1 Concerning the ancient tradition of the scorned wife, Angelo de Gubernatis goes back to the story of Anapu e Bitiu as well as to Joseph and Potiphar’s wife and to theories of their origins in seasonal or cult myths in Storia delle novelline popolari (Milan: Ulrico Höpli, 1883), pp. 58–60. The story is told in the names of Anapou (Anubis) and Satou in the introduction to Sindibad, by W.A. Clouston ([Glasgow]: Privately Printed for Subscribers, 1884), pp. xxiv–xxvi. Two brothers work the fields. The elder sends the younger to his wife to ask for seed and she offers more. When the lad refuses her advances, she accuses him by staging a rape scene. The cows warn Satou that his brother awaits him in the barn to kill him and he flees, invoking the aid of the Sun-god Re. Crocodiles intervene, but Satou mutilates himself to prove his innocence and leaves his brother’s company. The version best known to all readers of Eastern literature is that which forms the framing tales of the Historia septem sapientum, The History of the Seven Sages, Dolopathos, and the History of the Forty Vezirs or the Story of the Forty Morns and Eves, each one a variation on the tale of the wise young prince under a vow of silence and thus unable to protect himself against the false accusations of his stepmother, who, when he rejects her advances, accuses him of that which he refuses to do. Deemed guilty by his silence, his death at the hand of his own father is delayed only by the strategic storytelling of the various sages and viziers who trust in his innocence. For further perspective on the scorned queen and her revenge, see N.M. Penzer’s annotations to the Ocean of the Streams of Story (Kathā sarit sāgara), trans. C.H. Tawney, 10 vols. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1923), vol. II, pp. 120–4.

2 Both are invoked here because while Straparola opts for a satyr, his nearest literary antecedents present Merlin in the guise of the wild man. The satyr in literature merits monographic treatment because the half-human creature of ancient Greco-Roman mythology passed into Christian mythology as a form of demon or devil. The satyr at one point was treated as a pre-Adamic creature, to be associated with the ‘sons’ who later begot monstrous offspring in the manner of incubi upon the daughters of men. They lived in desert or forest areas, in the manner of Pan and his troops, as wild creatures impossible to catch, but subject to human appetites. All this is reflected in Costanza’s tactics for capturing one. At the same time, satyrs were thought to host the transmigrated souls of men, according to Pythagoras, so that while as beasts they were stubborn, enigmatic, secretive, and bent upon preserving their savage liberty, yet as enlightened spirits they were associated with soothsayers and seers. Moreover, although reluctant in its use, they are graced with the powers of speech. The creature is employed in the present tale as a prophet and soothsayer, an agent in a family intrigue, who is motivated, like Shakespeare’s Ariel, by the promise of liberty. The Renaissance took an interest in such beings from a scientific perspective as hybridized monsters, so that it was only in the folk tale that they were kept alive as mythological beings. Hédelin d’Aubignac considered them to be entirely bestial, having no human part, but the satyr was studied by Pico della Mirandola and Paracelsus as proto-humans, thereby maintaining the debate over pre-Adamic creatures. Meanwhile, humanists kept alive the legacy of Pausanias, Pliny, and Plutarch, while Saint Jerome, in ‘The Life of Saint Paul,’ the first hermit (ca. 377), talked of Saint Anthony and the satyr demons. Hédelin d’Aubignac, Des Satyres brutes, monstres et démons, ed. Gilles Banderier (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2003); Les vies de saints pères des déserts, trans. Arnaud d’Andilly (Paris: Louis Josse, 1701), vol. I, p. 78; Jean Miniac, Vivre au désert (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1992), pp. 31–2. When Straparola wrote the tale, satyrs were still in the news. The story of the mortal who captures a woodland creature by tricking it with food and wine and then releases it when it has revealed secrets has its origins in antiquity. The capture of Silenus by the shepherds of King Midas, who induced the creature to tell secrets about the universe, is recorded by Aelian (Claudius Aelianus) in [Various Histories], Books I–V, trans. Alwyn Faber Scholfield (London: Heinemann, 1959), bk. III, sect. 18.

3 Stith Thompson refers to this story type in generic terms as Type 514, in which a maiden in male disguise goes off to the wars or is involved in a seduction plot that leads to dangerous expeditions or to accusations forcing her to disrobe to prove her innocence. The Folktale (1946; reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 55. My own analysis of the story’s parts breaks away from assigning the story to the ‘Corvetto’ type, ATU 328, which comes together more persuasively in Basile’s Pentamerone, IV.1, in which a youth at court, disliked, is betrayed into performing impossible or life-threatening tasks with the help of a wild horse, or the advice of a wild man, thereby enabling him to return with the keys to an ogre’s castle and so regain his credit. ‘Costanza’ takes over parts of this story, but its principle aspects are more clearly seen in ‘Guerrino,’ V.1, and ‘Livoretto,’ III.2.

4 Faouzia Demnati studies these stories in relation to their exotic African and Near Eastern settings as a retrospective on the rich, exotic, and marvelous cities of the Crusader era. ‘Costanza, the Girl-Knight’ involves a traveller who encounters the oriental city as a place of civilization, luxury, and leisure, pitched to a readership on the eve of the Counter-Reformation. These are intriguing perspectives, perhaps exceeding Straparola’s intentions, but a reminder that such stories do encourage the imagination to wander, as in the romance settings of a great deal of Renaissance fiction. L’altérité orientalo-mauresque dans la culture du quotidian en Italie à l’époque de la Renaissance (Manouba, Tunisia: Publications de la faculté des lettres, 2000), p. 395.

5 It would be supererogation here to elaborate on the many tales both literary and folkloric that feature girls disguised as boys in order to circulate freely in a predatory world while preserving their chastity. On this topic, see Shahrukh Husain, Handsome Heroines: Women as Men in Folklore (New York: Doubleday, 1995).

6 For an extensive study of the tradition of sex changes in fiction in relation to ‘La doncella guerrera’ or the young female warrior, see the commentary by Aurelio M. Espinosa for story no. 155, ‘El oricuerno,’ which combines the romance stories of the female knight with stories of remarkable sex changes in his Cuentos populares españoles (Madrid: S. Aguirre, 1947), vol. III, pp. 97–107.

7 Ed. Donald Beecher (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, and Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1992), p. 199. Just as the spurned and vengeful queen may be said to belong to the Phaedra prototype, who, as the wife of King Theseus, fell in love with her stepson Hippolytus, accused him of attempted rape, and allowed him to be executed by the king, so the girl falsely accused of attempted rape may be said to belong to the Saint Eugenia prototype, for she, the daughter of a duke, joined a monastic community in the habit of a man and in time became abbot. When accused of rape before a judge (who was her own father), rather than allow herself to be executed, she tore open her robes to prove herself a woman and thereby expose the calumny of her accuser. Her story is to be found in The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine and there is a fine carving of the breast-bearing scene on a capital along the north aisle of Vézelay Abbey (Basilique Ste-Madeleine). As for stories featuring the narrative motor provided by a scorned and despotic woman who accuses a male of attempted rape, the count might run very high; Boccaccio’s story of ‘The Count of Antwerp’ (II.8) comes immediately to mind. The Decameron, trans. J.M. Rigg, 2 vols. (London: The Navarre Society, n.d.), vol. I, pp. 137–51.

8 Somadeva, Kathā sarit sāgara (Ocean of the streams of stories), trans. C.H. Tawney, 2 vols. (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1880; reprint, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992), vol. I, pp. 24–5. One of the earliest students of this story tradition was Felix Liebrecht, in the first volume of Orient und Occident (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1929), p. 341. The best known of the Arabian versions is found in the framing tale of The Arabian Nights, ed. J.C. Mardrus and E.P. Mathers (London: Routledge, 1964), vol. I. When Shah Zaman remains behind in his brother’s (King Shahryar’s) palace while the king is out hunting, he witnesses the queen’s twenty slave girls, ten of whom turn out to be men, engage in an orgy while the queen herself enjoys the services of a hideous blackamoor who drops down from a tree in the courtyard. This spectacle is therapy for Zaman, who was melancholy over the infidelity and execution of his own wife, for he might now conclude that the vice is common to women and the way of the world. His sudden return to health intrigues the king, who forces an explanation. The two kings set off wandering, and from their vantage in a tree they see a Jinni with a girl locked away in a box who, when the Jinni falls asleep, demands and receives sexual gratification from the two men, bidden down from the tree and threatened unless they comply – all to spite the Ifrit who had taken such pains to keep her services exclusive. Disabused of all illusions concerning the sex, they return, and King Shahryar not only slays his queen, but sets about the routine execution of all the girls in the harem after deflowering them one by one. This version preserves the cross-dressed men hidden in the queen’s entourage, but does not have the animal confessor, or the mocking laugh that arouses the curiosity that springs the denouement.

9 The motif of the laughing creature or deity in response to facts and events to which others are blind or misinformed is a motif that appears in Indian fairy tales down to the nineteenth century. One such is ‘The Fakir Ninaksa Saves the Merchant’s Life,’ collected by Maive Stokes. The fakir understood the irony in situations particularly involving animals that contain the souls of humans. Indian Fairy Tales, annotations by Mary Stokes (London: Ellis & White, 1880), pp. 114–18. It also occurs in the Folktales of Kashmir, ed. James Hinton Knowles (London: Trübner, 1888), pp. 484ff. Egyptian versions of the story of considerable antiquity may be found among the Egyptian Tales Translated from the Papyri by William Matthew Flinders-Petrie (London: Methuen, 1895), vol. II, pp. 107–18, 129–30.

10 Die Çukasaptati, trans. Richard Schmidt (Kiel: Brockhaus, 1893), pp. 11–23. Suka saptati of Gangādhar Sarangi (Kataka: Ke Malika, 1968), known in English as ‘The Queen and the Laughing Fish,’ in The Enchanted Parrot, trans. B. Hale Wortham (London: Luzac, 1911), no. 5, pp. 27–32. A related version is recorded by James Hinton Knowles in Folk-tales of Kashmir (London: Trübner, 1888), pp. 484–90. This work was reissued by Arno Press, New York, in 1977.

11 The motif of the boys disguised as girls in the queen’s entourage made its way to the West in the form it was given in the Kātha Sarit Sāgara of Somadeva (it was not included in the Tooti Nameh or the originating Çukasaptati).

