Already the golden-haired Apollo with his radiant chariot had left our hemisphere, plunged into the sea, and gone to the antipodes, and the folk who had been labouring in the fields, weary with their long toil, felt a desire only to repose quietly in their beds, when the worshipful and high-born company assembled themselves joyfully once more at the customary place. And after the ladies and gentlemen had spent some time in mirthful conversation, the Signora Lucrezia, once silence was restored, requested them to bring out the golden vase. Then, having written with her own hand the names of five of the ladies and tossed them into the vessel, she called to Signor Vangelista and told him to draw out the names one by one, so that they would know with certainty just which of their companions would be assigned the duty of telling stories that night. Then Signor Vangelista, breaking off the pleasant discourse he was holding with Lodovica, went obediently towards the Signora, and respectfully sinking to his knees before her, he drew out first the name of Fiordiana, then Vicenza, then Lodovica, next Isabella, and last the name of Lionora. But before they began their recitations, the Signora gave word to Molino and the Trevisan to take their lutes and sing a ballad – which they did, as follows.
Song
There is a face which is my sun of love,
In whose kind warmth I breathe and move,
Or faint beneath its scorching ray;
And when it shines amongst the fairest fair,
My lady reigns beyond compare,
And all around her bend beneath her sway.
Happy, thrice happy, is that favoured one,
Who sees no face but hers alone,
And passion’s nectar eager sips,
Who listens to the music of her tongue,
More sweet than lays by seraphs sung,
In words that fall like jewels from her lips.
But happier still were I, if she benign
Would place her lily hand in mine,
And make me worthy such a prize to claim.
Dull clod of earth although I be,
Then should I full fruition see
Of every hope and end of every aim.
Everyone of the company listened attentively and commended the song. And when the Signora saw it was ended, she asked Fiordiana, to whom the first turn of storytelling on the fourth evening had been assigned, that she should begin hers immediately, following the order which had been observed since the beginning of their entertainment. So the damsel, no less eager to speak than to listen, began her fable.
FIORDIANA
Ricardo, king of Thebes, had four daughters, one of whom becomes a wanderer over the earth. She changes her name from Costanza to Costanzo and arrives at the court of Cacco, king of Bithynia, who, because of her doughty deeds, takes her as his wife.
I must tell you first, fair and gracious ladies, that the fable which Eritrea told to us last evening has so dashed my confidence that I don’t feel much in the mood to play the storyteller tonight. Nevertheless, my sense of obedience to all the commands of the Signora and the respect I feel for the whole of this honourable and gracious company compels and encourages me to make an attempt with a certain story which, although it will assuredly not be found so pleasing as Eritrea’s, I will give to you for what it is worth. You will hear how a certain damsel, endowed with a noble soul and high courage, one who in the course of her noteworthy adventures was far better served by fortune than by reason, held it preferable to become a servant rather than to fall beneath her station and dignity, and how, after enduring servitude for some time, she became the wife of King Cacco. All this will be set forth in the story I’m about to tell.
Thebes is one of the great and splendid cities of Egypt, a place richly ornamented with noble buildings, both public and private, situated in a country rich in cornfields and favoured with fresh water in abundance – having all those things that make for a glorious metropolis. In times past, this city was under the rule of a king named Ricardo, a man profoundly wise, of great knowledge, and of the highest valour. This monarch greatly desired to have an heir to his kingdom. His wife was Valeriana, the daughter of Marliano, king of Scozia (Scotland), a lady who was perfection itself, very fair to look upon and exceedingly gracious in manner. To them were born three daughters, fine mannered, full of grace, and fair as rosebuds in the morning. Of these, one was called Valentia, another Dorothea, and the third Spinella. In the course of time it became clear to Ricardo that Valeriana his wife had come to the end of her childbearing season and that his daughters were ripe for marriage. He therefore determined to dispose of the three princesses in honourable unions, and at the same time to divide his kingdom into three parts, in order to give one to each of his daughters, keeping for himself only as much as he deemed sufficient for the entertainment of himself, his family, and his court. All this he carried out according to his intent.
The three maidens were given in marriage to three powerful kings, one to the king of Scardona, another to the king of the Goths, and the third to the king of Scythia. To each of them was assigned, by way of dowry, a third part of their father’s kingdom, Ricardo keeping back only a small portion thereof to satisfy his vital needs. Thus the good king, with Valeriana his well-beloved wife, lived righteously in peace and comfort. But lo, after some little while it chanced that the queen, of whom the king expected no further offspring, was brought to bed of a very beautiful little girl, whom the king welcomed with affection and caresses as warm as he had given to the other three. Yet the queen was not so well pleased with this last infant, not by reason of any dislike for the child, but because, seeing the kingdom was now divided into three parts and given away, she feared there would be no chance of furnishing this daughter with a dowry sufficient to win her a marriage worthy of their state. She desired at the same time that the child should receive the share due to a daughter of hers. Having handed the child over to the care of a very competent nurse, she gave strict orders to have the child well nurtured, to give her good instruction, and to train her in the gentle and praiseworthy manners and carriage becoming to a maiden of her condition. By the time Costanza – for such was this child’s name – was twelve years old, she had already learned to embroider, to sing, to dance, to play the lute, and to do every one of those feats which are held to mark a princess of rank. Not content with these graces, she gave herself also to the study of polite letters, which were of so great pleasure and delight to her that she would spend not only her days over them but her nights as well, striving always to discover the exquisite beauties of the books she studied. Then, more like a valiant young man than a young lady, she devoted herself to the arts of war, learning how to tame horses, to handle arms, and to run in the lists. In jousting she was so skilled that she often carried the victory, as if she had been one of those valorous knights held worthy for their honour and renown. For all these reasons, Costanza was greatly loved by the king and queen and all those in the royal entourage; there was no end to their affection.
When Costanza came to a marriageable age, her father, the king, was greatly troubled because he had neither the state nor the gold required to match her with some potent monarch. In this matter he often took counsel with the queen, but the prudent Valeriana, in whose eyes the good qualities of the child appeared so superior that no other lady of the land was her equal, was by no means disquieted, consoling his majesty with gentle and loving words, urging him to keep a light heart and not to doubt but that in the end some powerful lord, fired with love by their daughter’s many virtues, would not disdain to take her as a wife without a dowry.
Before many months had passed, the damsel was asked for in marriage by various gallant gentlemen, among whom was Brunello, son of the great marquis of Vivien, whereupon the king and queen called their daughter to them in their chamber. When they were all seated, the king announced, ‘Costanza, my well-beloved child, the time is now come when it is right for you to marry, and for a husband we have found a youth who should please your taste. He is no other than the son of the marquis of Vivien, our good friend and neighbour. His name is Brunello and he is a promising and gallant youth. The report of his valorous deeds has already spread throughout the world. Moreover, he asks nothing of us beyond our own goodwill and your fair sweet self, upon which I put a value exceeding that of all the pomp and treasure of the world. You must know that, although you are a king’s daughter, yet by reason of my poverty, I cannot find for you a more exalted alliance. Hence, you must be content with this arrangement and conform to our wishes.’
The damsel, who was most prudent and fully conscious that she was sprung from high lineage, listened attentively to her father’s words and without a moment’s delay answered him as follows: ‘There is no need, father, for me to spend many words in replying to your honourable proposal. I will only say what the present question demands. First I utter my gratitude, the warmest I can express, for all the affection and benevolence you have shown me in seeking to provide me with a husband without consulting with me in the matter. Next, speaking still with all submission and reverence, I do not intend to let myself fall below the race of my ancestors, who throughout all time have been famous and illustrious, nor do I wish to debase the crown you wear by taking for a husband one who is our inferior. Dear father, you have begotten four daughters, of whom you have married three in the most honourable fashion to three mighty kings, giving with them great store of gold and wide domains. Yet you wish to dispose of me, who has ever been obedient to you and observant of your precepts, in an ignoble alliance. Wherefore I tell you, to end my speech, that I will never take a husband unless I can be matched like my three sisters to a king of rank equal to my deserving.’
Shortly thereafter, Costanza, after shedding many tears, took leave of the king and queen, mounted a gallant horse, and set forth from Thebes alone, determined to follow whatever road fortune might lay open to her. Travelling thus at hazard, she deemed it wise to change her name, so instead of Costanza, she called herself Costanzo and attired herself in men’s clothing. She passed over many mountains and valleys, forests and rivers, saw many lands, heard the languages of men and marked their ways and manners, including those who lived their lives after the fashion of brutes rather than of men. One day, at the setting of the sun, she arrived at the famed and celebrated city of Costanza, the capital of all the surrounding country, at that time under the rule of Cacco, king of Bithynia. Upon entering, she began to admire the superb palaces, the straight and spacious streets, the running water, the broad rivers, and the clear, soft, trickling fountains. Then, coming to the great square, she beheld the king’s palace, lofty and magnificent with its pillars of marble, porphyry, and other precious materials. Soon after, lifting up her eyes, she saw the king, who was standing upon a gallery commanding a view of the whole square, whereupon she doffed her cap and made him a deep bow. The king, seeing so gracious and fair a stripling saluting him from below, had him called up and brought into his presence. As soon as Costanzo stood before him, the king demanded from what country he had come and by what name he was called. With a broad smile, the youth answered that he had journeyed from Thebes, driven out by envious and deceitful fortune, and that his name was Costanzo. He declared, moreover, that he desired to place himself in the service of such a great lord, promising all the faith and affection that good service entailed. Meanwhile, the king found himself greatly pleased by the appearance of the youth and said to him, ‘Seeing that you bear the name of my city, it is my will that you stay here in my court with no other duties but to attend upon my person.’
The youth, who looked for no better employment than this, first rendered his gratitude to the king and quite joyfully accepted service under him as his lord, offering at the same time to hold himself ready to discharge any duty that might be assigned to him.
So Costanza, in the guise of a man, entered into the service of the king, serving him so well and courteously that everyone who knew him was astonished by his talents. It happened, too, that the queen, when she had well observed and considered Costanzo’s graceful bearing, pleasant manners, and discreet behaviour, began to fix her eyes more diligently upon him, so that neither by day nor by night did she turn her thoughts upon any other. The glances she was forever darting in his direction were so soft and loving that not only a youth, but even the hardest rock – even a diamond itself – might have been softened. Thus consumed with her passion for Costanzo, the queen yearned only for an occasion to be alone with him, and before long that opportunity arrived to ask him outright whether it would please him to enter into her service, making it clear that over and above the reward she would give him, he would be more than welcome, sought after, and honoured at the court.
Costanzo understood clearly enough the drift of these words coming out of the queen’s mouth, which expressed no goodwill for his advancement, but only her amorous passion. Moreover, being a woman like herself, she could not possibly satisfy the unbridled lust that prompted them. Humbly, thus, she answered her, ‘Signora, my bond of service to my lord, your husband, is so strong that I would feel it a base injury were I to withdraw myself from obedience to his will. Therefore, I ask you to hold me excused and to pardon me that I am not ready and willing to take service with you, asking you to accept as the reason of my refusal of your gracious offer my resolve to serve my lord even unto death, provided that he is pleased to retain me as his man.’
