“ The Middle Ages was childish perhaps in its love of the marvellous and marvellous stories, but the audiences of the old giullari and jongleurs certainly did not lack imagination. In this they [28] were like children who are rich in it, and to whom a bare swift tale with sharply outlined facts is dearer than all the considerations and artifices with which a clever tale-teller may embellish it. ”

“ The Count of Anjou lamented loudly, saying, alas! why did not my horse fall like that of the Count of Nevers, so that the Countess might have been as close to me as she was to him?
When the tourney was ended, the Count of Anjou went to the Queen, and begged of her a grace: that for love of the noble knights of France she would make a show of being angry with the King, and when they made peace, she would ask him for a boon, and the boon should be this: that it should be the King’s pleasure that the youthful knights of France should not lose so noble a companion as Messer Alardo de’ Valleri. ”

“ The early Italian prose developed to a great extent along the lines of the earlier chroniclers who wrote in medieval Latin. Nor could it very well be otherwise, for even a new literature of a new tongue requires models, and where should the new nationalist scribes turn for models save to the Latin writings of their own countrymen? It is not too much to say that Italian grew quickly because of its Latin traditions. It is astonishing to think how quickly it did grow, from the simple beginnings of the Cento Novelle to Boccaccio. ”

“ Therefore for the love of God give me counsel, if you can.
Aristotle replied: I cannot do other than tell you that when the nature of man grows old, the good natural heat changes into weakness, while the reasonable virtue fails and alters1. For your instruction I will teach you what I can. Do so that in your youth you practice all beautiful, pleasant and honest things, and guard yourself from indulging in what is contrary to these; so when you are old, you will live without evil, not from nature or from reason, but owing to the long pleasant and noble habit you have formed. ”

“ The lady replied: tell him I will never pardon him unless a hundred barons and a hundred knights, a hundred ladies and a hundred damsels shall cry to me with one voice for mercy, and know not to whom they cry.
Then the knight, who was a man of great wisdom, bethought himself that the feast of Candlemass was approaching, when there would be great rejoicing in Puy, and all good folk would go to the monastery. And he argued: my lady will be there and many good people, such as she (Madonna Grigia) has asked herself shall cry out to her for mercy. ”

“ And the beginnings of the new Italian tongue, liberating itself from the secular thrall of its parent Latin, and having taken shape in its Tuscan and Sicilian matrixes, sought an early literary expression and found it in the work of our perhaps slightly pedantic giullare who will in all probability remain for ever unknown to us. That some such person existed is obvious, even if we cannot discover his name, nor his place of birth, nor estate. ”

“ Many of the tales, as I have said elsewhere, are common to many nations, and it is largely due to the strong if abrupt style of the narratives that they give us such a sharp sense of the period to which they belong.
To read the tales in the present collection provides a remarkable contrast with modern prose, which can never seem to say enough. The compiler or author, if so we may call him, of the Hundred Old Tales, eschews all psychology the meaning of which word he was ignorant of, and abstains from comment unless it be in the nature of moral comment. ”

“ Such was the advice the wise old men of the kingdom gave him. [54]
Roboam went away, and called together a counsel of young men, and asked them similarly their advice. And these asked him: how did they from whom you first sought advice counsel you? And he told them word for word.
Then the young men said: they deceive you, since kingdoms are not held by words but by prowess and courage. Whence, if you speak soft words to the people, it will seem to them you are afraid of them, and so they will cast you down, and will not take you for their lord nor obey you. ”

“ But he probably was a minstrel of the Middle Ages who went from castle to castle entertaining his listeners with his stories—Bible stories, stories from French, Provençal, and Arthurian sources, stories from the Classics, and stories of Oriental origin. Some were moralistic, some humorous, some witty, some spicy.
As a collection they have never ceased to interest because of their humanness. Written in a quaint simple style, they are full of action, wit, and wisdom, and represent practically the oldest prose work in the Italian language. ”

“ When the sons of king Priam had re-made Troy, which the Greeks had destroyed, and Talamon and Agamemnon had taken the lady Hesione, the sons of Priam called a meeting of their powerful allies and spoke so among their friends: dear friends, the Greeks have done us a great wrong. They have killed our folk, and destroyed our city, and our lady they have taken away. And we have re-made our city and strengthened it. Our alliance is a powerful one. ”

“ The personal pronouns have a curious way of getting mixed up in the Novellino. One feels that the story-teller has a perfect, even childish confidence in the reader’s interest, and as a matter of fact, the tales are so short and easily grasped that the doubt as to who is the particular “he” or “she” or “they” referred to is little more than a pedantic one. I have only altered these peculiarities of the prose where it has seemed necessary in order to allow the meaning to come through clearly, for certainly a great deal of the quality and charm of the book lies in its quaint style. ”

“ The Emperor Frederick was a most noble sovereign, and men who had talent flocked to him from all sides because he was liberal in his gifts, and looked with pleasure on those who had any special talent.
To him came musicians, troubadours, and pleasant story-tellers, men of art1, jousters, fencers and folk of every kind.
One day the table was set and the Emperor was washing his hands,2 when there came to him three necromancers garbed in long pilgrims’ robes.3 They greeted him forthwith, and he asked: which of you is the master? One of them came forward and said: Sire, I am he. ”

