Mlle Lhéritier, Les Enchantements de l’éloquence, ou les Effets de la douceur (‘The Enchantments of Eloquence, or The Effects of a Sweet Nature’), in her Œuvres mêlées, 1695: Blanche is the daughter of a widowed marquis, a worthy man who loses much money and marries a rich widow. She and her daughter Alix are both coarse; they hate Blanche, and she is made to do menial tasks, which she does well. Alix, well dressed and bejewelled, nonetheless has no suitors. Blanche, who reads novels for consolation, is caught by her stepmother but defended by her father, who speaks at length about the educative value of fiction. The family being in the country for the summer, Blanche is sent to fetch water in a wild area at some distance; she is accidentally hurt by a prince out hunting, and impresses him with her sophisticated conversation. Finding out about the family from villagers, the Prince asks one of his fairy godmothers, Dulcicula, to provide a cure for the girl’s injury. She visits the family, and is repelled by Alix’s hostility and struck by Blanche’s charm; her gifts are that the former will be even worse and the latter even better. Cured, Blanche is sent again for water, meets a fine lady and when asked gives her a drink, with great politeness, and again impresses by her conversation. The lady, another fairy godmother, called Eloquentia Nativa, gives her the gift of jewels that come from her mouth. At home, everyone seizes on them. Her stepmother sends Alix to fetch water, despite her protests. This time Eloquentia is dressed as a peasant girl, and on asking to drink from Alix’s jug is sent packing, with abuse, and then threatened with violence; she leaves Alix with the gift of spitting out toads, snakes, spiders, and other unpleasant creatures. When this happens, even her mother is repelled by her. Eloquentia takes Blanche to the Prince, whom she marries; Alix wanders the country, falls into destitution and dies alone.
Cinderella
ATU type 510A, Cinderella; Grimms no. 21, Aschenputtel (Crick, 78). From the multitude of versions available, the first and second below, from French and Scottish oral tradition, are versions in which the meeting with the Prince occurs at church; in one it is through the father that Cinderella obtains magic gifts, in the other through the mother. The differences between Basile’s version and Perrault’s imply that he based his on one he knew personally. See also Mme d’Aulnoy’s tale Finette-Cendron, summarized below with Hop o’ my Thumb tales.
Delarue/Tenèze i. 248; conte-type, Cendrouse, recorded in 1892 in Poitou: In a rich family with no mother there are two proud sisters and a third, known as Cendrouse, because she likes to be by the hearth. Her sisters often tease her. When they go out she remains at home. Their father goes away to a fair, and asks them what they would like him to bring back; the elder sisters ask for dresses, the third for a hazelnut. When they have the dresses the two go to Mass in them. Cendrouse, opening the nut, finds in it, besides clothes, a coach with driver and horses. With these she too attends Mass. On their return her sisters tell her of the beautiful young lady who was there, to which she says that the lady was no more beautiful than herself; she is mocked. The same happens on the next Sunday, but this time she drops a slipper (‘une pantoufle’); it is picked up by a king’s son, who swears that he will marry the woman it fits. Next Sunday, all the women try it on, without success, but when Cendrouse arrives, dressed as usual, the slipper fits her; she and the Prince depart together in the coach from the nutshell.
Rashin Coatie: a northern Scottish version first recorded by Andrew Lang; text in Neil Philip, The Cinderella Story, 60–2: The daughter of a widower who remarries has been left nothing by her mother except a red calf. The stepmother and her three ugly daughters ‘did na like the little lassie because she was bonny’, and make her wear a ‘rashin coatie’ (‘a garment made from rush fibres’; Philip, 60). She has to sit in a corner of the kitchen and eat scraps, but the red calf gives her all she asks for. The stepmother has it killed. It tells the weeping Rashin Coatie to pick up its bones and bury them under a grey stone. At Christmas everyone except her goes to church in their best clothes, but she has to stay behind to cook the meal. Not knowing how to, she is given a spell to say by the red calf, together with fine clothes to go to church in; ‘she was the grandest and the brawest lady there’. A prince falls in love with her. Back home, she is in her coat with the dinner ready when the others return; told about the fine lady, she asks to go with them next day but is rudely rebuffed. The same things happen next day, with ‘brawer claes’; on the third day, the Prince tries to prevent her leaving, ‘but she jumped ower their heads and lost one of her beautiful satin slippers’. The Prince announces that he will marry the one whom it fits. When nobody can put it on, the stepmother cuts the heel and toes of one of her daughters and it is forced on. She goes with the Prince to be married, but a bird repeatedly sings a rhyme saying that the slipper does not fit her, but does fit the one ‘in the kitchen neuk’. The Prince, suspicious, gets the truth from the stepmother. Before he can try the slipper on Rashin Coatie, she goes to the grey stone and returns dressed more richly than ever; ‘and the slipper jumped out of his pocket and on to her foot’.