Having then taken leave of the queen, he withdrew from her presence. The queen, who understood very well that oak trees are not felled with a single stroke, made several attempts on subsequent occasions, using her deepest cunning and art to entice Costanzo into taking service with her. But the youth, as constant and strong as a high tower beaten by the winds, remained unmoved. When the queen became conscious of this, her ardent burning love turned to mortal, bitter hatred, so that she could no longer bear the sight of him. Being now anxious to work his destruction, she pondered day and night how she might best bring this about, although she was in great fear of the king because he held the youth in such high esteem.
Now in the land of Bithynia there was a strange race of beings having one half of their body, the upper part, in the shape of a man, but with ears and horns like those of animals, while the lower part resembled a rough shaggy goat with a little tail twisted and curled like a pig’s. These creatures were called satyrs, whose mischievous activities caused great loss and damage to the villages and farms of the country dwellers. The king desired to have one of these satyrs taken alive and delivered into his keeping, but there was no one in the court with sufficient prowess to attempt the enterprise. The queen sought Costanzo’s destruction by having him sent on such an errand, but the outcome of the matter was not at all what she desired, for as often happens, by the working of divine providence and supreme justice, the intended deceiver is cast under the feet of the one she most sought to beguile.
The treacherous queen, very well aware of the king’s desire, happened one day to be in conversation with him over various matters, and while they were thus debating, she mentioned to him, ‘My lord, have you never considered that Costanzo, your faithful and devoted servant, is a knight so strong and courageous that he might easily capture one of these satyrs for you and bring him back alive, without calling on anyone else to aid him. And if events should unfold in this way, as I believe they would, you might give it a try right away, so that within an hour you would attain the wish of your heart and, as a brave and valiant knight, Costanzo would enjoy the honour of the deed to his eternal glory and triumph.’
The cunning queen’s speech pleased the king greatly, and so he had Costanzo called immediately into his presence and said to him, ‘Costanzo, if you revere me as much as you make a show of doing, and as all people are led to believe, you will now carry out my heart’s wish and earn for yourself the glory of fulfilling the deed. You know that more than anything else in the world I yearn to have a live satyr in my own keeping. Seeing how strong and active you are, I believe there is no other man in all my kingdom so well suited to accomplish this as you. Loving me as you do, I know you will not refuse me.’
Assuming this demand to have come from the king’s own heart, the youth was anxious not to vex him and thus answered with a cheerful and amiable face, ‘My lord, in this as in everything else you may command me. Weak as my best strength may be, I would never hold back from striving to fulfil your wish, even though in the task I should meet my death. But before I commit myself to this perilous adventure, I would ask you, my lord, that you have a large vessel with a wide mouth carried into the wood where the satyrs live, no smaller than the great bowls in which the maids wash their nightgowns and other personal linens. Beside this, have a large cask of good wine taken there, the best and strongest that can be had, together with two bags full of the finest white bread.’ Without delay, the king made the request to prepare everything that Costanzo had mentioned, and then Costanzo set out for the satyr’s wood. When he arrived, he took a copper bucket and began to fill it with wine drawn from the cask and this he poured into the other vessel standing nearby. Next he took some of the bread, and having broken it into pieces, he put these into the vessel full of wine. This done, he climbed up into a thick-leaved tree standing nearby and waited to see what might happen next.
No sooner was he in the tree than the satyrs, having smelt the scent of the fragrant wine, began to gather round the vessel, each one swilling from it a good bellyful of wine, like hungry wolves when they fall upon a fold of young lambs. After they had taken their fill, they lay down to sleep, falling into a slumber so sound and deep that all the noise in the world would not have awakened them. Then Costanzo, seeing that the time for action had come, descended from the tree and went softly up to one of the satyrs whose hands and feet he bound fast with a cord. Next, without making any noise, he placed him upon his horse and carried him away. While Costanzo was on his way back with the satyr tightly bound behind him, they came towards evening to a village not far from the city. By this time, the creature had recovered from the effects of the wine, woken up, and began to yawn as though getting out of bed. Looking about, he saw the father of a family bitterly weeping in the middle of a little crowd going to bury a dead child, accompanied by a chanting priest there to conduct the service. Seeing this spectacle, the satyr began to laugh so heartily that he couldn’t stop himself. Later, when they had entered into the city and had arrived at the great square, the satyr beheld a large crowd of people who were staring, their mouths agape, at a poor wretch on the gibbet about to be hanged. This time he laughed more loudly than he had laughed before. Afterward, when they had come to the palace, all the people standing by were taken by a rush of joy and started shouting, ‘Costanzo, Costanzo!’ The satyr, when he heard this outbreak, laughed louder than ever.
When Costanzo was conducted into the presence of the king and queen with her ladies, he presented the satyr to the king, whereupon the creature laughed again, and so loudly and long that everyone present was astonished. Seeing with what diligence Costanzo had fulfilled his wish, the king held him in the highest affection and esteem ever extended to a servant by his lord, which only added fresh grief to the burden already lying heavily on the queen’s heart. Intending to ruin him, she had done nothing but exalt him to even greater honour. Now the wicked queen, unable to endure the sight of Costanzo’s great fortune, devised yet another snare for him, which was this. She knew that the king went every morning to the cell where the satyr was kept, attempting for his diversion to make the creature talk, but entirely without success. Seeking out the king, she thus said to him, ‘Sire, you have gone repeatedly to the satyr’s cell where you have worn yourself out in an effort to induce him to talk to you for the sake of your diversion, but the creature shows no signs at all of saying a word. So why should you worry your brains over this further, for it is certain that if Costanzo were willing, he could easily make the satyr talk and answer questions.’
Hearing these words, the king had Costanzo straightway summoned into his presence and said to him, ‘Costanzo, I am well assured that you know the extent of the pleasure I take from the satyr you captured for me. Nevertheless, I am much annoyed to find him dumb, refusing to make any answer to the questions I ask. But I’m certain you could make him speak.’
‘Sire,’ Costanzo replied, ‘if the satyr is dumb, it is by no means my fault. It is the office of a god and not that of a mortal like me to make him speak. If, however, the reason for his muteness is not the result of natural or accidental defect, but a stubborn resolve to keep silence, I will do all that is in me to make him open his mouth in speech.’
Then, going together to the satyr’s prison, they gave him some dainty food and even better wine and called out to him, ‘Eat, Chiappino’ – for this was the name they had given to the satyr. But the creature only stared at them without uttering a word. ‘Come, Chiappino, tell us whether that capon and that wine are to your taste.’ But still he was silent.
Costanzo, perceiving how obstinate the humour of the creature was, said, ‘So you will not answer me, Chiappino. Let me tell you that it’s a mighty foolish thing you’re doing, given that I could, if I wanted to, just let you die of hunger here in prison.’ At these words, the satyr shot a sidelong glance at Costanzo. After a short while, Costanzo went on, ‘Rouse yourself and answer me, my Chiappino, for if you speak to me, as I hope you will, I will liberate you from this place.’
Then Chiappino, who had been listening eagerly all the while, when he heard of this chance at freedom, replied, ‘So what do you want of me?’
Costanzo then said, ‘Tell me, have you eaten well, and drunk to satisfaction?’
‘Yes,’ said Chiappino.
‘Now I want you, by your leave, to tell me,’ said Costanzo, ‘what exactly it was that moved you to laughter in the village street when we met the dead child on its way to be buried?’
To this Chiappino replied, ‘I didn’t laugh at the dead child, but at the so-called father, to whom the child in the coffin was in fact no kin at all, and I laughed at the priest singing the office, for he was the real father,’ by which speech the satyr would have them understand that the mother of the child had carried on an intrigue with the priest.
Then said Costanzo, ‘And now I want to know, my Chiappino, what it was that made you laugh even louder when we came into the square?’
‘I laughed then,’ replied Chiappino, ‘to see a thousand or more thieves who had robbed the public purse of crowns by the million, who deserved a thousand gibbets, standing in the square to feast their eyes on the sight of a poor wretch on the gallows, who perhaps may have pilfered ten florins to buy bread for himself and his poor children.’
Then said Costanzo, ‘Tell me how it was, likewise, that when we came here into the palace you laughed longer and louder than ever?’
‘Ah, for that I’ll beg of you not to trouble me more right now,’ said Chiappino, ‘but to go your way and come back tomorrow, and then I’ll answer you and tell you certain things about which, by chance, you haven’t an inkling.’
When Constanzo heard this, he said to the king, ‘Let us depart and come back tomorrow and find out what this thing may be.’ So the king and Costanzo took their leave and gave orders that Chiappino should be given of the best to eat and drink to put him in fine humour for speaking freely thereafter.
When the next day arrived, they went once more to Chiappino and found him puffing and snoring like a great pig. Going up close to him, Costanzo called to him several times in a loud voice, but Chiappino, with his belly well filled, was fast asleep and as dumb as a stone. Then Costanzo gave him a sharp prick with one of his darts, whereupon the satyr awoke, stood up, and demanded who was there. ‘Now get up, Chiappino,’ said Costanzo, ‘and tell us the thing you promised yesterday that we should hear. Explain why you laughed so loudly when we came to the palace?’
To this question Chiappino replied, ‘For a reason which you should understand far better than I. In truth, it was from hearing them all shouting “Costanzo! Costanzo!” while all the time you have been Costanza.’
When the king heard this, he couldn’t comprehend what Chiappino’s words might mean, but Costanzo, who understood their significance immediately, quickly changed the subject and posed a different question, ‘And when you had been taken into the presence of the king and queen, what made you laugh then as if nothing could stop you?’
To this Chiappino answered, ‘I laughed so outrageously then because the king thinks that the maidens in waiting upon the queen are truly maidens, as do you. But I know that the greater part of them consists of young men.’ With this he fell silent again.
The king didn’t know what to say when he heard these words, but leaving the cell where the wild satyr was confined, he took Costanzo with him and together they went to a place where they could learn the truth. When matters had been put to the test, he discovered that Costanzo was indeed a woman, and that the supposed damsels about the queen were agile young men, just as Chiappino had said. Immediately the king had a huge fire kindled in the middle of the square into which he had the queen cast, together with her paramours, in the presence of all the people. Keeping in mind the loyalty and faithfulness of Costanza, and taking full note of her great beauty, the king made her his wife in the presence of all his barons and knights. Moreover, when he found out who her parents were, he was enormously pleased and straightway despatched ambassadors to King Ricardo and Valeriana his wife, and to the three sisters of Costanza, telling them that she was now a king’s wife – all of whom felt joy over such good news. Thus the noble Costanza, in reward for the faithful service she had rendered, became queen at last and lived long with Cacco her husband.
