exact
image of Povira-bedda.
52 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

When the old woman told this to her granddaughter, the girl didn’t need
any persuading! The following evening Povira-bedda, all dressed up as you can
imagine, presented herself to the prince. At the sight of her he was at a loss
for words, and he married her on the spot. But Povira-bedda did not dare get
into the marriage-bed. The queen, you see, had ordered her to hide under-
neath the bed, so that the bride that she had selected for her son could lie
in the bed. The prince, of course, did not understand what was happening.
In the wink of an eye Povira-bedda vanished under the bed and—zoom!—in
between the bed-sheets slipped the princess.
Well, as the proverb says about such tricks, “The devil creates them, and
the devil exposes them.” When the prince realized what had been done to
him, he became enraged.
“I’ve been tricked! I’ve been betrayed!” he kept shouting, until all the palace
servants came running.
Now the queen had to admit that her plan had completely backfired, and
she had no choice but to give her blessing to the marriage. And that’s the way
Povira-bedda got the king’s son as her very own.
Collected by Mattia Di Martino from an anonymous storyteller at Noto.

5. T H E P O T OF BA S I L

O
nce upon a time there was a father who had a daughter called
Rusidda. Since there was no one at home to educate her, he sent her
to live at school with a teacher. Now this teacher had a terrace that
faced the king’s residence, and the king had a son who frequently looked out
from his own terrace. One day Rusidda was looking out and singing a song
that went: Ton to ron tò, The things that I know.20 The king’s son was there, and
he called out to her:
“Rusidda, Rusidda, how much do you know?
How many leaves does the basil plant show?”
Rusidda, not knowing how to answer, went to ask her teacher.
“What’s the problem?” asked the teacher,
and Rusidda answered, “The king’s son said to me:

20 The original consists purely of the nonsense syllables “ton to ron to, ton to ron to.” We have added “The
things that I know” to prepare for the prince’s response.
 Popular Fairy Tales 53

Rusidda, Rusidda, how much do you know?

How many leaves does the basil plant show?”

“If he asks you again,” said the teacher, “say to him:

And you, with your royal crown of gold,

How many stars does the dark sky hold?”

The next morning Rusidda went again to look out from the terrace. The
king’s son came out and said:

“Rusidda, Rusidda, how much do you know?

How many leaves does the basil plant show?”

And she answered:

“And you, with your royal crown of gold,

How many stars does the dark sky hold?”

Now it was the young prince who was unable to respond. He was filled with
resentment and vowed to get back at her. So he went and made a deal with her
teacher.
“Allow me to spend one night under Rusidda’s bed, and I’ll give you a fine
gift in return.”
The teacher agreed. When the hour came, and Rusidda went to bed, the
prince took a pointed tool and kept poking her through the mattress. The
next morning, Rusidda was miserable. Her teacher noticed and asked,
“Rusidda, what happened to you?”
“Oh teacher, what terrible fleas, what terrible bed bugs!”
The next morning there was another confrontation: Rusidda went to the
same terrace, and the two of them began taunting each other:

“Rusidda, Rusidda, how much do you know?

How many leaves does the basil plant show?”
“And you, with your royal crown of gold,
How many stars does the dark sky hold?”
“Rusidda, what keeps you from sleeping at night?
Oh teacher, these bed bugs and fleas can bite!”

Rusidda went to her teacher and said, “Teacher, you’ve betrayed me!” and
then she left.
When she returned home to her father, he asked why she didn’t want to
stay with the teacher any longer.
54 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

“It’s all because this young prince keeps pestering me. The minute I appear
on the terrace he says to me: ‘Rusidda, Rusidda, how much do you know?
How many leaves does the basil plant show?’ and I answer him: ‘And you,
with your royal crown of gold, how many stars does the dark sky hold?’ Last
night I slept at my teacher’s house, and all night long I was tossing and turn-
ing, imagining there were bed bugs and fleas. But it turned out to be the prince
who was poking me.”
“Calm down, my daughter,” said her father, “and let me figure out what to
do next.”
The father went and bought the best horse there was, and then he had a belt
made entirely of gold.
“Take this belt,” he said. “Mount the horse, and tomorrow go riding under
the king’s palace.”
So the next morning Rusidda did this, and as she rode beneath the palace
with the belt in her hand, she cried out:
“To whoever kisses my horse’s behind,
I’ll give this belt of gold so fine.”
The prince called out to her, “If you bring it here, I’ll kiss it myself,” and he
kissed the horse’s behind. But Rusidda gave the beast a sharp goad with the
spur, and the creature took off, leaving the prince standing there having kissed
the horse’s rear end. Meanwhile, Rusidda still held the belt in her hand and
called out:
“My horse’s behind you kissed and smelt,
But you didn’t get the golden belt!”
And she rode away.
The next morning Rusidda went back to her teacher, who asked,
“Rusidda, are you here again?”
“Yes, Ma’am, my father insists that I come.”
Rusidda went out on the terrace again, and the prince also came out.
“Ah, Rusidda, my little rose,21 it’s been a while since we’ve seen each
other.”
“I haven’t been able to come, I’ve been terribly busy.”
“Do you know what I have to say to you?” said the prince.
“Rusidda, Rusidda, how much do you know?
How many leaves does the basil plant show?”

21 The prince is punning playfully on her name here, since Rusidda means “little rose.”
 Popular Fairy Tales 55

“And you, with your royal crown of gold,

How many stars does the dark sky hold?”
“Rusidda, what keeps you from sleeping at night?
O teacher, these bedbugs and fleas can bite!”
“My horse’s behind you kissed and smelt,
But you didn’t get the golden belt!”

The prince became angry all over again.

“All right, I’ll get back at you for this, you’ll see!”
The next morning he dressed up like a sailor, picked up a basket of fish, and
went hawking the fish through the streets of the town: “I’ve got fish, fresh fish
for sale!”
“O teacher, please buy me some fish!” Russida cried out.
“How much do you want for them?” the teacher asked him.
“I don’t sell fish for money. I sell them for kisses,” he replied.
“Are you telling me the truth? I’ve never heard of fish being sold for kisses
before. How strange!”
“Yes, I’m telling you the truth.

If you’ll just give me a lovely kiss,

I’ll give you back a lovely fish.”

The teacher told this to Rusidda, who foolishly was taken in and went and
gave him a kiss. But the prince ran off, taking all his fish with him. As soon as
he was home, he took off his sailor’s clothes, went out on his terrace, and
resumed the exchange.

