Page:Crane Italian Popular Tales.djvu/322

284 In the Sicilian version, Pitrè, No. 186, "Long May," the wife, who is very anxious to make more room in her house by getting rid of the grain stored in it, asks her husband when they shall clean out the house. He answers: "When Long May comes." The wife asks the passers-by if they are Long May; and at last a swindler says he is, and receives as a gift all the grain. The swindler was a potter, and the woman told him that he ought to give her a load of pots. He did so, and the wife knocked a hole in the bottom of each, and strung them on a rope stretched across the room. It is needless to say that when the husband returned the wife received a beating "that left her more dead than alive."

Another story about foolish people is the following Venetian tale (Bernoni, Fiabe, xiii.), entitled:

There was once a husband and a wife. The former said one day to the latter: "Let us have some fritters." She replied: "What shall we do for a frying-pan?" "Go and borrow one from my godmother." "You go and get it; it is only a little way off." "Go yourself; I will take it back when we are done with it." So she went and borrowed the pan, and when she returned said to her husband: "Here is the pan, but you must carry it back." So they cooked the fritters, and after they had eaten, the husband said: "Now let us go to work, both of us, and the one who speaks first shall carry back the pan." Then she began to spin and he to draw his thread,—for he was a shoemaker,—and all the time keeping silence, except that when he drew his thread he said: "Leulerò, leulerò;" and she, spinning, answered: "Picicì, picicì, piciciò." And they said not another word.

Now there happened to pass that way a soldier with a horse, and he asked a woman if there was any shoemaker in