For lovers of erotic literature.

American author Evie Byrne found the origins of an engraving with a tub[1] and wrote her own version of this Decameron tale (seventh day, second story) which was taken from Apuleius’s The Golden Ass.

When her husband comes home, Peronella hides her lover in a tub and tricks her husband in believing that the lover is a purchaser who is inspecting the tub’s soundness and cleanness. The husband then crawls under the tub and starts cleaning it, the lover takes his mistress “like a Parthian mare,” and the cuckolded husband carries the tub to the lover’s home afterwards.

Or in an early English translation:

“Peronella hideth a lover of hers in a vat, upon her husband’s unlooked for return, and hearing from the latter that he hath sold the vat, avoucheth herself to have sold it to one who is presently therewithin, to see if it be sound; whereupon the gallant, jumping out of the vat, causeth the husband scrape it out for him and after carry it home to his house ”

On from Evie’s excellent version:

“You tease, she thought, you wicked tease, but she tipped her rear end up, inviting more caresses. Beneath her belly, her husband began to use the rasp, sending deep vibrations through the wood. Giannello snaked his hand beneath her skirts and she widened her stance so he could feel that she was wet and hot as the mouth of hell. Even with her husband beneath her, because no matter where they were, or what they did, she was ready to take Giannello. It was that simple.”

According to “The Daily Blague”[2] Ravel’s one-act opera L’heure espagnole was based on this tale.

Stories of cuckoldry are always highly erotic, just why is that?