But the king’s delight can scarcely be imagined when he found that the wife of the polished stranger was indeed his very own daughter.
After a few years the old king died, and Scioccolone reigned in his stead. And thus the promises of all the three fairies were fulfilled.
[Among the Italian-Tirolese tales is one called ‘I tre pezzi rari’ (The Three Rare Things), which begins just like ‘Scioccolone,’ and then the fairies give the three gifts of a dinner-providing table-cloth, an exhaustless purse, and a resistless cudgel, which we so often meet with, as in Grimm’s ‘Tischchen deck dich,’ p. 142; Campbell’s ‘Three Soldiers,’ i. p. 176–93, who refers to numerous other versions, in which other incidents of the two next succeeding tales occur. The Spanish version I have given by the name of ‘Matanzas’ in ‘Patrañas.’
In the Roman version of the ‘Dodici palmi di naso,’ it is singular that it is the second and not the youngest son who is the hero. There is another Italian-Tirolese story, entitled ‘Il Zufolotta,’ in which only one boy and two fairies are concerned, and they only give him the one gift of the Zufoletto, which, instead of supplying every wish as in ‘Dodici palmi di naso,’ has the power of the Zauberflöte, the pipe of the ‘Pied Piper,’ and kindred instruments in all times and countries, so that, when it has got its possessor into such trouble that he is condemned to be executed, it answers the same end as the cudgel, liberating its master by setting the judge and executioner dancing, instead of by thumping them.]
[1] ‘Sciocco,’ a simpleton; ‘scioccolone,’ a great awkward simpleton. [↑]
[2] Even in this story, where the fairies really are described as fair to see, it will be observed it is only said they had assumed the forms of beautiful girls for one occasion, not that they were necessarily beautiful, like our fairies. [↑]
[3] ‘Fatatura,’ the virtue of enchantment. [↑]
[4] ‘Villa’ is more often used to express a little estate—or, as we should say, the ‘grounds’ on which a country-house stands—than for the house itself, though we have borrowed the word exclusively in the latter sense. [↑]