“Rusidda, Rusidda, how much do you know?

How many leaves does the basil plant show?”
“And you, with your royal crown of gold,
How many stars does the dark sky hold?”
“Rusidda, what keeps you from sleeping at night?
O teacher, these bedbugs and fleas can bite!”
“My horse’s behind you kissed and smelt,
But you didn’t get the golden belt!”
“But I got you to give me that little kiss,
And you didn’t taste one morsel of fish!”

“I’ll make you pay for this,” said Rusidda, who went straight to her father
56 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

and told him the whole story. “My daughter, the only way we can put an end
to this is to stop sending you to that teacher.” And he did just that.
Now the prince went a long time without seeing Rusidda. As a
consequence, he fell seriously ill, and his father became concerned.
“My son,” he said, “tell me what’s wrong. What are you suffering from?”
“I’m sick and feel terrible. Call all the doctors.”
And so a whole medical staff was gathered. But the prince’s condition kept
growing worse the longer he was unable to see Rusidda.
Now Rusidda dressed herself up like a foreign doctor and entered the
palace, where she met a servant. “Take this message to the king,” she said. “A
doctor has come from abroad, who can make his son well again.”22
The king at once invited her in,
Hoping his son could be well again.
He invited her into the royal chamber.
“Your Majesty, before I look at this case,
There is one thing I must warn you about:
No need to come running, if you hear a shout.
For this is a sign that the cure is beginning.
You must shut me inside the room with your son,
And leave me to work on him in the dark.”
Eager to have his son well again,
The king then granted her every wish.
Into the room with the son she went,
And in a loud voice began to shout:
“Death is coming on her crooked haunches,
She’s come to claim the son of the king.”23
When Rusidda came out, the king asked this “doctor” to explain what had
happened.
“No problem, your highness, your son is cured. He simply needs to be
placed on the terrace first thing tomorrow morning. He told me that his
illness is a desire for a young woman called Rusidda. So I will go to her and

22 In this remarkable sequence the narration becomes rhythmic and then turns into formal rhymed
couplets, with all verses ending in an infinitive verb form except the next to last. (We have translated
without the rhyme.) Pitrè explains that, while transcribing the recitation, he became aware that it was
verse not prose, and so he printed it accordingly.
23 Pitrè’s note says we are to understand that it is Death herself that speaks this couplet, referring to
herself in the third person, as is common in some children’s folksongs. Death is most commonly seen
as a woman in Sicily.
 Popular Fairy Tales 57

her teacher and arrange for her to appear on the teacher’s terrace. Then the
prince will be well again.”
“Doctor, I’ll have everything done exactly as you say,” answered the king.
“For love of my son, I wouldn’t know what else to do.”
The next morning Rusidda went to her teacher.
“Rusidda, what brings you here?”
“I’ve come for some pleasant distraction. It’s been so long since I was out
on your terrace, and I’d love to take a little air there.”
Meanwhile the king’s first thought was to bring his son to the terrace that
very morning. When Rusidda looked out, the king’s son was already there.
He began sighing and said,
“Rusidda, Rusidda, how much do you know?
How many leaves does the basil plant show?”
“Even though you’re practically dead, you still want to play games?” said
Rusidda. (But she continued:)
“And you, with your royal crown of gold,
How many stars does the dark sky hold?”
“Rusidda, what keeps you from sleeping at night?
O teacher, these bedbugs and fleas can bite!”
“My horse’s behind you kissed and smelt,
But you didn’t get the golden belt!”
“But I got you to give me a little kiss,
And you didn’t taste one morsel of fish!”
“Death is coming on her crooked haunches,
She’s come to claim the son of the king.”24
Upon hearing this, the king ordered his men not to let Rusidda get away
from the house and to bring her to the palace.
“You owe me an explanation! What is this all about?”
“Your Majesty, because I have no mother I was sent to a teacher. When I
went out on her terrace, your son the prince made fun of me (and here she
told him everything that had taken place)—so that I now ask your Majesty’s
permission to allow me to return to my house.”

24 In this context, the reappearance of these verses serves two purposes: they inform the prince that he has
once more been “one-upped” by the ingenious Rusidda, and they reveal to the king what has been
happening.
58 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

“What do you mean, ‘return to your house,’ when your mischief has
almost cost me the life of my son?!”
“Nevertheless, I want to go home!” And she made such a fuss that the king
had no choice but to let her go.
Now the prince declared that he had to have this woman as his wife. And so
the king and the queen, even though they were royalty, decided to pay a visit
to the girl’s father and ask for her hand in marriage.
“Yes, I’ll give my daughter in marriage, but I must have a forty days’ waiting
period.”
Rusidda had a sack of flour brought, a large jug of honey, and a carafe, and
she shaped these materials into a puppet doll that was her own size. When the
nuptial night arrived, and she was about to get into bed with the prince, she
said, “I’m a little embarrassed to undress in front of you. So won’t you please
go into the other room a minute, while I take off my clothes and get into
bed?”
After the prince went out, she set up the doll in her place in bed, took the
puppet strings in her hands, and hid under the bed. When her husband came
back, he asked “Rusidda, do you recall when I said to you:
Rusidda, Rusidda, how much do you know?
How many leaves does the basil plant show?”
And the puppet nodded her head. “Do you remember when I came and
sold you fish in exchange for kisses?” And the puppet nodded her head. He
continued reciting a whole list of questions, and at the end he asked her:
“And are you sorry now for all that you did to me?”
Here the puppet raised its head, signaling “No.”
When the prince saw this, he drew his sword and shoved it into the doll’s
neck. The blow broke the carafe that was at the neck, and the honey began
flowing out. In his rage the prince licked his sword. “Oh how sweet is this
blood of my wife! Oh please, somebody, stop me, because I feel like killing
myself for having lost such a sweet wife!”
As soon as he said this, Rusidda came out from under the bed shouting,
“I’m alive! I’m alive!”
And Rusidda and the prince embraced one another.
And what became of the puppet so sweet?
The couple ate it as their wedding treat.
Told by a daughter of Giuseppa Furia at Ficarazzi.
 Popular Fairy Tales 59