Basile, La Gatta Cenerentola (‘The Cat Cinderella’), Pentamerone, Day I, Tale vi: A widowed prince has a daughter Zezolla, whose governess treats her with affection, but he gets married again, to ‘a wicked jade’ who is hostile to her. She frequently confides her sorrows to Carmosina, the governess, saying that she wished she had her as mother. Eventually Carmosina offers to give her advice; she accepts. The suggestion is that she should entice the stepmother to look into a big clothes-chest and kill her by bringing down the lid on her neck. Zezolla carries this out, and later cajoles her father until he marries Carmosina. At the wedding a dove appears and tells Zezolla that if she sends any request to the Dove of the Fairies in Sardinia it will be granted. Carmosina discloses that she has six daughters from a marriage previously concealed, and ensures good treatment for them, while Zezolla is reduced to being a kitchenmaid. Before a journey to Sardinia, the father promises his stepdaughters the gifts that they want; Zezolla asks only to be remembered to the Dove of the Fairies, but warns that if he forgets he will be unable to stir. He does forget, and his ship cannot move from port until the captain has a dream in which he is told of the father’s negligence. He goes to the fairies’ grotto and is given a kind message and a date-tree for Zezolla, with a hoe, a golden bucket, and a silk cloth to tend it. When she plants it it soon grows tall, and from it comes a fairy, who gives her a spell to recite, through which the tree will provide her with fine clothes. A feast-day comes round and the sisters attend the ball; Zezolla recites the spell and receives a pony, rich garments, and pages to attend her. The young King is entranced, and sends a servant to follow her, but she delays him by throwing down gold coins. Back at home, the sisters tell her what she has missed by not going to the ball. The next day she receives from the date-tree more finery, a coach-and-six, and liveried attendants; the King falls in love. This time she escapes the servant by throwing down jewels. The third time, the spell brings her a golden coach and numerous attendants. As she leaves the ball, the King’s servant follows the coach; she tells the coachman to go at full speed and in the rush drops one of her slippers. The servant brings it to the King, who orders every woman to attend a banquet; the slipper fits none of them. When he enquires if all are present, Zezolla’s father confesses that he has not brought her because she is ‘such a graceless simpleton’. After another banquet next day, the slipper darts on to her foot of its own accord. She is crowned queen, and her stepsisters depart in rage.
Ricky the Tuft
This is not of folk-tale origin, but would appear to have developed out of some kind of collaboration between Perrault, Mlle Lhéritier, and Mlle Bernard. I summarize the two women authors’ tales below, as examples of the more literary treatment of a fairy-tale theme. The ambiguous and uncomfortable ending of Mlle Bernard’s tale is considered by Collinet, 291, to anticipate the plot of the main novel, in which the heroine is married against her will. Perrault’s version can be related to tales of the Frog-Prince ty
pe (ATU type 440; Grimms no. 1), in which a princess has a suitor of some repugnant form whom she eventually finds attractive after all.