As soon as Fiordiana had brought her fable to an end, the Signora made her a sign to give her enigma. The damsel, who was somewhat disdainful, although more by chance than by nature, set it out in the following words:
Over savage lions twain
A spirit soft and mild doth reign.
By her side four damsels move,
Prudence, Valour, Faith, and Love.
She bears a sword in her right hand,
Before it calm the righteous stand,
But wicked men and souls unjust
It smites and lays them in the dust.
Discord nor wrong with her may rest,
And he who loves her wins the best.
This clever enigma won the praise of all, some finding its meaning to be one thing and some another. But there was no one who could really and truly divine the sense if it. When Fiordiana saw this, she said outright, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are all labouring in vain, for my riddle signifies nothing other than justice, infinite and equal, which is erected and established to hold sway over humankind in the manner of the gentle tamer of savage and hungry lions, by which I mean men of arrogant and unbridled spirit. She holds in her right hand a sharp sword, accompanied by the four virtues, which is to say, Prudence, Fortitude, Faith, and Charity. She is gentle and kind to the good, but hard and harsh to the wicked.’ When Fiordiana ceased speaking, the listeners were greatly pleased with the interpretation of her enigma. Then the Signora asked Vicenza to follow in her turn with a fable, which she did in the following words:
Three motifs or miniature stories meet to form the story of Costanza. The first is indebted to medieval romance and features a girl disguised as a knight who, for want of a dowry and in danger of being forced into an arranged marriage, proudly chooses to find a place in the world equal to her rank. That she marries a king in the end, after engaging in a dangerous quest for the satyr, is not only the completion of a romancecum-fairy tale, but the confirmation of her aristocratic entitlement. The second plot is of Eastern provenance and deals with the erotic despotism of the queen who, when her advances are rejected by the girl-knight taken for a young man, seeks either to send ‘him’ to his death on a dangerous mission, or to have ‘him’ punished for attempted rape by bearing false witness to her husband.1 Paralleling this is the equally archetypal tale, originating in ancient India, of an immodest queen whose activities are revealed to the king by a supernatural creature whose ironic laughter is the prelude to her exposure. The third story is ambiguously Mediterranean or Nordic, depending on whether the beast to be captured and returned to court is the southern satyr or the northern wild man of the woods.2 In both cases, the creature has the human capacity for speech and in the end is brought to explain his enigmatic conduct by revealing the truth concerning both the wicked queen’s illicit pastimes and the girl-knight’s true nature, in essence resolving two stories condensed into one. In this regard, the tale is an ingeniously opportune amalgamation of identifiable parts, which, in less investigative terms, produces a miniature romance in which the heroine as adventurer rises at a foreign court, finds herself unwillingly involved in a sexual intrigue, acquits herself honourably in the quest for the wild man, and secures her future through marriage – although Straparola makes less than some of his imitators in involving her indifferent sisters and helpless parents in the moment of her triumph.3
Readers will have their own intuitions regarding the staying power of this narrative configuration involving the cross-dressing of a royal heroine in quest, the Potiphar’s wife motif, and the capture of the truthspeaking satyr. Each episode has its own independent history with claims to considerable antiquity, including parallels in Greco-roman mythology involving scorned and vengeful queens and the lore of semi-human creatures of the woodlands or desert places. Romance overtones are maintained by the choice of place names in Straparola’s tale, for Costanza sets out from the court of Thebes and arrives at the court of Bittinia, which may safely be read as Bithynia.4 This was one of the preferred places in the world for Western writers to pitch their fanciful romances, in company with others such as Bohemia, Natolia, Mantinea, or Phrygia. In effect, it is as though Straparola had poured an entire chanson de geste into a novella, beginning with the search for a suitable partner in the world; the strategy for the protection of female chastity by assuming a male disguise, as with Spenser’s Britomart in the third book of his Faerie Queene and all her forebears in the literature of female knights; the danger of predatory sexuality and related court intrigues; the redeeming (or initiatory) quest to a wild place to do battle with a monster or prodigy; and the escape from calumniators by reclaiming female status and the romance entitlements garnered through eligibility for marriage.5 That is to say, Costanza is a heroine eliciting empathy. She is a narrative centre who redeems her destiny in a royal match through determination and intelligence.6 Her long speech to her parents expressing her disappointments and ambitions, and her intention to find her rightful status by venturing through the world, shapes the well-wishing that guides the plot to its conclusion. Treacherous queens and evasive satyrs are but accessories and obstacles to her archetypal life trajectory. To be sure, she reveals no particular interiority in relation to her disguise, or in her unwavering and out-of-hand rejection of a desiring queen, nor do we have much indication that she feels emotional partiality to the king before the fact of the queen’s execution.
Nevertheless, she progresses from episode to episode in precisely the order followed by Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, from seeking a place in male disguise at the court of the duke she will later marry, to erotic solicitations on the part of a commandeering woman, to a mock sword fight to protect her masculine honour, to liberating herself from the accusations of a scorned woman, to revealing the riddle of her sex in anticipation of marriage. The satyr’s revelations obviate the need for Costanza to pull down her dress before the king to prove her innocence, but it is telling that in Shakespeare’s source, ‘Of Apolonius and Silla’ in Barnabe Riche’s Farewell to Military Profession, Silla is compelled to do just that in the presence of the accusing woman who was more than scorned, but actually pregnant by the heroine’s lookalike brother.7 Had Costanza been accused of sex crimes against the queen, she had her own sex as alibi. There is an interlocking narrative vocabulary linking these divergent unmaskings. Such is Costanza’s micro-romance with its charactertesting feats. But the origin of the story lies elsewhere, namely in the tale of the cheating queen whose secret is revealed by a supernatural creature with soothsaying powers, to which the many romance-inspired elements are added. The intriguing feature of Straparola’s ‘Costanza, the GirlKnight’ is that it preserves its folkloric elements in full view – an assurance that his version of the story was not scaled back from medieval romance, but was built up from ancient narrative parts forming a compound folk tale, again suggesting that Straparola worked principally from oral rather than written sources.
One of the telltale features of the plot, in this regard, is the continuation of the scorned queen’s tale, not with the usual accusation of attempted rape, but with the request to send the now despised protagonist on a dangerous quest (a feature already seen in the Livoretto group, III.2). It derives from the ancient plot of the lecherous queen and the laughing animal by whose antics her infidelity is eventually made known. That ancient story was the core around which the Costanza prototype was built as the Indo-Arabic fable resituated itself in a European context. In the story ‘Yogananda and his Queen’ from the celebrated Ocean of the Streams of Stories (Kathā sarit sāgara), assembled around 1100 from a rich treasury of tales then in circulation, a Brahmin is led off to execution by order of the jealous king for merely chatting with the queen.8 On the way, however, a fish in a market stall, even though it was dead, began to laugh. The king was advised to stay the execution until he knew the reason why. His wise man, Vararuchi, is told to climb a palm tree and watch. A terrible female Rakshasa happens by in search of food for her children, having been promised the flesh of the executed Brahmin. The wise man overhears her explain to the children that because the fish laughed, their meal has been delayed. The children ask why and they learn that the king’s wives are all unfaithful and that the harem is full of men dressed as women, while an innocent Brahmin is about to die. This irony amused the fish.9 So the spy in the tree informs the king on the authority of the Rakshasa, bringing about the release of the holy man. The women are not punished, for the point of the story is the injudicious behaviour and caprice of all-powerful rulers in the handling of justice. That is demonstrated when Vararuchi, for having revealed his knowledge of a hidden mark on the queen’s body, is himself executed. But in later versions of the story, the women, for their lechery, are destroyed.
The oldest source on record of the story of the immodest queen exposed by a supernatural creature through the instrumentation of a young girl reticent to reveal the truth directly to the king is the Çukasaptati, dating to the sixth century or earlier.10 The Queen Kamalila one morning refuses to eat a certain fish because it is a male, causing the fish to laugh out loud. The king compels his Brahmin on pain of banishment to explain the phenomenon, and the chief Brahmin in turn relates his dilemma to his daughter, who goes before the king. But she merely stalls matters through her evasive answers. Meanwhile, a minister whose laughter causes roses to fall from his lips is imprisoned because he refuses to reveal the source of this special talent. The Brahmin’s daughter tells the king to find out why, and the minister accounts for his disinclination in terms of the infidelity of his wife. When the king turns to the queen and gives her a playful tap regarding the matter, she falls into a swoon, which causes the minister to break out laughing – presumably because, as in the Arabian Nights’ tale of the ruler and his brother, the victim of cuckoldry has found a fellow sufferer in the king. But why, specifically, does he laugh? Because when the queen’s lover had beaten her the night before she did not swoon, the minister explains. The king then sets up a search both for the marks on her body and for the lover who is hidden in a chest, with appropriate punishments to follow. Even in this early version, it is seen how the accusation is redirected as an inquest which frees the intermediaries from danger; it has taken an evasive girl and an equally evasive minister to get the truth out.
It is around this nucleus that the entire story unfolds. We are to imagine that as the story progressed towards the West, each receiving culture had to provide the surrounding circumstances for exposing the queen, in accordance with the necessity that such a dangerous revelation be displaced among voices compelled to speak against their wills – a feature carried through in Straparola when the satyr refuses to speak, forewarning the king that he may not appreciate what he learns. In the Western oikotype of the tale, closely followed by Straparola, the Brahmin’s daughter is replaced by the girl-knight who, in her adventures, encounters the lecherous queen, while the Rakshasa, an Eastern demonic figure with soothsaying powers, is replaced by a satyr or wild man (leading earlier to the many versions in which Merlin plays the role opposite Grisandole, the counterpart to Costanza). That the girl-knight and the satyr bring bits of their own lore into the story is a collateral part of the Western reconfiguration.
Speculation is free as to how this motif flourished in the Arabicspeaking world, but for our purposes, the important fact is that it was known in the West by the twelfth century.11 There is the prospect that the story entered through the Iberian Peninsula, given its version in the Scha’ascherim of Yosef ben Me’ir ibn Zabara, dating to that period.12 Arguably more important than all the literary renditions to follow, however, including those embedded in the various lives of Merlin, is the formation of the folk tale designated ‘X’ by Lucy Allen Paton, namely a Western prototype which preserved the generic parts of the Eastern story as a ‘living’ tale that was orally disseminated throughout the following seven centuries. Admittedly, it is only through the complex literary adaptations based on that tale that we can reconstruct its passage, yet according to Paton it is the folk tale ‘X,’ as it continued to evolve and spread, that provided the models for all such literary treatments – including Straparola’s and Basile’s – and not the literary adaptations themselves. That thesis stands to reason in light of the difficulty in accounting for the derivation of the literary versions from each other. This is now a familiar crux and will remain so, given the priority accorded routinely to texts in the propagation of texts, and the work of scholars reasoning out how authors modify the work of others. In the case of ‘Costanza,’ one late-fifteenth-century text, in particular, is apt for assessment as a source and must not be ruled out. Thus, the following history of cognate tales treats the surviving literary evidence both as potential source material and as indirect evidence of the unfolding folk tradition that survived down the nineteenth century, of which the present tale offers itself as the earliest transcription. Ultimately, the choice is between a literary rendition somewhat dissimilar to the Straparolan tale, but from which he managed to extract his more generic version, and a current folk tale the nature of which cannot be independently corroborated for another three centuries. But a folk tale there was, from which the tale of ‘Costanza’ is borrowed, whether directly or indirectly, for what is patently clear is that no claim can be made for Straparola as author of any part of the story.
