r son before she dies." The woman wonders that
her imprecation has taken effect so soon, and readily consents to Tony's
visit. Not only this, but she loads a mule with everything necessary for
the comfort of the body and soul of the dying pig.

The traveller leads away the mule with Tony, and returns home so pleased
with having found that the outside world contains so many fools that he
marries as he had first intended.

The credulity of the woman in the last version, in allowing Tony to
visit his sick mother, finds a parallel in a Neapolitan story (Imbriani,
_Pomiglianesi_, p. 226) called:

XCIV. CHRISTMAS.

Once upon a time there was a husband who had a wife who was a little
foolish. One day he said to her: "Come, put the house in order, for
Christmas is coming." As soon as he left the house his wife went out on
the balcony and asked every one who passed if his name was Christmas.
All said No; but finally, one--to see why she asked--said Yes. Then she
made him come in, and gave him everything that she had (in order to
clean out the house). When her husband returned he asked her what she
had done with things. She responded that she had given them to
Christmas, as he had ordered. Her husband was so enraged at what he
heard that he seized her and gave her a good beating.

Another time she asked her husband when he was going to kill the pig. He
answered: "At Christmas." The wife did as before, and when she spied the
man called Christmas she called him and gave him the pig, which she had
adorned with her earrings and necklace, saying that her husband had so
commanded her. When her husband returned and learned what she had done,
he gave her a sound thrashing; and from that time he learned to say
nothing more to his wife.[3]

In the Sicilian version, Pitre, No. 186, "Long May,"[S] the wife, who is
very anxious to make more room in her house by getting rid of the grain
stored in it, asks her husband when they shall clean out the house. He
answers: "When Long May comes." The wife asks the passers-by if they are
Long May; and at last a swindler says he is, and receives as a gift all
the grain. The swindler was a potter, and the woman told him that he
ought to give her a load of pots. He did so, and the wife knocked a hole
in the bottom of each, and strung them on a rope stretched across the
room. It is needless to say that when the husband returned the wife
received a beating "that left her more dead than alive."

[Fo