Page:Crane Italian Popular Tales.djvu/334

296 likes it greatly and asks what it is. His mother tells him it is the night-singer. One evening Giufà saw a poor man singing behind a door, and thinking he was a night-singer, killed him and carried him home. The rest of the story is like the first version.16

Giufà is not without an occasional gleam of wit, as is shown in the following story (Pitrè No. 190, § 8), entitled:

As Giufà was half a simpleton no one showed him any kindness, such as to invite him to his house or give him anything to eat. Once Giufà went to a farm-house for something, and the farmers, when they saw him looking so ragged and poor, came near setting the dogs on him, and made him leave in a hurry. When his mother heard it she procured for him a fine coat, a pair of breeches, and a velvet vest. Giufà dressed up like an overseer, went to the same farm-house, and then you should see what great ceremonies they made! they invited him to dine with them. While at the table all were very attentive to him. Giufà, on the one hand, filled his stomach, and on the other, put into his pockets, coat, and hat whatever was left over, saying: "Eat, my clothes, for you were invited!"

It is interesting to note that this story is told of no less a person than Dante, about whom cluster more popular traditions than many are aware of. It is the subject of one of Sercambi's novels, and will be found with many other interesting traditions of the great poet in Papanti's Dante secondo la Tradizione e i Novellatori, Leghorn, 1873.17

Giufà was not a very safe person to leave alone in the house. Once his mother went to church and told him to make some porridge for his little sister. Giufà made a great kettle of boiling porridge and fed it to the poor child and burned her mouth so that she died. On another occasion his mother, on leaving home, told him to feed the hen that was sitting and put her back on the nest, so that the eggs