12 Yosef ben Me'ir ibn Zabara, Sepher Shaashuim: A Book of Medieval Lore, ed. Israel Davidson (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1914); The Book of Delight, ed. Merriam Sherwood, trans. Moses Hadas (New York: Columbia University Press [1932], 1960), chap. 3, pp. 75–6. A wise young girl, pleasing to the king’s sight, offers to interpret his troubling dream. Having heard it, she is ‘abashed’ to tell him the truth, but tells him finally to search among his wives and maidservants where he would find a man in women’s clothes – he who is the ape of the dream ‘leaping on the necks of your women.’ Vengeance follows: the king first butchers the man in the presence his womenfolk, then slays them all to the last one and marries the maiden. See also the 233rd story of Jacques de Vitry in The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares, ed. Thomas Frederick Crane (London: David Nutt, 1890), pp. 229–30. In this version, a demon named Guinehochet tells a man that he has only one son, not two, for the other is the priest’s. The man demands to know which is the false son and the demon refuses, saying that he has to nourish both or neither. The parallel with the satyr’s behaviour in the present story is clear. Just how the motif travelled and developed is work for others, but sources to consider, according to Thomas Crane, include Brit. Lib. MS. Harleian 463, folio 19, included in Thomas Wright’s A Selection of Latin Stories from Manuscripts of the 13th and 14th Centuries (London: T. Richards, 1842), as no. 15, and another, no. 44 (p. 43) in that same work from MS. Arundel no. 52, folio 114. See also Theobaldus Anguibertus, Mensa philosophica (Cologne: Zyryckzee, 1508), p. 241.

13 Lucy Allen Paton, ‘The Story of Grisandole: A Study in the Legend of Merlin,’ PMLA 22, no. 2 (1907), p. 248: ‘It is evident also that X is not a reworking of Grisandole, but that the latter must be a redaction of X, from which its important variations occur in those parts where Grisandole’s career touches Merlin’s.’ Friedrich Wilhelm Valentin Schmidt, ‘Die Prinzessin als Ritter,’ in Die Märchen des Straparola, vol. I, of Sammlung alter Märchen (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1817), p. 335: ‘Diese romantische Erzählung hat Strap. entlehnt aus dem Roman von Merlin’ (This romance tale Strap. borrowed from the Tale of Merlin).

14 According to John Matthews, Merlin the wild man is inspired by the semi-mythical madman Lailoken who lived in the lowlands of Scotland. Both are noted for their prophetic laughter in series of three. Merlin laughs at the wife of King Rhydderch with the leaf in her hair, at the beggar who is sitting over a pot of gold, and the youth who purchases shoes on the day he is destined to die. According to this account, Queen Ganeida is Merlin’s sister who tests his sanity, not the unfaithful queen. Behind all these practices he sees the initiation rites of the shaman. King Arthur: Dark Age Warrior and Mythic Hero (New York: Random House, Gramercy, 2004), p. 47. See also J.S.P. Tatlock, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini,’ Speculum: A Journal of Mediæval Studies 18, no. 3 (July 1943), pp. 265–87. This article deals with the causes behind his retreat to the Caledonian woods, his madness, his life among the beasts, as well as his powers of divination in dealing with his sister Ganeida’s adultery, and his subsequent prophesies. Tatlock traced the detection of adultery by a leaf in the hair to the Celtic legend of Lailoken, dating to AD 603, but the enigmatic laughter is Oriental.

15 For more on the Merlin tradition, see Christopher Dean, A Study of Merlin in English Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present Day: The Devil’s Son (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992).

16 Robert de Boron is credited with incorporating the tales of Merlin the prophet introduced by Geoffrey of Monmouth into the order of romance. Geoffrey (by 1136) had already elaborated upon the war-mad northern bard attached to the court of Arthur, said to have fled civilization to live in the woods in the sixth century, by making him a prophet in the Romano-British era of Ambrosius Aurelianus. That would have encouraged his further displacement into the age of Julius Caesar to whom, in the story of Grisandole, he presents himself in the form of a stag. Only a few lines of Robert de Boron’s original verse romance survive (ca. 1190), but his work was preserved in the prose Estoire de Merlin (mid-thirteenth century), which in turn nourished the post-vulgate versions, the Suite de Merlin, and the English prose romance Merlin. This latter was edited by Henry Wheatley for the Early English Text Society, Orig. series 10, containing the complete prose Vulgate Merlin, chapters 1–6 of which cover Robert de Boron’s Merlin. Merlin or the Early History of King Arthur: A Prose Romance (about 1450–1460 AD) from the unique MS. in the University Library, Cambridge V=112, ed. Henry Wheatley and William Mead (London: Trübner, 1899). The story also appears in Le Livre d’Artus, ed. H. Oskar Sommer (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1908–16). The earliest surviving French romance on Merlin has been frequently published, including the edition entitled Merlin: roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, publié avec la mise en prose de poems de Merlin de Robert de Boron, ed. Jacob Ulrich and Gaston Paris (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1886). There are variations in the details among these several editions, including interpretations of the various circumstances encountered by the wild man on his return to Caesar’s court. The present résumé reflects the version in Le roman de Merlin l’Enchanteur, traduit en français moderne (Paris: Henri de Briel, Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1971).

17 [M. Scotus], Mensa philosophica, ed Erwin Rauner and Burghart Wachinger (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1995), p. 133. It was originally published in Antwerp in 1487.

18 The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques De Vitry, ed. Thomas Frederick Crane (London: David Nutt, 1890), p. 133. A version occurs in which the man claims to have four sons, to which the devil replies that he has only two. He is likewise told that he cannot know which: ‘non faciam, tu omnes nutrias. Et non ausus fuit aliquem expellere, quia timebat expellere suos.’ Neue Beiträge zur Erzählungsliteratur des Mittelalters (Die ‘Compilatio singularis exemplorum’ der Hs. Tours 468), ed. Alfons Hilka (Breslau: Grass, Barth & Co., 1913), p. 73.

19 It is not clear how this parallel material from the lore of King Solomon is to be incorporated into the formation of the oral or literary tales of laughing outsiders who thereby provoke devastating revelations. Wine was used to lure Asmodeus into captivity, from whom King Solomon sought information. He too, in being led into the presence of the king, laughs enigmatically on three occasions, thereby setting up prophetic revelations. Presumably the Talmudic writers took up the folk materials to their own ends, much as the Merlin writers had done. The story of Asmodeus would appear to have no direct bearing on the formation of Straparola’s source. See Lucy Allen Paton, ‘The Story of Grisandole: A Study in the Legend of Merlin,’ PMLA 22, no. 2 (1907), p. 247.

20 Robert de Boron, I due primi libri della istoria di Merlino ristampati secondo la rarissima edizione de 1480 (Bologna: R. Romagnoli, 1884). One of the intriguing details regarding the transmission of episodes and features among the many literary sources is that in the English Merlin, the wild man, as in Straparola, laughs while passing a funeral, followed by the same explanation that the man weeping is not the real father, but rather the priest who is reading the service. ‘Introduction,’ Roman de Merlin, pp. 44–6. In some fashion, this version of the tale had come to the author of ‘Costanza.’ There are many early references to Merlin in Italian literature that do not include the prophecy by laughter episodes, for which see Donald L. Hoffman, ‘Merlin in Italian Literature,’ Merlin: A Casebook, ed. P.H. Goodrich and R.H. Thompson (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 186–96.

21 Novella [Piacevole] del Fortunato, ed. Giovanni Papanti (Livorno: Francesco Vigo, 1869).

22 For Giovanni Sercambi’s ‘De magna prudentia,’ see his Novelle, ed. Rodolfo Renier (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1889), pp. 22ff. The story is in direct line from the Eastern tales, without the laughing fish, but with the king’s enigmatic dream calling for interpretation by his wise men, ultimately revealing the queen’s lover disguised as a maiden. This tale, missing so many of the narrative add-ons, is an unlikely source for Straparola, who had the shape of his narrative available to him in the ‘home’ format of the folk tale tradition more fully represented by the Novella del Fortunato. Also see Giovanni Sercambi, Novelle, ed. Giovanni Sinicropi, 2 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1972), no. 5, vol. I, pp. 26–36.

23 The Pentamerone, trans. Richard Burton (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927), IV.6, pp. 329–38. From Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille, 5 vols. (Naples: Ottavio Beltrono, 1634), IV.6.

24 The English translation was published in (London: J. & R. Tonson, 1759) from the French Les mille et un quart-d’heure (Utrecht: Etienne Neaulme [1715], 1737). See Contes, 3 vols., ed. Jean-François Perrin (Paris: Champion, 2010), vol. I, pp. 394–9.

25 Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, ‘Belle-Belle, or, The Chevalier Fortuné,’ in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, trans. Jack Zipes (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), pp. 174–205, from ‘Belle-Belle, ou le Chevalier Fortuné,’ in Contes nouveaux ou les fées à la mode, 2 vols. (Paris: Veuve de Théodore Girard, 1698), vol. II, in ‘Le nouveau gentilhomme bourgeois’ series; Contes II, Contes nouveaux ou les fées à la mode, ed. Philippe Hourcade and Jacques Barchilon (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1998), pp. 215–69. This story also had its imitators, as in the story of Fortuné included in Tabart’s Collection of Popular Stories for the Nursery (London: Tabart & Co., 1809), vol. II, pp. 148ff. Still to be investigated is the relationship between the story of the French author and the Novello del Fortunato (Leghorn: F. Vigo, 1869).

26 ‘The Savage,’ in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, trans. Jack Zipes (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), pp. 205–19. Taken from Henriette Julie de Castelnau de Murat, Histoires sublimes et allégoriques (Paris: Florentin & Pierre Delaulne, 1699), ‘Le sauvage.’ Further work for specialists is the relationship between this tale and the Comtesse d’Aulnoy’s, but it would appear that Julie de Murat knew the work of her predecessor and advanced her own imaginative interpretations accordingly.

27 ‘Zafarana,’ in Sicilianische Märchen, 2 vols. (Leipzig: W. Englemann, 1870), no. 9, vol. I, pp. 47–53.

28 Le piu’ belle fiabe abruzzesi (Cerchio: Adelmo Polla, 1990), no. 23; ‘Il satiro,’ in Usi e costume abruzzesi, Fiabe, ed. Antonio de Nino (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1883), no. 23, vol. III, pp. 133–6. In this tale a young girl in love, lacking her family’s approbation of her choice, decides to elope. The night is dark, however, and she leaves with a trickster impostor. They arrive at an island belonging to her father where there is treasure. Once the would-be thief is off the boat, she turns navigator and flees, cutting her hair and changing her clothes in order to take service as a boy in a royal palace. Then the Costanza events begin. Accused by the envious of boasting about her satyr-management skills, she is sent on a mission to bring the creature in. Her means are familiar: tempting the creature with food while she hides in a tree above with a rope. This ‘Costanza’ has no horse to help her. Once in the noose the beast-man begins to laugh and does so repeatedly on the way back to the palace. The creature refuses to speak for several days, chided repeatedly for its enigmatic laughter. Under force, he confesses the now familiar truths: that the heroine is a girl, that the priest was baptizing his own son, that beggars were sitting on a treasure, and that the damsels surrounding the king’s daughter were all men. Once the indecencies are dealt with, the king is free to marry the girl to the prince and give her the hidden treasure as a dowry. The queen’s illicit suitors are passed to the daughter and other minor adjustments are in evidence, but the fundamental story is remarkably intact, reflecting a stable narrative group going back to times before Straparola.

