The same as above: ‘abiti’ and ‘panni’ are convertible, so are ‘cenci’ and ‘straccj.’ [↑]
VACCARELLA.[1]
They say there was once a husband and a wife; but I don’t mean that they were husband and wife of each other. The husband had lost his wife, and the wife had lost her husband, and each had one little daughter. The husband sent his daughter to the wife to be brought up along with her own daughter, and as the girl came every morning to be trained and instructed, the wife used to send a message back by her every evening, saying, ‘Why doesn’t your father marry me? then we should all live together, and you would no longer have this weary walk to take.’
The father, however, did not see it in the same light; but the teacher[2] continued sending the same message. In short,[3] at last she carried her point, having previously given a solemn promise to him that Maria, his little girl, should be always as tenderly treated as her own.
Not many months elapsed, however, before she began to show herself a true stepmother. After treating Maria with every kind of harshness, she at last sent her out into the Campagna to tend the cow, so as to keep her out of sight of her father, and estrange him from her. Maria had to keep the cow’s stall clean with fresh litter every day; sometimes she had to take the cow out to grass, and watch that it only grazed over the right piece of land; at other times she had to go out and cut grass for the cow to eat. All this was work enough for one so young; but Maria was a kind-hearted girl, and grew fond of her cow, so that it became a pleasure to her to attend to it.
When the cruel stepmother saw this she was annoyed to find her so light-hearted over her work, and to vex her more gave her a great heap of hemp to spin. It was in vain that Maria reminded her she had never been taught to spin; the only answer she got was, ‘If you don’t bring it home with you to-night all properly spun you will be finely punished;’ and Maria knew to her cost what that meant.
When Maria went out into the Campagna that day she was no longer light-hearted; and as she littered down the stall she stroked the cow fondly, and said to her, as she had no one else to complain to, ‘Vaccarella! Vaccarella! what shall I do? I have got all this hemp to spin, and I never learnt spinning. Yet if I don’t get through it somehow I shall get sadly beaten to-night. Dear little cow, tell me what to do!’
But the cow was an enchanted cow,[4] and when she heard Maria cry she turned round and said quickly and positively:—
Throw it on to the horns of me,