The Cistern

Thomas Frederick Crane (Jul 12, 1844 – Dec 10, 1927) was an American folklorist, scholar and attorney-at-law.  After graduation from Princeton, he moved to Ithaca. He worked as a lawyer in the community and as a librarian for new founded Cornell University. He is mostly known for Cornell's fight song, "Give My Regards to Davy", and for his collection of Italian Popular Tales, which were published in popular children’s magazines.

The Cistern is short folk story collected by Thomas Crane and included in his Italian Popular Tales. The narrative follows three brothers, sons of a king. Two elder ones did not like their little brother, especially they did not want to hunt with him. One day the little one followed them to woods, so his brothers decided joke on him, and do it in quite harsh way.