Valentin Schmidt was the first to claim the early Merlin adaptations of ‘X’ as Straparola’s direct literary source, but it is difficult to imagine how he could have rediscovered the generic folk tale buried in such stylized and historicized materials. There is a better case to be made for a folk tradition which preserved the common tale that at one point gave rise to Grisandole and at another to Costanza.13 To represent this early segment of the tale’s literary history, I have chosen the thirteenth-century Roman de Merlin in which the author assigns to the celebrated Celtic shape-shifter and mage, Merlin, the role of the sage who sees into the queen’s nature and the corruption of her entourage. But it is to be underscored that the folk material had been incorporated into the story of Merlin as early as 1150 in the Vita Merlini, attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. That work, in turn, draws upon Welsh legend concerning the suffering that drives men to seek refuge in the wolds and that grants to them the powers of prophecy. The episode in which Merlin returns to the court to laugh his mysterious laughter at his sister, Queen Ganeida with the leaf in her hair, the sign of her infidelity, is the earliest trace of the Eastern story refitted upon the Celtic king and mage.14 The author redeploys such enigmatic laughter as a prompt for revealing hidden truths in several subsequent episodes. This work inspired the Prose Lancelot, from which arose Arthur and Merlin (ca. 1250), Merlin (1425), and the Prose Merlin (1450). In these last three, the famous soothsayer frequently appears in disguise, laughs ironically at human foibles, and makes devastating prophesies.15
In a brief retelling of the highlights, the elements in common with the story of ‘Costanza’ can be seen at a glance. The preoccupations of the Medieval storyteller are fully manifest, based though they are on a written source, for the setting is the Rome of Julius Caesar, and the heroine who comes riding to court disguised as the knight Grisandole is Avenable, daughter of the maligned and exiled Duke Mathum of Germany.16 She becomes Caesar’s cup-bearer. Thereafter, Caesar dreams of a pig with long shaggy hair and twelve young lions, all of whom he consigns to the flames. Tormented by its possible meaning, he offers his daughter in marriage to the person who resolves the riddle. Merlin appears in the form of a stag (or a herdsman so disguised) to explain that only a wild man could offer the solution. The task falls upon Grisandole to roam the forests in search of the wild man. A wild boar counsels her to use salted ham, honey, milk, and warm bread to lure the creature, and to employ four strong men to contain him. Then Merlin appears in the form of the wild man, striking his club against the trees, yet allows himself to be captured, laughing his mocking laughter all along, while refusing to explain himself except to the king. On the way, there is further laughter when he sees the poor at an abbey seeking alms, when he sees a stable-boy striking his master three times on the ear, and when he sees the queen with her twelve dames. The wild man’s explanations reveal that the alms-seekers were standing above buried treasure, the blows represented the three orders of the realm (there are variant explanations), the twelve women were men, and that he, himself, who had never been bound by a man, had now been bound by a woman. Merlin had played all the parts and had upheld his reputation as a seer; he had fulfilled the role of the truth-speaking wild man. In the process, by provoking the queen’s execution, he had cleared the way for a romance closure in which the heroine is married to Caesar and her father is exonerated and recalled. The Merlin appropriation became a literary tradition of its own with specific characteristics (absent in Straparola), but had fed initially upon the folk tale that pursued a parallel history down to recent times.
The business of supernatural laughter at hidden vices otherwise concealed to mortals was an integral part of the story type, but such vices and their ironic relations held a simultaneous place in the compilations of the writers of medieval exempla. This is particularly true of the father weeping for his dead son who is in fact lamenting the priest’s son gotten with his wife, thus exemplifying the anxiety over paternity and the legitimacy of children. The Mensa philosophica, first published in 1487, contains a fragmentary version about a man seeking the truth in such matters from the Devil. The Devil insists that he has but one son, while the man, knowing he has two, calls the Devil a liar. To his chagrin, however, the explanation follows that the other is by the priest.17 This is no doubt derived from Exemplum 233 in the collection by Jacques de Vitry in which a demon in France named Guinehochet reveals such secrets. When asked by a man about the number of his sons, the demon replies that he has but one. The man accuses him of telling lies, but the demon explains that the other is the priest’s. When the man demands to know the bastard in order to turn him out of doors, the demon refuses to say: ‘You must either drive both away or feed both.’18 This motif prevailed for centuries as a topic of enigmatic laughter, one of the many ironic circumstances that might arouse the mockery of those privileged to see into the hidden nature of things. Straparola’s representation of such topics in his version of the tale no doubt originated in his source.
The story of Grisandole the girl-knight is a chivalric episode that draws upon the Eastern motif of the lecherous queen, on the northern European motif of the wild man of the woods with his powers of divination, as well as upon the Talmudic story of Aschmedai or Asmodeus.19 Just who assembled the parts is a moot point, but the tale that came to Straparola featuring the heroine in disguise, the lechery of an oriental queen, the divinatory powers of a creature of the wilds, and closure in marriage was, by all this evidence, current in Europe by the second half of the twelfth century. Straparola may have looked to the Istoria di Merlino, translated from the French into Italian in 1480, but the clarity of narrative logic in his own retelling necessitates either a full correction of the Merlin episodes or, more probably, reflects his familiarity with the folk tale from which the Merlin episode had fallen away.20
There are other literary works in which segments of Straparola’s tale are quite intact, as in the first half of the Novella del Fortunato, where events correlate perfectly with the opening of ‘Costanza.’21 Both stories begin in Thebes. King Ricardo, too, has three daughters, marries them well, divides his realm into three parts, and has a fourth daughter late in life – Prudentia, born to Valeriana, daughter of King Merlino of Scotland. This daughter has all the graces of a young girl, but also takes up martial arts, jousting, and horsemanship, and, like Costanza, develops skills equal to any cavalier. A long encounter with her father concerning a marriage offer to Brunello, the son of a household marquis, and her proud rejection in the name of her ancestors, thereby launching her career as a girl-knight, constitutes far too many similarities for this novella not to have been among Straparola’s sources. Moreover, by the report of Giovanni Papanti, its nineteenth-century editor, the work seems to have been first published in Venice by ‘Hieronimo Cesalpini,’ who was active in the very years Straparola published his Piacevoli notti, although the story itself may be considerably older. Conceivably, Straparola seized upon this contemporary publication of a work of undetermined authorship and undetermined age, extrapolating his Costanza from Prudentia. He could have modified the folk tale in the image of the literary romance to produce his own novella. But his dependence upon a folk tale version tout court remains equally possible.
Yet another story worth consideration is the fifth of Giovanni Sercambi’s Novelle, which tells of the infidelity of a queen who keeps her lover hidden among her female entourage. When the king falls ill, he offers any reward, except his crown or his wife, for a cure. A wise doctor, through a series of investigations at court, exposes the queen and thereby cures the king, for his illness originates from his nightmares over her offending conduct. A grand assembly is held to which all the nobility is invited to bestow the promised reward. The doctor arrives nobly dressed, followed by a crowd of female admirers. But he, in fact, is a nobly born young woman who claims the king as her prize. This story would require extensive adjustments to become Straparola’s, but that it belongs to the ‘Costanza’ type is readily apparent.22
That many elements of the Grisendole story appear in Giovanni Battista Basile’s ‘The Three Crowns’ in The Pentamerone, written some seven or eight decades after Straparola, merely adds another episode to the general enigma surrounding their literary relationship, or lack thereof.23 Again, there is nothing about the retelling that would suggest that Basile had Straparola open before him in tweaking this folk tale further in the direction of a fairy tale through his inimitable baroque stylizing. Basile is clearly working with materials common to the second half of ‘Costanza,’ but they are removed by diversification due to time and geographical distance. In short, Basile does not begin with the tale of Costanza, but with fairy tale material of his own combined with the girlknight motif derived from a folk variation known in the south of Italy.
Basile opens with the motif of the royal daughter who is fairy-cursed from birth and kept mewed up in a tower throughout her childhood to avoid her fate. But when at last the girl is allowed to leave her ancestral home to marry, a crosswind simply carries her away and sets her down in front of a ghoula’s house where she is in danger of being cannibalized. The tale we are expecting is nowhere in sight. Marchetta, for such is her name, wins favour by secretly putting the ghoula’s house in order, herself acting like a fairy. However, after breaking a taboo that sets the ghoula’s three daughters at liberty (the Bluebeard motif) she is forced to flee, disguised as a man. The king she meets while out hunting takes pity on her and makes her a court page. Naturally, the queen falls in love with the page, then comes to hate him for scorning her, and then accuses him openly of attempted rape (a motif not employed in ‘Costanza’). The king accepts the matter at face value and the girl is carried off to the gibbet. There is to be no quest and no satyr, but another mechanism familiar to folk and fairy tales serves in their stead. At the eleventh hour, a mysterious voice reveals the truth while emanating from Marchetta’s magic ring, a gift presented by the ghoula, who had taken pity on the girl after frightening her away. Marchetta’s true gender is thus revealed, the king asks for the whole story from her own mouth, compares her situation to what he had heard from a fellow king, casts the accusing wife into the sea after weighting her body, and of course marries Marchetta. The stories compare at the typological level but represent highly divergent forms of the folk tale, whatever their immediate sources. That Basile borrowed from Straparola is again difficult to countenance, given the impoverishment of Basile’s source and the discrepancies that separate them.
The two remaining directions of the commentary pertain to stories derived directly from Straparola’s tale, predictably in France towards the end of the seventeenth century, and stories evincing close narrative affiliations with the ‘Costanza’ type, collected by the folklorists of the nineteenth century. The French literary elaborations reveal the potential embedded in Straparola’s tales for amplification in a new literary context framed by the formalization of the fairy tale, while the perpetuation of the generic tale through a seemingly infinite number of oral versions recorded some three centuries later is an implicit argument for the abundance of such tales in Straparola’s own time and the increased likelihood of one serving him directly as his source.