29 Tradizioni popolari abruzzesi, 2 vols. (Lanciano: R. Carabba, 1882–6), no. 5.

30 In the Novelline popolari italiane (Rome: Forni, 1875) is to be found the story of ‘Frederica,’ no. 36, pp. 146–51, in which a lusty queen is turned down by her valet, a girl in disguise (Frederica as Frederico) on the run from a former false accusation against her for infidelity. Reported to the king for attempted rape, she is on the run a second time and must assume several different disguises which, in the final scene, she reassumes to demonstrate her former roles, saving till the last her true identity as a girl. This is a clever amalgamation of several stories at once, including the Roman de la Violette, because a violet birthmark is removed from her breast to prove her infidelity by a jealous merchant early in the tale.

31 Volkslieder aus Venetien (Vienna, 1864), no. 79, which includes further notes on maidens in disguise as knights who fight at foreign courts while struggling but ultimately failing to keep their true sex undisclosed.

32 Sessanta novelle popolari montalesi, ed. Roberto Fedi (Milan: Rizzoli, 1977), no. 29, pp. 254–66.

33 Contes populaires de la Basse-Bretagne (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1881), re-edited and published in 3 volumes as Contes populaires de Basse-Bretagne (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1996), vol. II, pp. 314–40.

34 Cuentos populares españoles (Madrid, 1946–7), vol. III, pp. 57–66. The generic name for the story type in Spain is ‘La abijada de San Pedro’ (The goddaughter of Saint Peter), for the girl disguised as a boy and serving in a foreign court where she is accused of attempted rape and sent on quests is delivered by her godfather, whether St. Peter or St. Anthony, in the place of Merlin or a satyr. Many elements of the Livoretto story type figure prominently, such as the animal helpers and the three tasks: sorting grain, finding a ring at the bottom of the sea, or returning a lost son or daughter to the king. In some versions there is a gallows scene and the girl’s last-minute rescue. Espinosa links these stories to the Castillan romances featuring ‘la niña guerrero,’ the girl warrior, in turn connected to the many heroines on the Spanish stage who travel in boy’s disguises to pursue their love interests. The story can be found in Cuentos extremeños, ed. Marcel Curiel Merchán (Madrid: Instituto Antonio de Nebrija, 1944), pp. 225–9, and in Joan Timoneda, El Patrañuelo, ed. Rafael Ferreres (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1971), no. 20.

35 Friedmund von Arnim, Hundert neue Märchen im Gebirge gesammelt (Charlottenburg: E. Bauer, 1844); ‘Iron Hans,’ in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, trans. Jack Zipes (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), pp. 326–9. Other scholars in the German tradition who have collected and commented on versions of this story include Johannes Bolte and Jiří Polívka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1937), vol. IV, pp. 85–6.

36 Henry Carnoy, ‘L’homme de fer,’ in Collection de contes et de chansons populaires (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1885), vol. VIII, pp. 43–50.

37 ‘La fille changée en garçon’ (The girl changed into a boy), in Contes albanais (Paris: Leroux, 1881), no. 14, pp. 109–20.

38 A history of entries by coffer and chest, as practised by determined lovers, could be extended to considerable proportions. It was simply a realistic solution of the times, one that Straparola adopted among alternative choices for his novella-like creations, given the coffer’s place in the Renaissance household and the availability of porters in the streets. For a brief history, apart from the many stories in the Piacevoli notti itself employing this device, there are examples to be found in Boccaccio’s Decameron II.9 and IV.10 (which has features in common with the present story), in Giraldi Cinzio’s Ecatommiti III.10, and in Cardinal Bibbiena’s carnival play La Calandria. See Renaissance Comedy: The Italian Masters, vol. II, ed. Donald Beecher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 23–100. In Cinthio’s story II.10 of the Hecatommithi, a lover is smuggled into the lady’s chamber in a chest through the help of the lady’s maid, Liscia. Later, she arranges to have the chest called for, but the lover is caught, at which point the husband plans to revenge himself with the intruder’s wife, and the story moves in the direction of Straparola’s VI.1. One of the finest among them is in the fifth novella of Barnabe Riche’s Farewell to Military Profession, ed. Donald Beecher, ‘Of Two Brethren and Their Wives’ (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, and Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1992), in which Dorothy has one unwanted lover stuffed in a coffer, a second unwanted lover called in as a porter to carry ‘her’ away, and a third lover, her preferred soldier, sent after to bastinado them both, after the ‘porter’ offers to go shares with the ‘woman’ in the coffer. Another of memorable design is the Discours tres facetieux et veritable d’un ministre de Cleyrat en Agenoit, lesquel etant amoureux de la femme d’un notaire fut enfermé dans un coffre & vendu a l’anquant a la place dudit Cleyrat (Toulouse: Par la veuve Colomier, 1613), pp. 3–10. A translation of the title tells all: ‘The very delightful and true story of a minister of Cleyrat in the Agen region who, for being in love with the wife of the notary, was closed into a coffer and sold at auction in the central square of said city.’ The husband had seen the loving glances at a dinner party and was pleased when his wife confessed everything to him, asking for his advice. He recommended the rendezvous and the trick, and his wife played her part perfectly, even pretending to have lost the key once the coffer was sold at auction. We hear all about his sleepless night before the morning meeting and the husband’s staged return after a hug and kiss and an exchange of a significant sum of money. He was blackmailed for even more at the end and made to endure public humiliation.

39 Giovanni Sercambi, Novelle (Bari: Laterza & Figli, 1972), no. 29, vol. I, pp. 132–9.

40 The Seven Sages of Rome, French Version A (MS. Paris, BN f.fr. 2137, folios 38b–42c), ed. Hans R. Runte, SSFrATrans.html. This story appeared in the West – the earliest version is the French K MS. – no later than 1150 and no earlier than the tenth century. The intermediary sources are not known, but it is clearly related to The Book of Sindibad (Sendebar), ed. W.A. Clouston (Privately Printed, 1884), pp. 178–81, and before that to such works as the Persian Tooti Nameh. See also A. Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Essai sur les fables indiennes et sur leur introduction en Europe (Paris: Techener, 1838), pp. 159–61, on the origins of the story in the Book of Sendebar. There is a variant in the Arabic version of the Seven Vezirs in which a jealous merchant shuts up his wife in their house. There she is seen by the sultan’s son, but he can find no way to reach her. He communicates by shooting arrows with messages, and finally shoots a key to a chest. An associate then negotiates with the merchant to store a chest of precious goods for him and in this way the prince enjoys seven days of bliss with the lady. When the sultan asks for his son, the vizier requests the chest, but the lid comes open and everything is revealed. Fearful of revenging himself against the prince, the merchant can do no more than divorce his wife and vow never again to marry. Tales, Anecdotes and Letters Translated from the Arabic and Persian, trans. Jonathan Scott (Shrewsbury: J. & W. Eddowes for T. Cadell & W. Davies, London, 1800), pp. 131ff.

41 Edition from the Auchinleck MS. by Walter Scott (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1804), pp. 123–6. In the French metrical romance of Tristram l’amoureux, Tristram asks Ysolt if she remembers the trial she had undergone for his sake, how he had embraced her in coming out of the boat before so many witnesses, and how she had been acquitted before all the court, p. 221. The tale was known in Germany in the fourteenth century, as the Meisterlieder der Kolmarer Handschrift, ed. Karl Bartsch (Stuttgart: Litterarischen Vereins, 1862), pp. 338, 604; new ed. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1962).

42 Otia imperialia, ed. S.E. Banks and J.W. Binns (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002); De naturis rerum (ca. 1180), ed. Thomas Wright (1863; reprint, Nendeln: Kraus Reprints, 1967). John Webster Spargo, in Virgil the Necromancer, Studies in Virgilian Legend (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), advances the theory that the English scholar Neckham, at the end of the twelfth century, was responsible for launching the legends of Virgilian magic in the late medieval world. In dividing sources between the Tristan group and the Virgilian group, a place is denied to a version which is, nevertheless, important to the formation of the story type. In the middle of the twelfth century appeared Die Kaiserchronik (ll. 10688–10819), which tells the story in the name of Julian the Apostate and the widow, a story that seems to have had a Syrian origin. The widow had entrusted Julian with her wealth to keep it secure. When he refused to return it, she had him tested by oath before the image of Mercury in the Tiber. When Julian placed his hand in the statue’s mouth, it bit his hand and held him fast until the treasure was returned.

43 Early Prose Romances (London: George Routledge, 1889), pp. 19–20.

44 Giuseppe Rua, Novelle del ‘Mambriano’ del Cieco da Ferrara (Torino: Ermanno Loescher, 1888), p. 80.

45 This work was printed by John Doesborcke in Antwerp early in the sixteenth century and appears in Early Prose Romances, ed. Henry Morley (London: George Routledge, 1889), pp. 209–36. The story of the metal serpent is on pp. 232–3.

46 For further information on the growth and diffusion of the myth of Virgil and the cycle tales, see Domenico Comparetti, Virgilio nel Medio Evo (Leghorn: Francesco Vigo, 1872); Virgil in the Middle Ages, trans. E.F.M. Benecke (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

47 During the seventeenth century there remained a high degree of curiosity concerning wonders and rarities, including such ‘wondrous machines’ as the serpent of truth. Two writers who report on adultery detection by such devices include Giovanni Felice Astolfi in Cento avenimenti meravigliosi, stupendi e rari (Venice: Turrini, 1660), Deca I, 3, ‘Una donna rea è costretta dal marito a porre il braccio in una fonte, e ne è scorticata’ (Of the woman forced by her husband to place her arm in a fountain, by which it was badly scorched). In the Life of St. Gandolf, a dissolute woman is told to bring up a stone from the bottom of a fountain and if she is guilty of adultery the water will take the skin from her arm. ‘Sé ci sìa alcun rimedio per iscuoprire le mogli adultere’ (Whether there are any means by which an adulterous wife may be discovered), in Scipio Glariano [Angelico Aprosio] (Naples: Novello de Bonis, 1668), Grillo 22.

48 The tradition remains in Rome to the present day that the stone mounted in the vestibule of the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin called the ‘Bocca della Verità’ is invested with the Virgilian magic whereby it will determine the truthful (faithful) from the dishonest in biting off the hand of the unfaithful. No doubt the portrait of a river god originally sculpted for a fountain, this stone, since the Middle Ages, has epitomized the belief in such probative instruments. Conceivably, this very stone may have been associated with the Virgilian phenomenon from early times, for it is to Rome that the Lombard couple must go to test the woman’s honour. A statue by Jules Blanchard of a young female nude placing her hand in the ‘Bocca’ can be seen in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. The motif has also been kept alive in film and fiction, and particularly in the 1953 film Roman Holiday featuring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, and in Only You with Robert Downey Jr. and Marisa Tomei. As with so many other elements of Western fiction, the concept of the probative beast may have originated in the East. Friedrich von der Hagen describes the traditions associated with the ‘bocca’ in his Briefe in die Heimat aus Deutschland, der Schweitz und Italien (Breslau: J. Max & Komp, 1821), vol. IV, p. 106. A sculpture of a lion said to bite those who swear false oaths while holding their hands in its mouth – a work of uncertain antiquity – is to be found in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, India. As a point of comparison, a chastity-detecting lion is featured in Thomas Lodge’s horror romance A Margarite of America (1596), in which the virginal heroine is spared and fondled by the beast while her peccant maid ‘was rent in pieces, in that she had tasted too much of fleshly love.’ Ed. Donald Beecher and Henry Janzen (Toronto: CRRS Publications, 2005), p. 156.

