Poor Pascadozzia, in order to escape the peril in which she found herself, swore with one hand upon another to keep the promise: so the ogress let her go free. “Words are but wind,” answered the ogress “I am not to be caught with such prattle you have closed the balance-sheet of life, unless you promise to give me the child you bring forth, girl or boy, whichever it may be.” Poor Pascadozzia, in a terrible fright, began to make excuses, saying that neither from gluttony nor the craving of hunger had she been tempted by the devil to commit this fault, but from her being pregnant, and the fear she had lest the child should be born with a crop of parsley on its face and she added that the ogress ought rather to thank her, for not having given her sore eyes. The poor woman went again and again down into the garden, until one morning the ogress met her, and in a furious rage exclaimed, “Have I caught you at last, you thief, you rogue! prithee do you pay the rent of the garden, that you come in this impudent way and steal my plants? by my faith, but I’ll make you do penance without sending you to Rome!” Rapunzel, Tales From Grimm illustrated by Wanda Gag But when the ogress came home, and was going to cook her pottage, she found that some one had been at the parsley, and said, “Ill luck to me but I’ll catch this long-fingered rogue, and make him repent it, and teach him to his cost that every one should eat off his own platter, and not meddle with other folks’ cups.”
There was once upon a time a woman named Pascadozzia, who was in the family way and as she was standing one day at a window, which looked into the garden of an ogress, she saw a beautiful bed of parsley, for which she took such a longing that she was on the point of fainting away and being unable to resist her desire, she watched until the ogress went out, and then plucked a handful of it. So great is my desire to keep the Princess amused, that the whole of the past night, when all were sound asleep and nobody stirred hand or foot, I have done nothing but turn over the old papers of my brain, and ransack all the closets of my memory, choosing from among the stories which that good soul Mistress Chiarella Usciolo, my uncle’s grandmother (whom Heaven take to glory!) used to tell, such as seemed most fitting to relate to you and unless I have put on my spectacles upside down, I fancy they will give you pleasure or, should they not serve, as armed squadrons, to drive away tedium from your mind, they will at least be as trumpets to incite my companions here to go forth to the field, with greater power than my poor strength possesses, to supply by the abundance of their wit the deficiencies of my discourse.
Origins of Fairy Tales from Around the World.
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