Sleeping Beauty
ATU type 410, Sleeping Beauty; Grimms no. 50, Dornröschen (‘Briar-Rose’, which must be derived from Perrault but ends with the marriage; Crick, 323). Delarue/Tenèze, in their Commentary (ii. 70) on the tale, do not regard the version they give as evidence that Perrault’s source was a French oral tradition, believing that he used Basile.
Basile, Sole, Luna e Talia (‘Sun, Moon, and Talia’), Pentamerone, Day V, Tale v: A lord has a daughter, Talia. Astrologers predict that she will be in danger from ‘a splinter of flax’; he bans it from his house. One day from the window she sees a woman spinning, tries to do it herself, gets a point of flax under her nail, and falls dead. The body is laid out and left abandoned in the lord’s country mansion, sitting on a throne. A king out hunting enters the house following his falcon which has flown in, fails to awaken the girl, but is excited and has intercourse with her. Still unconscious, she bears boy and girl twins, called Sun and Moon, and is attended by fairies. Seeking the breast one day, the babies suck on her finger, drawing out the flax, and she comes back to life. The King returns to her and comes to love her more and more; his wife becomes suspicious. She frightens a servant into revealing the truth, and makes him ask Talia to send the children to the King. The Queen orders them to be killed and cooked, but the cook hides them with his wife and prepares lamb instead, which the Queen serves to the King, constantly repeating to him that he is ‘eating of his own’. Eventually, irritated, he goes away, whereupon the Queen sends for Talia. Insulting her and refusing to believe her innocent, she prepares a pyre in which to throw her. Talia asks to undress, screaming as she removes each garment; at the last and loudest scream the King reappears. The Queen reproaches him and tells him that he has eaten the children; she is thrown into the fire, together with the servant. The cook, also threatened with burning, is able to explain in time; father and children are reunited and the cook rewarded.
The Ninth Captain’s Tale (The 1001 Nights): A woman, unable to conceive, prays for a daughter even if she is not proof against the smell of flax; she bears a fair and delicate girl, Sittukhan, with whom a sultan’s son falls in love. It makes him ill; an old woman discovers the cause and offers to help. She advises Sittukhan to learn to spin, which, despite her mother’s protests, she does, but faints when a piece of flax gets behind her nail. The old woman tells the parents not to bury her but put her on an ivory bed in a pavilion in a river, then tells the sick Prince where she is. Finding her, he takes her hand to kiss it, sees the flax and draws it out; then he stays forty nights before leaving, but returns immediately three times on seeing beautiful things—flowers, carobs, a fountain—which remind him of Sittukhan. At last he bids her farewell for ever, whereupon, grieving, she finds a speaking cornelian ring, which gives her even greater beauty and a palace next to the Prince’s. He sees her and again falls in love, without recognizing her; he asks his mother to take her precious gifts, brocade, which Sittukhan has cut up, then emeralds, which she gives to pigeons. She tells the Queen that if her son wishes to marry her he must feign death, be wrapped in a shroud and buried in her garden; this is done, and when he is left in the garden she makes herself known and they live together happily.
Delarue/Tenéze ii. 68, La Belle endormie (‘The Sleeping Beauty’), recorded in the late nineteenth century in south-western France: A rich but ugly and repellent prince asks to marry a beautiful princess, and a meeting between them is arranged at a fair. She refuses him. A fairy godmother of the Prince casts a sleeping spell on her, and she lies sleeping for over a hundred years in a castle, which falls into ruins. No one dares to enter it until a prince loses his way when hunting; having been given shelter and poor food in a hovel he cuts his way into the castle. She wakes and cannot understand what has happened; they marry and live happily.
Little Red Riding-Hood
ATU Type 333, Little Red Riding-Hood. I summarize the Grimms’ version because it has superseded Perrault’s Petit chaperon rouge as the typical form of the story. The version in Delarue/Tenèze below, and others like it, have attracted much critical attention. The mysterious paths were explicated, with reference to rural customs for girls about the age of puberty, by Yvonne Verdier in an influential article which has often been discussed (for instance in Zipes, Trials … of Little Red Riding Hood, 5–8; see the Select Bibliography).
