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> Giudita
> The Wizard and the Donkey
> The Hunchback Brothers
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The Hunchback Brothers
Once upon a time there were two siblings who had had the misfortune of being born hunchbacks.
One day the youngest said: “I want to go ‘round the world and become rich.” And he got up and left home. He walked all night and all day, lost his way and ended up in a strange forest.
“What shall I do now?” thought the poor boy. “If the bandits come they will find me. I better climb this tree and hide in it’s branches.” So, the boy climbed to the top of the tree and he made himself comfortable, intending to spend the night there.
All of a sudden he heard a noise, “Oh my God! Here are the bandits!” he thought… but when he looked, instead of bandits he saw many old ladies coming out in procession from a great hole, singing “Saturday, Sunday…” and the boy, without thinking what he was doing, sang along from the top of the tree “… and Monday.”
The old ladies stopped and turned “Oh! Who is the angel who said such lovely thing? We didn’t manage to say it ourselves!” and they then began to sing again: “Saturday Sunday…. “
And again the boy responded “and Monday.”
Finally the ladies spotted him sitting high in the tree. The poor boy, realising he had been discovered, started shaking as it he had a fever, and then he began moaning,
“I beg you, don’t kill me. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong, I just said the first thing that came to my mind.”
“Indeed,” said the old ladies, “you can come down and ask of us anything you would like to have and we will grant it to you.”
The boy hunchback decided the old ladies seemed safe and climbed down the tree. The old ladies immediately surrounded him and began to chant: “Ask! Ask! Ask!”“I do not have anything to ask,” replied the boy, “I am a poor boy, and I would not want anything but being freed from this hunch because everyone makes fun of me.”
“It will be as you wish,” said the old ladies. And they took the boy and cut off the hunch from him back with a saw. The boy did not feel any pain, nor was there any blood or scarring.
So the hunchback boy, who was no longer a hunchback boy, found his way back home and everyone looked at him, peered at him but nobody really recognised him! Not even his brother recognised him at first glance, and he wondered aloud many times “Is this really you, my brother?”
“Yes it is me in the flesh. Can’t you see how beautiful I look?”
“How did you do it?” asked the older brother.
The younger brother then told of his adventures.
“Oh! I want to go there as well” said the hunchback brother.
“Careful,” said the younger brother, “I don’t know if they will cut your hunch off too.”
“I want to try anyway,” said the hunchback brother and set off on his journey until he arrived in the same forest and climbed up on the same tree. At same hour the old ladies came out singing “Saturday Sunday and Monday…
”Then, the hunchback, remembering his brothers words shouted “… and Tuesday!”
But this time the rhythm of the song was broken and the old ladies started screaming angrily “Who dare say this? The rhythm is broken! If we find him, then he will see how terrible this is.” With that, the old ladies began searching for the source of the dissonance and eventually saw the hunchback brother on the tree
“Get down!” They shouted at him.
“No, I do not want to come down” the hunchback answered.
“Get down!” Said the old ladies again.
“No way!”
“If you come down we will not hurt you.”
The hunchback, thinking that this is the way the old ladies must have behaved with his brother, climbed down the trees. As soon as he was back on the ground, the old ladies surrounded him and took his brothers old cut off hunch and stuck it onto his front, saying,
“This is the punishment you deserve for having spoilt our song.”
With this, the older brother, who now had a hunch on both his front and back, went home crying and moaning – but there was nothing he could do.
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