Thomas-Simon Gueullette’s debt to Straparola is little acknowledged, but his story entitled ‘The History of the Blue Centaur’ is another that points to inspiration from the Piacevoli notti, no doubt through the highly successful Louveau translation. Gueullette was working in the shadow of Galland whose assembly of tales into the ‘European’ Arabian Nights had created the fashion for oriental tales. Gueullette’s mission in his Tartarian Tales, or a Thousand and One Quarters of Hours was to create new oriental stories by refitting European tales with oriental settings and trappings.24 In his restyling of ‘Costanza,’ he surrounds the familiar episodes with a love relationship between young royals who become separated. The princess, thinking the prince dead, disguises herself as a man and goes to Nanquin, where, for her winning ways and handsome appearance, she becomes the object of the queen’s sexual advances. The heroine’s disinclination turns the queen’s desire to hatred, for which reason she is sent on the perilous quest to capture the arrow-proof Blue Centaur. True to the Straparolan model, she baits a trap with wine and food, and when the creature falls senseless with drink, she binds him in chains and takes him home. Along the way, as in ‘Costanza,’ the creature rouses himself and begins to laugh first at a funeral, then at a hanging, and finally at the court, yet even with imprisonment he refuses to explain himself. Gueullette does not forget that the queen can still make her accusations of attempted rape, and so the calumniated princess finds herself in prison beside the centaur, which makes him laugh even more. Hope of deliverance and fear of death, however, conspire to make the creature speak, not only to explain his enigmatic responses but to plead for the heroine’s release. His insights are precisely those of Straparola’s satyr: that the priest at the funeral was the father to the boy; that those who were to be hanged were but petty criminals; that the heroine was in a male disguise; and that two of the queen’s close ‘female’ attendants were male sexual partners. Gueullette completes his little romance by having the newly discovered Princess of Georgia marry, not the king, but her once-missing prince. This and similar creations are part of Straparola’s legacy.
Even though the Comtesse d’Aulnoy’s Belle-Belle, ou le Chevalier Fortuné predates Gueullette’s rendition by nearly two decades, it is altogether a more fanciful and freer adaptation, but without obliterating its underlying debt to Straparola.25 This heroine-chevalier is sent by her father to fight for their deposed king, but fairy tale mechanisms soon intrude, for in showing consideration to an aged shepherdess she wins the favour of the fairy held inside. The fairy gives to her a speaking horse named Camarade which, in turn, encourages her to enlist seven helpers with extraordinary skills along the way. At this juncture, we have fallen back to the story of Livoretto with his magic horse and the animal helpers he befriends through acts of kindness. Once at the court, however, Fortuné (for such is the name she adopts) not only wins the king’s favour but attracts the queen’s amorous attention. Once rejected, the spiteful queen has the disguised heroine sent to fight a dragon, but through the counsel of her horse and the aid of her helpers Fortuné prevails. In a second act of rancour, the scorned queen sends her to the court of the conquering emperor, Matapa, but again, through help from her friends, she returns victorious. Only then is she accused outright of attempted rape and condemned to death. Her true sex is revealed not through the laughter of a wild man or satyr, but simply by revealing herself to be female. The queen dowager, meanwhile, is poisoned by one of her confidants and in the end the king marries Belle-Belle. The story was written to illustrate two social clichés: that the fury of a scorned lover should never be underestimated; and that the heavens always fight for the innocent. It is also a miniature replay of the kind and unkind daughters, insofar as BelleBelle’s two older sisters meet the same shepherdess in distress and in scorning her earn the displeasure of the concealed fairy, so that all the jewels they touch thereafter turn to glass. The Comtesse d’Aulnoy was the most influential among the authors of the modern fairy tale in preserving and extending Straparola’s legacy through adaptation.
The same narrative recurs in ‘The Savage’ by Henriette Julie de Murat, although this writer underscores new themes pertaining to physical beauty and the power of the imagination to fashion the public self.26 Proof of the debt to Straparola is made clear by the elaborate replay of the family situation that opens ‘Costanza.’ Richardin and Coiranthe of Terceres have three ugly daughters designated to marriages which promise to produce a race of monsters. Nevertheless, they are the recipients of all the family wealth. Then a fourth child is born to the aging parents, the beautiful and talented Constance. Dissatisfied with her father’s choice in an arranged marriage, she flees dressed as a male. Her fairy helper is named Obligeantine and her talking horse is Embletin, although the latter’s role is diminished considerably as counsellor and confidant. This retelling integrates a far greater number of tangential episodes, thereby extending the tale. There is a princess who is attracted to Constance, but she has an ugly suitor from the Canary Islands whom Constance must face and slay in a duel. The satyrs become an entire race that rises up against the king after the invasion of the canary birds is quelled. One of them descends literally upon the king and demands a position at court. This work concludes with a double marriage, for not only does the king take Constance for his bride, but the satyr takes the princess that Constance had rejected. To be sure, the satyr has been a prince in enchanted form all the while. The final twist is Obligeantine’s role in having Constance’s hideous family invited to the weddings, but transfigured into beautiful people in order to spare embarrassment to everyone concerned. Just how much this tale has become a commentary on the preoccupations of the French court and salons is work for others. But it is a testimonial to the narrative and thematic elasticity of the kinds of stories selected and recorded by Straparola, presumably with some degree of appreciation for their inherent and intrinsic force.
That so many versions of the Costanza type were collected by folklorists in the nineteenth century, and in forms closely approximating Straparola’s tale, does not indicate influence so much as the strength of the folk tradition that supplied the many literary adaptations throughout the preceding centuries. There is comparative work to be done in calibrating the relationship of these variants to their ancient sources. The following are a few among the many that might be cited. In Italy the tale was collected in diverse regions by Laura Gonzenbach,27 Antonio De Nino,28 Gennaro Finamore,29 Domenico Comparetti,30 Georg Widter and Adolf Wolf,31 and Gherardo Nerucci.32 In France, the story was found in Lower Brittany by François-Marie Luzel, one version being ‘Le Capitaine Lixur ou le Satyre’ in which the youngest daughter of an aging knight goes off to court in disguise and encounters the hostile queen who causes her to go in search of dangerous beasts, including the Satyr who laughs mysteriously and at last is brought to tell the truths concerning the queen’s sexual predilections and the heroine’s gender.33 Versions of the tale were likewise recorded in Spain by Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa.34 Among the German folk tales, there are many about wild men who in some cases are made of iron and can only be captured by fraud or enticements of food and drink. They are vestiges of the tradition that connected Merlin to the creatures of the forest and tend to have far more in common with Straparola’s ‘Guerrino and the Wild Man of the Woods’ (V.1), where the captured creature is liberated by a boy who wins lifelong help in exchange. A case in point is ‘Der Eise Hans.’35 In a related tale, collected in France, a ravaging iron giant is captured by a young swordsman with his dog, cords, and an iron carriage. This creature is displayed in a cage from which he is liberated in exchange for returning a child’s ball which had rolled into his cage. Many of the events follow the story of ‘Guerrino.’36 But these drift away from the defining type.
Finally, there is a delightful variation collected in Albania by Louis Auguste Henri Dozon which brings several tales together and introduces novel elements. It begins with the third of three daughters of a dying knight who sets off in male disguise to take her father’s place in the royal service. She engages in a reversed-gender version of Cesarino’s dragon slaying (X.3) by killing such a beast to rescue the prince, who in turn advises the girl warrior not to accept the promised realm for a reward, but only the king’s talking horse. No romance element yet emerges. The magic horse and its rider set out on new adventures in other realms, in the course of which the heroine wins a bride by leaping a wide trench on horseback while catching a flying apple. This time marriage ensues, but the princess, dissatisfied with her ‘husband,’ tells her father. Rather than a scorned queen’s wrath, it is a young bride’s disappointment that provokes the sequence of dangerous missions with fatal intentions. In each, however, the heroine prevails, first bringing back a lamia captured with honey, then a man-eating horse after attaching special iron shoes on her own mount. Still unable to satisfy the princess in bed, however, the heroine is sent out to deal with a church full of serpents. Through a well-executed plan, these creatures are forced to pay tribute, but their power to curse remains and they impose a sex change upon the heroine, making an apparent male into an actual one. For the newly minted hero, their malediction is his blessing, however, for he now returns to consummate his marriage. The motivic drift is extraordinary insofar as several distinct tales are evident, but at the heart of the story is the girl-knight in disguise confronted by a gender crisis and sent on suicidal missions to deal by craft with menacing creatures in the wild through the counsel of a talking horse.37 Such a conflation of parts, by structural comparison with related versions, reveals something of the computational imagination of the folk tale reciters at work.
These several late transcriptions by folklorists place their own demands upon an analysis of the present tale. They demonstrate the pan-European currency of a common story type that can only have arisen in relation to the ancient Eastern tale. It featured the girl-knight, the wicked queen and her disguised lovers, the quest for the satyr, and the enigmatic laughter that brings about multiple revelations. Traces of its passage are evident in literary appropriations going back to the twelfth century, but Straparola’s version preserves the characteristics, not of a reduced romance, but of a folk tale per se, and thus promises to be the first quasi-transcription of Paton’s ‘X,’ designating the ‘Costanza’ group of oral tales. And there the matter must rest.
VICENZA
Erminione Glaucio, an Athenian, takes as his wife Filenia Centurione, and growing jealous of her, accuses her before the tribunal. But with the help of her lover, Hippolito, she is acquitted and Erminione is condemned.
Of a truth, gracious ladies, there would be no condition sweeter, more delightful, or more happy in all the world than the service of love, were it not for that bitter fruit that springs from sudden jealousy, the foe to gentle Cupid, the betrayer of kindly ladies, the enemy that, day and night, seeks their deaths. This brings to mind a fable in which you’ll understand immediately the hard and piteous fate that befell a gentleman of Athens, who, because of his cold-hearted jealousy, sought to have his wife slain by the sword of justice, but was himself condemned in her place. This judgment ought to please you, though, because most of you are in love, if I’m not greatly mistaken.
Athens, that most ancient city of Greece, although now through her excess of pride is entirely ruined and overthrown, was in times past the veritable home and resort of all learning. There, once upon a time, resided a gentleman named Messer Erminione Glaucio, a man highly considered and of much repute in the city, well-to-do, but at the same time of mean intelligence. It came about that when he was advanced in years, because he had no children, he made up his mind to marry, taking for his wife a damsel named Filenia, daughter of Messer Cesarino Centurione. She was of noble descent, blessed with marvellous beauty and with numberless other good qualities. In that entire city there was no other maiden to equal her. But because of her remarkable beauty, he was also in great fear that his wife would be courted by various gallants of the city, leading to some disgraceful scandal for which the finger might be pointed at him. This made him resolve to confine her to a lofty tower in his palace well out of all men’s sight. Yet before long, without knowing why, the wretched old dotard was overcome by such a streak of jealousy that he mistrusted even himself.