49 A German version of the story of Virgil and the probative serpent close in time to Straparola, although unlikely to have had any direct effect upon him, is nevertheless further testimony to the spread of this lore throughout Renaissance Europe. It is no. 206 of Johannes Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst, ‘Ein Keiserin stiess ir Hand in das Maul Vergillii’ (An empress sticks her hand in the Virgilian throat). The stone is in Rome, and whoever swears a false oath with the hand in its mouth will have it bitten off. It is almost now a travel book entry. A Kaiser accuses his Kaiserin of adultery with a knight and often they argue over it until he proposes that she purge and purify herself through the ordeal of the stone. She agrees. On the way to Rome, surrounded by her ladies in waiting, the knight breaks through the ranks in fool’s clothing and embraces and kisses her ‘vor aller Welt,’ before all the world, causing her to cry out and protest against such evil. When she comes to the stone she then swears her deceitful oath about the fool and her husband as the only men ever to have touched her. Taken from the earliest edition of 1522, ed. Johannes Bolte (Berlin: Herbert Stussenrauch, 1924; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1972), pp. 130–1. A similar story appears as ‘Die kaiserin mit dem leben pild,’ in Hans Sachs, Sämtliche Fabeln und Schwänke, ed. E. Goetze (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1894), no. 342, vol. II, p. 504.

50 The Enchanted Parrot, trans. B. Hale Wortham (London: Luzac, 1911), pp. 52–5. This Eastern tradition goes as far back as the Chinese Buddhist Tripiţaka, dating to the third century of the Christian era, in which a lover, dressed as a fool, lays the accused woman on the ground, thus touching her in a way that enables her to pronounce the ambiguous oath sworn before a sacred or holy tree. See Cinq cents contes et apologues extraits du Tripiţaka chinois et traduits en français, trans. Édouard Chavannes (Paris: E. Laroux, 1910–34; reprint, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1962), no. 116, vol. I, pp. 387ff. A similar tale appears in the Kitab Hayāt ad-Hajawān of Muhammad ibn Musa ad-Damīrī, written near the end of the fourteenth century, in which the lover touches the beloved by lifting her down from a donkey.

51 Sagas from the Far East or Kalmouk and Mongolian Traditionary Tales, ed. Rachel Harriette Busk (London: Griffith & Farran, 1873), pp. 315–23. See also Bernhard Jülg, Mongolische Märchen: die neun Nachtrags – Erzählungen des Siddhi Kür und die Geschichte des Ardschi-Bordschi Chan (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1868), p. 107.

52 Collected Ancient Greek Novels, ed. B.P. Reardon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 273–81.

53 These stories are told in relation to the practices of medieval ecclesiastical courts, which also relied upon the burning iron and cold water tests in cases where evidence was insufficient to determine innocence or guilt. Pope Innocent III banned such practices in 1215 after long debate in intellectual circles, including the Fourth Lateran Council, but the practices continued semi-officially down to the eighteenth century in certain parts of Europe and America. The sagas and romances featuring ordeals, and particularly those in which trickery deceives the engines of truth, participated in the debate, further calling the legitimacy of such practices into question. Gottfried von Strassburg for one, in his telling of the Tristan story, makes ironic and derogatory comments over the efficacy and validity of trial by ordeal. See Jeff Sypeck, ‘Ordeal,’ Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, ed. Carl Lindahl et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 302.

54 Ranulf Higden, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden from MS. Harleian 2261, in Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, no. 41, ed. Joseph Rawson Lumby (London: Longman & Co., 1879), bk. VI, chap. 23, vol. VII, p. 165. Queen Emma requested the test to clear her name; it consisted of ‘iv passes on iv cultres of hoote yrne for hereselfe, and v for the bischop with owte eny hurte, sche schalle be excusede of this cryme.’

55 Amis and Amylion (English metrical romance), ed. H. Le Saux (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1993); La tavola ritonda, ed. Filippo Luigi Polidoro (Bologna: G. Romagnoli, 1864–6, from the codex in the Biblioteca Medicea Lorenziana, Florence); ‘Flore et Blanceflor,’ Poèmes du XIIIe siècle, ed. Edélestand du Méril (Paris: P. Jannet, n.d.; reprint, Nendeln: Kraus Reprints, 1970), pp. 164ff. For further literary representations of the story, see Pio Rajna, Le fonti dell’ Orlando furioso (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1876), chap. 19, pp. 504ff.

56 Le Grand d’Aussy, ed., Fabliaux ou contes du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Onfroy, 1781), vol. III, pp. 157–67; (reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1971), pp. 263–5. The story is also known as ‘L’histoire de la femme enlevée du roi.’ This is a variation upon the story ‘Inclusa’ from the tradition of The Seven Sages of Rome. The device of the underground tunnel had a long history, for it does service again in the Contes Tartares of Thomas-Simon Gueullette, where he tells the tale of the dervish who dupes the jealous Persian, once again to prove that no precaution whatever can deter a woman. (The Hague: Henri du Sauzet, 1715–17); ed. Jean-François Perrin (Paris: Champion, 2010), vol. I, pp. 560–73. In the Novellino of Masuccio of Salerno, the trick recurs wherein a man takes his own wife on his horse to meet her lover, thinking her safe at home. Trans. W.G. Waters (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1895), pt. IV, novel 34, vol. II, pp. 167–76.

57 One further example ties this medieval story from the Seven Sages tradition to later Arabic tales: ‘Histoire de Kamaralzeman et de la femme du joaillier’ (The story of Kamaralzeman and the jeweller’s wife), in Contes inédits des mille et une nuits, trans. Guillaume Stanislaus Trébutien (Paris: Dondey-Dupré, 1828), vol. III, pp. 150ff.

58 (Lyons: Benoist Rigaud, 1574), but first published in 1531. The standard edition was published in Torino in 1870; (reprint, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1971), pp. 9–48. See also Comptes amoureux par Madame Jeanne Flore touchant la punition que faict Venus de ceulx qui contemnent et mesprisent le vray amour (Lyons: Denis de Harsy, 1542), and the modern edition by Régine Reynolds-Cornell (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 2005).

59 Celio Malespini, Ducento novelle (Venice: Al Segno dell’Italia, 1609), no. 98, vol. I, pp. 259r–64r. Many of its passages are merely translations of Mambriano’s poetry into prose. See the annotations by Giuseppe Rua to the Novelle del ‘Mambriano’ del Cieco da Ferrara (Torino: Ermanno Loescher, 1888), pp. 79, 81. There is a second order of denouement for such stories of jealous husbands and incarcerated wives, which is for the husband to confess in the end that Cupid is crafty, that no amount of strategizing to keep out lovers will prove efficacious, and that where the wife proves this through an act of infidelity, the husband, rather than seek revenge, is best advised simply to tear down the tower and leave her at liberty. Such stories possess no trial scenes at the end as with Straparola’s, but may otherwise contain many common features. The third story, day eight, of Francesco Sansovino’s Cento novelle scelte da i piu nobili scrittori is a case in point. Galastro, king of Spain, upon the advice of his chiromancer, builds a tower where he places his wife. But in spite of his precautions, he finds himself cuckolded by Galeotto, son of King Diego of Castile. The boy thinks about the angelic beauty of the queen and of her confinement. When the king is out hunting, he disguises himself as a merchant and gains entry to demonstrate his wares. (A similar tactic is employed to different ends in Straparola’s I.4.) As he draws her to the window for better light he begins speaking to her with his eyes to communicate his desire. Thereafter, they find the means to enjoy one another in a neighbouring room, while the king, upon his return, pays the merchant for his goods. In the end, the queen confesses everything in anticipation not of the king’s anger but of his resignation to the fact that towers are futile and that Cupid is omnipotent, thereby regaining her freedom. (Venice: Francesco Sansovino, 1561), pp. 301v–5v. The story is based entirely on Straparola’s IX.1, ‘King Galafro’s Vain Precautions.’

60 For further classification of the type, see Paul Delarue and Marie-Louise Tenèze, ‘L’oiseau de vérité,’ in Le conte populaire français: Un catalogue raisonné des versions de France et des pays de langue française et d’Outre-mer, 3 vols. (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 1976), vol. II, pp. 633–48.

61 Margaret Schlauch, for one, in her study of Chaucer’s ‘Man of Law’s Tale’ in its broadest literary context concerning banished or incarcerated queens (a text and its tradition reviewed briefly above in relation to the story of Doralice, I.4) assumes the antiquity of the story type as an expression of anxiety over maternal infanticide and cannibalism. Chaucer’s Constance and Accused Queens (New York: Gordian Press, 1969), originally published in 1927, pp. 12ff.

62 For a brief overview of the schools of fairy-tale interpretation, see Max Lüthi, Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), pp. 1–20.

63 Raymonde Robert’s comparative structural analysis of this story in the versions by Straparola, Mme. d’Aulnoy, Eustache Le Noble, and Antoine Galland introduces roughly the same narrative divisions: I. the bride selection; II. the marriage, childbirth, and banishment portion; and III. the royal children, their quests, and the truth pronouncements of the speaking bird. These are subdivided into eleven subsections approximating the motifs enumerated in the Thompson Motif Index of Folk Literature. Le conte de fées littéraire en France de la fin du XVIIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Nancy: Presses universitaires, 1982), pp. 37–42.

64 ‘Die drei königskinder,’ in Sammlung alter Märchen: Die Märchen des Straparola (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1817), vol. I, p. 284.

65 Arthur Dickson had a keen interest in IV.3, ‘The Truth-Speaking Bird,’ because it represents ‘the oldest recorded in Europe’ of the folk tale which he takes as the basis for Valentin et Orson. Although later chronologically, it serves, nevertheless, as his oikotype for a work which originated as a romance elaboration early in the fourteenth century upon the folk tale in question concerning an exiled queen and the quest by her sons to find her. This chanson de geste antedates the present tale by two-and-a-half centuries, but the folk tale goes back to early Sanskrit origins. Valentine and Orson: A Study in Late Medieval Romance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929), p. 23.

66 This does not eliminate entirely the chance that the tale was in independent circulation, or that it had come early to the West, but that nothing resembling Galland’s tale has been located in Eastern collections is surely indicative. See The Arabian Nights, trans. by Husain Haddawy from the manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), which breaks off after the 271st night.

67 ‘The Jealous Sisters and Their Cadette,’ in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, trans. Jack Zipes (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), pp. 270–302, from Antoine Galland, ‘Histoire de deux soeurs jalouses de leur cadette,’ Les milles et une Nuit, 12 vols. (Lyons: Briasson, 1717), Nights 678–88. See also Guy Huet, ‘Le conte des sœurs jalouses,’ Revue d’Ethnographie et de Sociologie 2 (1911): p. 200.

