Hop o’ my Thumb went up to the Ogre and gently pulled his boots off; then he put them on himself. They were very big and very wide, but they were magic boots, and had the power of becoming larger or smaller to suit the legs of whoever put them on, so that they fitted Hop o’ my Thumb as closely as if they had been made for him. He went straight back to the Ogre’s house, where he found the wife in tears beside her daughters who had had their throats cut.
‘Your husband is in great danger,’ Hop o’ my Thumb told her; ‘for he has been captured by a gang of robbers, who have sworn to kill him unless he gives them all his gold and silver. Just when they were holding a knife to his throat, he saw me, and begged me to come and tell you of the danger he is in, and say that you are to give me everything he owns that is of value, and not to keep anything back, because otherwise they will kill him without mercy. The message was so urgent that he told me to take his seven-league boots, as you can see, so as to make haste, and also so that you will not think that I am an impostor.’ The good woman was very alarmed and immediately gave him everything she had, for the Ogre was a very good husband to her, even though he ate small children. So Hop o’ my Thumb, laden with all the Ogre’s wealth, went back to his father’s house, where he was welcomed with great rejoicing.
Now there are many people who disagree about this last incident, and who claim that Hop o’ my Thumb never stole the Ogre’s money, although they admit that he had no scruples about taking his seven-league boots, because all they were ever used for was to chase small children. These people declare that their information comes from a reliable witness, since they have in fact been given food and drink in the woodcutter’s house. They affirm that, when Hop o’ my Thumb put the Ogre’s boots on, he went to the King’s court, knowing that they were very anxious there about an army that was two hundred leagues away, and wanted to know the outcome of a battle that had been fought. They say that he went to see the King, and told him that if he wished he would bring him news of the army before the day was out. The King promised him a large sum of money if he was successful. Hop o’ my Thumb brought the news that very evening, and having made himself well known by this first commission, he was able to earn as much as he wanted, for the King paid him handsomely to carry his commands to the army, and innumerable ladies gave him whatever he wanted in order to get news of their lovers, which brought him more money than anything else. There were some women who entrusted him with letters for their husbands, but they paid him so badly, and it amounted to so little, that he never bothered to count what he had earned in this way.
After he had been in business as a courier for a time, and had amassed great wealth, he went back home to his father’s house, where the rapturous welcome he received is beyond all imagining. He gave all his family enough for them to live in comfort, and established his father and brothers in official posts that had just been created;* in this way he started them all on their careers, while improving his own position at Court in the best possible manner.
THE MORAL OF THIS TALE
If every son grows strong and tall,
Well-mannered and well-liked by all,
Then parents with large families are pleased;
But when a son is silent, weak, and small,
He’s likely to be bullied, mocked, and teased.
But sometimes it’s the smallest who does best,
And brings prosperity to all the rest.
APPENDIX A
Selected Tales related to Perrault’s Contes
WHOLE books have been written on the different versions of single tales (see Select Bibliography, items by Cox, Dundes, etc.). What follows is a very small sample, in the form of summaries, chosen because they are relevant to Perrault’s versions, not in order to give a truly representative selection of any given tale. The reasons for inclusion are various: because they are more or less probable sources for Perrault, or vary significantly from his tales, or exemplify literary versions contemporary with his, or illustrate the French tradition for a particular tale.
Where possible I have tried to give not only the bare bones of these splendid stories but convey something of their style, sometimes by quotation. For readers who may be interested in pursuing the topic I give the numbers of the tale-type, as found in the basic reference work on folk-tale, known as Aarne-Thompson-Uther, ATU. This is the latest revision (2004), by Hans-Jörg Uther, of Aarne’s The Types of the Folktale, first published in 1928. For the tales by the Brothers Grimm included below I have used: Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm, Selected Tales, trans. Joyce Crick (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005) (referred to below as Crick), but give the tales their traditional numbering. For the French tales in my most important source, the marvellous repertoire of French folk-tales known as Delarue/Tenèze, I give the editors’ own type-numbers, which sometimes differ very slightly from the ATU numbering. I have mostly used two websites, edited respectively by D. L. Ashliman and Heidi Anne Heiner, for texts from The 1001 Nights, Straparola, Basile, and Jacobs. For Mlle Lhéritier, Mlle Bernard, and Mme d’Aulnoy, I have referred to the editions by Raymonde Robert and Nadine Jasmin. For further details on all these, see the Select Bibliography. References for some particular tales are given as required below.