Now there was residing in the city at this time a certain scholar from Crete who was young in years, but very discreet and much loved and esteemed by all who knew him on account of his amiability and grace. This same youth, Hippolito by name, had paid suit to Filenia before she was married. Besides this, he was on intimate terms with Messer Erminione, who held him as dear as if he had been his own son. This young scholar, weary of his studies and in need of recreational travel, left Athens for Crete and remained there for some while. But upon his return, he was dismayed to discover that Filenia was married. Thereafter, he fell into a deep melancholy made more acute by his loss of all hope of seeing her at his pleasure. Least endurable of all was that a maiden so lovely and graceful should be bound in marriage to such a slavering and toothless old man.
The burning pricks and sharp arrows of love became intolerable to the love-stricken Hippolito and at last impelled him to find some hidden way to fulfil his desires. After he had considered carefully the many schemes that presented themselves to him, he fixed upon one that appeared to him the most suitable. To put this into execution, he first went to the shop of a carpenter, his neighbour, where he ordered two chests to be made of equal length, breadth, depth, and capacity, so that not a soul could distinguish one from the other. When this was done, he made his way to Messer Erminione’s house. Pretending to be in need of a favour, he minced the following words: ‘Messer Erminione, you know well enough that I love and reverence you as though you were my own father, and that for my part, if I were not fully convinced of your affection for me, I would never dare beg a favour of you with the assurance I now use. But since I have always found you well disposed towards me, I feel certain you’ll grant me my heart’s desire and the service my soul so greatly yearns for. You know I’m constrained to leave Athens for the city of Frenna where I have important matters of business to expedite and I must remain there until all has been completed. And because I have no one about me I can fully trust, being served only by menials and hirelings in whom I place no real confidence, I would ask you to keep in your charge, if you would, a certain chest of mine in which I keep my most precious belongings.’
Messer Erminione, suspecting no craft in the young scholar, replied that he was quite content to grant this favour, and that for greater security the chest would be placed and kept in the same chamber where he slept. Upon this reply, the scholar gave thanks to Messer Erminione, the warmest he knew how to render, promising to remember this great favour for as long as he lived. Then he begged the old man to honour him by going as far as his own dwelling so that he could show him the various articles he kept stored in the chest. So the two went off together to the scholar’s house, where the young man pointed out a chest filled with rich garments and jewels and necklaces of considerable value. Then, summoning one of his servants and presenting him to Messer Erminione, he said, ‘If at any time, Messer Erminione, this servant of mine should come to ask for my chest, give it to him. You can trust him fully, as though he were my own self.’
Then, as soon as Messer Erminione had taken his leave, Hippolito hid himself in the other chest – exactly like the one filled with garments and jewels – and having fastened it from the inside, he requested his servant to carry it to a certain place he knew. The servant, who was party to the whole plot and most obedient in his patron’s service, called a porter, according to his master’s order, hoisted the load on the man’s shoulders, and ordered him to carry it to the tower containing the chamber where Messer Erminione slept every night with his young wife.
It fell to the lot of Messer Erminione, being one of the chiefs of the city and a man of great wealth and influence, on account of the honourable position he held, to go for a certain time to a place called Piraeus, a couple of leagues distant from Athens, in order to settle certain suits and conflicts which had arisen between the townsmen and the peasants nearby. So when Messer Erminione had gone his way, as tormented as ever by the jealousy that weighed upon him day and night, the young scholar, enclosed in the chest now standing in Madonna Filenia’s bedroom, was waiting for the favourable moment. More than once he had heard the fair dame weeping and sighing over her hard lot and bemoaning the place and hour in which she had been given in marriage to this destruction of her life, longing only for the oblivion of sleep. When it seemed to him that she was in her first slumber, he got out of the chest and went to the bedside, saying in a soft voice, ‘Awake my soul, for I, your Hippolito, am here.’
When she was fully aroused and recognized him by the light of the candle burning in the room, she nearly let out a cry, but the young man, putting his hand upon her lips, prevented her, saying to her in a voice full of agitation, ‘Be silent, heart of mine! Don’t you see that I’m Hippolito, your faithful lover? Truly, I can’t live without you.’
The fair young woman was a little comforted by these words, and when she began to compare her old husband to the youthful Hippolito, she was by no means dissatisfied by this turn of events and lay all night with her lover, spending the time in love talk while ridiculing the impotent ways of her doltish husband. Before they parted, they agreed to meet together in the same manner. When the morning began to dawn, the youth hid again in the chest, while every evening he would come out to spend the night with the lady.
After many days had gone by, Messer Erminione, for the discomfort he felt and the rabid jealousy that never ceased to torment him, managed to bring to an end all the disputes he had been sent out to settle and returned to his home. Hippolito’s servant, as soon as he heard the news of Messer Ermonione’s return, lost no time in going to his house, according to the agreement that had been settled, and politely requested in the name of his master, Hippolito, the return of the chest, which Messer Erminione turned over to him without remonstration. Summoning a porter, the servant then had the chest conveyed home. Once out of his hiding place, Hippolito walked towards the piazza where he chanced to meet up with Messer Erminione, whom he embraced and thanked most courteously in the warmest terms he could muster for the great kindness he had received, declaring at the same time that he and all he possessed were always at Messer Erminione’s service.
It came about that one morning Messer Erminione remained in bed with his wife somewhat later than usual, and lifting up his eyes, he noticed on the wall high above his head certain stains that looked as though someone had been spitting. Once again his inveterate jealousy got the best of him. Amazed by what he saw and churning it over in his mind, he reasoned that if there was spit up there it had to be his or someone else’s. And since he couldn’t convince himself that it was his own, his thoughts began to terrify him. Turning, he asked in an angry voice, ‘Whose spit marks are those up there on the wall? I’m certain they’re not mine, for I never spat up there in my life. I know you’ve been cheating on me.’
Filenia, laughing all the while, answered him, ‘Is there no other charge you would like to bring against me?’
Messer Erminione, when he saw her laughing, grew even more infuriated, saying, ‘Ah, you laugh, do you, wicked woman that you are? Just what is it that makes you laugh?’
‘I’m laughing,’ answered Filenia, ‘at your own foolishness.’
At these words, Messer Erminione began to roar and stomp with rage, intent upon measuring his own ability to spit so high. After much coughing and gasping, with all his might he strained to reach the mark on the wall, but he wore himself out for nothing, for the spittle always fell right back in his own face, spattering it all over. After the miserable old codger made several more attempts, he found himself in a worse mess than before. His failure only convinced him the more that his wife was a cheat, whereupon he began to say the meanest and nastiest things one can say to a woman. Had he not been afraid of the law and his own neck, he would most certainly have throttled her then and there with his own hands, but he managed to restrain himself, deeming it better to deal with her by legal process than to stain his hands in her blood. Not satisfied with the berating he’d already given her, he went to the tribunal full of wrath and anger, where he placed the charge of adultery against his wife before the judge. But because it lay not in the power of the judge to pronounce condemnation upon her unless the legal statutes had been duly observed, he ordered Filenia to be brought before him so that he could closely examine her.
Now the law and custom of Athens was that every woman accused of adultery by her husband should be set at the foot of the red pillar around which was entwined a serpent. There she was to make an oath whether or not the accusation brought against her was true. After she had taken the oath, she was required to place her hand in the serpent’s mouth. If she had sworn falsely, the serpent would at once bite off her hand; otherwise she would receive no injury. Hippolito heard rumours of this charge before the tribunal and understood that the judge had sent to fetch Filenia to place her on trial. Being a resourceful youth, he at once took action to make certain she would not run the risk of an ignominious death. To rescue her from condemnation, he first stripped off all his clothes and donned in their stead the rags of a madman. Then, without being seen by anyone, he left his own lodging and ran straight to the tribunal as though he had been out of his mind, acting the part of a madman to perfection.
While the officers of the court were haling the poor lady along towards the tribunal, all the people of the city gathered to find out how the procedure would end. In the middle of the crowd the feigning madman forced his way in one direction and another, working his way so well to the front that he found a chance to cast his arms around the neck of the woeful lady and to press a kiss upon her lips, a caress that, with her arms bound behind her back, she could in no wise escape. As soon as she was brought before the judge, he addressed her in the following words, ‘As you may see, Filenia, your husband Messer Erminione is here to lay a complaint against you, which is that you have committed adultery, asking that I deal out to you the due penalty according to the statutes. Therefore, you must now make an oath and say whether or not the charge is true which your husband brings against you.’
Then the young woman, who was very astute and keen of intellect, confidently swore that no man had ever touched her except her husband and the madman who was now present before them all. After she had sworn her oath, the ministers of justice led her to the place where the serpent was. When Filenia placed her hand in its mouth, it did her no harm whatsoever, insofar as what she had sworn had been the truth, which is that no man had ever caressed her in any way except her husband and the presumed madman.
When they perceived this, the crowd and all her kinsfolk who had come there to see the solemn and terrible sight at once set her down as innocent and wrongfully accused and cried out that Messer Erminione deserved the same form of death required as penalty for the crime imputed to his wife. Because he was a nobleman and one of the chiefs of the city, the president would not allow him to be publicly burned – as provided according the law in such cases – yet to fulfil the duty of his office he sentenced Erminione to be thrown into prison for life, where, after a short space of time, he expired. In this way, the wretched jealousy of Messer Erminione was brought to its miserable end, and by these means the young wife was delivered from death. Within a short while after, Hippolito made her his lawful wife and they lived happily together for many years thereafter.
Vicenza’s story once ended, the Signora asked her to propound her enigma. Smiling gaily, instead of a song, she gave the following riddle:
When hope and love and strong desire
Are born to set the world on fire,
That selfsame hour a beast is born,
All savage, meagre, and forlorn.
Sometimes, with seeming soft and kind,
Like ivy round an elm tree twined,
It clips us close with bine and leaf,
But feeds on heartache, woe, and grief.
Ever in mourning garb it goes,
In anguish lives, in sorrow grows;
And worse than worst the fate of him
Who falls beneath its talons grim.
Here Vicenza brought her enigma to an end. The interpretations of its meaning were diverse and no one of the company was found clever enough to fathom its true import. When the fair Vicenza saw this, she sighed a little impatiently, and then, with a smiling face, she explained, ‘My riddle signifies merely that chilling jealousy, which, all lean and faded, is born at the same birth with love itself, and winds itself around men and women just as the ivy hugs the tree. This jealousy feeds on heartache, seeing that a jealous man lives always in sadness. He’s dressed in black because he’s always melancholy.’ This explanation of the enigma pleased everyone, and especially the Signora Chiara, whose husband had a jealous temperament. But to stop people from thinking that Vicenza’s enigma had been framed to fit his case, the Signora right away asked Lodovica to tell her tale, which ran as follows.