6. C ATA R I N A THE WI S E

W
ell, gentlemen, here’s a tale that people have told time and again. In
Palermo there was once a great merchant, who was married and
had a remarkable daughter. From the moment she was weaned, she
was so wise that she had a comment to make about anything that happened in
the house. Because of this talent, her father called her “Catarina the Wise.”
She grew up studying all sorts of languages, reading all sorts of books, and
displaying abilities and talents unmatched by anyone.
When the maiden turned sixteen, her mother died. In her grief, Catarina
locked herself in her room and refused to come out. She decided to eat and to
sleep in her room and gave up taking walks, going to the theater, or having any
other diversions. Her father was very unhappy that his only daughter kept
herself from having any pleasure in life. So he decided to summon a council.
He called together all the leading men of the city. Indeed, as a merchant, he
naturally knew all the best people.
“Gentlemen, you know very well that I have a daughter who is the apple of
my eye. But ever since her mother died, she keeps herself shut in like a cat and
won’t even stick her nose out the door.”
The councilors replied, “Your daughter is famous throughout the entire
world for her exceptional wisdom. Why don’t you open a great college?
Perhaps by teaching young people, your daughter will be able to shed this
burden from her mind.”
“What a good idea!” the father exclaimed.
So he called Catarina and said, “Listen, my child. Since you’ve been unable
to find anything to interest you, I had this idea of opening a college and
placing you in charge of it. Do you like this plan?”
She liked it very much and took charge herself of organizing all the
teachers for such a college. The girl had brains to spare! When the college was
all set up, they put up a sign: Free Schooling for Whoever Wants to Study with
Catarina the Wise.
So, children began coming to the school, both boys and girls, and Catarina
had them sit on benches alongside one other with no distinction of rank
between them. Someone objected and cried out, “he’s the son of a coal mer-
chant!” But it made no difference: the son of the coal merchant had to sit next
to the daughter of the prince. As the proverb says, “First come, first served.”25

25 We are using a familiar English proverb to translate the Sicilian, more concretely rooted in agrarian
culture: “Who arrives first, gets to grind at the mill” (Cu’ veni prima macina lu mulinu).
60 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

And that’s how this school began. Catarina taught everyone equally, and
whoever didn’t do their assignments got a lick of the cat-o’-nine-tails.
The school’s reputation spread as far as the palace, so that even the prince
wanted to attend. He put on his most regal outfit and went and found a seat.
When it was his turn, Catarina asked him a difficult question, and he didn’t
know the answer. Whack! She gave him such a hard smack that I think his
cheek must still be burning. The prince returned to the palace very upset and
went straight to his father.
“May it please your Majesty, I want to get married, and the one I want is
Catarina the Wise.”
So the king sent for Catarina’s father, and he came.
“Majesty, I am at your service.”
“You may rise, and you might as well know that my son is infatuated with
your daughter. So, I think we should let them get married.”
“As your Majesty wishes, but I’m a merchant, while your son is of royal
blood.”
“No matter. She is the one my son desires.”
When the merchant returned home, he said, “Catarina, I’ve learned that
the prince wants you as his wife. What do you say?”
“I accept.”
Within a week everything was ready. (Don’t imagine these people lacked
wool for the mattresses, or chests of drawers!) Caterina had twelve brides-
maids, and when they opened the royal chapel, the marriage took place.
After the ceremony the queen told the bridesmaids to carry out their task
of undressing the princess for bed, but the prince said no. “I don’t want
anybody to undress her or dress her, or any guards outside our door!” As
soon as they were alone he said, “Catarina, do you recall that slap you gave me
at school? Are you sorry for it now?”
“Why should I be sorry? I’ll give you another if you want!”
“You mean you have no regrets?”
“Not in the least.”
“And you’re not going to apologize?”
“Why should I?”
“So that’s how it is, is it? Well, I’ll teach you a lesson!”
And he prepared a rope to drop her down a trapdoor into a pit.
One last time he asked, “Catarina, either you apologize, or I drop you down
through this trapdoor.”
The maiden replied boldly, “Fine. I’ll be cooler down there.”
And so without further ado, he dropped her into the pit with nothing but a
small table and chair, a jug of water, and a piece of bread.
 Popular Fairy Tales 61

The next morning the king and queen came to visit the newlyweds to wish
them the customary “good morning.”
“Nobody is allowed in,” said the prince, “because Catarina isn’t feeling
well.” Then he opened the trapdoor and asked,
“How was it last night?”
“Just fine, nice and cool.”
“Have you thought about that slap you gave me?”
“You should think about the next one I’ll be giving you.”
When two days had gone by, she began to feel terrible hunger pangs and
couldn’t think of what to do. Then she pulled one of the stays out of her
corset and began digging a hole in the wall. She dug and dug, and after twenty-
four hours she saw a glimmer of daylight that cheered her up. So she widened
the opening and looked out. It just so happened that her father’s clerk, Don
Tommaso, was walking past that spot, and she called out, “Don Tommaso,
Don Tommaso!” The man couldn’t figure out how this voice could be coming
out of a wall.
“It’s me, Catarina! Tell my father that I need to speak to him as soon as
possible!”
So Don Tommaso came back with her father (who couldn’t have found the
place by himself), and she called out:
“Father, unfortunately my husband has lowered me into this underground
pit. Have a tunnel dug from the basement of our house all the way here with
supporting arches and a lantern every twenty feet. Then leave the rest to me.”
While they were carrying this out, her father sent her food every day: hens
and chickens and all kinds of good dishes. Three times a day the prince would
come and call down the trapdoor,
“Catarina, are you sorry for that slap you gave me?”
“Not at all. I’m thinking about the next one I’ll be giving you.”
Once the craftsmen had completed the tunnel with arches and lanterns
every twenty feet, Catarina would wait until the prince closed the trapdoor
and then go to her father’s house. After a few days the prince grew frustrated
with this game. He opened the trapdoor and called down:
“Catarina, I’ve decided to go to Naples. Do you have anything to say to
me?”
“Have a nice trip, and don’t forget to write. And by the way, you know that
old saying, ‘See Naples and die’? Please don’t take it literally!”
“So then, I should leave?”
“I can’t believe that you’re still here.”
And so the prince departed.
As soon as the trapdoor was closed, Catarina ran to her father.
62 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

