[1][2] In the English language, the tale was a selection in Thomas Keightley's Fairy Mythology (1828), and later appeared in John Edward Taylor (fl.
The king consults his oracular wooden statue to learn that he would gain back his kingdom when the sorceress loses her sight.
But agents sent to do his bidding are foiled by the well-guarded sorceress, who instantly detected any harm-seeking intruder and meted out "dog justice" upon them.
Porziella then gives birth to a son, raised in the sealed chamber, until as a grown boy he is surreptitiously lowered down by rope to the kitchen below.
Miuccio agonizes at first, but he accomplishes the task under bird's guidance, by building three huge cardboard castles, which are lifted into the air by three griffins summoned by the fairy-bird.
Chirping to gather a large flock of birds, she asks if any one of them would put out the sorceress's eyes, offering as reward safeguard against the talons of hawks and other raptor-kind and free pass (carta franca) "against muskets, bows, crossbows, and "bird-lime of the fowlers".
The sorceress, realizing that being blinded by this darting bird signified her demise, shriekingly departs the city and enters a cave where she pounds her head against the wall until she dies.
Miuccio arrives simultaneously, and at the bird's prompting tells the king he wishes no other reward than to be left to his miserable lot, and not be bothered with any more tasks that placed him in harm's way.
[10] The hero has even developed the temerity to ask the king, exactly which "son of the Devil (figlio de lo Zefierno)" was it that got such ideas in his head.
The queen feels a cutting pain in her heart, and with her life slipping away, tells the king that it was a sign that Miuccio must have slain the dragon, as astrologers predicted.
The queen admits to underestimating Miuccio's abilities, but asks as a final favor to have her entire body anointed with the dragon's blood before she is buried.
[19][20] As translator and commentator Nancy L. Canepa points out, the story carries the moral that "Those who try to harm others encounter their own downfall" in its preamble, yet while the plotting queen has met her doom in appropriate fashion, there is incongruity in the serial rapist-murderer king getting away scot-free without being discomfitted in the least.