

E-text prepared by Cathy Smith, Chloe P. H. Lewis, Josephine Paolucci, and
the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net.)



Transcriber's note:

   Minor typographical errors have been corrected.

   Carets (^) indicate a superscript letter.

   This book has two types of notes. Footnotes are in the text and
   are indicated by a letter. These have been moved to the end of
   the appropriate paragraph. Endnotes are indicated by a number,
   and the notes for all the chapters are at the end of the stories.





ITALIAN POPULAR TALES

by

THOMAS FREDERICK CRANE, A. M.

Professor of the Romance Languages
in Cornell University







Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

Copyright, 1885,
by Thomas Frederick Crane.
All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.




To

GIUSEPPE PITRE.




PREFACE.


The growing interest in the popular