68 The use of this name is a historical tease, for it may have been retrofitted upon the story at nearly any time. But it is a variant spelling of Chosroes and a possible reference to the famous and cultured Chosroes I Anushirvan (531–79 CE), the Sassanid emperor and patron of Barzoye or Burzoë, the poet who first translated the Panchatantra into Pahlevi. His name was spelled variously Khosru Nushirvan and Khusrau I Anosarvan. If the indication is taken literally, the story would have originated in ancient Persia in the sixth century. See the ‘Introduction’ to Sir Thomas North, The Moral Philosophy of Doni, known as The Fables of Bidpai, ed. Donald Beecher, John Butler, and Carmine Di Biase (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 2003), pp. 18ff.

69 Dolopathos or the King and the Seven Wise Men, trans. Brady B. Gilleland (Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1981), pp. 71–7.

70 Just how this story may have linked up with the tale that produced the version recorded late by Galland is beyond certain knowledge. Even the source of Dolopathos is debated, whether it comes from the Greek Syntipas or from the Book of Sindebar, the sources of which are unknown, despite the many hints of affiliations with wisdom books from India, such as the Panchatantra. See the ‘Introduction’ by Brady Gilleland to Dolopathos (Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1981), pp. xiii–xix. It is perhaps revealing that ‘The Swans’ in particular does not occur in other versions of the Seven Sages cycle, making this telling the first in the Latin West.

71 The Anglo-Saxon ‘Wife’s Lament’ may be one such testimonial to an exile brought on by the treachery of her brothers-in-law seeking power by dint of marriage to her sisters – a situation echoed in King Lear. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, eds., The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), vol. III, pp. 210–11.

72 Raja Rajendralala Mitra, ‘Avadanakalpalata,’ Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1882), pp. 62–6; new ed. (Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, [1971]). A similar story is that of Padmavati, falsely accused of devouring her children, maligned, and drenched in blood by the king’s other wives. Le Mahavastu, ed. É. Senert (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, n.d.), vol. III, pp. xvii, 152. Equally ‘early’ in spirit is a Turkish tale telling of a childless wife replaced by a second who bears her husband twins. The jealous first wife replaces them with snakes and throws the children into the sea in boxes. They are raised as foundlings while their mother is driven into exile and cared for by shepherds. When the boy is taunted, he and his sister, still in possession of their birth clothes, set out in search of their parents. Eventually, they find their mother and the family is reunited. Ignacz Kúnos, Türkische Volksmärchen aus Stambul (Leiden: Brill, 1905), p. 339.

73 Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights (London: The Burton Club, 1887), vol. III, p. 647. For a description of many more tales in this vein, see Johannes Bolte and Jiří Polívka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm, 5 vols. (Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1913–32), vol. II, p. 393.

74 The story type has not only been singled out for study by Margaret Schlauch as the folk heritage eventuating in Chaucer’s ‘Man of Law’s Tale’ in the Canterbury Tales, in Accused Queens (New York: Gordian Press [1927], 1969), but by Johannes Bolte and Jirří Polívka in their ‘Anmerkungen’ or annotations to the Grimms’ Märchen, ‘The Three Little Birds,’ in Anmerkungen zu der Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1913), no. 96, vol. II, pp. 380ff; new ed. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1963, 1992); and James M. Taggart, Enchanted Maidens: Gender Relations in Spanish Folktales of Courtship and Marriage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 41–58. Taggart studies the story type in relation to ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Blancheflor’ as narratives of marital crisis and reconciliation in the context of family conflicts and dynamics. The basic story of the accused queen and the exchange of animals for infants leading to incarceration and exposure is also at the centre of Theseus of Cologne, MS. Brit. Lib. Add. 16,955, Doon de la Roche, MS. Brit. Lib. Harleian 4404, and ‘De Alixaundre, Roy de Hongrie, qui voulut espouser sa fille,’ Nouvelles françaises inédites du quinzième siècle, ed. E. Langlois (Paris: H. Champion, 1908), pp. 61–7. This group also includes such related narratives as the story of Queen Oliva. One among the many is the Historia della regina Oliva, ed. Francesco Corna da Soncino and Silvia Marchi (Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 1998). Giuseppe Pitrè extends the bibliography of this story around the folk tale of ‘La Bella Oliva’ which he collected in Florence. Popular versions were known all over Italy, according to Novelle popolari toscane, parte seconda (Rome: Casa editrice del libro italiano, n.d.), p. 118. Another extensive examination of the story type was made by Arthur Dickson in his quest for the origins of the French chanson de geste, Valentin et Orson, in Valentine and Orson: A Study in Late Medieval Romance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929). He established that the version closest to the folk tale source was the Middle Low German Von Nameloss unde Valentyn based on a now-lost, fourteenth-century French original. A new dimension is added to the basic tale when the two ‘lost’ sons of the exiled queen are abducted shortly after their births, the one raised at the court of Pipin, the other by a bear in the Forest of Orleans. This replaces the sojourn of Ancilotto’s children with the miller and his wife, where they remain together. The boys must first rediscover one another and bring back Orson from his wild-man state before they can undertake the many quests that lead to the snake (in later versions a brazen head) which tells the boys their history and relationship (in the manner of the truth bird) and sets them on the course for rediscovering their parents.

75 Among the literary recensions, the closest to Straparola’s is perhaps the story of Dionigia (X.1) in the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni, written in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The heroine, royal by birth, arrives incognito in England, yet through her beauty and innate graces she wins a royal spouse. She is destined to bear multiple children, twin sons. The queen mother refuses to attend the marriage and later claims that Dionigia bore apes and arranges to have her slain through the false-letter-exchange device. The Viceroy (now in the place of the good vizier or the compassionate servant in charge of the execution) allows her to escape with her children, hence avoiding the separation and foundling segment of the present story. This tale concludes with the king’s Psyche-like search for the missing spouse, as in the Belle-Hélène group. In this story, the psychological climax pertains to forgiving a husband (the king) believed responsible for ordering the heroine’s execution. Trans. W.G. Waters, 3 vols. (London: Society of Bibliophiles, 1898), vol, II, pp. 73–90.

76 La naissance du Chevalier au Cygne (twelfth century), ed. Henry Todd (New York: Kraus Reprints [1889], 1960); Le Chevalier au Cygne (fourteenth-century revision), in The Old French Crusade Cycle, ed. Jan A. Nelson, 2 vols. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985). A closely affiliated work was current in Italy by 1500, bearing the title Istoria della Regina Stella e Mattabruna; see the following note.

77 ‘L’uccellino che parla,’ in Vittorio Imbriani, La novellaja fiorentina (Livorno: F. Vigo, 1877); new ed. (Milan: Rizzoli, 1976), no. 6, pp. 81–93. Imbriani includes in his notes (pp. 93–7) a verse version of the Istoria della Regina Stella e Mattabruna (the Italian equivalent of ‘The Knight of the Swan’) in print as early as the outset of the sixteenth century (Pesaro: Stamperia Gavelli, 1500). The first part of this story is nearly identical to the story of ‘The Truth-Speaking Bird.’ For the ‘L’uccellino che parla,’ collected by Domenico Comparetti, see his Novelline popolari italiane (Bologna: Forni editore, 1875), no. 30, pp. 117–24. This story is very similar to Straparola’s, replicating every part from the opening conversations overheard by the king to the jealous sisters and the animal substitutes down to the quest for the three precious objects and the truth-speaking bird. The maligned young mother is immured in a narrow space while the children grow up in the household of a shepherd. They have golden hair and stars on their brows. They are lured into making the quest by a fairy disguised as an old woman. When the walls are removed the queen is found dead, but she is resuscitated by the water of life. The children wear hats to hide their hair and brows, allowing the bird to stage a dramatic discovery scene at the end. The bird then instructs the king to make three shirts of pitch for the two wicked sisters and his own mother. The story ends as the three villainesses illuminate the plaza. See also Gherardo Nerucci, Sessanta novelle popolari montalesi, ed. Roberto Fedi (Milan: Biblioteca universali Rizzoli, 1977), nos. 20 and 27, pp. 195–204, 238–48; and ‘La fanciulla coraggiosa’ (The courageous girl), in Isaia Visentini, Fiabe mantovane (Turin: E. Loescher, 1879), no. 46, pp. 205–8. One night three brothers are sitting around the fire when an elderly beggar woman comes asking for shelter. Upon seeing their garden the next day, she tells them of essential ornaments they must have: the water of youth, the speaking bird, and the singing branch. She gives instructions and the eldest makes the quest but fails, as do the second and third. Their sister, telling her rosary, knows of their fate, goes in quest, fetches the three wonders, rescues her brothers, and creates the most beautiful garden ever seen. The third portion of the full generic tale is here abandoned, enabling the present story to conclude as a horticultural wonder tale. The modern edition is Le 50 fiabe mantovane (Parma: Astrea, 1993). James Bruyn Andrews also found a version along the Ligurian coast, ‘L’oiseau qui parle,’ in which a prince marries a shepherdess who is hated by her mother-in-law. The childbed replacement is a pig, while a sorceress joins forces with the wicked old woman in tormenting the children, and in the end shares her fate in the fire. Contes ligures, traditions de la rivière recueillis entre Menton et Gênes (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1892), no. 42.

78 One of the most complete retellings of this story is ‘Le tre sorelle,’ in Domenico Comparetti’s Novelline popolari italiane (Bologna: Forni [1875], 1968), no. 6, pp. 23–31. The preamble of the bride selection by overhearing the fanciful chatter of the three young ladies is included. Two of them become the jealous sisters who betray the third, the birthing queen. The queen’s children are exposed as the result and are raised by the rich merchant who finds them. The venture for the extraordinary objects follows, the boys are turned to stone, and their younger sister completes the exploit, returning with a fairy who speaks the truth in the place of the bird (which is now merely a singing bird). The fairy arranges the final banquet and anagnorisis, and the story closes with a motif from ‘Pietro the Fool’ in which stolen objects are placed in the pocket of the king to illustrate how the banished queen was also innocent. The two jealous sisters are tied and burned and the royal family is reunited.

79 Letter to Signora Frondosa, in Andrea Calmo (1510–71), Lettere, ed. Vittorio Rossi (Torino: E. Loescher, 1888), bk. IV, no. 42, pp. 346–7. The earliest letters date to 1552. Lettorio di Francia, in Storia dei generi letterari italiani novellistica (Milan: Francesco Vallardi, 1924), p. 713, claims that this letter was published in 1552 and hence just at the time Straparola’s stories were making their appearance. Calmo does not appear to be making reference to the final sections of the Arabian story presented by Galland, but to an independent tradition of stories about dancing waters and speaking green birds, less the Oriental element of the pearls and precious stones falling from the children’s hair.

