Let us start with Burton’s faux-Jacobean summary of this story:

Cecelia. ill-treated by her stepmother, is well entreated by three fairies. Her envious stepmother sendeth her own daughter to them, and she is scorned by them, for which reason she sendeth her stepdaughter to watch pigs. A great lord falleth in love with her, but through the craft and wickedness of the stepmother, they give him the ugly daughter in exchange, and she putteth her stepdaughter in a cask ready to pour boiling water upon her. The lord discovereth the treachery. taketh out Cecelia, and putteth the hideous daughter in her place ; and the mother cometh, and scaldeth her with boiling water, and finding out her error, slayeth herself.

The thing is, this one’s so brief that there’s not a lot that Burton has missed. He goes one for an entire paragraph about how ugly the stepdaughter is, for example, which is boring as anything if you aren’t the sort of person to laugh at mockery of the appearance of others. It was a big seller in medieval Venice, apparently, but now it’s about as funny as a Scooby Doo multi-door chase scene. Burton says she’s the image of a sea-ghula, which is a tribe I’ve not heard of before, but presumably it relates to the desert ghouls we have often discussed.

The stepdaughter needs to do all the household chores, and one day, while she’s carrying something home, she drops her basket in a ravine. As she’s thinking of ways to retrieve it a sorcerer appears behind her. He seems also to be a ghula. I’ll include his description, as he might make a useful monster. I presume he’s what we’d call an ogre. In the story he seems to be first behind her and then down at the bottom of the ravine, otherwise the dialogue makes little sense.

“…His hair stood up like an hog’s bristles, black and stiff, sinking to the very marrow of the bones; The forehead was full of wrinkles, so that it seemed furrowed by the plough. He had shaggy brows, crooked eyes sunk deeply into their orbits, and filled with what do ye call it, and they looked like shops under the eyelashes’ heavy gutter. He had a crooked, frothing mouth, out of which protruded a pair of tusks, like a wild boar’s. His breast was full of bumps, and covered with hair enough to stuff a mattress. And above all he was hunchbacked, roundbellied, and had thin legs, and crooked feet. His appearance was such, that it would make you twist your mouth with fear.”

Cecella, isn’t afraid, and asks him to hand up the basket, with the blessing “May you be married to a rich spouse”. He answers “Come down, 0 my daughter, and take it up.” Cecella climbs down,. clutching at roots and stones. I note that in doing so she has, in Ars Magica terms, taken the role of “daughter” that was offered. When she arrives at the bottom she is met by three faeries who are, according to Burton’s description, blonde and exceedingly lovely. They “kiss and caress” her, and lead her to a house under the rubbish, where a king dwells. Personally I’m hoping for Oscar the Grouch, but I’m sure to be disappointed. She combs and braids the faeries’ hair and is asked what she finds after. She answers that there is a mixture of nits, lice, pearls and garnets. They are pleased and give her a tour of the palace.

The luxuries described are weird, to a modern reader, but tell us a little about what impressed nobles at the time, so the materials may suit magic items. There are Turkish carpets, engraved desks, leather covered caskets with brass corners, walnut tables so bright you can see your reflection in them, table covers of green fabric adorned with flowers, and high backed chairs covered in horse leather. In the wardrobe, there are clothes made with sleeves of velvet and cloth of gold, and bed covers made of damask and taffeta. There are also charms shaped like a serpent tongue or a crescent. There are also gems the shape of an ear of wheat, lilies, and feathers to wear, and garnet jewellery.

The faeries tell Cecelia to take what she likes. She’s humble, so she just takes an old skirt. They then ask her by which gate she will leave, and she says she chooses the stable door. They bless her with a wand, and curse the circumstances which left her in the woods. She heads home.

On the way home she crosses paths with a young lord called Cuosimo. He offers to marry her and has a word with her stepmother, offering to grant Cecelia one hundred thousand ducats. The stepmother wants to swap him over to her daughter, so she plays for time. She sends him away, saying she needs to call together her relatives to take counsel. He agrees and heads off.

