The Fair Fiorita
Lauren: Hey, Vera. You look a little bit angry today. What's
going on?
Vera: Why doesn't he get it? He's so stupid! I'm the person he should
be with. We all know that. I'm the one he's looking for and he just
ignores me.
Lauren: Maybe someday he will figure it out.
Vera: Probably not. He's just too stubborn.
Serafina: Maybe you are going about this the wrong way. You have more
to gain from this than just him. If you go about your life and deal
with
everything in it, if you are meant to be with him, you will be led to
him. Don't worry, you will have your Fiorita in the end.
Vera: There you go talking crazy again.
Alice: This kinda sounds interesting. Any reason to call Josh Fiorita
is good enough for me. I want to hear it.
Serafina: There was this guy, a prince named Salvatore, who had three
sisters. His father decided to marry off his daughters to the first
three men who passed by their palace. Those three men were a
swine-herd, a huntsman and a grave digger. This upset Salvatore very
much. He cared about his youngest sister very much and did not want her
marrying a grave digger. On the day of the weddings, Salvatore heard a
voice saying to him "Happy he who should have a kiss from the lips of
the fair Fiorita."
Vera: This is dumb already.
Alice: Yeah, we know you don't care. Just try to listen anyway. You
might actually learn something for once.
Serafina: OK, back to the story. Upon hearing this, Salvatore set out
on a
journey to find her. He traveled for three years when he came across
his oldest sister and her husband, the swine-herd. They told him where
he could find
his other two sisters and the way to get to Fiorita. From what he saw
and what his sister told him, he had nothing to worry about when it
came to his sisters' marriages. They all were very happy. When he left
to
continue his journey, the swine-herd gave him some hog's bristles to
keep him from danger. Salvatore then found his second sister and her
husband.
The huntsman gave him bird feathers. He continued on to the house of
his youngest sister who had been his favorite. When Salvatore got
there, her husband gave him a
human bone. Upon arriving in Fiorita's land, he devised a plan to get
in to see her. He had cymbals made and hid himself inside so that he
would be brought directly to her. He did get to her, but that was not
the hard part. There were many tasks he would have to do in order to
win her father's permission to marry her. He was locked in a room full
of fruit and forced to eat it all. He used the hog's bristles to
attract hogs to come and eat up the fruit. His next task was to allow
Fiorita to fall asleep to the sounds of birds singing. For this, he
threw down the feathers to attract many beautiful birds.
The last tast
was to obtain a baby that would speak and call him by name.
Salvatore
used his last gift, the human bone, and a child appeared to do the
task. After completing these tasks, finally approval for the wedding
was given, and they all lived happily ever after.
Vera: And the point of that was...?
Lauren: Don't you ever listen? Just don't worry about stuff and the
things
that happen to you in life will bring you to him when it is meant to
be. You can't force it or it won't work. Just take life as it comes and
take the gifts and the help that people in your life give to you.
Alice: Nicely put, Lauren.
Author's Note: I used the story
The
Fair Fiorita for this weeks story.
I chose this story because it shows that on our journeys trying to find
something that we think is most important to us, a lot of times we find
other important things along the way. A lot of times these things may
help us find what we are truly looking for. I really liked the moral of
this story. Salvatore was just so upset about the his sisters' new
husbands that he didn't even give them a chance. It turns out that
everything worked out very well for all of them and he was worried for
nothing. I left out a few details of his journey and meeting his
sisters just to keep the story flowing, but kept the general story the
same. He actually saw his oldest sister's child first and that is what
led him to his sister. I felt that keeping the story basically between
him and his sisters and brothers-in-law was a good way to do it,
especially with Vera's impatience to the stories anyway. I really liked
this story a lot. There are a lot of twists and turns in it, and
therefore makes it have different morals, not just one. I really liked
that.
"The
Fair Fiorita"; Italian Popular Tales; Thomas Crane, 1885.
Image information: Singing birds
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