When the mother saw the terrible greediness of her children, and that they ate the raw stuff and did not leave even a small piece for her or their sister, she cursed them and said, “May you be cursed by God and be changed into two birds; may you haunt the highest peaks of the mountains; may you never be able to eat bread even when you see it, because you did not leave any for me this day.”
No sooner had the boys gone out of the house than they were changed into two huge eagles, who, spreading their wings, flew away to the ends of the earth, no one knowing whither they had gone.
And that is why you don’t eat raw cookie dough, kids.
This one doesn’t end well — after trying to break the curse by not speaking, the heroine starts to have doubts.
Five years had passed, the girl not seeing anything of them, and not speaking all the time. After that time she said to herself, “What is the good of my sitting here and keeping silent when none of them have come; perchance they are dead, or who know what has happened?”
No sooner had she opened her mouth and spoken a word when in came her two brothers, and said to her mournfully, “Thou hast not kept thy vow, thou hast broken thy promise, thou hast spoken! If thou wouldst have waited one more year we would have become human beings, and the spell would have been broken. Now we are cursed forever. We must remain eagles and birds of prey.”
And so they have remained to this day, preying on birds and beasts, living on raw meat, never being able to touch bread, and even picking up children under six years of age, the years which their sister had to wait in order to break the spell.
Sooner or later, it all ends in cannibalism. Frankly, if we had a single takeaway for fairy tales, that’s not the most unlikely.
The King of Love
Sometimes you read a story and you’re not sure if the problem is the story or the guy translating it. With this one, the story is a complicated jumble, made more complicated by the fact that the translator couldn’t tell a good story if his life depended on it.
This is another story from Italian Popular Tales by Crane, and I sure hope they didn’t rely on Crane to make them popular. At several points, he commits such a crime against the story that I am forced to intercede to attempt to save it. I am certain that he was a lovely man who undoubtedly did much for the folklore of Italy, but this has issues.
It wants to be a version of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” but it’s not very good at it. (Alas, possibly the best of all possible versions, “The Hog Bridegroom,” could not be included in this volume for copyright reasons. It had twenty-four headed otters. This version is sorely lacking in otters, regardless of the number of heads.) It keeps throwing in other elements, but in a particularly graceless manner, as if the storyteller is losing his place.
Also, it’s called “The King of Love.”
ONCE upon a time there was a man with three daughters, who earned his living by gathering wild herbs. One day he took his youngest daughter with him. They came to a garden, and began to gather vegetables.
Never go into strange people’s gardens and start picking things. It’s only polite.
The daughter saw a fine radish, and began to pull it up, when suddenly a Turk appeared, and said: “Why have you opened my master’s door? You must come in now, and he will decide on your punishment.”
Those of us who have grown suspicious of things in folk songs being euphemisms for other things are giving this radish the side-eye right now.
Although, um, apparently his door is a radish? That doesn’t even need a euphemism. That’s just peculiar. That is a very small door, or else a radish for the ages.
The Turk will appear for about three lines then vanish forever, and was probably thrown in because the storyteller read the Arabian Nights at some point. He was gonna do a whole subplot with carpets, but it kinda fell by the way wayside.
They went down into the ground, more dead than alive;
Radish pulling can be extremely taxing.
and when they were seated they saw a green bird come in and bathe in a pan of milk, then dry itself, and become a handsome youth.
Crane has omitted all the details I want to know, like “What is the bird wearing?” Does he have on green feather cloths or is this a naked man in a pan of milk? Is the daughter averting her eyes or going “Check out the radish on that bird!”?
How one reacts to surprise handsome men in pans of milk tells us a lot about a person’s character, dammit.
He said to the Turk: “What do these persons want?”
“Your worship, they pulled up a radish, and opened the door of the cave.”
“How did we know,” said the father, “that this was Your Excellency’s house? My daughter saw a fine radish; it pleased her, and she pulled it up.”
If this isn’t a euphemism, I will eat my hat.
“Well, if that’s the case,” said the master, “your daughter shall stay here as my wife; take this sack of gold and go; when you want to see your daughter, come and make yourself at home.” The father took leave of his daughter and went away.
“Honey, do you want to marry a man who stands around naked in pans of milk? It’s just, there’s this bag of gold, you see … ”
“Sure, when else will I meet someone else who enjoys the finer