Griselda
ATU type 887, Griselda. I have used the translation of the Decameron by G. H. McWilliam (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), from which I take the quotations.
Boccaccio, Decameron, Tenth Day, Tenth Story: Gualtieri, the Marquis of Saluzzo, is urged by his subjects to marry, so as to ensure an heir, and they offer to assist in finding a suitable wife. In a speech he agrees to their request but states that he will find his wife for himself. He has been attracted by a village girl and arranges with her father to marry her. Announcing his intention to his subjects, he tells them to honour his wife whoever she may be. He makes arrangements and, with a large escort, goes to fetch the unwitting bride. He asks her whether she will always obey him, try to please him, and never be upset by his words or actions; she promises it all. She is then stripped naked before everyone, reclothed and crowned, and the marriage takes place on the spot. As his wife she behaves perfectly to everyone, earning great respect from his subjects, and complies in every way with Gualtieri’s wishes. A daughter is born; ‘but shortly thereafter Gualtieri was seized with the strange desire to test Griselda’s patience, by subjecting her to constant provocation and making her life unbearable’. He feigns anger, telling her that his subjects are discontented with her as a mother because of her previous humble status; she responds with docility. Soon after he sends a man to remove the daughter, apparently to have her put to death. Despite her grief she submits without protest. The child is sent to a relative of Gualtieri’s. Similar events occur with the birth of a son, Gualtieri now claiming that the people complain even more because a peasant’s grandson will be their lord. Griselda remains outwardly unmoved (although she has been seen ‘doting upon the children’) when the son also is taken. Years later Gualtieri decides, in a final test, to obtain a papal dispensation allowing him to divorce her and remarry; he arranges for forged letters from Rome to arrive. He tells her that because of her social inferiority she must return to her father as she came, and that he will marry a woman of higher status. In a speech, she accepts his decisions and returns the wedding ring, but recalling her nakedness asks, in return for her virginity, that she should leave wearing at least a smock. Gualtieri, though moved almost to tears, sternly agrees, not allowing the pleas of those present to affect him. Her father, unsurprised, has kept her clothes; she keeps house for him as before. Gualtieri makes preparations for another marriage, and sends for Griselda, telling her to get the house ready for the new bride. ‘Since Griselda was unable to lay aside her love for Gualtieri as readily as she had dispensed with her good fortune, his words pierced her heart like so many knives.’ She herself in peasant’s dress sweeps, tidies, and gives instructions for the decoration of the rooms, then on the wedding day welcomes the guests. The children are brou
ght, but the daughter’s identity is carefully kept secret; Griselda welcomes her. When asked by Gualtieri to give her opinion, she praises the girl, but begs him ‘not to inflict those same wounds on her that you imposed upon her predecessor’. Seeing her accept the situation still without protest, Gualtieri makes a speech, explaining that his intention was to show her and his people what a wife should be, and that the torments he had made her suffer were intended to prove that he would have peace; now he would make amends. ‘These are your children … and I am your husband, who loves you above all else.’ Joyous reunions follow, with celebrations for days. Gualtieri is regarded as wise but Griselda ‘the wisest of all’ and her ordeal ‘harsh and intolerable’. Her father is treated with honour, her daughter married to a gentleman, and she and Gualtieri live happily together. The final comments compare her to an angel and him to a swineherd, praise her constancy, and suggest that she would have been justified in finding another man after she had been driven out.
Donkey-Skin
ATU type 510B, Peau d’Asne; Grimms no. 15 (see below). Straparola’s version appears to be a Donkey-Skin tale with motifs from other types, such as the calumniated queen near the end. Perrault’s tale is in outline and some stylistic features close to Basile, but Basile’s version lacks the demands made for dresses, and when the heroine leaves home she is transformed, not simply disguised; there is nothing about a donkey, except that the animal is mentioned in two passages.