“Father, father, I really need your help now. Get me a brigantine ready to
sail, servants and a housekeeper and a supply of fancy gowns, and send them
all to Naples. Rent me a palace that faces the royal palace, and wait for me
there.”
Her father loaded the brigantine and sent it off. In the meantime, the
prince had prepared a fine frigate and sailed away on it. When Catarina saw
the prince depart from her father’s balcony, she got on another brigantine
and arrived in Naples before he did. (Small boats travel faster than large
ones.) Once she arrived, she got into her finest gown and went out on her
balcony. For a week she paraded opposite the royal palace in her finest gowns.
Finally, the prince, having fallen in love with her, sent a messenger to her
palace.
“My lady, if it pleases you, the prince would like to pay you a visit.”
“At my lord’s service,” she replied.
And so the prince arrived, dressed all in his finest. After the usual
compliments and conversation, he asked,
“Are you married or single?”
“Single,” she replied, “And you?”
“I, too, am single. And do you know what? You bear a great resemblance to
a lady I was in love with in Palermo. I’d like to have you as my wife.”
“I accept,” she said.
And within a week they were married.
Soon she was pregnant—time passes quickly in a story—and in nine
months Catarina gave birth to a handsome baby boy. The prince came to her
bedside and asked, “What shall we name him?”
“Naples,” she answered, and so the boy’s name was Naples.
Two years passed, and the prince wanted to leave. Despite his wife’s pro-
tests he insisted on it. He left a document with her, declaring that the boy was
his firstborn and heir to the throne. Then he went off to Genova.
As soon as he was gone, Catarina wrote to her father asking him to have a
brigantine loaded with furniture, servants and a housekeeper to be sent to
Genova. She also asked him to rent a house opposite the royal palace and to
wait for her there. As soon as the prince departed, Catarina took another
ship, arrived there before the prince did, and set herself up in the new house.
When the prince saw this beautiful woman with all her jewels, wealth, and
royal coiffure, he couldn’t help but exclaiming, “Holy Mary, she looks just
like Catarina the Wise!” and he sent a messenger to ask if he could pay a visit.
She accepted, and after he met her, they began conversing, and he asked, “Are
you single?”
“I’m a widow,” she replied.
 Popular Fairy Tales 63

“I too am a widower,” he said, “with a little boy. Do you know, by the way,
that you bear a great resemblance to a lady I knew in Palermo?”
“How remarkable! But you know the old saying: we all have seven
look-alikes in this world.”
To make it brief, within a week they were married. Catarina got pregnant,
and in nine months—time goes quickly in a story—she gave birth to another
baby boy, even handsomer than the first. You can imagine how happy the
prince was!
“My princess, what shall we name him?”
“Genova,” she replied. And so the child was baptized Genova.
Two months passed, and the prince felt the urge to travel again.
“How can you do this and leave me with the baby?” Catarina asked.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll leave you a document saying that he is my son
and a young prince.”
And so he did.
While the prince was readying his departure for Venice, Catarina wrote to
her father in Palermo and had him send a brigantine to Venice loaded with
servants, a housekeeper, furniture, new clothes, and many other things. The
prince departed, and so did Catarina. Since large ships take more time than
small ones, Catarina arrived and took up residence first. The prince arrived,
moved in, and where do you think he cast his eye? On Catarina’s window.
“Oh my God!” he exclaimed. “This woman is the very image of Catarina
the Wise! Also the woman in Naples! Also the woman in Genova! But that
simply can’t be, because Catarina is down in a pit, and the one woman is in
Naples, and the other is in Genova. But I’ll be damned if she doesn’t look
exactly like her.”
He sent a messenger and arranged a visit, and his first words were:
“Excuse me, madam, but I must say it’s amazing how much you resemble a
woman I saw in Palermo, and in Naples, and in Genova.”
“How remarkable! But you know the old saying: we all have seven look-
alikes in this world.”
Then they proceeded to carry on the usual conversation.
“Are you single?”
“No, I’m a widow.”
“I too am a widower, with two little boys.”
By the end of the week they were married. She grew pregnant, the months
passed—time goes quickly in a story—her labor pains came, and she delivered
a baby girl, as beautiful as the sun and the moon.
“What shall we name her?” asked the prince.
“Venezia.”
64 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

And so they baptized her Venezia.

Two years went by.
“I’m thinking,” the prince said to Catarina, “that I’ve done enough travel-
ing, and it’s time for me to go back to Palermo. But here’s what I’ll do: before I
go I’ll give you a document stating that this girl is my daughter and a royal
princess.”
Upon doing this, he departed, and so did Catarina. She went right to her
father’s house and through the passageway back to her place under the trap-
door. The prince arrived and went immediately to open the trapdoor.
“Catarina, how are you doing?”
“Just fine.”
“Are you sorry now for the slap that you gave me?”
“Not at all. I’m thinking about the next one I’ll be giving you.”
“Listen, Catarina, I’m planning to get married.”
“So what’s holding you back?”
“Well, if you’re willing to say you’re sorry, you’ll still be my wife.”
“No way.”
The prince was stymied. Then he decided on a plan: he announced that his
wife had died, and he was looking to re-marry. Then he wrote to request
portraits of all the eligible princesses. The portraits arrived, and the one he
liked best was the King of England’s daughter. Consequently, he sent for her
to come with her mother, declaring that he had chosen his new bride.
They arrived in Sicily with the King of England and went right to the
palace, since the wedding was to be the very next day. Meanwhile, what did
Catarina do but have three gorgeous royal outfits made for her children
Naples, Genova, and Venezia. She herself dressed as the queen that she was,
and then she took Naples dressed as the crown prince and Genova and
Venezia dressed like a little prince and princess, got into a fancy carriage, and
drove to the palace. Along the way, she told her children,
“When I tell you, go up to your father and kiss his hand.”
Inside the palace, they found the prince sitting on his threshold.
“Naples, Genova, Venezia, go and kiss your father’s hand.”
As they did this, the prince practically died of shock.
“So this is the next slap!” he exclaimed, coming down and embracing his
children. The princess from England was left in the lurch,26 and the next
morning she departed.

26 The Sicilian idiom is more vivid: “she was left with her eyebrow shaved.” Pitrè cites a custom whereby
girls showed they were engaged to marry by shaving their eyebrows. To be “left with your eyebrow
shaved” came to describe a rejected fiancée.
 Popular Fairy Tales 65

Now Catarina explained to her husband how she had managed the whole
business, and he begged her forgiveness for all the suffering he had caused her.
From that day forward they loved each other dearly.
And so they lived on, in contentment and peace,
While we just sit here, grinding our teeth.
Told by Agatuzza Messia in Palermo.

