Reading Diary B: Italian Round 2

The second half of the Italian Popular Tales unit proved to be just as fun as the first! There were a few of the stories that I had heard before, but with a twist. For instance, The Three Goslings is the equivalent of The Three Little Pigs. A lot of the stories, however, were very new to me and in my opinion had a variety of lessons.

I found An Incident in Rome to be entertaining yet serious. It is a story where a group of men stumble upon this hole in the ground. A man descends into it to find a door and a man sitting in the room behind it. After a series of events, we find out that this man is Pontius Pilate, who is neither saved nor condemned. He is to stay and read over and over the sentence he gave to Jesus Christ. It is no light subject matter, that is for sure!

My favorite of the unit was The Feast Day. This is a story about how a cat, a dog, a maiden, and her husband all get stuck on the top of the house. They are later saved by a friend who came to visit and managed to pull them all down. The reason it was my favorite is really just because it is a story that in context means something completely different present day. They use the following expressions:

"... Where the deuce are you fastened?"
"Where the deuce have they hidden?"

I find this entertaining because a lot of college kids use similar expressions. I don't know if this is the style of story from which that slang term originated, but it added such value to the entertainment of the story. Not to mention the way that it ends:

So he gave a great pull: the cat's tail was loosened, the cat fell into the dog's mouth, the dog into his mistress' mouth, the mistress into her husband's, her husband into his friend's, and his friend into the mouth of the blockheads who are listening to me.

I just like that the author used the term "blockheads" to finish of a great story!

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