Straparola, Doralice (Piacevole Notte, vol. i, Tale 4, a long adventure story): The father of Doralice, a prince of Salerno, remains faithful to his dead wife’s wish that he should not remarry; her condition was that only if her ring fitted another woman perfectly could Tebaldo marry her. However, by chance the daughter tries the ring on and says to her father that it fits; not long after, he is ‘assailed by a strange and diabolical temptation’ to take her to wife. Doralice, when she hears ‘the evil designs of her wicked father was deeply troubled in her heart’, but is afraid of him and says nothing; she consults her old nurse, who, fearing that mere flight will not succeed, devises a trick: Doralice swallows a potion which puts her to sleep, and is hidden in a clothes-chest, in which she is taken to England. Here she makes her way into a prince’s bedroom, still concealed, and looks after it; she is discovered and marries the Prince. The story thereafter concerns their two children and Tebaldo’s cunning and ruthless pursuit of revenge (he murders the children, making it look as if their mother had killed them). Eventually, after ever more extraordinary events, the nurse saves Doralice from a terrible death and the villain meets a fitting and no less terrible end.
Basile, L’Orza (‘The She-Bear’), Pentamerone, Day 2, Tale 6: A king’s wife dies, making him promise not to remarry; after mourning briefly, he seeks a new wife everywhere, but decides that his wife’s conditions are met only by his daughter Preziosa. She rebuffs him immediately and firmly, whereupon he orders her to marry him the same evening. She explains her plight to an old woman, who says: ‘When your father comes to you this evening—donkey that he is, wanting to act the stallion—put this piece of wood into your mouth, and you will at once become a she-bear.’ This happens, and frightens the King; Preziosa, as advised by the old woman, runs away to the forest, where she is seen by another king’s son. The she-bear and the Prince form an attachment. One day he sees her in her human form, falls in love, and becomes ill. His mother agrees to his wish that the bear should be in his room and cook for him, which she does, so well that the Queen understands why he is fond of her and allows him and the bear to kiss. ‘While thus engaged, I do not know how it happened, but the piece of wood fell from Preziosa’s mouth, and she remained in the Prince’s embrace, the most beautiful and ravishing being in the world.’ All is explained and the lovers marry; nothing more is said of the father.
There is much humour, as in Perrault, but of a folksy, burlesque kind.
Brothers Grimm, no. 65, Allerleirauh (‘All Kinds of Fur’ or ‘Coat o’ Skins; Crick, 184), is itself found in several versions, from 1812 until 1857. Very briefly: the condition imposed by the Queen who dies is that any future wife of the King should have hair as golden as hers; envoys he sends to search cannot find such a woman, but when the daughter grows up the King falls in love with her. She like his councillors is horrified. On her own initiative she requests three dresses (like sun, like moon, like stars) and a coat made from the skins of every kind of animal, believing that since he cannot give her such things he will no longer pursue her. But he succeeds, and she runs away, to be found in the forest and taken to a palace kitchen. She does the worst work and is mistreated by the cook (an important character), but makes soups for the King in which she places gifts, including a ring; eventually she appears in her dresses, wins the King’s love and marries him.
