Complete Fairy Tales
Page 21
Acheron: in Greek mythology, one of the rivers of the underworld (Hades).
Donkey-Skin
Marquise de Lambert: 1647—1733. Given a literary upbringing by her stepfather, who was a writer, she was widowed in 1686 and became a well-known figure in salon society. Later she kept a highly influential salon of her own. She is also remembered for her writings on education.
ogres: Perrault’s note to the text’s ogre reads: ‘A savage man who ate small children’. The word does not appear in seventeenth-century dictionaries.
an expert casuist: casuistry was the branch of Catholic ethics concerned with ‘cases of conscience’, deciding what could and could not be permitted within the limits of Christian law. It had fallen into disrepute during the seventeenth century, largely as a result of Pascal’s devastating satire of it in his Provincial Letters (1656—7), of which these lines are a distant echo.
the heavens: the French ‘couleur du temps’ has a special sense here, ‘temps’ often being used instead of ‘ciel’ (sky or heaven) in country districts at the time (Delarue/Tenèze, ii. 249 n. 1).
musk-fed geese: geese which had been given food flavoured with musk in order to render the flesh fragrant.
Aurora’s distant lands: the East.
the apple made of gold: according to legend, the goddess of discord threw down such an apple carrying the inscription ‘To be given to the greatest beauty’. Paris, then a shepherd, was chosen by the gods to decide between Venus, Juno, and Minerva (or Aphrodite, Hera, and Pallas Athene in Greek terms); Venus won, by unscrupulous methods according to some.
STORIES OR TALES OF BYGONE TIMES
Dedication
Mademoiselle: the King’s eldest niece was known at Court simply by this title. Here it refers to Elizabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans (1676—1744). Her parents were Philippe d’Orléans, ‘Monsieur’, the King’s brother, and Elizabeth-Charlotte de Bavière, ‘Madame la Palatine’. She married, in 1698, the duke Léopold de Lorraine; she was the grandmother of Marie-Antoinette. That Perrault was allowed to dedicate the Contes to her indicates that he was ‘bien en cour’, in favour with the King.
your own ancestors: probably an allusion to Henri IV (1553—1610), very popular among the people and known for his familiar manners.
Darmancour: the name by which Charles Perrault’s youngest son was known, perhaps from a piece of land owned by the family, though none has been identified; to give a distinguishing name of this kind was normal. In the dedication manuscript of 1695, when he was 19, the signature was P.P., for Pierre Perrault. See Introduction, p. xv, on the problems of attribution raised by the signatures.
The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood
Swiss guards: considered reliable, men from Switzerland were commonly employed as guards and doormen; they also had a reputation for drinking.
Be that as it may: from here on there are many variant readings; see Appendix B.
among the animals kept for eating: country houses had a ‘ménagerie’, as here, where animals intended for the table were fattened up (Collinet, 322).
toads: they were believed in the seventeenth century to be poisonous.
Little Red Riding-Hood
riding-hood: the word used by Perrault, chaperon, had various meanings in the seventeenth century, ‘bonnet’ being perhaps the most correct here and ‘hood’ possible, but it did not mean a hood worn when riding. However, there can be no question of abandoning the traditional English phrase and title, no doubt chosen for alliteration.
baking … buns: the French ‘ayant cuit et fait des galettes’, often misinterpreted, means literally ‘having done some cooking, and made …’ or ‘having done some baking and made …’; the latter is preferable in the context of ‘galettes’, which were often made of left-overs on baking days. ‘Buns’ seems the most appropriate equivalent because Red Riding-Hood also takes some butter.