7. T H E C O U N T ’ S S I S T E R

H
ere’s a tale that people like to tell. Once there was a count, as rich as
the ocean, and he had a young sister, beautiful beyond words. She
was just eighteen years old, and the count was so jealous and posses-
sive that he kept her locked away in a small room of the palace. No one had
ever seen her, and no one knew her.
Now the wall of the count’s palace was next to the prince’s palace. The
lovely little countess, confined and guarded like a dog, was no longer able to
endure her condition. So, during the night, she began digging, softly, softly,
and made a hole in the wall of her room, behind a beautiful big picture that
was hanging in her room. Well, this hole turned out to be opposite the
prince’s bedroom and opened behind a picture he had hanging there. So the
hole could not be seen on the prince’s side.
One night, the countess gave the picture a nudge and peered into the
prince’s room, and when she saw a precious, illuminated lamp, she addressed
it with these words:
“Lamp of silver, lamp of gold, burning bright,
Is your prince sleeping or awake this night?”
And the lamp answered,
“My lady, you’re welcome to come in here,
The prince is sleeping, have no fear.”
So she entered the room, and as she got into bed alongside the prince, he
woke up. After he embraced her and kissed her, he asked,
“Where do you live, my lady? Where are you from?
Is there some realm that you call your home?”
And she laughed with her little golden mouth and replied,
66 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

“Prince, what are you saying, what are you asking?

Just keep quiet, and enjoy what you’re doing!”

When the prince later woke up and no longer saw the divine creature at his
side, he dressed like a flash and summoned his councilors. When they arrived,
he told them all what had happened and asked,
“What do I have to do to make her stay with me?”
“Oh, your royal majesty,” they answered, “when you are embracing, you
must tie her hair to your arm so that you’ll wake up as soon as she tries to
leave.”
The next evening the countess repeated her refrain:

“Lamp of gold, lamp of silver, burning bright,

Is your prince sleeping or awake this night?”

And the lamp answered again,

“My lady, you’re welcome to come in here,

The prince is sleeping, have no fear.”

She went in and again got into the prince’s bed.

“Where do you live, my lady? Where are you from?

Is there some realm that you call your home?”
“Prince, what are you saying, what are you asking?
Just keep quiet, and enjoy what you’re doing!”

Thus they fell asleep, and although the prince managed to tie the countess’s
lovely hair to his arm, the countess took some scissors, cut the hair, and
disappeared while he was asleep. When the prince woke up, he called out,
“Councilors, oh my councilors, the divine creature has vanished!”
The councilors answered, “Oh majesty, next time you must take the end of
the little gold chain she wears around her neck and tie it to your own neck.”
The following night the little countess peered into the room and said,

“Lamp of gold, lamp of silver, burning bright,

Is your prince sleeping or awake this night?”

And the lamp answered,

“My lady, you’re welcome to come in here,

The prince is sleeping, have no fear.”

When the prince had her in his arms, he asked his usual question.
 Popular Fairy Tales 67

“Where do you live, my lady? Where are you from?

Is there some realm that you call your home?”

And she gave her usual answer:

“Prince, what are you saying, what are you asking?

Just keep quiet, and enjoy what you’re doing!”

The prince managed to tie her little chain around his neck, but when he fell
asleep, she cut the chain and disappeared. In the morning the prince called for
his councilors and told them what had happened. “Oh your majesty,” they
replied, “take a wash basin filled with saffron water and set it under your bed.
When she takes off her blouse, grab it and throw it into the basin to soak in
the saffron. That way, when she puts it on and leaves, she will leave a trail that
you can follow.”
That evening the prince prepared a small basin with the saffron water and
went to bed. Midnight came, and the countess said to the lamp,

“Lamp of gold, lamp of silver, burning bright,

Is your prince sleeping or awake this night?”

And the lamp answered,

“My lady, you’re welcome to come in here,

The prince is sleeping, have no fear.”

When the prince saw her, he asked his usual question:

“Where do you live, my lady? Where are you from?

Is there some realm that you call your home?”

And she gave her usual answer:

“Prince, what are you saying, what are you asking?

Just keep quiet, and enjoy what you’re doing!”

When the prince began to snore, she got up and began to tip-toe away, but
she found her blouse all soaked in the basin with the saffron. Without utter-
ing a peep, she wrung it out and squeezed it until it was clean and escaped
without leaving a trace.
From that night on the prince waited for his divine creature to come, but he
waited in vain and eventually fell into deep despair. But exactly nine months
later, he woke up one morning to find a beautiful baby boy sleeping next to
him, and he looked just like an angel. It took the prince just seconds to get
dressed and begin shouting, “Councilors! My councilors!”
68 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

When they arrived, the prince showed them the boy.

“This is my son!” he said. “But how can I ever find out who his mother is?”
The councilors answered, “Oh your royal majesty, you must pretend that
the child has died. Then place him in the middle of the church and order all
the women in town to come and weep for him. The one who weeps best of all
will be his mother!”
And the prince did just what they said, and all kinds of women came.
“My son! My son!” they cried out, and they left the way they came. At last
the countess arrived. She was already in tears, and once she saw the baby, she
began wailing, tearing her hair, and crying out:
“O son of mine, O my son!
In trying to get you too much good,
I cut my blond braids as best I could.
In looking for more beauty than I can pay,
I had to give my gold chain away;
And for carrying vanity much too far,
A saffron blouse I was forced to wear!”
Now the prince, his councilors, and everyone who was there began to
shout: “She’s the mother! She’s the mother!”
Just at this very moment the count himself arrived, drew out his sword,
and pointed it at his sister. But the prince threw himself between them and
said:
“My count, hold back! No shame can this woman bring.
She’s been sister to a count, but now she’s wife to a king!!”
And so the two of them were married right then and there.
They continued to live in contentment and peace,
While we just sit here, picking our teeth.
Told by Francesca Leto to Salvatore Salomone-Marino in Borsetto.

