The Merchant is an Italian literary

fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic (paranormal), magic, incantation, enchantments, and mythical ...

written by

Giambattista Basile Giambattista Basile (February 1566 – February 1632) was an Italian poet, courtier, and fairy tale collector. His collections include the oldest recorded forms of many well-known (and more obscure) European fairy tales. He is chiefly remembere ...

in his 1634 work, the ''

Pentamerone The ''Pentamerone'', subtitled ''Lo cunto de li cunti'' ("The Tale of Tales"), is a seventeenth-century Neapolitan fairy tale collection by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile. Background The stories in the ''Pentamerone'' were collect ...

''.Giambattista Basile, ''Pentamerone''
"The Merchant"
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Synopsis

A merchant's son, Cienzo, was throwing stones with the son of the king of Naples, and cracked the prince's head. His father, fearing the consequences, threw him out with some money, an enchanted horse, and an enchanted dog. In the evening, Cienzo found a tower by a ruined house; the master of the tower would not let him in, for fear of robbers. Cienzo went to the house. In the night, he found it was haunted by three

ghost A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to rea ...

s, lamenting their treasure. He lamented with them. In the morning, they gave him it and warned him to keep care of it. He could not see a ladder up and called for help; the owner of the house came with a ladder and they found a treasure, which Cienzo refused to take part of and went on. Another time, he crossed a river to find a

fairy A fairy (also fay, fae, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore), a form of spirit, ...

being attacked by robbers; he helped her, but refused to come to her palace to be rewarded. He came to a town where a seven-headed

dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...

devoured a maiden every day, and now the lot had fallen the princess, Menechella. He went to fight the dragon, found its heads reattached themselves, but cut them all off with one blow, cut off their tongues, and threw them about the countryside, where they were too far apart. The king declared that whoever had killed the dragon would marry his daughter. A countryman gathered all the heads and claimed the prize. Cienzo wrote a letter to the princess and had his dog deliver it. The king had the dog followed back to Cienzo, who revealed that the heads that the man had brought as proof were missing the tongues, which he had. The king married his daughter to Cienzo and sent for Cienzo's father.

Synopsis

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Further reading