Page:Crane Italian Popular Tales.djvu/156

118 During the night when the princess had gone to bed, the lamp said: "Lady, I want to drink." "Oil-cruet, give the lamp a drink." "Lady, it has hurt me." "Oil-cruet, why did you hurt the lamp? How beautiful is the fairy Orlanda! How beautiful is the fairy Orlanda! How beautiful is the fairy Orlanda!" So she did all night until day. All these things were enchanted: the lamp and the oil-cruet. The prince, who heard it, said one day to a servant: "This evening you must enter the princess' room. You must spend the night under her bed. You must see what she does in the night." The servant did so, and the same thing was repeated with the lamp and the oil-cruet. The servant told the prince, who said: "To-night, I will go." At night he crept under his wife's bed. The same thing was repeated. The lamp said: "Lady, I want to drink!" "Oil-cruet, give the lamp a drink." "Lady, it has hurt me." "Oil-cruet, why have you hurt the lamp? How beautiful is the fairy Orlanda!" The whole night she repeated: "How beautiful is the fairy Orlanda!" The prince responded: "Blessed be the fairy Orlanda!" "Ah!" said the princess, "did it need so much to say a word?" Then they embraced and kissed each other, and remained contented and happy.6

We now pass to an amusing class of stories, in which the hero comes in possession of enchanted objects and loses them, finally regaining them in various ways. There are three versions of this class. In the first, the hero loses the objects by the cunning of a woman, and regains them by means of two kinds of fruits, one of which produces some bodily defect and the other cures it. In the second, the episode of the fruits is wanting, and the owner regains his property either by preventing the princess from cheating him at play or by making her fall in love with him. In the third, a person (usually a landlord) substitutes worthless objects for two enchanted ones, which are recovered by means of a third magic object (usually a stick), which beats until the stolen property is restored.7