Love has its own imperatives – call them the sanctions of Cupid – over which law and custom have no sway, not to mention the legal and emotional entitlements of jealous spouses. This story was written to confirm the futility in seeking to control the amorous aspirations of those under even the closest of surveillance. It offers no ethical speculations except through the biases of its narrative order whereby the jealous are relegated to harsh justice, whatever their rights, and lovers are granted the desires of their hearts, however sinful or illegal. Thus wretched jealousy is defeated, the bane of a woman’s existence. The story of Erminione and Hippolito is unapologetic in this regard, arousing animus against the crotchety, unsavoury, and superannuated husband and sympathy for the bullied and incarcerated young wife. The locale of the present story is Athens, a seat of learning, but one that has fallen into decadence. The protagonist is a student, pleasantly playful and a touch brazen, who devotes himself to the service of love. Moreover, he had courted the lady before his travels, when she was still single, but finds her, upon returning from abroad, miserably yoked in what appears to be an arranged marriage. Such extenuating circumstances serve to reconcile the reader to a plot of rescue through seduction. In the process, the hero displays a capacity for hypocrisy both in ingratiating himself with the lady and in using his friendship with her husband to gain entry into the house in a coffer allegedly filled with his prized possessions. The coffer trick is, to be sure, one of the preferred means in the plays and novelle of the Renaissance for moving lovers secretly from house to house, as opposed to the freedom of fairy tales in which lovers may fly in as birds.38
Readers, along the way, lend their emotional approbation to this tale of youth conspiring against age, hope against despair, stolen pleasures after suffering, and craft in overcoming material obstacles, for the young wife is not only in a psychological prison, but a tower where she has been placed in isolation from the world. The doors, the locks – and the spies, in related stories – are emblematic of male jealousy and the condition of women during the Middle Ages as protected property, forced to dwell in edifices that served both as family strongholds and as military fortifications. Straparola’s tale also incorporates an episode based on probative tests whereby guilt or innocence was thought to be established by the occult reactions attributed to special waters, the properties of fire, animal behaviour, or occult machines. In matters of marital fidelity, a judicial system might well maintain faith in such engines of verity or trial by ordeal, given the absence of investigative means, or reliable witnesses, or diseases, or pregnancies, whereby the secret sexual conduct of both men and women might otherwise be demonstrated. Anxiety over the matter with regard to fidelity and paternity might well lead to the employment of such medieval inventions as the Virgilian mouth or the Bocca della Verità. At least it was a way of breaking the stalemate before a judge, insofar as a guilty candidate was damned by her own attempted perjury or by her refusal to submit to the test. It is around this quality of lie detection that the closing events of the tale unfold – lie detection that honours the literal wording of the oath, however, and not the hidden secrets of the heart. The story thereby turns upon a quibble, a play of words, in the interests of a romantic escape rather than the settling of Truth.
In no preceding work do all the elements found in the tale of ‘Erminione’ – the tower, the coffer, the spit on the wall, the lover in the guise of a madman, and the probative test – appear together except in the fourth novella of Cieco’s Mambriano, ‘La pietra della verità’ (The rock of truth), even though this novella deviates from the serpent and post mechanism to be found in the Virgilius tradition and in Straparola. The story in Mambriano likewise takes place in Athens. Agrisippo is an extremely rich old man who marries the fifteen-year old Lipomena – her parents were greedy for the money. He becomes jealous and builds a tower to keep her, but Cupid always finds a way. There are many poetic flourishes that are suppressed by Straparola, including the tale of the young and handsome Filomerse, expert in the arts of chivalry and hunting. While out fishing, he wounds a dolphin sacred to Neptune with an arrow and earns the anger of the gods. It is Cieco’s mechanism for bringing the lover under Lipomena’s window, where the hunter, now the hunted, is shot by Cupid and afflicted with ardent love. Filomerse does not lay plans, however, but collapses into sobbing lovesickness, leading to his mother’s intervention, the call for the doctor, the detection of the cause of his malady, and the mother’s scheme to save her son’s life. Her solution features but one chest, supposedly packed with the boy’s earthly belongings, to be stored by Agrisippo. Expectations of success restore the hero to health, banquets follow, he leaves town as a pilgrim, and returns secretly to his mother dressed as a chambermaid. After much coming and going, he is at last carried to his beloved in the coffer. Their tryst lasts precisely thirty-two days, whereupon the lovers must light upon less stressful circumstances for expressing their love. The old man’s suspicion increases meanwhile, but again over the sputum he notices high up on their bedroom wall. The husband’s proof of a lover’s presence by attempting and failing to spit as high, however, is Straparola’s invention or part of an alternate source. Both stories end in the same manner, for the old husband wants his accused wife tried by the rock of truth. Meanwhile, Filomerse dresses himself as a madman to accost her in order to teach her the equivocation needed for her escape. Exonerated, she is released and her husband is imprisoned in his own tower where, after four months, he expires, freeing the lovers to marry. Barring any lost intermediaries of greater affinity, including oral tales, this novella from Mambriano is presumably Straparola’s principal narrative source. The extensive reduction involved and the variations in major details may well give cause for doubt insofar as Cieco’s novella could, itself, represent an extensive literary elaboration upon an elusive oral prototype. But in this regard, it is critical that this is one of the few instances in which the story type upon which Straparola based his work left no subsequent legacy in the oral culture.
The author of Mambriano is Francesco Bello, known as Cieco da Ferrara; he was in the personal service of Duke Ercole I as early as 1477. His immediate source may have been Sercambi’s novella, ‘De astutia in juvene.’39 But the Ur-story upon which his novella is based appeared early in European literature in the Western version of The Seven Wise Men, or The Seven Sages of Rome in the story called ‘Inclusa.’40 The jealous husband of a young wife, uncertain how to keep her in isolation, builds a tower beside the sea. A young cavalier falls in love with her and to possess her begins by making friends with her husband. He enters his service, moves into a house near the tower, and then digs an underground tunnel with a trapdoor. When he appears suddenly inside the lady’s quarters, she welcomes him with pleasure. The nightly encounters last for a time. She even gives him her lord’s ring which he, in turn, shows to the lord, to his great amazement. But by the time the suspicious husband reaches his wife, the ring is already back in her custody, returned through the trapdoor. At last, the woman herself is brought out and presented to the lord as the young soldier’s sweetheart, following which the jealous lord is tricked into giving his own wife to the young man, thinking her safely hidden away in the tower. He learns of his error only after the two have sailed away. There is, as yet, no coffer trick, no threatened judicial hearing, no instrument of probation or trial by ordeal, and no trickster lover playing the madcap. All those details are to be added during the intervening two-and-a-half centuries separating the earliest versions of The Seven Sages of Rome from the work of Cieco. One small consideration is that the novella in Mambriano calls for a test, but it is not that of the traditional Virgilian serpent; that substitution is supplied by Straparola or an alternate source relying on the Virgilian tradition. Further clarification may thus be had by looking at two interim representations of the story: the Tristan and Iseult group, in which the jealousy of King Marc leads to trial by ordeal; and the Virgilius group, concerning accusations and the use of probative devices.
Just as there are potentially hundreds of tales of ladies immured in towers by jealous husbands down to Celia in Ben Jonson’s Volpone, so there are many stories that feature ordeals and probative tests as a means for dealing with marital infidelity. Rua follows Comparetti in tracing both elements of the story – the wife imprisoned by a jealous husband and the ordeal for the determination of truth or falsehood – to ancient legends from the East involving the sun and moon that found full personification in the romances associated with Tristan, Iseult, and King Marc, such as the Tavola ritonda o Istoria di Tristano in which Iseult is obliged to make her oath with her hand on a holy relic and the vertudiosa pietra della itropica. In certain of these tales, Tristan disguises himself as a pilgrim in order to approach her, comfort her, or kiss her and thereby set up the now-familiar equivocation. The Tristan lore may be the principal European textual tradition to improvise upon the Virgilian motif, making the Mambriano novella a proximate re-enactment of one of its key episodes. There are telling variations within the Tristan tradition as well, for in the Sir Tristrem; a Metrical Romance of the Thirteenth Century by Thomas of Ercildoune, the ordeal is carried out with a red-hot iron which Ysonde carries without being burned because Tristrem had come to her in the form of a poor beggar and embraced her in the boat crossing the Thames before a crowd of observers, setting her up with the essential equivocation.41
Straparola alters the mechanisms of the ending by grafting upon the novella from Mambriano certain features from an episode found among those that together constitute the life of Virgilius. This compilation in the name of the great Roman poet may be traced back to the twelfth century, by which time Virgil had achieved the reputation of being a great mage and necromancer. Not unlike the life of Doctor Faustus in later centuries, Virgil’s life was constituted as a cycle of wonder tales, magical feats, and divinations. Early references to this accretion of texts appear in the Otia imperialia of Gervase of Tilbury, dating to 1212, and in De naturis rerum of Alexander Neckham, circa 1180.42 Henry Morley, in his introduction to his anthology of Early Prose Romances, suggests that the tradition began in Naples where the poet had achieved tutelary status to the city by the twelfth century, and that from there the stories, many of them Eastern in origin, spread first throughout Italy and then to the rest of Europe.43 The most influential of these collections was the French Les faits merveilleux de Virgille for which no manuscripts survive and which is today known only from its extremely rare early sixteenth-century editions, although it is undoubtedly many decades or centuries older. It was from this work that subsequent translations were made into English, Dutch, and German. By contrast, however, Giuseppe Rua states that the oldest source for this particular legend of ‘How Virgilius made in Rome a metal serpente,’ to use the earliest English title, dates to the first half of the fourteenth century in a work entitled Von einem pild ze Rôme daz den emprecherinnen die vinger ab peiz. In this story, an empress, accused of infidelity with a knight, submitted herself to the customary test and avoided her deserved punishment through the help of the knight who, in embracing her and kissing her in the guise of a madman, enabled her to say that no one had ever approached her more closely than her husband and the fool.44 That same story appears in the English translation entitled This boke treatethe of the life of Virgilius and of his death, and many maravyles that he dyd in his lyfe tyme by witchcraft and nigromansy, through the help of the devylls of hell.45 It contains the essential features that Straparola had to have known to adjust the closure of his story. Whether this particular episode began in Germany, France, or Italy is a moot point, but it is clearly the story that found its way, through any number of intervening versions, into Straparola’s tale of ‘Erminione.’46
According to this tale, she who places her hand in the mouth of the serpent, the creation of which is attributed to Virgil the poet turned necromancer, must swear to the truth of her cause, for in failing to do so the hand may not be withdrawn (will be bitten off).47 In the English rendition, a man from Lombardy mistrusts his wife despite her explanations. To exonerate herself she consents to go to Rome to swear her oath with her hand in the mouth of the serpent of truth.48 Her partner in sin is beside her in the cart and she tells him to put on a fool’s coat and thereby disguise himself so that when the day for the ordeal arrives he can be there. Virgilius knew of her falsehood and advised her not to place her hand in the contraption, but she insisted and by equivocation regained her reputation. Once again, the madman in the crowd had come forward to embrace and kiss her, whereby she could freely declare that she had no more to do with him (meaning the man whom she was accused of sinning with) than with that ‘fole, that stode hyr by.’ Thus she spoke a sufficient truth. Virgil was so angry that the woman had escaped his cunning that he destroyed the serpent. The mage pronounces upon the deceitfulness of the entire sex, but the woman’s husband is satisfied and thus she regains his trust. Behind the machinations of this tale is the lady herself, whereas in Straparola it is the lover who crafts the deceit and disguising. Moreover, there is no demise for the jealous husband. Straparola makes all the necessary adjustments to accommodate the two sources in a united production.49
Such trials by ordeal in literature, however, go back to the early tales from the East, of which one from the sixth century must represent an entire heritage. In the Suka saptati, the Sanskrit collection known as The Seventy Tales of a Parrot, which in turn became the Persian Tooti-nameh, the woman accused of infidelity counter-accuses. To put an end to the debate, she is sent to the Yaksha (a shape-shifting forest deity of human size in Indian lore) for trial by ordeal.50 Those found guilty are beaten or killed while the innocent go free. The woman arranges with her lover that he seize her around the neck along the way, without further explanation. In doing so, to be sure, he provided her with the now-familiar enigma of being touched only by her husband and the man recently driven away by the bystanders in view of all. The Yaksha saw through her cunning, but applauded her wit and allowed her to escape. This was a story in need of improvement, such as a disguise for the lover so that he could not be recognized, and such improvements it received as it made its way across the Arabic world to the West.