The stepmother then forces Cecelia into a pickling barrel. Her plan is to pour hot water in, to kill her. Cuosimo arrives early, because he’s impatient, and finds the stepdaughter in Cecelia’s clothes,. He is fooled, despite her being so disgusting the author can list negative characteristics for pages. His lands are far away, so he stops on the way home, and the first night they avoid each other because he’s disgusted. The next morning he takes her back to her stepmother’s house, to just call the whole thing off. The stepmother is not home, because she’s off gathering wood to boil Cecelia alive.

He declaims emphatically, and a cat answers him :”Your wife’s in the cask.” He grabs the fire axe and smashes the barrel open. He stands there literally stunned by her beauty for a paragraph. He then asks who put her in the barrel, not once, but six times in different ways,. Elegant variation is beginning to wear me down in the Pentamerone. Cecelia explains what a pig pickling barrel is, and how murder is afoot. He gets her to dress and hide behind the door, then rebuilds the barrel in display of practical coopering which I did not expect from a nobleman. He tricks the stepsister into the cask, saying he’s having a charm made, to protect her from the evil eye. He then sneaks off with Cecelia, and they ride to Pascarola, north of Naples, where his lands are.

The stepmother returns home and murders her daughter. We’ll not go into detail, save that it says she dies as if she had eaten Sardinian Grass, which we’ve discussed before.The mother discovers her error, and is so distressed she throws herself into a well, and breaks her neck. The moral is ‘Who spitteth to heaven on his face receiveth the spittle.’

The Two Brothers

Let’s start with Burton’s faux-Jacobean “Marcuccio and Palmiero are brothers, one rich, and corrupt, and vicious, and the other poor, but virtuous. They meet after various vicissitudes, but the poor brother is driven away by the other ; after a time the rich brother falleth into poverty and is driven near the gibbet, but at last, recognised to be innocent, is saved by his brother, who hath become rich and a baron, and who giveth him a share of his good fortune.”

There’s a merchant with two sons, and he’s dying. He calls them to him and says “Marcuccio and Palmiero, I’m about to die, so I have only a little time to give you my final wisdom. Let me tell you how little time I have for a couple of paragraphs.

So, his advice is kind of basic for a last word. I thought it would be something like “The treasure is in the cave behind the rock that shines on New Year’s Day”, but no! His advice is

Wisdom’s a treasure that can’t be stolen. (three ways)

Fear Heaven (two ways)

Don’t be lazy (five ways)

Be frugal. He says “By small coins is made the ducat” which seems like an early version of “Take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”.

Spend as much as you can. Eat as much as you want. Drink as much as you like.

People with money are good – people without money are bad (hobgoblins and asses). Suck up to the rich. This is where “Sleep with dogs, arise with fleas” comes from. It’s also the source of that ableist saw about not having friends who are lame.

Don’t talk much.

Be happy to have little.

Think first and act later (this is where “Don’t shut the stable door once the oxen are gone” comes from, and that changes a bit to the modern version about bolting horses.) He says this a second way later.

Chew well, then swallow.

Avoid quarrels. Avoid pride. The gibbet is for fools.

Avoid redheads. This may be an antisemitism thing.

The love of the great is like flask wine: good in the morning and sour in the evening.

“Take care of a rich man become poor, of a peasant become rich, of a beggar in despair, of a petted servant, of an ignorant prince, of a mercenary judge, of a jealous woman, of a man of to-morrow, of a court flint-stone, of a beardless man, of a woman with beard, of a quiet river, of a smoky chimney, of bad neighbours, of a child that always weepeth, and of an envious man. “

The boys split up, and one is good and wise, but poor, and the other is a rake, and becomes rich. Eventually the poor brother asks the rich one for help, and is refused. He decides to kill himself by climbing the tallest available mountain and throwing himself to his death. Just before he manages it, a woman appears and catches him by the arm.