80 Gonçalo Fernandes Trancoso, Contos (Lisbon: A. Gonçaluez, 1575–6); see Cosquin, vol. I, pp. 194–5.

81 The Collected Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè, ed. and trans. Jack Zipes and Joseph Russo, 2 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2009), no. 36, vol. I, and vol. II, pp. 838–40. In the annotations, Zipes and Russo offer further examples collected in Montevago, Capaci, Casteltermini, and Noto. The story is also in Italian Popular Tales, ed. Thomas Frederick Crane, rev. Jack Zipes (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2001), pp. 16–22, abridged. Comparetti includes ‘L’uccellino che parla’ in Novelline popolari italiane (Rome: E. Loescher, 1875), pp. 117–23; Laura Gonzenbach, ‘Die verstossene Königin und ihre beiden ausgesetzten Kinder’ (The banished queen and her two abandoned children), in Sicilianische Märchen (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1870), no. 5, pp. 19–27; and Angelo de Gubernatis, ‘I cagnolini’ and ‘Il re di Napoli,’ in Le novelline di Santo Stefano (Turin: A.F. Negro, 1869), nos. 15 and 16, pp. 37–40. The ‘King of Naples’ is very close to the present story, with the third of the daughters, Teresina, marrying the king with promises of the birth of wonder children bearing the distinguishing marks. The children are substituted by three dogs with star markings. They are found and raised humbly, but in time take their leave. They find a wonderful palace in a forest owned by a Fata or the Madonna (possibly a vestige from another version insofar as this person has no further role), and are there discovered by their father who had been inspired in a dream to go out hunting and to follow the game that leads him to the palace. He identifies them as the children promised by Teresina, yet returns home to tell his mother, leading to the quest for the dancing water, for which 100 cavaliers had already lost their lives. Adventures ensue leading to their mother’s recovery and the death of the wicked old woman. Still others are mentioned in the notes to Pitrè’s ‘The Herb-Gatherer’s Daughter,’ vol. II, p. 841. A related tale is also to be found in Stanislao Prato, Quattro novelline popolari livornesi (Spoleto: Bassoni, 1880), pp. 92–136. See also ‘La fola del trèi surèl’ and ‘La fola dla malediziôn di sèt fiù,’ in Carolina Coronedi-Berti, Novelle popolari bolognesi (Bologna: A. Forni [1874], 1983), nos. 5 and 19, pp. 29–36, 121–5. (In the A. Forni reprint of her Favole bolognesi [1883], 1981, the page numbers are 14–18 and 19–21.) The first tells of a poor widow with three beautiful girls. The oldest would marry the king’s secretary, the second the king’s cook, and the third the king himself to whom she would bear children with golden markings. The king hears them at their window and brings all to pass, then leaves for the wars, placing the household in his mother’s care. The traduced young queen is locked away in a tower far from the palace on a diet of bread and water, and so the familiar story flows along in the rich and challenging dialect of regional Emilia.

82 Louis Auguste Henri Dozon, Contes albanais (Paris: Ernest Laroux, 1881), pp. 7–15.

83 Tommasino (Masillo) Reppone di Gnanopoli (Pompeo Sarnelli of Polignano, bishop of Bisceglie), Posilecheata, ed. Enrico Malato (Florence: Sansoni, 1962), no. 3, pp. 109–49. The work was first published in Naples by Giuseppe Roselli in 1684. See also ‘La ’ngannatrice ’ngannata,’ in Posilecheata (Naples: D. Morano, 1885), no. 3. (Carolina Coronedi-Berti calls the author Masillo Reppone and Tommaso Perrone di Polignano.) This writer, living a century after Straparola and much influenced by Basile, may nevertheless have known and been influenced by some features he found in Straparola.

84 Raymonde Robert, Le conte de fées littéraire en France (Nancy: Presses universitaires, 1982), p. 39.

85 Eustache le Noble, ‘L’oiseau de vérité,’ Le gage touché, histoires galantes (Amsterdam, 1700), in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, trans. Jack Zipes (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), pp. 264–70; La Comtesse d’Aulnoy, ‘Princesse Belle-Étoile et le Prince Chéri,’ Suite des contes nouveaux ou les fées à la mode (Paris: Théodore Girard, 1698), in The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, trans. Zipes, pp. 229–63. Also, Contes II, Contes nouveaux ou les fées à la mode, ed. Philippe Hourcade and Jacques Barchilon (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1998), pp. 343–406.

86 François-Marie Luzel, Contes populaires de la Basse-Bretagne, ed. Françoise Morvan, 3 vols. (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1996), vol. III, pp. 195–206.

87 F.-M. Luzel, Légendes chrétiennes de la Basse-Bretagne, 2 vols. (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve & Larose [1887], 1967), vol. II, pp. 274–92. See also ‘L’arbre qui chant, l’oiseau qui parle, et l’eau d’or’ (Singing tree, speaking bird, and golden water), in E. Henry Carnoy, Contes français (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1885), no. 15, pp. 106–14.

88 Jean-François Bladé (1827–1900), Contes populaires de la Gascogne, ed. Michel Suffran (Bordeaux: Opales, 1996), pp. 65–79. This work was originally published in Paris by Maisonneuve, 1886.

89 ‘Sonne, Mond und Morgenstern’ (Sun, moon and morningstar), in Johann Georg von Hahn, Griechische und albanesische Märchen (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1864), vol. II, pp. 40–8.

90 Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales (Garden City, NY: Nelson Doubleday, n.d.), pp. 223–6; Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1856), no. 96, p. 174. The story is from Westphalia and was first published in 1819.

91 ‘Springendes Wasser, sprechender Vogel, singender Baum’ (Leaping water, speaking bird, singing tree), in Heinrich Pröhle, Kinder- und Volksmärchen (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1975), no. 3, pp. 10–16.

92 In a French tale collected by Carnoy, a queen has an incurable disease which a passing magician says will be cured only by finding the three now-familiar objects. Her two sons go on the quest and fail to fulfil the instructions, while the young princess carries through, undistracted, resurrecting many knights along with her brothers with drops of the precious water. She returns home in triumph as ‘a model for good and wise little girls,’ which says something about the audience to which the story was traditionally recited. ‘L’arbre, que chante, l’oiseau qui parle, et l’eau d’or,’ in E.H. Carnoy, Contes françaises (Paris: Leroux, 1885), no. 15, pp. 107–13, recorded in Provence in 1883. This story is influenced by the design and purpose of ‘the three brothers’ type, in which each sets out, seriatim, to find the cure for an ailing father. The third succeeds after many adventures and errors, rescuing his two brothers on the way back. See the commentary to VII.5.

93 (Göttingen: Dieterich’sche Buchhandlung, 1851), pp. 168–77; new ed. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1972). Further examples from German-speaking regions include the story, ‘Die drei Schönheiten der Welt’ (The three most beautiful things in the world) in Christian Schneller’s Märchen und Sagen aus Wälschtirol (Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner’schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1867), pp. 65–71; new ed. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1976); Ignaz Zingerle, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Tirol, 2 vols. (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1859), vol. II, pp. 112ff.; Justus Heinrich Saal, ‘Der wahrredende Vogel’ (The truth-speaking bird), in Abendstudente in lehrreichen und anmuthungen Erzählungen, more properly Abendzeitvertreib in verschiedenen Erzählungen (Leipzig: Gleditsch, 1756–69). To this may be added ‘The Two Sisters Jealous of the Younger’ in Gustav Weil’s Tausend und eine Nacht Arabische Erzählungen, 4 vols. (Bonn, 1897), vol. III, pp. 274–311. In this tale, the two sisters substitute for the children a dog, a cat, and a stick. The queen is imprisoned and the children are rescued by a gardener. Then an old crone tells the king he is lacking three things in his garden: a speaking bird, a singing tree, and golden water. The king’s two unknown sons accept the challenge and make the quest whereupon they are turned to stone, with their sister to the rescue. The captured bird explains matters at the end in the fashion now familiar from Straparola’s tale. Ignaz and Joseph Zingerle, working together, found ‘Der Vogel Phönix, des Wasser des Lebens und die Wunderblume’ (The phoenix, the water of life, and the magic flower), in which a knight loses his way in the forest, at nightfall finds a poor farmer’s house, and there overhears the farmer’s daughters, thinking him asleep, talking about what they would do if married to so handsome a man. The knight, enchanted by promises of children with golden hair, turns dreams to reality, accompanied by jealousy. The knight, absent during the parturition of his children, leaves his dear wife to her fate: the alleged birth of dogs, orders for drowning her children, their rescue by a miller, and her own death in prison. Later, the sisters lay secondary plans to have the children sent on missions that would expose them to wild animals, carrying forward the Germanic concern with endless forests and fearful imaginations. The first meets a friendly fox who becomes his guide in his search for the phoenix. The crossing of streams on the fox’s back is redolent of tales in ‘the grateful dead’ tradition (see the commentary to XI.2). The story luxuriates in the details of fairy tale quests and evil aunts, but the entire business is conducted to happy issue by the enigmatic fox. After three rivers and many forests, the boy at last arrives with the beautiful flower – his third quest. The father in this tale is likewise attracted to his own daughter until the speaking phoenix chatters about the injustice done to his own wife. The evil sisters are now forced to confession. The tale ends with a motif from the ‘puss in boots’ (XI.1) and ‘grateful dead’ (XI.2) traditions when the boy seeks to thank the fox one last time, only to be told to strike off its head. Trapped all along inside the fox was a beautiful woman who suddenly appears when the beheading is done and runs to hug her liberator. It is his own mother who had silently led him through his many rites of initiation, and who now, by his efforts, is restored to her husband. It is a rich and complex tale conjoining several story types; it was collected in Obermiemingen before 1854. Kinder- und Hausmärchen aus Süddeutschland, intro. J.W. Wolf (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1975), pp. 157–73; originally published in Regensburg in 1854.

94 Further versions of this story are to be found in Mary Frere, Old Deccan Days or Hindoo Fairy Legends Current in Southern India (London: Murray, 1868), no. 4, pp. 55ff, in which 100 boys and one girl are born to the Radjah by his favourite wife. The dozen infertile wives looking on collude in their jeaolusy, accusing the innocent Guzra-Bai of being a sorceress who has converted her children into the stones which have been duly placed in all 101 cradles. The children are rescued from a garbage heap and at one point in their adventures become birds. Patrick Kennedy tells another in The Fireside Stories of Ireland (Dublin: McGlashan & Gill, 1870; Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1975), pp. 14–19, in which a young girl whose twelve brothers have been turned to birds by a spell is compelled to sew shirts for them all to recover them. Meanwhile, she is married to a prince and bears him two children which the wicked old queen tosses to a wolf, thereafter smearing the mother’s lips with blood. After the second séance of cannibalism, she is condemned to the pyre, but as she is tied to the stake she completes the last shirt, her brothers rescue her, the babes are brought back by the good-fairy wolf, and the double plot around the abused and maligned queen and the recovered infants is brought to happy issue. See also ‘The Boy who had a Moon on his Forehead and a Star on his Chin,’ in Maive Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales (London: Ellis & White, 1880), no. 20, pp. 119–37. This is the present story in a version from India which includes even the opening chatter of the gardener’s daughter about having a child with a moon and star, which is overheard by the passing king. He marries her, given that his four other wives are childless. It is these four wives, however, who become pests and temptresses, inciting the innocent new bride to make mistakes that aggravate her lord who then makes her a palace servant. The king’s dog saves the child by swallowing it whole. The wives report the dog, so the child is passed to a cow, then to a horse, and each time the report is carried back. But Ketar is a magic horse and leads the boy into the adventures of Livoretto, urging him to take service at another court while it remains in the vicinity to provide gear and advice. The pattern is familiar from the ‘Guerrino and the wild man’ model, as well as from stories of ‘the grateful dead’ group in which the revenant supplies the equipment for his ward to win a princess (see the commentary to XI.2). After marrying the seventh princess and dealing with his arrogant brothers-in-law, he returns home. Then ‘the truth bird’ story resumes with a grand feast, followed by confessions, the quest for his mother, and an agreement to stay only if the four wicked wives are slain. This amalgam is worth the profiling to show how such elements were conjoined by imaginative folklorists. This is presumably a late tale formed under Western influence.

