Part II: Petrosinella and Rapunzel
“Petrosinella” by Giambattista Basile
From the Lo cunto de li cunti, (The Story of Stories), also known as The Pentamerone, published 1634-1636 in Naples, Italy. Read the original Italian at Letteratura Italiana.
I won’t delve too deeply into the history of the author of this tale, Giambattista Basile, except to say that he was both a soldier and a government official who became interested in the Neapolitan language and folk culture and wrote fifty tales in that dialect, which he bound together by a framework story. Although his book Lo cunto de li cunti was not published until two years after his death in 1632, it had a great impact on the fairy tales of France written 60 years later.
What stood out to me when I first read this tale was how it explicitly states prevailing beliefs from that time period about pregnancy. Holly Tucker, in her book Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early Modern France, wrote about how “in medical and folk culture alike, it was believed that the mother’s desires while pregnant could imprint themselves on the child. Birthmarks, in particular, were considered the results of unfulfilled cravings,” (99). You will notice that this is the reason Pascadozzia, Petrosinella’s mother, cites for her actions.
Likewise, Petrosinella’s escape is quite different than the escapes in tales that followed it. Petrosinella is the only one of the three captive maidens who gets to square off with magic against her captor.
As for other notable differences, in Sir Richard Francis Burton’s 1893 translation, the “gallnuts” are translated as “acorns,” though the “ogress” is a “ghula,” a Middle-Eastern flavored form of the word “ghoul,” (this despite the fact that the creature was an orca not a gula in the original Italian). I hesitated between his translation and the John Edward Taylor translation that I ended up deciding to include. Though Taylor’s translation is deliberately, modestly vague in areas where Basile’s tale wasn’t, I prefer its overall effect to Burton’s.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
John Edward Taylor translation, originally published 1847, found in Petrosinella: Neapolitan Rapunzel or online.
There was, once upon a time, a woman named Pascadozzia, and one day, when she was standing at her window, which looked into the garden of an ogress, she saw such a fine bed of parsley that she almost fainted away with desire for some. So when the ogress went out she could not restrain herself any longer, but plucked a handful of it. The ogress came home and was going to cook her pottage when she found that some one had been stealing the parsley, and said, “Ill luck to me, but I’ll catch this long-fingered rogue and make him repent it; I’ll teach him to his cost that every one should eat off his own platter and not meddle with other folks’ cups.”
The poor woman went again and again down into the garden, until one morning the ogress met her, and in a furious rage exclaimed, “Have I caught you at least, you thief, you rogue; prithee, do you pay the rent of the garden that you come in this impudent way and steal my plants? By my faith, I’ll make you do penance without sending you to Rome.”
Poor Pascadozzia, in a terrible fright, began to make excuses, saying that neither from gluttony nor the craving of hunger had she been tempted by the devil to commit this fault, but from her fear lest her child should be born with a crop of parsley on its face.
“Words are but wind,” answered the ogress, “I am not to be caught with such prattle; you have closed the balance-sheet of life, unless you promise to give me the child, girl or boy, whichever it may be.”
The poor woman, in order to escape the peril in which she found herself, swore, with one hand upon the other, to keep the promise, and so the ogress let her go free. But when the baby came it was a little girl, so beautiful that she was a joy to look upon, who was named Parsley. The little girl grew from day to day until, when she was seven years old, her mother sent her to school, and every time she went along the street and met the ogress the old woman said to her, “Tell your mother to remember her promise.” And she went on repeating this message so often that the poor mother, having no longer patience to listen to the refrain, said one day to Parsley, “If you meet the old woman as usual, and she reminds you of the hateful promise, answer her, ‘Take it.’”
When Parsley, who dreamt of no ill, met the ogress again, and heard her repeat the same words, she answered innocently as her mother had told her, whereupon the ogress, seizing her by her hair, carried her off to a wood which the horses of the Sun never entered, not having paid the toll to the pastures of those Shades. Then she put the poor girl into a tower which she caused to arise by her art, having neither gate nor ladder, but only a little window through which she ascended and descended by means of Parsley’s hair, which was very long, just as sailors climb up and down the mast of a ship.
Now it happened one day, when the ogress had left the tower, that Parsley put her head out of the little window and let loose her tresses in the sun, and the son of a Prince passing by saw those two golden banners which invited all souls to enlist under the standard of Beauty, and, beholding with amazement, in the midst of those gleaming waves, a face that enchanted all hearts, he fells desperately in love with such wonderful beauty; and, sending her a memorial of sighs, she decreed to receive him into favor. She told him her troubles, and implored him to rescue her. But a gossip of the ogress, who was for ever prying into things that did not concern her, and poking her nose into every corner, overheard the secret, and told the wicked woman to be on the lookout, for Parsley had been seen talking with a certain youth, and she had her suspicions.
The ogress thanked the gossip for the information, and said that she would take good care to stop up the road. As to Parsley, it was, moreover, impossible for her to escape, as she had laid a spell upon her, so that unless she had in her hand the three gall-nuts which were in a rafter in the kitchen it would be labium lost to attempt to get away.
Whilst they were thus talking together, Parsley, who stood with her ears wide open and had some suspicion of the gossip, overheard all that had passed. And when Night had spread out her black garments to keep them from the moth, and the Prince had come as they had appointed, she let fall her hair; he seized it with both hands, and cried, “Draw up.” When he was drawn up she made him first climb up to the rafters and find the gall-nuts, knowing well what effect they would have, as she had been enchanted by the ogress. Then, having made a rope-ladder, they both descended to the ground, took to their heels, and ran off towards the city. But the gossip, happening to see them come out, set up a loud “Halloo,” and began to shout and make such a noise that the ogress awoke, and seeing that Parsley had run away, she descended by the same ladder, which was still fastened to the window, and set off after the couple, who, when they saw her coming at their heels faster than a horse let loose, gave themselves up for lost.
But Parsley, recollecting the gall-nuts, quickly threw one on the ground, and lo, instantly a Corsican bulldog started up—O, mother, such a terrible beast!—which, with open jaws and barking loud, flew at the ogress as if to swallow her at a mouthful. But the old woman, who was more cunning and spiteful than ever, put her hand into her pocket, and pulling out a piece of bread gave it to the dog, which made him hang his tail and allay his fury.
Then she turned after the fugitives again, but Parsley, seeing her approach, threw the second gall-nut on the ground, and lo, a fierce lion arose, who, lashing the earth with his tail, and shaking his mane and opening wide his jaws a yard apart, was just preparing to make a slaughter of the ogress, when, turning quickly back, she stripped the skin off an ass which was grazing in the middle of a meadow and ran at the lion, who, fancying it a real jackass, was so frightened that he bounded away as fast as he could.
The ogress having leaped over this second ditch turned again to pursue the poor lovers, who, hearing the clatter of her heels, and seeing clouds of dust that rose up to the sky, knew that she was coming again. But the old woman, who was every moment in dread lest the lion should pursue her, had not taken off the ass’s skin, and when Parsley now threw down the third gall-nut there sprang up a wolf, who, without giving the ogress time to play any new trick, gobbled her up just as she was in the shape of a jackass.
So Parsley and the Prince, now freed from danger, went their way leisurely and quietly to the Prince’s kingdom, where, with his father’s free consent, they were married. Thus, after all these storms of fate, they experienced that truth that—
“One hour in port, the sailor, freed from fears,
Forgets the tempests of a hundred years.”