Grimms no. 26, Rottkäppchen (‘Little Redcap’; Crick, 91. She includes the sequel, often omitted): A much-loved little girl is known as Little Redcap from the red velvet cap given to her by her grandmother. Her mother sends her one day with cake and wine as a treat for the grandmother, who is ill, and warns her firmly not to stray. As Little Redcap enters the forest where her grandmother’s house is she meets a wolf and, unafraid, explains her errand in detail. The wolf suggests that she should pay more attention to the flowers and birds, and she begins to collect a posy, straying from the path, while he goes straight to the grandmother’s house. He pretends to be the girl and is told to come in. He eats the grandmother and gets into her bed dressed in her clothes. Little Redcap eventually enters, finding everything strange, and seeing the ‘grandmother’ exclaims at his ears, eyes, hands, and mouth, at which the wolf ‘took one leap out of the bed and swallowed Little Redcap all up’. Then he falls asleep. Hearing loud snores, a passing huntsman looks in, finds the wolf, and cuts open his stomach, releasing the girl and her grandmother unharmed. Little Redcap then puts stones inside the wolf instead, which causes him to die when he wakes and tries to run off. The huntsman gets the skin, the grandmother recovers with the cake and wine, and Little Redcap reflects that she will never stray again.
At some later date, Little Redcap, on a similar errand, meets another wolf, but is not to be led astray and on arrival tells her grandmother about him. The wolf, pretending to be the little girl, fails to get in, and climbs on to the roof to lie in wait for her. Her grandmother tells her to pour the water from a boiling of sausages into a trough outside, and the smell so tempts the wolf that he slides down the roof, falls, and is drowned.
Delarue/Tenèze i. 373: conte-type from east central France: A mother gives her daughter milk and a bun to take to her grandmother. She meets a werewolf, who tells her to take the needles path, while he takes the pins path; she picks up needles as she goes. The werewolf kills and eats the grandmother but puts some of her flesh and blood on one side. When she enters, he tells her to leave the milk and bun and take the meat and wine which is there; the voice of a cat tells her that she is a filthy girl to eat her grandmother’s flesh and blood. The werewolf tells her to undress and get into bed with him. As she takes off each garment she asks what to do with it and is told to burn it since she will have no need for it. In bed, she exclaims at the wolf’s hairiness, claws, ears, and so on, and he replies. When she comes to his mouth and he says ‘to eat you’, she tells him that she needs to relieve herself. Despite being told to do it in the bed, she insists on going outside; the wolf ties her by a piece of wool, but she attaches it to a cherry-tree and runs off. When the wolf discovers that she has gone he chases her, but she reaches home in time.
Bluebeard
ATU type 312, The Maiden-Killer (Bluebeard). Delarue subdivides, giving Types 311,312 A, and 312B (Delarue/Tenèze i. 182). The closest to Perrault is 312A; 312B has the framework of a Hansel and Gretel tale. The Brothers Grimm included in their first edition a version (no. 30) very like Perrault’s, but no doubt for that reason dropped it later; see Crick, 290, 321.
Delarue/Tenèze i. 182; conte-type 311, Le Gros Cheval blanc (‘The Great White Horse’), recorded in 1946 in Canada: A great white horse abducts girls from a village. A widow with three daughters is forced by her need for firewood to send them, one by one, to collect wood from the forest, where in turn they are caught by the horse (but each time he has to come nearer to their house). He tells them to clean his house while he is out during the day, giving them keys but forbidding them to enter one particular room. The two older sisters, on doing so, see dead girls hangi
ng with their throats cut; scared, each drops the key into the blood, which they cannot remove. The horse on his return demands the key, sees the blood, and kills them. The third daughter, however, having recognized her sisters among the corpses, keeps hold of the key. She replaces their heads, and over two days takes them to the barn and wraps them in straw. The horse, seeing the key free of blood, agrees to her request to take the packages back to her mother. On the third day the youngest daughter makes a large rag doll and puts it in her place by the butter-churn to deceive the horse. Then she wraps herself in straw and is carried back also. The horse on realizing the deceit stamps on the floor so hard that he breaks through it, and is never seen again.
