In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Seven brothers leave their home because their mother does not give birth to a daughter. She finally has one, and while they are awaiting the news and the sign, the midwife sends the wrong signal, on account of which they go wandering through the world. The sister grows up, searches for her brothers, finds them, and after various adventures they all return home rich. The tale of the two little pizzas was truly a stuffed pizza, which everyone savored so much that they’re still licking their fingers. But Paola was prepared to tell her tale, and the prince’s command was like the eye of a wolf that took the words out of everyone’s mouth, and so she began to speak in this manner: “When you do a favor you always find one; benevolence is the hook of friendship and the spike of love; if you don’t sow you can’t reap. Ciulla has given you an antipasto of an example, and I’ll give you another as an after-dinner treat, as long as you remember what Cato said: ‘Talk little at table.’1 Thus do me the courtesy of lending me your ears, and may the heavens make them always grow, so that you can hear satisfying and pleasing things. “There once was, in the town of Arzano,2 a good woman who unloaded a son every year, until they got to be seven and you might have taken them for a seven-piped syrinx of the god Pan, each pipe bigger than the next. Once they lost their baby ears3 the boys said to their mother, Iannetella, who was pregnant again, ‘You should know, my dear mother, that if you do not have a girl, after so many boys, we’ve made a firm resolution to leave this house to go 8 The Seven Little Doves Eighth Entertainment of the Fourth Day 350 AT 451: The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brother. Penzer notes similarities with a Bolognese story, as well as with Grimm 9 (“The Twelve Brothers”), 25 (“The Seven Ravens”), and 29 (“The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs”) (2:71). 1. Cato Dionysius, Disticha 3.20: “In conversations among table companions make sure you keep a moderate tone; / do not be too chatty if you want your speech to be elegant and urbane” (cit. Croce 414). 2. A village, and now commune, in the province of Naples, district of Casoria (8.5 kilometers from Naples). 3. “A playful expression; as if children lost their ears as they do their teeth” (Croce 415). out into the world and wander far and wide like a blackbird’s children.’ When the mother heard this bad news, she begged the heavens to strip her sons of this desire and to prevent her from losing seven such jewels. And when the hour of the delivery arrived, the sons said to Iannetella, ‘We’re going to retire up to that crag, the cliff right across from here. If you give birth to a boy put an inkstand and a pen on the windowsill, and if you give birth to a girl put a serving spoon and a distaff there, and if we see the signal for a girl we’ll come home and spend the rest of our lives under your wings, but if we see the signal for a boy you can forget about us and give us the name of feathers!’ “Her sons left, and the heavens willed it that Iannetella gave birth to a lovely little daughter. But when the midwife was told to give the sign to the brothers, she was such a scatterbrain and a dolt that she put out the inkwell and the pen. At the sight of that, the seven brothers threw up their heels and walked so far that after three years of traveling they reached a wood—where the trees did a flower dance4 to the sound of a river that played in counterpoint on the stones—in which there lived an ogre. Because this ogre’s eyes had once been torn out by a woman when he was sleeping, he was such an enemy of the female sex that he ate up every one of them that he could get. “When the young men reached the ogre’s house, tired from their travels and weak with hunger, they asked him if he would have the compassion to give them a few bites of bread. The ogre answered...

Share