r and Perrault took their stories from Straparola and the
_Pentamerone_, there is little doubt that the French translation of the
former, which was very popular (Jannet mentions fourteen editions
between 1560 and 1726) awakened an interest in this class of stories,
and was thus the origin of that copious French fairy literature, which,
besides the names mentioned above, includes such well-known writers as
Mde. D'Aulnoy, the Countess Murat, Mlle. De La Force, and Count Caylus,
all of whom drew on their Italian prototypes more or less.[9]

Popular as were the two collections above mentioned they produced but
one imitation, _La Posillecheata_, a collection of five stories in the
Neapolitan dialect and in the style of the _Pentamerone_, by Pompeo
Sarnelli, Bishop of Bisceglie, whose anagram is Masillo Reppone. The
first edition appeared at Naples in 1684, and it has been republished
twice since then at the same place. The work is exceedingly coarse, and
has fallen into well-deserved oblivion.[10]

Nearly two centuries elapsed before another collection of Italian tales
made its appearance. The interest that the brothers Grimm aroused in
Germany for the collection and preservation of popular traditions did
not, for obvious reasons, extend to Italy. A people must first have a
consciousness of its own nationality before it can take sufficient
interest in its _popular_ literature to inspire even its scholars to
collect its traditions for the sake of science, to say nothing of
collections for entertainment. In 1860, Temistocle Gradi, of Siena,
published in his _Vigilia di Pasqua di Ceppo_, eight, and in his _Saggio
di Letterature varie_, 1865, four popular tales, as related in Siena.
These were collected without any other aim than that of entertainment,
but are valuable for purposes of comparison. No attempt at a scientific
collection of tales was made until 1869, when Professor De Gubernatis
published the _Novelline di Santo Stefano_, containing thirty-five
stories, preceded by an introduction on the relationship of the myth to
the popular tale. This was the forerunner of numerous collections from
the various provinces of Italy, which will be found noted in the
Bibliography. The attention of strangers was early directed to Italian
tales, and the earliest scientific collection was the work of two
Germans, Georg Widter and Adam Wolf, who published a translation of
twenty-one Venetian tales in the _Jahrbuch fuer romanische und engl