THE TWO HUNCHBACKED BROTHERS.1
Reading edition
THE TWO HUNCHBACKED BROTHERS.1
There was once a man who had one son, who married a widow who also had one son, and both were hunchbacks. The wife took very good care of her own son, but the son of her husband she used to put to hard work and gave him scarcely anything to eat. Her son, too, used to imitate his mother, and sadly ill-treat his stepbrother.
After treating him ill for a long time, she at last sent him away from the house altogether.
The poor little hunchback wandered away without knowing where to go.
On, on, on he went, till at last he came to a lonely hut on a wide moor. At his approach a whole host of little hunchbacks came out and danced round him, chanting plaintively—
Sabbato!
Domenica!
a great number of times. At last our little hunchback felt his courage stirred, and, taking up the note of their chant, chimed in with—
Lunedì!
Instantly the dancing ceased, all the little hunchback dwarfs became full-grown, well-formed men, and, what was better still, his own hump was gone too, and he felt that he, too, was a well-grown lad.
‘Good people,’ said our hunchback—now hunchbacked no more—‘I thank you much for ridding me of my hump and making me a well-grown lad. Give me now some work to do among you, and let me live with you.’
Then all disappeared, and the boy went home.
‘So you’ve come back, have you?’ said the stepmother. ‘What, and without your hump, too! Where have you left that?’
Then the good boy told her all that had happened, without hiding anything.
‘Do you hear that?’ said the stepmother to her own son. ‘Now go you and get rid of your hump in the same way.’
So the second hunchback went forth, and journeyed on till he came to the lonely hut on the moor.
A tribe of hunchbacks came out and danced round him, and sung—
Sabbato!
Domenica!
Lunedì!
to which the bad son of the stepmother added in his rough voice, all out of tune—
Martedì!
Immediately all the hunchbacks came round him and gave him a drubbing, and the chief of them stuck on him a hump in front as well as behind.
Thus they sent him home to his mother.
When his mother saw him come home in this plight, she turned upon the stepson and abused him for having misled her son to injure him; and both mother and son set upon him and belaboured him after their wont. But he had only told the truth, without intention to deceive; and the stepmother’s son had incurred the anger of the dwarfs by his discordant addition to their chant. So the first hero took out his wand and said, ‘At ’em, good stick!’ and the wand flew out of his hand and administered on mother and son a sounder drubbing than that they had themselves been administering. Ever after that he was able to live at home in peace, for everyone was afraid to injure him because of the power of his stick.
[Next we have a group where a younger sister of three comes to supernatural good fortune, without any previous envy or ill-treatment on the part of her elders.]