Draw the peg back, and the bar will fall: for Perrault’s ‘Tire la chevillette, la bobinette cherra’ These few words cause more problems than any other passage. The French is archaic; cherra is the future form of the Old French verb choir, ‘fall’. Chevillette and bobinette, diminutives of cheville and bobine, are words scarcely known elsewhere, but it is reasonably certain that the first means a little peg (one of the usual meanings of cheville) and the second a wooden bar used like a bolt—not ‘latch’, the word that has very often been used for it. Translators seem to have assumed, against the evidence, that the door-fastening must be a latch; but in order to open a door fastened with a latch, you raise it: when it falls, it keeps the door shut. Robert Samber, the first English translator, simply turned the bolt into a latch, ignored the meaning of cherra, and wrote ‘the latch will rise’, which does at least make sense. J. E. Mansion, the editor of the authoritative dictionaries of French, revising Samber, has ‘pull the peg and the bolt will fall’. Rouget (300) believes that the chevillette is a short piece of wood at the end of a length of cord which passes through the door from inside, where it is attached to the bobi-nette. From inside, this bar could be moved horizontally across to engage in the door-jamb and hold the door shut; from outside, the cord is pulled and the bobinette slides back out of the door-jamb. It is also possible that the chevillette is a peg which is attached to one end of the bar and projects outwards through a slot in the door. In any case the fastening would have been very simple, suitable to a humble village dwelling.
to EAT YOU WITH: Perrault’s note, found in the manuscript: ‘You say these words in a loud voice so as to frighten the child, as if the wolf were going to eat it.’
to their rooms: the text ‘jusque dans les ruelles’ means literally ‘as far as the space between bed and wall’, ruelle (now ‘alley’) having once been used in this specialized sense when, in grand houses, the lady, reclining on her bed, held conversations with guests. With the development of salon society, it had come to mean a lady’s rooms generally when used for conversational gatherings, which would have been upstairs. The ambiguity of meaning here helps with the implication about what wolves are.
Bluebeard
my apartment downstairs: in a rich man’s house the wife’s rooms, probably a sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, would be the best and on the first floor, the husband’s on the ground floor.
store-rooms: Collinet notes (326) that in great houses the furniture was changed according to season, and kept in store-rooms when not required. The long mirrors that Perrault mentions were an expensive innovation.
dragoon guard … musketeer: not ordinary infantrymen. A dragoon fought on foot but travelled on horseback; a musketeer was then the equivalent of a soldier in the Horse Guards, whose duties were to guard the King.
Puss in Boots
the solicitor … the notary: the former is an approximation to seventeenth-century procureur; the notaire charged fees for the registration of legal documents.
tricks … rats and mice: Perrault alludes here to one of La Fontaine’s Fables: Book III. xviii, ‘The Cat and an Old Rat’.
sow-thistles: for lasseron, modern French laiteron; one of the Sonchus genus, sow-thistles, known as good food for pigs and rabbits.
The Fairies
title: the direct translation of Perrault’s ‘Les Fées’. There is a problem in that only one fairy appears, though in two guises; against the example of the first English translator, Robert Samber, who decided for logic and had ‘The Fairy’, I have assumed that Perrault was aware of the problem and kept his title notwithstanding. He might have meant fairies in general, as in the sentence quoted from Samber in the note below to the gift that I give you is this.
a widow who had two daughters: this represents one of the changes made in 1697. For the variants found in the earlier text, in 1695, see Appendix B.
the spring: for the text’s fontaine, which could mean both a fountain in the sense of a structure built to provide water and also the spring which supplied it; the latter is more appropriate here.
the gift that I give you is th
is: here I follow Samber, who translates the formulaic French ‘je vous donne pour don’ by: ‘I will give you for gift’, and adds a note of his own: ‘These words the fairies make use of when they have a mind to do good or harm to any body.’
