Note 8 — THE SIMPLE WIFE.1

Another version of this story was told me, or rather an entirely different story embodying the same purport, which, though full of fun, turned on the double meanings of common words of household use too homely for the most part, and some too coarse to please the English reader. The husband, among other things, tells his wife to prepare dinner for a friend and to mind she has ‘brocoli strascinati’ and ‘uovi spersi,’8 as they are his favourite dishes. ‘Strascinare’ is to drag anything along, but is technically used to express brocoli chopped up and fried, the commonest Roman dish. ‘Spergere’ is to scatter, but the word is used among common people to express eggs poached in broth, a favourite delicacy; (eggs poached as in England are called ‘uova in bianco’). The wife, taking the words literally, drags the brocoli all over the house and all over the yard, till it is so nasty it cannot be eaten, instead of frying it, and scatters the eggs all about the place instead of poaching them, and so on through a number of other absurdities difficult to explain in detail. In the end the husband falls ill, partly from her bad cooking and partly from annoyance; a doctor is called in, who tells her (among other directions which she similarly misunderstands), that he must have nothing but ‘brodo,’9 but she is to make it ‘alto, alto.’ ‘Alto’ is literally ‘high,’ but he uses it for ‘good,’ ‘strong;’ she, however, understands him to mean her to make it in a high place, and goes up on the roof to make it. When the husband asks for it she says she cannot get it for him then as it is up on the roof.