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A king who does not have much to think about raises a flea until it becomes as big as a lamb, then has it skinned and offers his daughter as a reward to anyone who is able to recognize its skin. An ogre identifies it by smell and takes the princess, but she is freed by the seven sons of an old woman after seven trials. The prince and the slave split their sides laughing over Vardiello’s ignorance and praised his mother’s good judgment, since she had been able to foresee his bestial behavior and find a remedy for it. When Popa was urged to start talking she waited for all the others to put their chatter under lock and key, and then began to speak: “Resolutions made without judgment always lead to ruin without remedy; he who behaves like a madman suffers like a wise man, as happened to the king of High Mountain, who on account of a four-soled mistake committed a high-heeled1 folly and put his daughter and his honor in immeasurable danger. “The king of High Mountain was once bitten by a flea, and when he had picked it off with great dexterity and saw how beautiful and solidly built it was, it seemed a shame to him to execute it on the block of his fingernail. And so he placed it in a carafe and, feeding it daily with blood from his own 5 The Flea Fifth Entertainment of the First Day 76 AT 311: Rescue by the Sister, AT 513A: Six Go Through the Whole World, AT 621: The LouseSkin , and AT 653: The Four Skillful Brothers. The tale consists of two distinct parts, each having many variants. The first, “the riddle as to what animal the skin belongs,” can be found in Grimm (124 and 134) and Gonzenbach (22), among others. “The second part contains one of the most widely diffused motifs in folk-tales, that of pursuers being hindered by magical obstacles thrown in their path. In some cases safety is finally reached by means of the ‘joint efforts’ of various people endowed with wonderful gifts. Thus, in the present tale, out of the seven sons, numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 produce ‘magic obstacles,’ while all seven form the ‘joint efforts’ motif as a whole. [. . .] [I]t will be noticed that the magic object resembles that which it forms. Thus spittle becomes a sea, a twig turns into a forest, and so on. This is merely the outcome of the belief in sympathetic magic” (Penzer 1:55). See also Grimm 71, Pitrè Fiabe e legg. sic. 2, Pitrè Fiabe, nov. e racc. sic. 21, Pitrè Nov. tosc. 10, and 5.7 of this collection. 1. ’n cordoana (Neap.): “of high quality, like the leather used in the refined and ancient traditional leatherworking of Cordoba” (Rak 122). arm, it grew so quickly that at the end of seven months, when he had to change its quarters, it was bigger than a lamb. On seeing this, the king had it skinned, and when the skin had been dressed he issued a proclamation: whoever was able to recognize to which animal the hide belonged would be given his daughter in marriage. After the notice was made public, flocks of people came running, arriving from the asshole of the earth to be present at this exam and try their luck. There was one who said it was a monster cat, another a lynx, one a crocodile, one some animal and another a different one; but they were all a hundred miles off and not one was on the mark. “Finally, an ogre presented himself at this anatomy exam, an ogre who was the most horrible thing in the world and the mere sight of whom brought tremors, diarrhea, worms, and chills to the boldest young man in the world. Now as soon as he arrived the ogre started buzzing around the skin and sniffing at it, and he hit the bull’s-eye straight on when he said, ‘This hide belongs to the ringleader of all fleas.’ “The king saw that the ogre had grafted onto the right tree2 and summoned his daughter Porziella, who looked like she was made of nothing but “Chisso cuoiero è de l’arcefanfaro de li pulece.” [“This hide belongs to the ringleader of all fleas.”] 2. Literally, “he had grafted it onto a lotus tree,” or he...

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