Catherine Bernard: Riquet à la houppe, in her novel Inès de Cordoue, 1696: A prince and princess have a beautiful but stupid daughter called Mama, too stupid to realize it; she meets a hideously ugly man who emerges from the ground and tells her that the reason why she is neglected in gatherings is her lack of intelligence, but that he can make her intelligent by putting a spell on her, on condition that she marries him after a year has passed. She agrees, without understanding what she is agreeing to, and soon becomes clever as well as attractive. She has many suitors, of whom she prefers the handsomest, Arada. But when the year is up Riquet appears, and tells her he is the king of the goblins, living underground; in view of her reluctance, he gives her two days to make her mind up to marry him and stay intelligent. She marries him but cannot reconcile herself to his ugliness. She gets a message to Arada, who joins her, but Riquet finds out. Angry, he revises the spell so that she is clever only for him, during the night. However, she finds a way to keep him asleep and to continue her love-affair. One day, by accident, her ruse is discovered, and Riquet finds the lovers together; this time the spell he casts is that Arada and he should look exactly the same. The story ends at this point with the remark that lovers always become husbands eventually.
Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier: Ricdin-Ricdon, an episode in her novel, La Tour ténébreuse et les jours lumineux (‘The Dark Tower and Days of Light’), 1705, supposedly from an ancient chronicle written by Richard Lionheart: The intricate plot concerns a village girl, Rosanie. She is seen by a prince being bullied by her mother and is taken by him to court to work at spinning; her mother has said, but ironically, that she was good at it. In fact she hates it and, aware of her ignorance in dressing and other courtly skills, cannot endure her new life. In despair, she meets a curious stranger who offers to help. On condition that she will remember the name Ricdin-Ricdon in three months’ time, he gives her a magic wand, which enables her to spin with extraordinary speed and to dress elegantly. The Prince, falling in love with her, arouses the hatred of a rejected lover, who plots revenge on him; first with the help of a witch and a magician (later revealed to be Ricdin-Ricdon) he is tempted to leave Rosanie for a beautiful princess and her kingdom; then a wicked ambassador attempts to abduct Rosanie, but after an accident to his carriage and a fight she is rescued by three strangers, their leader turning out to be her Prince; then—after he has seen an apparition in which Ricdin-Ricdon, in fact a devil, boasts of a future triumph in getting a girl into his power—he is attacked by three men but fights them off. Meanwhile his father the King has been told that Rosanie is not what she seems, but of royal blood (in fact the princess whose shape the witch of a previous episode had taken on). Failing to remember the name—which she had not written down because at the time she could not write—she confesses her despair to the Prince, who having heard it when seeing the apparition is able to tell her, and all ends happily for them; on being told his name, Ricdin-Ricdon vanishes, screaming horribly.
On the significance of the tale see Warner, Beast to Blonde, 175. As she remarks, it recalls Rumpelstiltskin tales rather than Ricky, there being no question of a marriage contract between Ricdin-Ricdon and the heroine.
Hop o’ my Thumb
ATU type 327B, The Brothers and the Ogre; Grimms: see below. Perrault’s tale, although it begins with the hero seemingly a tiny character like the English Tom Thumb, is never considered as a Tom Thumb story, but always as a version of the Hansel and Gretel type (ATU 327A), the classic form of which is the Grimms’ story. Delarue, in his commentary on the type (Delarue/Tenèze, i. 325), notes that the Tom Thumb motif is an unnecessary borrowing from ATU type 700, in which the hero’s size is crucial, while in Type 327 it is his cleverness that matters. He also says that no complete versions of the tale (i.e. with a plot ending in the defeat of the ogres) are known to antedate the stories by Perrault and Mme d’Aulnoy; see for instance the first summary below.
Basile, Pentamerone, Day 5, Tale 8, Nennillo and Nennella, begins like Hop o’ my Thumb: A widower marries a second wife, who hates his two children and makes him take them twice to a forest in order to lose them, but he leaves them with provisions and, the first time, leaves a trail of ashes by which they can find their way back. The second time, after renewed anger from the wife, he makes a trail of bran, which is eaten by a jackass. On hearing the sounds of a hunt, Nennella runs away and Nennillo climbs into a tree. From here on the story diverges from Perrault’s, telling how the girl is caught by a pirate and adopted, later to be swallowed by a magical fish, while the boy is found by a prince and taught to be a carver of meat. They are reunited at a seaside banquet where he hears his sister’s voice calling from inside the fish, and all ends happily except for the stepmother.