8. T H E T A L K I N G B E L LY

I
’ve heard tell, gentlemen, that there was once a king and queen, who had
an only son. When he turned eighteen, his father wanted him to get
married, but his son said, “Your majesty, it’s too soon.”
The father kept insisting, and his son always responded, “Your majesty, it’s
too soon.”
 Popular Fairy Tales 69

One day, so as not to be bothered anymore, he told his father, “All right, I’ll
marry, but only if I find a maiden whose belly talks.”
The king ordered all the bells to be rung and summoned his councilors. As
soon as they were gathered together, he said, “I need your advice. My son has
told me that he’ll only marry a maiden whose belly talks. But I don’t want to
give my realm to just anyone to enjoy.”
A wise old councilor stood up and said, “Your majesty, I think you should
call for twelve courtiers. Then give each of them a painter and send them on a
journey throughout the entire world—Portugal, Brazil, Spain, and France.
Whoever finds the maiden whose belly talks is to have a portrait of her drawn
and brought to you. If the portrait pleases your son, all will be well. If it
doesn’t please him, he’ll never say a word again about marrying a maiden
whose belly talks.”
And this is what the king commanded. Twelve noblemen departed from
the court and journeyed all over the map, each one with a painter. One of
them, for example, the Duke of Butera, took with him a superb painter, and
together with his servant, they traveled far and wide. At one point a sudden
storm erupted, and they couldn’t see anything because it was so cloudy. So
they took refuge in a forest. The servant found shelter in one part, the prince
and the painter in another part. Later, when they made their way to the other
end of the forest, they saw an old man tilling the soil.
“I greet you, man of the soil,” the duke cried out.
And the old man responded, “Welcome, man of war.”
“Are you still standing on your own two feet?”
“I’ll soon have three feet.”27
“Do you still see well?”
“I can tie my shoes.”28
“Is there snow on the mountains?”
“There’s still time for me.”29
The good old man stood up and invited the duke and the painter into his
home where there was a maiden who was sitting and weaving. When the duke
entered, he said, “Oh, young lady, what is that cloth that you’re stretching
out?”
“Oh, cavalier, watch what you’re doing with your sword!”30

27 Implied here is that he will be walking with a cane.

28 Implied is that he can see quite well.
29 The duke has implied that the old man is indeed very old and has white hair on his head (the moun-
tains), and the old man responds that he still has time to live.
30 The expression in Sicilian is: O Cavalieri, vidi chi ti penni. Pitrè makes clear that this is a reference to the
duke’s sword. The implication is that he is poking his nose into something that doesn’t concern him.
There is also a sexual implication.
70 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

Then her father turned and asked her, “And your mother?”
“She’s gone to make someone see the world who’s never seen it before.”31
“And you, what are you doing?”
“I’m making things dance without a sound.”32
“And your grandma?”
“She’s gone to honor some one who cannot be honored anymore.”33
The father turned to the duke and said, “Gentlemen, please make your-
selves at home, and I’ll get you something to eat.”
In the meantime, the grandmother and mother arrived, and they all sat
down to dinner. While they were all eating, the duke said to the painter in a
low voice. “If her belly talks, this maiden will become the wife of the king’s
son. She does not have one defect.”
When it became dark, they all went to bed, and the maiden’s mother forgot
to prepare a candle for the duke. During the night he looked for a light. Since
he could not find any, he stood up and searched for a candle, and silently he
entered the room where the maiden was sleeping. No sooner did he approach
her and begin feeling around in the dark than he touched the belly which said,
“Don’t touch me because I belong to the prince.”
The duke returned to the painter and said, “I’ve got something to tell you:
the maiden’s belly is talking in there.”
“Well then,” replied the painter, “tomorrow I’ll draw her portrait, and we’ll
bring it to the king.”
The next day, as soon as they got up, the painter drew the portrait. Then the
duke took his leave.
“Farewell,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you again in a few days.”
“It will always be a pleasure to see you,” said the old man.
After they reached the first village, the painter finished the portrait. The
duke tied it around his neck with a string, and they returned to the court.
Meanwhile the other courtiers began gradually returning with their painters.
After they all had gathered at the court, the king held a meeting with his
councilors and noblemen, and the king listened to them as they showed their
pictures. However, the prince found fault in all the portraits. Then Duke
Butera stood up and declared, “Your majesty, if this portrait doesn’t please
you, you’ll never find a wife.”
And he displayed the portrait that he had been carrying around his neck.
“I like this maiden,” the prince announced. “But does her belly talk?”

31 Implied is that the mother has gone to help deliver a baby as midwife.
32 Implied is the water is boiling in the pot, and the pasta is moving about.
33 She has gone to visit someone who has just died.
 Popular Fairy Tales 71

“Yes, your majesty.”

“Well then, she will be my wife.”
Beautiful garments were prepared for the maiden as well as four
coaches and twelve chambermaids. They all got into one of the coaches—the
duke, the chambermaids, and the servants—and they departed to fetch the
maiden.
When the good old man saw the coaches, he immediately realized they were
coming for his daughter. After the coaches arrived and stopped, the duke
descended and bowed before the maiden and said to her that the king’s son
wanted to have her for his wife. The chambermaids bathed her, dressed her,
and helped her climb into the coach, all in a grand display. The maiden wept
for joy and embraced her father and mother. Then she asked permission to
depart and left.
The king, queen, and prince were all at the palace awaiting her. The prince
took her by the arm and led her to a great party in her honor. That night,
before going to her bed (for they had not been married yet) the prince said to
his mother: “Your majesty, when she is asleep, please enter her room, touch
her belly, and see if it talks.”
His mother did as he asked. When the maiden was sound asleep that night,
she entered the room and touched her belly.
“Don’t touch me. I belong to the prince.”
She withdrew her hand, and afterward she told her son, “Everything’s all
right, my son. You’ve found what you’ve been looking for.”
The next day, as soon as the royal chapel was opened, they got married. But
let us leave them while they are entertaining themselves and turn to another
story.
Once upon a time there were two merchants, very good companions. These
two friends loved each other as much as they loved their own eyes. One of
them had a beautiful mare. Well, one day one of the merchants went to the
other and said, “My friend, I must take a trip to Monreale. Would you lend
me your mare?”
“Of course, comrade.”
So the merchant rode on horseback to Monreale. While he was in the
town, he put the mare in a stable where it gave birth to a colt. Since the mare
had to rest after having the colt, the merchant had to wait two days before
taking back the horse. After the two days had passed, he got on the mare and
returned to Palermo. Then he went to the stable where he left the mare for his
friend, and he took the colt to his own home.
The friend’s servant saw that the mare had given birth to a colt and told his
master.
72 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