Cinderella
The Little Slipper Made of Glass: probably Perrault’s most famous invention. In previous versions of the tale, Cinderella wears different kinds of shoe. The idea has been attributed to a confusion between the two words verre (glass) and vair (the old word for squirrel fur). The argument goes: the true spelling must have been vair, because a slipper, realistically speaking, would have been made of fur. This can scarcely be denied, but is irrelevant for an unrealistic story. The argument was circulated by no less a personage than Balzac, in his Sur Catherine de Médicis, and thus gained credence. Balzac was discussing Rossini’s opera La Cenerentola, in which Cinderella is identified by a ring, not a slipper. The point is here that the slipper is magic and fits only one foot: fur can be stretched, glass cannot, but it can be exactly shaped. No text containing the alleged spelling vair has ever been discovered (nor did Balzac provide any evidence for one), and there can be no doubt at all that Perrault intended the slipper to be of glass.
looking-glasses… head to foot: a great luxury, also found in Bluebeard’s house.
hairdresser… curls: there is some doubt whether coiffeuse here meant a hairdresser or a hatter, the French verb coiffer and its derivatives applying both to hair-styling and headgear; similarly with the ‘cornettes à deux rangs’ which decorate the heads of the ugly sisters. In the absence of any convincing interpretation, I have opted for something suggesting a slightly comic hairstyle. Soon after, the service Cinderella offers her sisters (‘s’offrit même à les coiffer’) seems more likely to have concerned hair than hats.
beauty spots: small patches of black taffeta, placed on the face to enhance the complexion. They had come from Italy in the sixteenth century and much care was devoted to their shape and positioning; guidebooks recommended the best suppliers.
oranges … citrons: another expensive luxury, so that for Cinderella to share them was a great favour for the sisters.
godfather or godmother: a practical suggestion rather than a facetious comment on the story. Wealthy and influential friends or relatives were often asked to fulfil the role in the expectation that their sponsorship would be of value to the child in later life.
Ricky the Tuft
Rickett being the family name: I have anglicized the text’s ‘Riquet’. Collinet points out (290) that this was the name of the goblin king in a book by Montfaucon de Villars, Le Comte de Gabalis (1670). His realm was underground, which helps to explain the apparition later in the tale.
larding-pins: French lardoire; ‘it is a long, pointed, trough-shaped instrument with a wooden handle, used for introducing long strips of lard into a large piece of meat, such as a round of beef for making “boeuf à la mode”. The strip of lard is laid in the trough, the “pin” is inserted into the meat as far as it will go, one presses the protruding end of the “lardoon” against the meat and withdraws the pin, leaving the lardoon inside the meat’ (Philip and Mary Hyman, personal communication). I am grateful to the Hymans, contributors to the Oxford Companion to Food, for this information, and to Judith Luna for contacting them.
the tassels on their hats: the text translates literally as ‘their fox’s tails over their ears’, which is a puzzle. Grateful acknowledgements as in the previous note for the solution to the problem, dictionaries of the time and French editions offering no help: the term queue de renard was given to the kind of hat worn by chefs, with a tassel.
Hop o’ my Thumb
times were very hard: famine was not uncommon throughout the seventeenth century in France, and the years 1693 and 1694 had been particularly bad. Perrault had written a poem, Le Triomphe de Sainte-Geneviève (1694), in honour of the patron saint of Paris, who was credited with ending the famine.
dress … ready for cutting up: French habiller has the same variety of meanings as ‘dress’.
posts that had just been created: governmental posts were usually venal, and when the public finances were weak creating new offices for sale was a common resource.
1 For example in the relevant section of the basic work on French folk-tale, by Paul Delarue and Marie-Louise Tenèze, continued by Josianne Bru, Le Conte populaire français, catalogue raisonné …, 5 vols., Paris: various publishers (1957–2000).
2 Fairies appear in some but not in others; probably the influence of Cinderella has caused the term to be extended to all. Perrault’s contemporary Mme d’Aulnoy used the title ‘Fairy Tales’.
3 The first sentence of his Mémoires de ma vie (ed. Paul Bonnefon, Paris: Librairie Renouard (1909)), the main source of information, written in 1702, reads: ‘I was born on the twelfth of January 1628, one of twins.’ The other twin, also a boy, lived only for six months. Marc Soriano, in his Le Dossier Perrault, Paris: Hachette (1972), which has much valuable information, bases on this the unsustainable theory that the trauma it caused determined Perrault’s psychological development.
