Italian Popular Tales

Translated from the dialect. (Sicilian, Pitrè, No. 190, 3, Giufà e lu Judici)

One day Giufà went out to gather herbs, and it was night before he returned. On his way back the moon rose through the clouds, and Giufà sat down on a stone and watched the moon appear and disappear behind the clouds, and he exclaimed constantly: "It appears, it appears! it sets, it sets!"

Now there were near the way some thieves, who were skinning a calf which they had stolen, and when they heard: "It appears, it sets!" they feared that the officers of justice were coming, so they ran away and left the meat. When Giufà saw the thieves running away, he went to see what it was and found the calf skinned. He took his knife and cut off flesh enough to fill his sack and went home. When he arrived there his mother asked him why he came so late. He said it was because he was bringing some meat which she was to sell the next day, and the money was to be kept for him. The next day his mother sent him into the country and sold the meat.

In the evening Giufà returned and asked his mother: "Did you sell the meat?" "Yes, I sold it to the flies on credit." "When will they give you the money?" "When they get it." A week passed and the flies brought no money, so Giufà went to the judge and said to him: "Sir, I want justice. I sold the flies meat on credit and they have not come to pay me." The judge said: "I pronounce this sentence on them: wherever you see them you may kill them." Just then a fly lighted on the judge's nose, and Giufà dealt it such a blow that he broke the judge's head.

The anecdote of the fly in the latter part of the story is found independently in a version from Palermo. "The flies plagued Giufà and stung him. He went to the judge and complained of them. The judge laughed and said: 'Wherever you see a fly you can strike it.' While the judge was speaking a fly rested on his face and Giufà dealt it such a blow that he broke the judge's nose."

This story, which, as we shall see, has variants in different parts of Italy, is of Oriental origin and is found in the Pantschatantra. A king asked his pet monkey to watch over him while he slept. A bee settled on the king's head; the monkey could not drive it away, so he took the king's sword and killed the bee – and the king, too. A similar parable is put into the mouth of Buddha. A bald carpenter was attacked by a mosquito. He called his son to drive it away; the son took the axe, aimed a blow at the insect, but split his father's head in two, in killing the mosquito. In the Anvar-i-Suhaili, the Persian translation of the Pantschatantra, it is a tame bear who keeps the flies from the sleeping gardener by throwing a stone at his head.[13]

The only popular European versions of this story, as far as we know, are found in Italy. Besides those from Sicily, there are versions from Florence, Leghorn, and Venice. The first is called:

101. The Little Omelet.

[13] See Max Müller's Chips, II. p. 229, and Benfey, Pant. I. p. 293.