Page:Segnius Irritant or Eight Primitive Folk-lore Stories.pdf/85

This general plan sums up in a more or less graphical form many of the results arrived at in the previous notes and comments to the eight stories. I have introduced the principal incidents in the last, and in many ways the most remarkable of the Venetian folk-lore stories, collected orally by the late D. G. Bernoni, because it confirms in a remarkable manner the inferences as to the dates and periods which were drawn from a comparison of Father Know-All, The Three Citrons, The Sun-horse, and L’omo morto. This story, called El Rè Corvo (King Raven), is a Venetian and consequently later variant of the Three Citrons; but while it has lost the anti-climax, it has preserved its prologue which links it more or less with Father Know-All. The main points of the story are briefly as follows: A queen, under a “conjuration,” gives birth to a raven, which just twenty years afterwards returns and demands for a wife the baker’s daughter. He has three. The king and queen go to the baker, who reluctantly agrees, after receiving a bribe to give his first daughter in marriage to the raven. On the eve of this marriage a beautiful youth passes the door of the baker’s daughter, and says: “The idea of a beautiful girl like you to go and marry a raven. It will sit on your shoulder and dirty you.” The girl replies: “If it does I shall kill it.” The marriage takes place. On the following morning the girl is found strangled in bed. The raven has flown. The raven returns exactly at the end of a year, and the same happens to the second daughter of the baker. At the end of another year the raven returns and is betrothed to the third daughter of the baker. When the beautiful youth passes her door and taunts her, she replies: “Mind your own business; if it dirties me I shall have plenty of fine changes of raiment.” The raven says to his parents: “This is the girl for me, I won’t kill her.” They marry, and in bed the raven turns into a beautiful youth. The young bride carries the raven about on her shoulder all day, and is devoted to it. Unfortunately, though bade keep the matter secret by her husband, she divulges to his aunt the secret of their marriage, and the raven flies away. His disconsolate wife begs of her father-in-law a pilgrim’s dress and three pairs of iron shoes, and goes in search of him. Much the same events occur as in the Three Citrons, but she meets no flocks of ravens. The first castle is the castle of the wind, and the old woman gives her a chestnut, and bids her only open it in case of extreme need. The wind is prevented from eating the heroine by being well fed up and gorged with a plate of ‘pasta’ and haricot beans, and sends her on to the castle of the moon. Here much the same happens, except that the old woman gives the heroine a walnut instead of a chestnut, and the moon (of course, a lady giant in Italian) is gorged with a saucepanful of rice, and sends the heroine on to the castle of the sun. Here the sun is gorged with maccaroni; the heroine is given an apple by the old woman, and is carried by the sun on his ray to the castle of King Raven. At the castle of King Raven the heroine engages herself as goose-girl, opens the chestnut, and a splendid robe comes out. The geese cackle on seeing it; the queen