“How can that be? How could my friend take the colt and treat me so
badly?”
So he went to his comrade’s house and said, “Friend, how can you do such
a thing when we are bound in friendship?”
“What’s wrong? The mare gave birth to the colt while it was in my hands.
Therefore, the colt’s mine.”
There was a lawsuit, and they went to a judge, who said the owner was
wrong. So, they went to a higher court, and the same thing happened.
Enraged, the poor comrade said, “Well, my friend’s a rogue, and he’s taking
advantage of me by righting a wrong in the courts.”
So he went to the king’s palace and presented himself before the prince. “I
want to thank you, your majesty, for seeing me,” and he explained what had
happened. However, the prince also told him he was in the wrong and had no
right to the colt.
When the merchant left and was descending the stairs, he burst into tears
like a baby. The princess saw him and asked, “Why are you crying?”
“Your majesty, let me tell you what’s happened,” and he told her the entire
story.
“Don’t despair,” she responded. “Just be quiet, and climb those secret
stairs over there. Then I’ll tell you what you’re to do.”
The merchant was content and went up the secret stairs. The princess told
him that she was the maiden whose belly talks and said, “This evening at
midnight, dress the way you are, and cry out: ‘Help! Help!’ without ever
stopping. You’re to continue doing this until the guards come and take you to
the prince, who’ll ask you, ‘What’s going on? What’s wrong?’ Your response
will be: ‘Your majesty, the fish are coming from the sea and are climbing up
the mountain.’ ‘How is that possible?’ the prince will ask you, and you’ll
know just what to say.”
The poor comrade did as she instructed. When the king’s son heard him
scream “Help! Help!” he went downstairs and had him brought up into the
palace and asked him, “What’s wrong, my poor man? Has something
happened to you? Is there something dangerous? Speak!”
“Your majesty, we’re lost,” he cried out. “The fish are coming from the sea
and are climbing up the mountain!”
“How’s that possible?” the king’s son said. “How is that possible?”
“And how’s it possible,” the merchant replied, “that you’ve allowed my
comrade to keep my colt?”
Upon hearing these words, the prince said, “Very well, the mare is yours,
and the colt is yours as well. Go down to my stable and take the horse you
want. But I know that these words did not come from your mouth.”
 Popular Fairy Tales 73

Early the next morning, the prince said to the princess, “Since you’ve
mixed your nose into my affairs, take whatever you want from the palace,
whatever appears to be yours and whatever you like, and leave!”
“My prince,” she responded, “I would like a month’s time to do this.”
“Take as long as you want.”
And what do you think the princess did? Well, she summoned many
artisans—bricklayers, carpenters, painters, and decorators—and said to them:
“Within twenty-eight days I want you to build me a palace that’s to be the
finest imaginable, but it must be completely different from this one, and I
want you to build it so that it is facing this one.”
On the evening of the twenty-seventh day, the palace was ready with
tapestry, sofas, and all sorts of comfort. On the twenty-ninth day, the princess
called the prince and said to him that it would give her great pleasure to have
dinner with him that night. While they were eating that evening, she put a
sleeping potion into his glass of wine. So, when the prince drank it, he soon
fell asleep. Then the princess had him dressed in his best clothes and carried
over to her palace.
The next morning, as soon as he awoke, the king’s son glanced around the
room, and he had no idea where he was. So he went back to sleep. Then he
awoke again, and he could not believe his eyes. Finally, he cried out: “Hello!
Hello! Where are we?”
Then his wife appeared, and the king’s son recalled the agreement that he
had made with the princess a month ago.
“You’re still here?” he said.
“What do you mean ‘still here?’ You told me that I could take with me
whatever I liked. Well, I like you, and I’ve taken you with me.”
“You’re right,” the prince said. “The first time you showed me you were
right was with the mare. Now it’s with this palace. Do you know what I say to
you? Take this kingdom and rule with your talents in your own way. You have
a grand sense of justice, good enough for yourself and for others.”
And this is what was done.
To be sure, they lived happy and content,
while we just sit here without a cent.
Told by Agatuzza Messia at Palermo.
74 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

9. T H E T H R E E C O T TA G E S

T
here was once a king, so it’s been told, and this king had only one
son who refused to get married. The reason was that he was devoted
to a young maiden who made him forget about all other women and
who had captured his heart. But the prince’s father continually insisted he
marry a suitable princess, and one day the prince said to him, “Papa, I’ll get
married, but there’s one condition. You must have the portraits of all the
princesses from all the kingdoms sent to me, and I’ll pick whoever appeals to
me.”
His father quickly sent out his couriers, and soon he had all the portraits
that he wanted. The prince, who had given his word and had thought it was
going to be impossible to obtain all the portraits, found himself in hot water.
Now he had to choose among all the portraits, and he chose the daughter of
the King of Turkey. Within a few days everything was arranged for the wed-
ding. But no sooner had he married the princess than he left her in the lurch,
locked himself in a room, and would not speak with anyone.
The queen mother did not know how to get them back together. So she
decided to do the following: She ordered three cottages built in three different
places, and she had one painted red, the other blue, and the third green. The
next day she invited a few noble friends to the red cottage, all dressed in red.
Then she brought her son.
After lunch, while her son was walking in the garden, she sent the princess
there, too. They walked together for a while, and then the young woman, who
had been instructed what to say, asked him, “Prince, will you pick a lemon for
me?”
The prince did as she asked, and after he gave her a peeling knife, swish! She
cut off her finger and cried out: “What a vile knife! What a vile master!” And
with a painful cry, she attached her finger and went to the queen who departed
quickly with her friends.
The next day they went to the blue cottage, and the same thing happened.
As soon as her finger was cut off, the young woman ran off with the others.
The following day they went to the green cottage, and it was the same story.
But this time the prince could not stand any more of this, and so he went to
his mother and asked her what he had done to the princess for her to call him
a vile person.
“What have you done!” his mother responded. “Come here!”
And she took him into another room where the princess was sitting. He
found her with the three fingers all attached. What did you expect? Love
 Popular Fairy Tales 75

always finds its way back to its proper place. The prince embraced her, and
they enjoyed the rest of their days happy and content.
Collected by Mattia Di Martino in Noto.

10. W AT E R AND S A LT

G
entlemen, I want to tell you a wonderful tale that’s been told time and
again.34
Once upon a time there was a king with three daughters, and while
they were sitting at the table one day, their father said, “Well now, let’s see
which one of you loves me the most.”
The oldest daughter turned to him and said, “Papa, I love you as much as
my own eyes.”
“Papa, I love you as much as my own heart,” responded the second
daughter.
Finally, the youngest said, “Papa, I love you as much as salt and water.”
The king was offended and cried out, “You love me as much as salt
and water?! Me? Quick, call the executioners. You’re to be killed right
away!”
The executioners arrived and took the maiden. Her sisters were filled with
pity and gave the executioners a small dog and said to them, “When you
arrive in the woods, kill the little dog. Then tear off our sister’s blouse, but
don’t you dare touch her. Leave her in the cave.”
When the executioners arrived in the woods, they killed the dog, tore the
blouse to pieces, and left the youngest sister in the cave. Afterward they
ripped out the dog’s tongue and brought it to the king at the palace,
“Your majesty, here is your daughter’s tongue and her blouse.”
So, the king gave them a reward. But let’s now drop them and turn to the
maiden.
A wild man35 passed by, and she told him all about her misfortune.
“Do you want to come with me?” the wild man asked.
“What can I do here? I’ll come along.”
He picked up his bundle of wood, and they went to his hut. Then he placed
her in charge of the house and all the things in it.

