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The king of Strong Fortress falls in love with the voice of an old woman, and after he is tricked with a sucked-on finger, he gets her to sleep with him. But upon discovering her old hide, he has her thrown out the window, and when she remains hanging on a tree she is enchanted by seven fairies, after which she becomes a splendid young woman and the king takes her for his wife. But the other sister is envious of her fortune, gets skinned to make herself more beautiful , and dies. There wasn’t one person who didn’t like Ciommetella’s tale, and they derived a double-soled pleasure from seeing Canneloro freed and the ogre, who had done such a butcher job on the poor hunters, punished. And when the order was given to Iacova to seal the next letter of entertainment with her coat of arms, she began to speak in this manner: “The accursed vice, embedded in us women, of wanting to look beautiful reduces us to the point where to gild the frame of our forehead we spoil the painting of our face, to whiten our old and wizened skin we ruin the bones of our teeth, and to put our limbs in a good light we darken our eyesight, so that before it is time to pay our tribute to time we procure ourselves rheumy eyes, wrinkled faces, and rotten molars . But if a young girl who in her vanity gives in to such empty-headedness deserves reproach, even more worthy of punishment is an old woman who 10 The Old Woman Who Was Skinned Tenth Entertainment of the First Day 115 AT 877: The Old Woman Who Was Skinned. See Penzer’s discussion of the appearance of a number of the motifs in this tale in legend, religious traditions, folklore, and the literary fairy tale tradition. These include a man marrying a hag who then turns into a beautiful lady (“The Weddynge of Syr Gawayne,” the legend of Perceval); the “false sybarite” motif; and the flaying of the sister. With regard to the latter, he notes that the “terrible end of the other sister is rather surprising when we remember that the lucky sister had been given gifts by the fairies to make her beautiful, noble, and virtuous. Yet as soon as she is married, she proceeds to treat her less lucky sister in the most heartless and cruel way imaginable.” The similarities with Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Claus and Big Claus” and Grimm 61, “Little Farmer,” are also noted (1:103–04). Gonzenbach 73, “The King Who Wanted a Beautiful Wife,” is in essence identical to “The Old Woman.” Croce mentions a similar tale by Pitrè (6 in Fiabe e legg. pop. sic.) and cites corresponding Sicilian, Venetian, Abbruzzese, and Tyrolean versions (Lo cunto de li cunti, 287). out of her desire to compete with young ladies becomes a laughingstock for others and the ruin of her own self, as I am about to tell you, if you will lend me a bit of your ears.1 “Two old women had retired to a garden facing the King of Strong Fortress’s quarters. They were the summary of all misfortunes, the register of all deformities, the ledger of all ugliness: their tufts of hair were disheveled and spiked, their foreheads lined and lumpy, their eyelashes shaggy and bristly , their eyelids swollen and heavy, their eyes wizened and seedy-looking, their faces yellowed and wrinkled, their mouths drooly and crooked; in short, they had beards like a billy goat’s, hairy chests, round-bellied shoulders, withered arms, lame and crippled legs, and hooked feet. And to prevent even the Sun from catching a glimpse of their hideous appearance, they stayed holed up in a few ground-level rooms2 under the windows of that lord. “The king was reduced to such a state that he couldn’t even fart without causing those old pains in the neck to wrinkle their noses, for they grumbled and threw themselves about like squid over the smallest thing. First they said that a jasmine flower fallen from above had given one of them a lump on her head, then that a torn-up letter had dislocated one of their shoulders, and then that a pinch of dust had bruised one of their thighs. “Upon hearing of this monster of delicacy, the king concluded that underneath him lived the quintessence of softness, the prime cut of...

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