Conte-type 312A, Le Père Jacques, from the Vendée area: Bluebeard has killed six wives, and takes a seventh; he goes away, giving her a key but forbidding her to use it. She does so, and sees the six murdered women hanging in their wedding-dresses. She drops the key, it is stained by blood, and she cannot wash it clean. Searching the other rooms she finds an old man, Father Jacques, kept captive in a tower as a lookout. On hearing what she has done he tells her that she will be killed, and that her husband had put something beneath the feet of the other wives which first made them laugh, but then hurt them. The wife sends her dog to her brothers with a message for help. The husband returns, sees the key, and tells her to put on her wedding clothes before she dies. In her room, she plays for time by saying to his repeated requests that she is putting on first this, then that item of clothing. Meanwhile he sharpens his knife, repeating a bloodthirsty refrain as he does so, and she keeps asking Jacques if her brothers are coming. At the moment when she has to admit that she is ready, they arrive and kill him.
Conte-type 312B, from east central France, recorded in about 1885: Two lost sisters are taken in by a housewife, who gives them food to eat that they do not recognize. Then they are shut in a dark room, and threatened with being cooked when her devil husband returns. He removes the elder sister’s clothes one by one, with an accompanying series of questions and answers, while the girl asks her sister each time whether she can see anyone coming: a little woman and a little white man are approaching. This couple, who are the Virgin and Jesus, appear as the devil reaches the child’s last garment; he and his wife are thrown into the oven.
A version given in abbreviated form, Comorre, 191, recorded in 1853 in Brittany, has many elements from the 312A type, but not the key. Comorre, who has married four times already, marries Tryphina, the daughter of a lord. He goes away, leaving her behind. On his return, finding that she is pregnant, he says he will kill her. She is able to escape with the help of the four dead wives, who give her the instruments of their execution (poison, rope, fire, club). She is pursued and killed, but resuscitated by St Veltas. Comorre dies when his castle falls in ruins. On Comorre or Conmar, a historical figure, and the connection between Bluebeard and Brittany, see Warner, Beast to Blonde, 260–2.
Puss in Boots
ATU type 545, The Cat Helper. With this tale it is the earlier Italian writer, Straparola, who is closer to Perrault than Basile. The tale in Delarue/Tenèze illustrates a French tradition which differs considerably from Perrault.
Straparola, Costantino il Fortunato (‘Lucky Costantino’), Piacevole Notte, Night XI, Tale i: Costantino, the third son of a poor woman who dies, is left only the cat; his brothers treat him harshly, refusing to give him any of the food they get. The cat by chance is a fairy, who from compassion tells her master that she can help, and catching a young hare she gives it to the King as a present from her master, whom she describes as good-looking and virtuous. She returns to him with food which she has taken surreptitiously (and which he refuses to offer to his brothers). Costantino having suffered from his privations she takes him to the river, washes his skin, and cures him. She continues to offer presents from him to the King, but getting bored she tells her master that if he will follow her instructions she will make him rich. Taking him to the river near the King’s palace she tells him to strip and get in, then cries out that Costantino is drowning. He is rescued by the King’s servants. The cat tells him that Costantino was bringing jewels as a present but was attacked and robbed. The King decides to give his daughter in marriage to the goodlooking young man, whom he believes to be rich, but when the time comes for the couple, with their escort, to repair to Costantino’s castle he has to ask the cat for help. She goes ahead and on meeting some riders tells them that they will be attacked by an approaching force of mounted men; to avoid trouble they must say that they serve Messer Costantino. The same happens with herdsmen and drovers she meets. All tell the King that they serve Costantino. When the cat arrives at a castle she gives the same instructions to the soldiers on guard there; as it happens the castle’s owner was away and had met with a fatal accident, so that Costantino takes possession without difficulty. In due course, having married the King’s daughter, he becomes king himself.