She’s gorgeous, dressed in green, and has a laurel wreath in her golden hair. She says “My dude, you’ve studied so much! Go use the weapons you have tempered. Let me say it again in three different ways! Virtue is a compass! Also, I’m Virtue, and you seem to be blaming me for your problems, so Heaven sent you here so I could tell you to suck it up and stop cursing my name. Shake it off, you big baby. I’m awesome!” She then gives him a packet of powder and sends him to a particular town, Campo-largo. Oddly it says he knows her for Virtue by the “point of her nose”. He tries to kiss her feet, but she disappears, because that’s not her kink. He slides down the Mountain with the Strong-Willed Virtue. She can, apparently, grant most of the personal Virtues, but only turns up when Heaven decrees.

In the town, there’s a princess on her deathbed. Marcuccio says “I can cure her if you like.” The king is happy to let him try. Let’s take a quote:

“[He] brought him to the chamber of the princess, where he found that unhappy damsel lying in a perforated bed, so much consumed and grown so thin, that she was only skin and bones : the eyes were so deeply sunken in their orbits, that one would have needed Galileo’s glasses to see the eye-balls, the nose was so sharply defined that it might have usurped the office of the supposed form, the cheeks were so thin and drawn that she seemed like the death of Sorrento, the under-lip fell back upon her chin, the breast was flat down like unto the breast of a magpie, the arms were like the shin-bone of a lamb, bared of the flesh ; in brief she was a transformed being, who with the cup of pity drank a toast to compassion.”

To explain part of that the Death of Sorrento was a festival until 1799. “A morte ‘e Surriento” basically involved a pair of carts, each with a big puppet on the front. At midnight they head for the town gate, where they are slain by Death, and then people party on with the stuff in the carts. I think it was for the end of Lent.

Marcuccio feeds her the powder in a slightly warmed egg. She recovers in a way that makes sense in terms of the theory of humors. Let’s take the quote:

“But Night had not yet entered port and set up her tent, when the sick damsel called her handmaidens, and bade them change her bed, which was soaked in sweat, and when they had changed her, she felt refreshed, a thing that in seven years of infirmity had never happened, and she sought somewhat of food ; so that they had fair hopes, and they gave her something to sip. Thus every hour she gained strength, and every day her appetite increased, and not a week went by without she recovered, and her health returned, and she left her bed.

Seeing this, the king thought Marcuccio the god of leechcraft, and he endowed him with lands and fiefs, and made him a baron, and prime minister of his court, and married him to a lady the wealthiest in that country…”. Note he doesn’t marry the princess.

Meanwhile, the black sheep of the family has fallen on hard times. He’s on the run from his problems, but they get progressively worse until he arrives in Campo-largo penniless and ragged. It’s raining, so he breaks into an abandoned shack out of town. Palmeiro takes off his stockings, makes a noose and tries to hang himself. The beam is rotten, so he falls and bruises his ribs on the pile of stones he was using as a kickstool.

When the beam breaks, a thief cache is revealed. There are chains, necklaces and rings, as well as a wallet of gold ducats. He is suddenly happy, and he heads for a tavern. In terrible luck, the thieves had stolen these items from this very innkeeper! What are the odds? The tavernkeeper sees the wallet and has the other guys in the inn hold Palmeiro while he calls the watch. He is searched and he’s carrying a ton of stolen jewellery, so…it’s the gibbet for him. He appeals to a higher judge who happens to be his brother, and then Marcuccio is stuck on a dilemma, because he’s caught between the demands of justice and the ties of blood.

As Palmerio is being led to the gibbet, a sprinting doorkeeper arrives and says “You’ll never believe this! The two thieves went back to their stash. Since it was missing, they accused each other of treachery, stabbed each other, and then confessed their sins deathbed-style!”. Marcuccio explains who he is and says “Hey! If you know what virtue and vice are now, come to my house and I’ll share my stuff.”

The motto is “Virtue alone makes men blessed.”

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