CV. * UNCLE CAPRIANO. (Sicilian, Pitre, No. 157, _Lu Zu Crapianu_) 303

CVI. * _Peter Fullone and the Egg._ (Sicilian, Pitre, No. 200,
_Petru Fudduni e l' ovu_) 381

CVII. THE CLEVER PEASANT. (Sicilian, Gonzenbach, No.
50, _Vom Klugen Bauer_) 309

CVIII. THE CLEVER GIRL. (Tuscan, Comparetti, No. 43,
_La Ragazza astuta_) 311

CIX. CRAB. (Mantuan, Visentini, No. 41, _Gambara)_ 314

ITALIAN POPULAR TALES

CHAPTER I.

FAIRY TALES.

The most wide-spread and interesting class of Fairy Tales is the one in
which a wife endeavors to behold the face of her husband, who comes to
her only at night. She succeeds, but her husband disappears, and she is
not reunited to him until she has expiated her indiscretion by weary
journeys and the performance of difficult tasks. This class, which is
evidently the popular form of the classic myth of Cupid and Psyche, may
for convenience be divided into four classes. The first turns on the
punishment of the wife's curiosity; the second, on the husband's
(Melusina); in the third the heroine is married to a monster, is
separated from him by her disobedience, but finally is the means of his
recovering his human form; the fourth class is a variant of the first
and third, the husband being an animal in form, and parted from his wife
by the curiosity or disobedience of the latter or of her envious
sisters.

To illustrate the first class, we select, from the large number of
stories before us, a Sicilian tale (Pitre, No. 18) entitled:

I. THE KING OF LOVE.

Once upon a time there was a man with three daughters, who earned his
living by gathering wild herbs. One day he took his youngest daughter
with him. They came to a garden, and began to gather vegetables. The
daughter saw a fine radish, and began to pull it up, when suddenly a
Turk appeared, and said: "Why have you opened my master's door? You
must come in now, and he will decide on your punishment."

They went down into the ground, more dead than alive; and when they were
seated they saw a green bird come in and bathe in a pan of milk, then
dry itself, and become a handsome youth. He said to the Turk: "What do
these persons want?" "Your worship, they pulled up a radish, and opened
the door of the cave." "How did we know," said the father, "that this