Page:Crane Italian Popular Tales.djvu/104

66 and threw it to the ground, and lo! a beautiful child, with a golden apple in his right hand, who cried papa and mamma. The king entered the room, and the child ran to meet him, and wished to put the golden apple on the crown which the king wore. The king then kissed the child, blessed the pair, and taking the crown from his head, put it on his son-in-law's, saying: "This is now yours." Then they gave a great feast at the court for the wedding, and they invited the prince's three sisters, with their husbands. And the prince's father, receiving such good news of the son whom he believed lost, hastened to embrace him, and gave him his crown too. So the prince and the fair Fiorita became king and queen of two realms, and from that time on were always happy.23

In the above story the wife is won by the performance of difficult tasks by the suitor. A somewhat similar class of stories is the one in which the bride is won by the solution of a riddle. The riddle, or difficult question, is either proposed by the bride herself, and the suitor who fails to answer it is killed, or the suitor is obliged to propose one himself, and if the bride fails to solve it, she marries him; if she succeeds, the suitor is killed. The first of the above two forms is found in three Italian stories, two of which resemble each other quite closely.

In the Pentamerone (I. 5, "The Flea"), the King of High-Hill, "being bitten by a flea, caught him by a wonderful feat of dexterity; and seeing how handsome and stately he was, he could not in conscience pass sentence on him upon the bed of his nail. So he put him into a bottle, and feeding him every day with the blood of his own arm, the little beast grew at such a rate that at the end of seven months it was necessary to shift his quarters, for he was grown bigger than a sheep. When the king saw this, he had him flayed, and the skin dressed. Then he issued a proclamation, that whoever could tell to what animal this skin had belonged should have his daughter to wife." The question is answered by an ogre, to whom the king gives his