Delarue/Tenèze ii. 256, conte-type, La Peau d’non (‘The Little Donkey’s Skin’), recorded c. 1885 in east central France: A prince and his wife have a daughter; the wife dies, making the Prince promise never to marry unless it is a woman like herself. In due course he tells his daughter that he wants to marry her. She consults her godmother, who tells her to consent on condition only that he gives her a spinning-wheel which spins by itself. After a long search he finds one. The same happens when she asks for three dresses, like the stars, the sun, and the moon; and for a cabriolet drawn by four rats. The godmother tells her to leave in this, taking all the gifts with her; she will meet shepherds who will sell her a young donkey and skin it for her to wear, when she must look for any kind of menial work. All this happens, and she is employed as a shepherdess, setting the wheel to spin meanwhile. The son and daughter of the estate where she works go to dances, laughing at her when she asks to go too, but the mother allows her to go, for each of three times, beating her beforehand first with a cloth, then a broom, then a poker, but permitting her on each occasion to stay longer. Each time she wears a different dress and is asked where she comes from, answering first ‘the land of the cloth’, then of the broom, then of the poker. Back home she is told about the beautiful, unknown girl and is mocked when she replies that the girl was no more beautiful than herself. At the last dance it is the King’s son who asks her where she comes from; when she leaves, he follows the light of her dress in the darkness and sees her put on the donkey-skin. He falls in love and insists on having a cake made by the shepherdess. She comes to cook for him. While she does so he plucks at the donkey-skin; she pretends to think it is the cat. She puts her ring into the cake before leaving. Finding it, he announces that he will marry its owner. All others having failed to make it fit, she appears in the donkey-skin. When the ring is seen to fit her the Prince says he will wed her and removes the skin, to show her wearing the sun dress beneath. She writes to tell her father, who comes to the wedding.
Three Silly Wishes
ATU type 750A, The Three Wishes, second form.
Philippe de Vigneulles, untitled story, no. 78 in Cent nouvelles nouvelles (‘A Hundred New Stories’), c. 1505–15; from the edition by Charles H. Livingston (Geneva, 1972), 302–7. This begins with a version of ATU type 1430, The Man and his Wife Build Air Castles: A poor and lazy man has an industrious wife, who gets enough milk one Sunday to make a good lot of cheese. Counting on this, they indulge in wishful thinking about getting rich and powerful, until the man gets so excited by the prospect that he spills the milk. Enraged, the wife throws him out, and on his return, seeking to persuade her that she was also to blame, he tells a story against another wife: a poor and lazy couple (like himself, he says), prayed hard and often to God to make them rich. God, ‘seeing that their prayers were not founded in reason’, granted them three wishes. Delighted at first, they soon quarrel over which of them should wish first. Fearing to lose her opportunity, the wife makes a wish that her cauldron should have a new leg to replace the broken one. The husband is furious, and ‘wishes the leg inside her belly’. With it inside, she will die if it is not removed; the neighbours, hearing her cries, all come in, and tell him that he wil
l be a murderer unless he wishes the leg out again. ‘Thus were the three wishes all lost and turned to nothing.’ The man decides that the poor are destined always to be poor.
Delarue/Tenèze iv (2). 122; conte-type, Les Quatre souhaits (‘The Four Wishes’), recorded 1883 in Brittany; told by François Marquet, a cabin-boy, aged 16: A poor couple with one son do not have enough to eat. One day when they are resting after working hard, they meet Jesus, who is sympathetic and gives them an ox, telling them that if they cut off its legs they will have four wishes. They take it home and do as directed, wishing each time ‘by the virtue of the leg’; first the wife wishes that her son should be bearded like his father, whereupon he grows a large beard and the leg returns under the ox, ‘so perfectly joined that it was as if it had never been cut off ‘. Horrified by the boy’s ugliness the wife wishes it removed; and the second leg returns to the ox. The husband storms at his wife, and wishes that she had an ox’s leg stuck to her behind, which happens. With only the last wish remaining, the husband offers to ask for gold and silver, so that he will be able to make a golden cover for the leg. She refuses, and herself wishes that the leg might disappear. The ox is now as it had been, and the final comment is that the couple were neither richer nor poorer than before.
The Three Wishes, in Joseph Jacobs, More English Folk Tales, New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, s.d., first published 1894: A woodman intending to fell a huge oak is addressed by a fairy who implores him not to. Amazed, he agrees, and she grants him three wishes. When he is at home all thoughts of the wishes have gone, but on being told that he will have to wait for his supper he wishes for ‘a good link of black pudding’; it at once comes down the chimney. His wife exclaims in astonishment and he recalls what happened that morning. She tells him he is a fool and wishes that the length of sausage was on his nose. It sticks there and they cannot pull it off. He asks what to do. ‘T’isn’t so very unsightly’, she says, but he makes a wish for it to be removed. The final comment is that although they did not become rich they had good black pudding for supper.
Complete Fairy Tales Page 17