Basile, Gagliuso, Pentamerone, Day II, Tale iv: Remarks against ingratitude introduce the tale. A poor man from Naples dies, leaving to his elder son a sieve, which he is able to use to make money, and a cat to the younger son, who on bemoaning his fate is told by the cat that she can help him. She catches fish in the bay, and gets birds from the fowlers, and takes them to the King as a present, praising Gagliuso. Eventually the King asks to meet him; next day, the cat explains that his servants have stolen all his clothes; the King sends some in replacement. At the banquet they are given the cat has to cover for Gagliuso’s ill-bred remarks. She tells the King that Gagliuso’s estates further north are vast enough for him to marry a princess; the King sends a group of officials with her to see; in advance, she tells herdsmen and farmers that if they wish to avoid being attacked by the group approaching, they must say that their animals and farms all belong to Gagliuso. Informed of Gagliuso’s apparently endless wealth the King, through the good offices of the cat, arranges for his daughter to marry him. After a month the couple set off north, Gagliuso buying a baron’s estate with the dowry he has been given. He promises eternal gratitude to the cat, but she, to test him, pretends to be dead, whereupon Gagliuso expresses no regret but tells his wife to throw the body out of the window. With long and bitter reproaches the cat ‘threw her cloak about her, and went her way’, disregarding his efforts to pacify her.
Delarue/Tenèze ii. 339, conte-type, Monsieur Dicton, recorded 1911 in western France: M. Dicton, a poor man whose ‘castle’ is a hovel, is helped by Renard the fox, who asks to have his only three chickens, one at a time; in return, he first persuades a flock of pheasants to follow him to the King’s palace, on the pretext that their tails will be gilded there; he presents them as a gift from M. Dicton. Next he does the same with a flock of woodcock. The third time Renard takes M. Dicton, now in a bad state from hunger, and they find some deer; deceiving them as before, he takes them to the King, who wishes to thank M. Dicton personally. Before he does so, Renard explains his haggard state by saying that he has been attacked and robbed. The King is invited to visit M. Dicton’s castle, Renard going on ahead and ordering the countryfolk to say that all the land around belongs to M. Dicton. Coming to a castle where a party is in progress, he warns its owners that the King is coming with an army to attack them, and hides them in heaps of straw. The King arrives, the food is devoured, and the fox suggests lighting the straw as a celebration, which rids the countryside of the owners to M. Dicton’s benefit.
The Fairies
ATU type 480, The Kind and the Unkind Girls; Grimms no. 24, Frau Holle (Crick, 86; more elaborate than the Perrault tale). This type is known traditionally as ‘Diamonds and Toads’, but more usually now as ‘The Kind and Unkind Girls’. It is very common, and often regarded as intrinsically connected with the Cinderella type. I give a sample of the French tradition from Delarue/Tenèze. It seems likely that Perrault knew the tale personally as a separate entity; I give Basile’s version which has further episodes, together with that published by Mlle Lhéritier, exactly contemporaneous wit
h Perrault’s, but designed to give a somewhat different lesson from his.
Delarue/Tenèze ii. 188, conte-type, Les Deux Filles, la laide et la jolie (‘The Two Daughters, One Ugly and One Pretty’), recorded 1870–5 in the Lyons area: The mother treats the younger, disagreeable, and lazy daughter well, but mistreats the elder, kindly one, making her work. Going to fetch water, she meets the Virgin, who asks her to delouse her hair and enquires what she finds in it; ‘gold crowns’, says the girl, and is given a box which she is to open at home. When she does so she becomes beautiful. The other daughter, going on the same errand, is asked to do the same for the Virgin, but says she has found lice and fleas; she is given a box which makes her ugly when she opens it. However, the mother goes on treating them in the same way as before.
Basile, Le Doie Pizzele (‘The Two Cakes’), Pentamerone, Day IV, Tale vii: Two sisters, one good and one bad, each have a daughter who resembles her mother. The good cousin, Marziella, sent to get water from a fountain, asks beforehand for a cake to eat there; she sees a hunchback woman who begs a piece, but she gives her the whole cake, and is rewarded: flowers will fall from her mouth, jewels from her hair, and wherever she walks lilies and roses will grow. The next day her mother takes some of the jewels to a usurer. While she is away her aunt visits and hears what has happened; hastening home she sends her daughter Puccia on the same errand, but on meeting the same old woman Puccia eats the cake in front of her; as punishment she will foam at the mouth, her hair will drop toads, and ferns and thistles will grow as she passes. From here on, the story turns to romance between Marziella and a prince, who having heard about her from her brother, wants to see her, but her aunt tries to drown her and sends Puccia instead, with dire consequences; Marziella and the Prince eventually meet through the kind offices of geese that she has fed.
Complete Fairy Tales Page 18