95 Aurelio Espinosa, Cuentos populares españoles, 3 vols. (Madrid: S. Aguirre, 1947), no. 119, vol. I, pp. 250–2. Wentworth Webster collected a related version in the Basque country which contains the eavesdropping king, the marriages of the three sisters, the jealousy of the elder two, the birth scandal, and the exposure of the infants. This queen spends twenty years underground before her children come of age and complete the quest for the truth-speaking bird, leading to their reunion. This seems to be an imperfect telling of a French version in which the sister cross-dresses to carry out the quest leading to the final discovery banquet. Légendes basques, trans. Nicolas Burguete ([Anglet]: Aubéron, 2005), pp. 240ff, published originally in English (London: Griffith & Farran, 1877), pp. 176ff. Another version was collected in Andalusia by the Spanish novelist and folklorist Cecilia Bohl de Faber (1819–89) and published in her Cuentos de encantamiento (1877) (Stories of enchantment) as ‘El pajaro de la Verdad’ (The bird of truth). In this tale it is ministers and courtiers who oppose the marriage; the replacement animals are a cat and a snake; the queen is walled up; and the children are raised by a fisherman. It is a witch who ultimately attempts and fails to thwart the children by sending them on quests. This tale also introduces some seventeen additional birds, serving as narrators and as protective fairy-like guides. The moral was that the bird of truth could never be slain because Truth itself is eternal. The story may be found in her Obras completas (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1961), vol. V, pp. 206–11.

96 Téofilo Braga, Contos tradicionais do povo Portugues, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 1987), vol. I, pp. 147–50. Braga’s compact bibliographical ‘Nota’ supplies additional references to this story type from Brazil, Poland, Hungary, Prussia, Croatia, the Basque country, Bohemia, Norway, and other regions, revealing the scope, popularity, and resilience of this story type.

97 Contes arabes modernes (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1883), pp. 137–51.

98 Contes populaires de Lorraine (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1886), vol. I, pp. 196–7. The story is from Mardin in Mesopotamia and was first reported in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1882), p. 259. Angelo de Gubernatis in Zoological Mythology or the Legends of Animals (London: Trübner, 1872), vol. II, p. 174, describes a Russian story in which all three magic elements appear: the speaking bird, the singing tree, and the water of life.

99 Five Tales for the Theatre, ed. Albert Bermel and Ted Emery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 239–305.

100 (Paris: J.-J. Pauvert, 1963).

101 From Giuseppe Rua, Tra antiche fiabe e novelle: Le ‘Piacevoli notti’ di Messer Gian Francesco Straparola (Rome: Ermanno Loescher, 1898), pp. 99–100. Boccaccio, ‘Corbaccio,’ in Opere minori (Milan: E. Sonzogno, 1879), p. 286.

102 See the translation by Konrad Eisenbichler and Jacqueline Murray (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).

103 Interpretations of how much more these characters manifest archetypal positions of the psyche will depend upon the beliefs of readers about fundamental human relations. Genobbia has made a new man of Nerino by replacing his mother, and in the process the man who parcelled her out to the attention of others is destroyed by his stubborn silence and vindictive impulses. Such emblematic reciprocity carries provocative intimations, especially if Raimondo also serves as a replacement of the youth’s father.

104 Trans. Konrad Eisenbichler, in Renaissance Comedy: The Italian Masters, ed. Donald Beecher, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), vol. II, pp. 234–88.

105 Plutarch, trans. Paul A. Clement, ‘Table Talk’ in the Moralia, 15 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), bk. I, quest. 5, vol. VIII, p. 65. For the story in Herodotus, see [History of Greece], trans. A.C. Godley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), bk. I, sect. 8–12. See Jacques Ferrand, ‘Diagnostic Signs of Love Melancholy,’ in A Treatise on Lovesickness (1623), trans. and ed. Donald Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990), chap. 14, p. 270.

106 The story was translated into French by Gabriel Chappuys. Les facétieuses journées, ed. Michel Bideaux (Paris: Champion, 2003), VII. 10, pp. 636–46. La Fontaine entitled the story ‘Le Roi Candaule et le Maître en Droit,’ Nouveaux contes de M. de la Fontaine (Amsterdam: C.J. Zwol, 1676), pp. 106–15.

107 Anton Francesco Doni, one of the early polygrafici active in Venice just before and after mid-century, published some of his letters as early as 1544, but did not come into his stride as an author before the time of the publication of the Piacevoli notti in 1550. The earliest publication on current record of his Novelle is La filosofia morale … & piacevoli novelle (Venice: Giovanni Battista Bertoni, 1606). They are available in modern editions such as Le novelle, ed. Patrizia Pellizzari et al. (Rome: Salerno, 2002/2003), but in that multi-volume collection no version of the story identified as Novella 38 leaps from the page. In fact, he places it in a commentary on the Rime of Burchiello and makes up a fake source for it – typical Doni. Petraglione designates it as Novella 89 in his edition of the Novelle (Bergamo: Istituto italiano d’arti grafiche, 1907).

108 In the annotations to his edition of Gabriel Chappuys, Les facétieuses journées (Paris: Champion, 2003), p. 864. Bideaux cites Di Francia, from his Novellistica, Storia dei generi letterari italiani novellistica (Milan: Francesco Vallardi, 1924), vol. I, p. 210, concerning the prospects of the story’s arrival from the East through the oral tradition and Ser Giovanni’s loss of economy and precision that undoubtedly characterized the original. His own belief, however, is that the story copied by Ser Giovanni originated with an earlier Italian author of novelle in a version now lost (p. 865). Chappuys’s story is VII. 10, pp. 636–46, taken from Francesco Sansovino, VII. 10.

109 The Novellino of Masuccio, trans. W.G. Waters, 2 vols. (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1895), pt. IV, no. 35, vol. II, pp. 171–84. A collateral challenge for comparatists is whether this story by Masuccio of Salerno is the same story as the one we have in hand or a different one. ‘Same’ or ‘different’ is to be determined by the critical degree of coincidences or departures from a signature profile, and by the point at which variations constitute a new species. Such enquiries turn out to be more vexing with regard to conscious makers building on literary sources than with stories in the oral tradition wherein, despite lapses, faults, substitutions, and inventions, there is a concerted effort to preserve traditions and maintain essential defining narrative features. Masuccio’s story we may provisionally call ‘Tobia and the Inn-keeper’s wife, Lella.’ She too is so beautiful that she takes the breath away. Her husband is jealous to a fault, but he is an inn-keeper too, and his wife is on daily display in a way that draws paying customers just for the chance to gaze at her. This is Candaules with a twist. Young Tobia heard of her reputation and booked a stay there specifically to that end, only to become a rival for her love, as her husband feared. There is the matter of curing Tonto of his jealousy, initially, but in the end the lovers, as in Straparola, lay their plans for escape. The coincidences between Masuccio and Ser Giovanni can be tallied, but straight off there is no school of love, no unwitting confidences between the husband and the lover, and no amorous encounters repeatedly interrupted by the husband’s unexpected arrival. Given the arrangements at the hotel, flight is the lovers’ only solution. These are significant obstacles, but the husband is made to collaborate unwittingly in helping them make their escape, as in the cognate tales associated with Straparola’s ‘Erminione’ (IV.2). Tobia announces his departure, as Nerino does; arranges for a ship; tells his host about a sick boy he wants to take aboard with him; and offers him a tidy sum to transport the boy down to the port muffled up in his bedclothes. Needless to say, this will be Lella in disguise. Her own husband places her on horseback and makes jokes about the situation, as he imagined it to be, all the way to the port. Of a less tragic and more pragmatic frame of mind than Raimondo, the jealous Tonto grieves her loss for a time, learns a lesson, remarries, and never thinks of her again. That the publication of Masuccio’s work follows Ser Giovanni’s by a century (1476) sheds no light on the matter at all, for there is no evidence, in any case, that the latter is related to the former. Rather, it is the generic correspondences that tease, as though the whole of the novella-writing enterprise is a grand set of variations upon a vast repertory of motifs. Yet there are intimations in the reading that suggest affinities between these two stories, raising questions about the mind’s own apparatuses for establishing degrees of analogy and the innuendoes upon which analogies are based that later achieve bedrock authority.

110 L’Arcadia in Brenta, ed. Quinto Marini (Rome: Salerno, 2004), pp. 146–9.

111 Bahar-Danush, or Garden of Knowledge, trans. Jonathan Scott, 3 vols. (Shrewsbury: J. & W. Eddowes, 1799), vol. III, pp. 291–4 (Orig. Bahār-i-Dānish).

112 Pietro Fortini was active at much the same time as Straparola; he worked in Siena and died in 1562. His fiction was completed towards 1560 and also remained in manuscript until the nineteenth century. Le giornate delle novelle dei novizi (Bologna: Forni, 1967; reprint, Rome: Salerno, 1989; ed. Adriana Mauriello), no. 6.

113 Novelle edite e inedite, ed. Vittoria Lami (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1968), no. 6, pp. 137–57, from the edition by Gaetano Romagnoli (Bologna: Forni, 1882).

114 ‘Of the Poor Student and the Goldsmith,’ in Rastbüchlein und Katzipori, ed. Franz Lichtenstein (Tübingen: Litterarischen Verein, Stuttgart, 1883), no. 3, pp. 8–13. This story is preceded in Germany by a tradition of tales that passes through the Fabeln of Hans Sachs in which a young man is employed by a merchant who discovers by degrees that his employee is sleeping with his own wife while seeking his advice on how to handle the affair. The boy tells him everything but does not make the connection until the master invites him home to a social gathering to tell his adventures to his guests in the presence of his wife. When the boy arrives at the unique house with the red door and the green columns he puts two and two together. To save face, he must tell his story, but ingeniously makes it out to be but a dream from which he awakes. This satisfies everyone, so that the next day the boy is given a sum of money and sent on his way. ‘Der Pueller mit der rotten thüer und den zway grüenen seülen’ (The lover, the red door, and the two green columns) in Sämtliche Fabeln und Schwänke, ed. Edmund Goetze (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1913), vol. I, pp. 278–80. This story, written just after mid-century, was taken from Johann Agricola, Sybenhundert und fünfftzig teutscher Sprichwörter verneüwert und gebessert (Hagenau [Braubach], 1534), no. 624; new ed. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970). It holds no prospect of cross-fertilization with Straparola in either direction, but reveals the widespread circulation of the story type at the time Straparola was writing, always with Ser Giovanni in the background, and the tradition from which he derived his story. It contains the confession turned to a dream motif that appears in the Bahar-Danush mentioned above. This motif clearly enjoyed wide currency.