Delarue/Tenèze i. 306. Divided into subtypes 327A and 327B, the latter including Perrault’s Le Petit Poucet. Conte-type for 327B: Furon-Furette, collected 1945 from central France: A boy and girl are taken to the forest by their stepmother on purpose to lose them. She makes them think she is still near them by leaving a clog hanging on a tree, which when blown by the wind makes the sound of wood being chopped. Lost, they are taken in by a woman married to a devil; she tries to protect them when her husband returns, but he discovers and prepares an oven in which to cook them. Overhearing his plan, they persuade his children to change places with them in the bedroom and exchange gold rings for ones made of silk taken from a broom, thus tricking the devil into cooking his children. Escaping, they are pursued; meeting some washerwomen, they are helped to cross a river when the women spread out sheets for them to walk on. Later the women trick the devil into crossing in the same way but let him drown.
Mme d’Aulnoy, Finette-Cendron, a story contained in her novel Don Gabriel Ponce de Leon, 1697. It will be apparent that after the sisters escape from the Ogre’s castle the plot becomes that of a Cinderella story (or rather Perrault’s Donkey-Skin, which it resembles more than his Cinderella): A king and queen, who have three daughters, lose their kingdom and fall into poverty, to such an extent that the mother decides she must get rid of the daughters, Belle de Nuit, Fleur d’Amour, and Finette-Cendron. She leads them out into the wilderness three times in order to lose them. Finette-Cendron has the help of her godmother, the fairy Merluche, who gives her a white horse for use when necessary. To lead them on their way back home they have first a thread which extends indefinitely, then gravel. On the third occasion, the two elder sisters having always bullied and insulted Finette-Cendron, Merluche advises her to leave them where they are and go back home alone, but she is too good-natured to do so, and they leave a trail of peas behind when led away from home. The birds take them. Lost and with nothing to eat, they sow an acorn and water it; it soon grows into a tree, from which Finette-Cendron sees a marvellous castle, covered in gold and jewels. When the others, disbelieving her, climb the tree to look, they decide that they must go there, hoping to find princes as husbands, and in the night they take Finette-Cendron’s beautiful clothes which had been given her by Merluche. She has to follow them looking like their servant. The castle is owned by a one-eyed ogre, whose ogress wife takes them in, consoling them by undertaking not to eat them as soon as he would have done. When the even more monstrous Ogre comes in there is some conflict between them as his wife wants to keep the girls for herself. Finette-Cendron, as servant, is told to heat the enormous oven, but asked whether it is hot enough persuades the Ogre to look himself, whereupon he gets stuck and is roasted. The sisters suggest that the ogress should make herself beautiful to attract suitors, and they do her hair for her; meanwhile Finette-Cendron takes an axe and cuts her head off. The two elder sisters, seeing all the Ogre’s wealth, take over the castle and make outings, gorgeously dressed, to balls at the nearby town, leaving Finette-Cendron to do the housework. When they are out, she finds as she is sitting in the hearth a golden key hidden in the chimney; it opens a c
hest full of fine clothes and jewellery. She goes secretly to the same ball as her sisters and is not recognized, but makes a sensation there. Told of the unknown lady by her sisters, she murmurs that she was just the same. Visits to the ball continuing, she leaves later than usual one night, and loses a slipper in the dark. The King’s son finds it and becomes ill from love. Eventually he tells his mother that he will marry the one whom the slipper fits. The King announces that all women must come to try it on; many try in vain to make their feet smaller. Finette-Cendron, wanting to go, is insulted and told to water the cabbages, but after her sisters leave she dresses up, and finds Merluche’s white horse waiting to take her. On the way they pass her sisters and the horse spatters them with mud; Finette-Cendron tells them that ‘Cendrillon’ despises them as much as they deserve. When she is taken to the Prince’s room, the slipper fits, and she produces its pair; general joy ensues, and more so when she says that she is a princess. It turns out that it was the Prince’s parents who dispossessed Finette-Cendron’s parents; she agrees to marry him on condition that her parents recover their kingdom. When her sisters appear, she treats them kindly and forgives them. The verse moral reiterates that forgiveness is the best revenge for ingratitude.
Complete Fairy Tales Page 19
