The Hunchbacks
A young wife, lonely and bored in her married home, asks her servant to find her some entertainment. The servant encounters a hunchbacked musician who plays the flute and drum, and his music delights the young wife. She dresses him in fine clothes and gives him rich gifts. When he leaves, his friends all envy him and demand to come along the next time. She soon calls for the musician again, but while they perform, he and his fellows drink and carouse to such an extent that they all pass out and are unable to move. The young woman's husband comes home, and in a panic, the wife and her servant bundle the performers into a storeroom full of bedding and feathers. In their drunken stupor, they suffocate. Discovering this later, after her husband has departed, the young wife is again in a panic. She sends her maid to find a porter, but a particularly foolish one; the wife sleeps with him, then asks him to take a sack (full of the hunchbacked musicians' bodies) down to the river and to throw it in, which he does without question.
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See the story Amatores, which has close links to this one.
Nishimura notes several analogues to this, and motifs that the pattern fits: TMI K2322 = ATU 1536B, 'The three hunchback brothers drowned' (cf. ATU 1537, The Corpse killed five times); Fabliau MR2, Des trois Boçus [Three Hunchbacked Musicians]’; Straparola, Le piacevoli Notti, 5.3 (Three hunchback brothers).
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| Gibbosi appears in the following versions and secondary versions
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| Gibbosi is narrated in the following occurrences
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| Gibbosi appears in the following manuscripts
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