“ It chanced one day that Messer S., he who owned the palfrey, could bear it no longer. He went to his friend and said: my friend, why do you not speak to me? Why are you angry? The other replied: because I asked you for your palfrey and you denied it me.
And the other replied: that was never so. It cannot be. The palfrey and my own person are yours, for I love you as myself.
Then the knight became reconciled with his friend and he turned to the old amity, and recognised that he had not thought well1. ”

“ While France, Spain and Germany can show a rich epic popular poetry, Italy can only boast a few hundred novelle in prose.
The tale or novella was a literary product especially pleasing to the Middle Ages, which was, in the matter of culture, an infantile age. The period seems to have almost a childish [11] affection for the marvellous tale. Learning and intellectual sophistication of any kind was in the hands of a few, was almost a kind of vested interest in which not only the common people, but even the lords and knights themselves had no interest or claim. ”

“ There is no hint of conscious colouring, no attempt to heighten the effect by a single adjective. Adjectives indeed are extremely rare in the Novellino, as in all good simple prose for the matter of that. The writer rarely departs from “very beautiful” or “most gentle” or “very rich”. As a rule, the tales are almost adjectiveless, and never are adjectives used to round out an effect or disguise an impoverished period. The rhythm of the tales, almost monotonous perhaps, yet wonderfully strong, moves surely from subject to predicate with the least possible adornment. ”

“ King David, being king by the grace of God, who had raised him from a shepherd to be a noble, wished one day to learn at all hazards the number of his subjects: which was an act of vain-glory most displeasing to the Lord, who sent an angel who spoke thus: David, you have sinned. So your Lord sends me to tell you. Will you remain three years in hell1 or three months in the hands of His enemies which are yours, or will you leave yourself to the judgment of your Lord? ”

“ This, of course, is one of the characteristics of good literature in all ages, and especially is to be found in early classic prose.
A typical story of the Middle Ages is the dramatic, macabre tale of the knight who was charged with the custody of a hanged man, and [26] found a substitute for the body which had been taken away by the dead man’s friends in the corpse of the husband of a woman to whom the knight makes love. The love scene which takes place at night by the grave-side of the woman’s husband whom she is desperately mourning is grim and picturesque indeed. ”

“ There is in them as their especial merit great humanity, passion, drama, and often a wisdom so old and mysterious that it seems to reach back through half a dozen civilizations to the very heart and mind of early man. ”

“ The tales which make up the Novellino [4] were, for the most part, “taught”, as we learn from our text by one giullare or story-teller to another. And each man added or altered them according to his wit and company. That the professional story-tellers played tricks with the tales in vogue and added details and colour of their own on occasion, we may well presume from Novella LXXXIX, where a “man of the Court” is reminded that he is spinning out his story at too great a length by one of the yawning company. ”

“ And it came about that he gave the order for battle, and made such a great killing of the Saracens that the nurses say there to the children when they cry: Here comes King Richard, for like death was he feared.
They tell that the Sultan seeing his men fly, asked: how many are these Christians who do such great slaughter, and they answered him: Sire, there is only King Richard with his folk. Then the Sultan said: May God forbid that so noble a man as King Richard should go on foot. ”

“ If the flowers of speech we offer you be mixed with other words, be not displeased, for black is an ornament to gold, and a fair and delicate fruit may sometimes adorn a whole orchard; a few lovely flowers an entire garden. ”

“ If it is not correct to state that people to-day have less imagination than folk in the Middle Ages, it is very likely true that as they have so many more calls on it, it easily becomes tired and loses in elasticity. Those with lively imaginations like to add a good deal themselves to a story that is told them, and such was the case with the listeners to the stories given in this collection. They would probably have resented the guillare overloading his narratives with subsidiary facts, descriptions and artificial holding of the interest. ”

“ Then the good Hector who surpassed in valour at that time all the valorous men, spoke thus: my lords, war is not to my liking, nor do I advise it, for the Greeks are more powerful than we are. They have valour and wealth and science, and so we are not in a position to combat them, for this great strength of theirs. ”

“ There are those who deny the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey to one poet. One cannot pretend to settle a question which still perplexes Italian critics of their own early literature. One may, however, refer briefly to some of the best accredited opinion on the subject.
Francesco Costerò, who believes the tales to be written by several hands, writes in his preface to a popular edition of the Novellino: “Nobody has yet, in spite of all the efforts of the learned, arrived at determining for certain the time or authorship of the Novellino. ”

“ We may, I think, fairly argue that it was some professional teller of tales, some giullare of more than average education rather than any monk or ascetic who wrote the first manuscript of the Hundred Old Tales, and this for the extremely free, not to say bawdy character of three or four of them. (These latter have not been translated.) Moreover, the curious and often ridiculous errors in geography, history, chronology and physics which we find in the Novellino is surely proof that the person who compiled it was no great scholar or man of learning. ”

“ We read of Solomon that he made another offence to God, for which he was condemned to the loss of his kingdom. The angel spoke to him [52] and said: Solomon, on account of your sins, it is meet that you should lose your realm. But our Lord sends to tell you that for the good merits of your father, He will not take it away from you in your life, but for your wrong-doing He will take it away from your son. Whereby we see the father’s merits enjoyed by the son, and a father’s sins punished in his child. ”

“ And since the noble and the gentle in their words and deeds are as a mirror for the lower folks, for that their speech is more gracious, coming from a more delicate instrument, let us call back to memory some flowers of speech, such fair courtesies and fine replies, valiant actions and noble gifts as have in time gone by been compassed by many. ”