115 William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 2000), p. 15. The standard work on the sources of Shakespeare’s plays is Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1958), Merry Wives, vol. II, pp. 3–58.

116 The Cobler of Caunterburie and Tarletons Newes Out of Purgatorie, intro. and ed. by Geoffrey Creigh and Jane Bellfield (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987), pp. 177–185.

117 John Dickenson, Greene in Conceit, ed. Donald Beecher and David Margolies (Toronto: CRRS Publications, 2008).

118 In The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays, trans. Maya Slater (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2001).

119 ‘La Roi Candaule et le Maître en Droi,’ Contes et nouvelles en vers (Hamburg, 1731), vol. II, pp. 187ff; Tales and Novels in Verse by J. de la Fontaine, 2 vols. (London: For the Society of English Bibliophylists, n.d.), vol. II, pp. 121–32. For a later tale based on the signature plot design, see ‘Sur le moine Amador, qui fut un glorieux abbé de Turpenay’ (About Brother Amador, the glorious abbot of Turpenay), in Honoré de Balzac, Contes drolatiques, in Oeuvres completes (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1879), vol. 19, pp. 365–83.

120 Fantasies of severed and replaced heads go back to antiquity, whether to chilling or comic effect. A story in The Katha sarit sagara or Ocean of the Streams of Story, trans. C.H. Tawney (1889; reprint, Calcutta: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992), vol. II, pp. 261–4, in the section of bk. XII that constitutes The Twenty-five Tales of a Vampire (Vetala), the sixth story, tells of a woman who has lost both brother and husband to beheadings. She hears a voice telling her to replace their heads and that through the power of the goddess of the temple where the men had sacrificed themselves they would be brought back to life. In her haste, however, she places them on the wrong bodies, raising the problem of just who, then, was her husband. It almost reads like a mind experiment in a modern study of the brain, the body, and the self. In the ten-volume edition published in Delhi by Motilal Banarsidass (1923), the story is in vol. VI, pp. 203–8.

121 Of necessity banished to a footnote are further musings about the absence of the neurobiological competence in this protagonist to manifest fear responses in the presence of ‘emotionally competent stimuli’ (ECS), to use the terminology of Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2003), p. 53. But the story is, ultimately, a thought experiment in that regard and not a case study, for the fear response is primal and predates the development of the cerebral cortex and all rational faculties in its preparation of the organism to deal with menacing contingencies in its environment; hence it is rarely lacking even in the dumbest among us. Fear may be partially conditioned, but its fundamental salience as a mid-brain response mechanism is architecturally basic and a sine qua non of survival. Nevertheless, as an identifiable emotion, the imaginative writer (or reciters in the oral tradition) could attempt a narrative such as this one, in which an engagement with the social world is depicted in the absence of fear. Because the avoidance of death is fear’s ultimate purpose, moreover, there is an apt sense in which a fear response becomes synonymous with the initial death quest, thereby making sense of a narrative in which absolute fear replaces an encounter with the finality of death; the transfer allows for the protagonist’s survival. With the completion of the experience, something like the homeostasis of full humanity is restored. But it is an odd literary inquest into the constitution of the subliminal regulatory systems of the body, a fantasy in which a severe emotional handicap is equated with deficient intelligence. Yet the story, as a modern allegory, is a reminder that primal emotions remain a part of our full complement of neurobiological wisdom in relation to relevant stimuli in the environment.

122 For Chaucer’s ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ I have turned to the edition by Albert C. Baugh, Chaucer’s Major Poetry (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963), pp. 490–500. It is, of course, widely available in several editions. Baugh points out that the exact version employed by Chaucer has not been found, but that it relates to tales – undoubtedly of Eastern origin with regard to the killing and poisoning of the revellers – that have cognate versions in the novelle and sermon exempla of the period (p. 490). For these, see W.F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster, eds., Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940). Morlini tells the tale in his Novelle (Naples, 1520), in which a wizard learns that a treasure lies beneath the Tiber. When the party goes to fetch it, however, the members divide up, some going to the city, the others remaining to guard the treasure. These two groups then conspire against each other, the one party killing the members of the other by force before eating the poisoned food brought to them. Of other stories in this tradition (not connected to our present tale), see a series of articles in Notes and Queries, series VII, vol. I (March 6, 1886), pp. 182ff by W.A. Clouston entitled ‘Oriental Sources of Some of Chaucer’s Tales.’ For the earliest version in the Vedabbha Jataka, see the translation by C.H. Tawney in Journal of Philosophy, II (1883), pp. 203–8.

123 The Giunti version is much older, however, for it appears in the third section of the MS. Panciatichiano 32, dating to 1330–40, included in the supplementary section of the Novellino e conti del duecento, ed. Sebastiano Lo Nigro (Turin: Unione Tipografico-editrice, 1968), pp. 392–4. Lo Nigro cites fifteenth-century versions (p. 392, note), one of which is in Exempla aus Handschriften des Mittelalters, ed. Joseph Klapper (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1911), no. 98. This is one of the undoubtedly many representations of the story among the sermon exempla of the age which inspired Chaucer’s opening motif of the quest for Death. The original version in the Novellino, ed. Lo Nigro, pp. 189–90, is a Christianized rendition of the ancient Eastern tale in which Christ, out walking with his disciples, sees a great treasure. The disciples seek the treasure, naturally, and Christ warns them away from that which deprives the Kingdom of so many souls. He promises future confirmation. The gold is later found by two companions who, for their greed, murder each other in the now-familiar way. Christ then returns with his disciples to show them how greed leads to death. It is very much in the sermon exemplum tradition, given the manner in which ‘the Enemy’ works in the thoughts of the two companions. See The Novellino, trans. Roberta L. Payne (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 120.

124 The Lais of Marie de France, trans. Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), pp. 111–26. Weasels in medieval lore were associated with the herb of life.

125 From the MS. Panciatichiano 32, the final section, transcribed by Sebastiano Lo Nigro in his edition of the Novellino [sic] e conti del duecento (Turin: Unione Tipografico-editrice, 1968), no. CXLV, pp. 378–80.

126 Stith Thompson, The Folktale (1946; reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 105. Among the more recent tales gathered in India by Maive Stokes is that of ‘Loving Laití’ which concludes with the restoration of the prince’s severed head by his wife using her own blood as a healing elixir. Indian Fairy Tales (London: Ellis & White, 1880), no. 14, pp. 73–84.

127 Thomson’s reference for this is Bolte-Polívka, I, 32, and 37, by which he means Johannes Bolte and Jiří Polívka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (Hildesheim: G. Olm [1913], 1963), vol. I, pp. 32, 37.

128 Beautiful Angiola: The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales Collected by Laura Gonzenbach, trans. Jack Zipes (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 81–4. It also appears in the original collection of Laura Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen aus dem Volksmund gesammelt (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1870), no. 57, vol. II, pp. 1–4.

129 ‘Giovannino senza paura’ (Fearless Little John), in Novelle popolari toscane (Rome: Società editrice de libro italiano, [1941]), no. 39, pp. 257–9. Also (Florence: A. Forni, 1981). The versions in Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales are worth mentioning, but are less specific than usual, for in the case of no. 1, ‘Dauntless Little John,’ Calvino confesses to taking bits and pieces from several versions – although his principal inspiration seems to be from the Florentine story collected by Pitrè, cited above. Typically, the story ends when Little John is given an unguent for reattaching heads, allows his own to be severed, and then dies of fright in seeing his own posterior. Not pleased with this ending, Calvino takes over the one from the Sienese version collected by Angelo De Gubernatis, ‘Giovannino senza paura,’ in Novelline di Santo Stefano (Turin: Negro, 1869), no. 22, p. 46, in which the protagonist is frightened by his own shadow. This is a light story of terrifying encounters with spirits and wraiths. When it is Giovannino’s turn, however, the boy jokes, plays, and sits down to dinner with them without a moment of fear until the enchantment is broken and he inherits the castle and all its wealth. It is then that he marries, lacks for nothing, yet one day dies of fright from seeing his own shadow. The Calvino reference is to the edition translated by George Martin and published in New York by Pantheon Books (1980), pp. 3–4. A second story in the group is no. 80, ‘Fearless Simpleton,’ pp. 294–5. It does not get beyond bashing the reanimated corpse with a blunt object to keep him as dead as the simpleton thinks he should be. Another such was collected by Carolina Coronedi-Berti, ‘La fola d’ Zanòn sèinza poura,’ in Favole bolognesi (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1981), no. 33, pp. 132–4. This little hero, too, after many intrepid adventures in spooky palaces, upon seeing his head cut off and installed backwards, dies of fear.

130 This story has its consonances with the story from the Novellino e conti del duecento concerning the wrath of God, and with the variant collected by Nerucci, ‘Giovannino insenza paura,’ in Sessanta novelle montalesi, ed. Roberto Fedi (Milan: Rizzoli [1891], 1977), no. 44, pp. 363–6. This is another in the tradition of the boy who recoils at nothing, even in strange places in the middle of the night. When the others come singing the misereri, thinking to find him dead, they find the contrary and chant ‘Bravo Giovannino.’ In a second sequence, he allows his head to be cut off, but when it is set on backwards and he contemplates his rear end, he becomes so frightened that he drops down dead and so his adventures come to a close. See Sebastiano Lo Nigro, Racconti popolari siciliani: classificazione e bibliografia (Florence: L.S. Olschi, [1958]), p. 42; and Reinhold Köhler’s annotations to Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1870), vol. II, pp. 237–8.

131 Les mémoires de messier Roger de Rabutin, Conte de Bussy, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Henry de Lourme, 1699), vol. I, pp. 76–7.

132 Folktales of France, ed. Geneviève Massignon, trans. Jacqueline Hyland (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 3–8, 247. The edition mentions additional versions in Corsica, elsewhere in France, and in the New World.

133 Deutsche Hausmärchen (Göttingen: Dieterich’sche Buchhandlung, 1851), pp. 328–9, 408–16. The story was known as far away as Iceland where it was collected by Jón Arnason. The boy is taken to the parish priest, but his night in the church has no effect. During subsequent wandering he encounters many other ghoulish adventures. He deals casually with the giant that falls into the kitchen and with a goblin that breaks in half and recedes into the ground; he sleeps in dangerous beds and witnesses the resuscitation of slain warriors with the contents of a phial. His response to this final adventure is to kill the healer and the men who had returned to life. In the final episode he participates in a beheading game in which he finds his own replaced backwards, which consumes him with fear until the error is rectified. His story runs true to form. ‘The Boy Who Did Not Know What Fear Was,’ in Icelandic Legends, trans. George E.J. Powell and Eiríkur Magnússon (Felinfach: Llanerch Publishers [1864], 1995), pp. 161–70.

134 Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales (Garden City, NY: Nelson Doubleday, n.d.), pp. 441–5; and Sven Grundtvig, Danish Fairy Tales (London: G.G. Harrap & Co., 1914), pp. 137–47.