34 This is the particular manner that storytellers began their tales in Vallelunga.
35 Un omu sarvaggiu (Sicilian) or un uomo selvaggio. Pitrè notes that he is a sorcerer.
76 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

“You’ll find everything you want here. Now thank the Lord who’s come to
your aid, and don’t be afraid of anything.”
They ate, and he went out to hunt because he was a savage, and she stayed at
home. In the morning she got up, did her hair, washed herself, and threw away
the water. On the window sill there was a turkey, and the turkey began to sing:
“In vain you comb your hair and make yourself neat!
The wild man will come and turn you into mince meat.”
Upon hearing these words, she began to weep, and when the wild man
arrived, he said to her, “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter? What do you think the matter is? I washed my face,
and when I threw away the water, a turkey said to me,
‘In vain you comb your hair and make yourself neat!
The wild man will come and turn you into mince meat.’ ”
“Ah!” responded the wild man. “You foolish girl, if the turkey says this to
you again, you must respond:
‘Oh, turkey, turkey,
with your feathers, I’ll make a pillow,
with your meat I’ll make a nice bite to eat,
for soon I’ll be the wife of your owner.’ ”
The next day, after she responded in this way, the turkey shook and threw
off nearly all its feathers. Later, when the prince came by and appeared at the
window and saw the turkey almost completely bare, he was astounded and
wanted to find out how this had happened. The next day the maiden washed
herself and her hair and threw away the water, whereupon the turkey said:
“In vain you comb your hair and make yourself neat!
The wild man will come and turn you into mince meat.”
And she responded:
“Oh, turkey, turkey,
with your feathers I’ll make a pillow,
with your meat I’ll make a nice bite to eat,
for soon I’ll be the wife of your owner.”
The prince, who had been hiding nearby, watched everything. Indeed, he
saw how the turkey shook the rest of the feathers from its back and noticed
that the princess had a beautiful face that only the good Lord could have
made. When he returned home, he exclaimed,
 Popular Fairy Tales 77

“Hurry, papa! I want to get married, and I want that maiden!”

“Let’s see who the maiden is,” the father said. “I think she belongs to the
wild man.”
They sent messengers to the wild man to ask for her hand, and he
responded, “I’ll do as you like, and if she accepts the prince’s offer, I’ll give
my consent.”
He called the maiden and talked with her. Indeed, the maiden listened to
the request, pretending that she didn’t want to leave the wild man, but inside
she felt that she had been in the grip of the wild man for a hundred years and
wanted to get away. Enough said. She gave her consent, and the wedding date
was set. Then the wild man said to the maiden: “Listen to me. The day before
you are to marry, you’re to kill me. Then you must invite three kings, and the
first one will be your father. Then tell your servants that they are to pass out
salt and water to everyone except your father.”
So, they did as he said and sent the invitations to the three monarchs.
Now let’s turn to the father of the maiden. The more time passed, the more
he was tormented by the thought of his daughter’s death. He was sick with
grief. When he received the invitation to the wedding, he said, “How can I
possibly go there when all I think about is my daughter.”
Although he didn’t want to go, he also thought:
“If I offend that king because I don’t go, he may declare war against me
some time.”
So he picked himself up and went.
The day before the wedding, the prince and princess killed the wild man
and quartered him. Then they put each part in four different rooms, and they
spread his blood in all the rooms and on the stairs (because the turkey told
them to do this). Wherever there was flesh and blood, it turned into gold and
precious stones. When the three kings arrived and saw the stairs completely
made of gold, they didn’t dare put their feet on them.
“Never mind,” the prince said. “Climb the stairs. There’s nothing to fear.”
That evening the prince and princess were married. The next day they sat
down at the table to eat, and the prince told the servants, “Salt and water, but
nothing for that king.”
They began to eat, and the princess sat next to her father, but her father
didn’t eat.
“Your majesty,” she said, “why aren’t you eating? Perhaps the food isn’t
good?”
“On the contrary! It’s really good!”
“Well then, why aren’t you eating?”
“It’s that I don’t feel very well.”
78 Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè

The husband and wife passed some pieces of meat to him. The king did not
want any and chewed his food like a goat (as if he could eat it without salt).
When they finished eating, they all began to tell stories. The king, sick as he
was, told the entire story about his daughter.
“Your majesty,” his daughter remarked, “if you happened to see her again,
would you recognize your daughter?”
“Oh, my God! I only remember her from the last time I saw her.”
The princess got up and went to put on the clothes that she had worn when
her father had sent her to her death.
“Well now, your majesty, do you recognize your daughter? You wanted me
killed because I had said that I love you as much as salt and water. Now you’ve
seen what it means to eat without salt and water.”
Her father could not manage to open his mouth. He threw himself at her,
embraced her, and asked for her pardon.
Well, they remained happy and content
While we still sit here without a cent.
Told by Elisabetta Sanfratello at Vallelunga.

11. M Y T H R E E B E A U T I F U L C R O W N S

O
nce upon a time there was a washerwoman who had a daughter, and
one day this woman went to deliver the laundry. When she returned
home, she caught a cold. So, before she went to bed, she took some
bread and a bottle of oil and gave them to her daughter.
“My daughter,” she said, “I’m going to the hospital. Here’s some bread and
oil to eat.”
She locked the door behind her and stuck the key into her pocket. At the
hospital her fever rose. So she took confession, and during the confession she
gave the key to her house to the priest.
“Father,” she said, “I have a daughter at home, and I’m feeling miserable
that I must leave her abandoned in the middle of the road of life.”
“My dear woman, don’t worry. I’ll look after your daughter. I’ll take her to
my home, and she’ll be raised by my mother and sister.”
After the woman died, the priest thought of everything, but unfortunately
he forgot to go and open the door for the girl. Saturday came, and while the
priest’s mother was emptying his pockets to wash his pants, she saw the key.
“My son,” she said, “whose key is this?”