4 Mémoires, 111.
5 This is what Colbert asked (Mémoires, 223), probably disapproving of the idea; Perrault relates his answer: that he had seen Marie only once since she had left the convent in which she was educated, but knew her parents well and was certain that he would get on with them. He could have said it merely to placate Colbert.
6 The birth dates, which are found in baptismal registers, are relevant because, although it is often said that Perrault had four children, there seems to be no record of another birth. That the first record dates from more than three years after the marriage is unusual, though explicable. If there was a birth before 1675, the baptism was apparently not recorded, which, given Perrault’s piety, is certainly unusual. The only written record dates from much later, when after the publication of the Contes his relative Mlle Lhéritier dedicated one of her stories to ‘the sister’ of the youngest son, Pierre. Unless this is some private code, the most plausible explanation is a stillborn daughter between 1672 and 1675. Paul Bonnefon, the editor of the Mémoires, affirms that only three children were born (223 n. I).
7 ‘A lady of good family, good looks, good mind, sharp wit, and strange life (few women can have plotted to have their husband executed for high treason), was the foremost teller of fairy tales in her day, and indeed the innovator, it seems, of the fairy tale as a literary genre’; Iona and Peter Opie, The Classic Fairy Tales, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1974), 24.
8 She is variously said to be his cousin or his niece. See on her and her work Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, London: Chatto & Windus (1984), 170–9, who says that her mother and Perrault’s were ‘either sisters or cousins’ (p. 170). Raymonde Robert, in her edition of Mlle Lhéritier’s Contes (Paris: Champion (2005), 18), argues that she and Perrault were cousins.
9 For instance by Soriano, Le Dossier Perrault, and elsewhere, and Gérard Gélinas, Enquête sur les Contes de Perrault, Paris: Imago (2004).
10 Gabriele Faerno, Centum fabulae, 1564. A selection has been republished by Marc Soriano in his edition of Perrault, Paris: Flammarion (1989).
11 See Collinet’s edition, Paris: Gallimard (1981), 276.
12 See below, p. 4. La Matrone d’Ephèse, though a ‘conte’ and not a fable, was published in the last, somewhat miscellaneous twelfth book of the Fables, in 1693.
13 It is in the Preface that Perrault says that he had known about Boileau’s satire for some time; he wrote the Apologie in advance.
14 Collinet (his edition, p. 276), in the course of a résumé of the contribution made by Perrault to the story, notes that the portrait of the Prince is modelled on the young Louis XIV. Since Griselda is something of a Cinderella in advance, the fact that Louis had secretly married the devout Mme de Maintenon, who herself resembled the fairytale heroine in more than one respect, suggests the intriguing possibility that P
errault had her in mind when composing his poem. See Antonia Fraser, Love and Louis XIV, London: Phoenix (2006), 179–81, on the trials of her childhood, and p. 254 on her view of marriage: ‘She must be as submissive towards the King as Sarah was towards Abraham.’
15 One is the remarkable passage in which she insists that she ought to breast-feed the child herself, in an age when it was usual to employ a wet-nurse. It is Jean-Jacques Rousseau who is always given the credit for first arguing against wet-nurses, in his Émile (1761).
16 The tale is again indebted to La Fontaine, many of whose fables are from folk- tale. Like the fabulist, Perrault treats the peasant couple with indulgent mockery, and adds a not-very-serious moral.
17 The Arabian Nights contains an uninhibited version in which the husband wishes, at his wife’s behest, for a larger male member, with truly monstrous results. See Ashliman website under Foolish Wishes for the tale in the translation by Richard F. Burton, 1885. Collinet (p. 280) mentions that a parody by the poet François Gacon was obscene.
18 See Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane, Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1985), 229.