the little shepherd
there was once a shepherd boy no bigger than a mite and as mean as could be on his way out to pasture one day, he passed a poultry dealer carrying a basket of eggs on her head so what did he do but throw a stone into the basket and break every single egg enraged, the poor woman screamed a curse: "you shall get no bigger until you've found lovely bargaglina of the three singing apples!"
from that time on, the shepherd boy grew thin and puny, and the more his mother attended to him, the punier he became finally she asked, "what on earth has happened to you? have you done a bad turn for which someone placed a curse on you?" he then told her about his meanness to the poultry dealer, repeating the woman's words to him, "you shall get no bigger until you've found lovely bargaglina of the three singing apples!"
"in that case," said his mother, "you've no choice but to go in search of this lovely bargaglina"