One of the most extraordinary tales in this tradition is ‘How Haran Gerel swore falsely and yet told the truth’ from The Saga of Ardschi-Bordschi and Vikramaditja’s Throne.51 Naran Gerel, daughter of a king, was so closely guarded that if any man went near her, his legs would be broken and his eyes put out. Yet she wanted to see something of the world, so orders were given that all must withdraw completely and leave the empty streets to her. But the minister Saran stole a glimpse, which she detected, and by subtle signs arranged for a meeting. The minister’s wife agreed that if she made such gestures he must go. During their meeting they were captured, however, and both were slated to die. The clever minister’s wife came bearing fruit as though on doctor’s orders and was admitted, there changing clothes with the princess and sending her home. At the trial the couple professed merely to have entered the private garden where the guards took them by mistake. In light of such doubts, the princess’s innocence could only be resolved by a probative trial. She must swear in the presence of the barley corns which, in the case of lies, leap into the air and burst with a loud noise. But the princess would be taught what to do by the subtle facial expressions of the minister’s wife. This wife then blackened her husband, told him to make grimaces, and had him carry an empty water pitcher like a beggar. The princess understood that she could swear her oath on such a beggar because he was a false beggar and so escape prosecution by this literal technicality. The moral of the story is that if you have a permissive wife who is this clever, go abroad; if not, stay home. The origin of this Siberian tale goes back to the stories of ancient India.
This narrative idea was employed by Achilles Tatius in Leucippe and Clitophon, for as the romance draws to a close, the young women travellers, Leucippe and Melite, are obliged to prove their innocence after so many chastity-threatening adventures outside their parental households. Two methods are employed, each associated with a founding myth that explains the probative powers of the trial site. One is the cave of Pan where, following his attempt at rape, he has been left with the reeds from which he made the famous pipe. Virgins entering the cave under oath are met with the sweet sounds of the pipe, whereas the soiled and fallen are met with screams and after three days mysteriously disappear and are heard of no more. Leucippe embraces the ordeal and prevails. Melite, falsely arraigned for adultery, is compelled to write her oath upon a tablet hung around her neck before stepping into the knee-high water of the spring that is the source of the holy river Styx. Innocence is met with calm, but the waters will rise up to cover the tablets of the guilty. She too is proven pure before a large crowd, while her calumniators flee for their lives as the multitude cries out for their punishment.52
Straparola’s story, in its implementation of the Virgilian ordeal, is a further testimonial to the peculiar mentality that gives credence to occult signs associated with augury and trial by ordeal. On the one hand there is an aspect of ritual magic and superstition, while on the other there is a deep-seated belief in an occult ordering of the universe that is concerned with hidden justice, truth, and reciprocity (or God’s intervention through miracles). At the centre of such practices are the particular anxieties concerning the matters of vital concern to the collective human enterprise which remain beyond human ken through forensic evidence or the reading of intentional states implicit in human behaviour and expressions. They are the ritual and divinatory means whereby truth penetrates hypocrisy. Nevertheless, such trials simultaneously capitulate to the occult in the establishment of innocence and guilt. Straparola’s story, in that regard, remains as ambiguous as others in the tradition, whether for its credulousness concerning such devices or for its irony in presenting the deception of such devices by the clever. The practice of trial by ordeal was widespread among the ancient Celts and Goths who looked for evidence of innocence or guilt in the reaction of skin to hot irons or boiling oil. In time, holy relics were drawn into the practice. Thomas of Ercildoune’s heroine seems to have been subjected to the Saxon ordeal of carrying a red-hot piece of iron. Walking over burning plough-shares, often blindfolded, was another.53 This was imposed upon Queen Emma, mother of Edward the Confessor, when accused of adultery with the Bishop of Winchester. She prayed at the sepulchre of St. Swithen and when she passed the test, her accuser fled to Normandy.54 The Virgilian serpent, because it is attached to stories of deception that defeat the lie detector, in effect introduces a note of scepticism. Straparola’s story perpetuates the tale of equivocation, justified by the entitlements of young love over withering jealousy and old age. But in the Saxon tradition, it is God Himself who is deceived by the cunningly worded oath. The same stratagem appears in Amis and Amylion and in the Tavola ritonda o l’istoria di Tristano, as well as in Flore et Blanceflor.55 Thus, embedded within the modest novella of Erminione and his unfaithful wife is a vast legacy of tales of sequestered women, jealous husbands, impregnable towers invaded by the cunning, scenes of illicit love justified by youth, torment, and love’s entitlements, and the circumvention of the trial by ordeal. All of these tales are comprised of generic narrative traditions retained in their respective forms – forms that are faithfully re-inscribed in the present tale, thereby linking it to its many predecessors. Imitation of the ‘Inclusa’ produced a goodly number of medieval sequels, including the twelfth- or thirteenth-century story, ‘Du chevalier à la trappe.’56 Two young people dream of each other without either knowing the other in waking life. The chevalier sets out to find her and after a considerable journey sees her in the window of her tower, where she is kept by a jealous husband. He is a powerful duke and his tower features no less than eighteen doors separating the lady from her liberty. She sings a love song to him and, in keeping with the prototype, he goes to meet the lord of the house to offer his services, fighting against all the duke’s enemies. In time, he builds a house beside the tower, hires a workman for the excavations, and then kills him in the interests of secrecy. The trap door is mysterious and well-disguised. Through it he reaches the lady. When she gives him her husband’s ring, he sports it boldly in the lord’s presence, raising extreme suspicion, but by the time the jealous old master gets the eighteen doors unlocked to question his wife, the ring has already been returned. The young chevalier then invites the lord to a banquet to meet his beloved and presents to him his own wife, but the same ruse is employed to assuage the lord’s suspicion. With a boat awaiting them, they are well at sea before the duke realizes the deception. In this still-remote way, Straparola’s tale can be said to fit within a sizeable class of stories pertaining to jealousy, castle keeps, and the determination of lovers that includes Marie de France’s ‘Lay of Yonec’ to ‘The Lady of Shalott.’57
A further example in this tradition is ‘De Pyralius, qui feit édifier le chasteau jaloux: avec la description dudict chasteau,’ the first story in the Comptes amoureux of Madame Jeanne Flore.58 But now the design of ‘Inclusa’ has been modified by features from the Mambriano group in a version significantly amplified by lengthy descriptions of the setting and the characters’ sentiments, and by the addition of episodes that tend to impose a more medieval ethos upon the materials of the novella. Being nearly contemporary with the tale of ‘Erminione,’ this work invites comparison as a cognate tale based on a common source. Jeanne Flore (pseudonym) places the tale in Toulouse, names her couple Pyralius and Rosemonde Chiprine, and indulges her fancy in describing the old man’s maladies and decrepitude as well as the young wife’s miseries and lamentations. His jealously is so advanced that he even walls up windows in fear of the sun’s impregnating powers. Rosemonde thinks only of escape by any means possible. Her saviour is Jean Andro of Lyons, a hunter and fighter who is led to the foot of her tower by the pursuit of a wild boar. When he falls in love, he too is afflicted by all the conventional symptoms of love melancholy, making him a successor to Filomerse in Mambriano. Long passages of dream description, speculations, apostrophes, and complaints against injustice add considerable girth to the narrative. The hero preaches to himself his chivalric duty to rescue the imprisoned maiden despite her marital status. At this juncture, the story goes its own fanciful way that includes encounters with giants guarding the tower, the crossing of multiple drawbridges, and the slaughter of serpents until Pyralius appears on the battlements to ask for mercy before fleeing by a postern gate. There follows an extensive erotic and ritualized encounter with the lady beginning with salutations and kisses, followed by dancing, food, and the appearance of Venus herself who leads the lovers into the bedroom. It is a striking creation, full of fantasy and wish-fulfillment that, at the same time, empties the narrative of its contemporary social particularity, and represents sensibilities in stark contrast with Straparola’s in recycling Cieco’s novella or the tradition upon which it was built. Jeanne Flore exchanges the original’s closing duplicities for dragonfighting bravura and a romantic rescue.
By contrast, Malespini remains altogether more faithful in his redeployment of that same novella in his Ducento novelle, entitled ‘Avenimento di Agrissippo Ateniese, che rinchiuse la moglie in una torrè per grandissima gelosia, che non le giovò punto’ (The story of Agrissippo of Athens who, because of his very great jealousy, locked his wife in a tower so that not even Jupiter could prick her). In this version, the dilapidated old man is eighty while the girl is a mere fifteen. He builds a tower four miles from the city, near the sea, with thirty-two inner doors for which he alone has the keys. When Filomerse, the young knight, indulges himself in a fit of love melancholy over the girl, physicians are called in to diagnose his depression, and there is a long aside on Neptune’s court and Cupid. The story concludes with a fidelity test in which the lover plays the fool in a way that sets up the prevarication by which the young wife escapes the rigour of the Temple of Truth. She then appeals to the Senate over her two-year incarceration, causing the husband to be put in her place, while the young lovers now go on a daily basis to visit him. With regard to Straparola, however, it has little bearing apart from underscoring the ongoing interest in the story type.59 Nevertheless, stories based on trials by ordeal were nearing an end as the practice itself lost juridical credibility. Furthermore, the apparent absence of such tales among the raconteurs of the nineteenth century suggests that it was never a tale in the popular tradition, but a literary creation from beginning to end. That question remains for others to solve.
LODOVICA
Ancilotto, king of Provino, takes the daughter of a baker as his wife and has three children by her. After harsh persecution at the hands of the king’s mother, these exiled babes, now grown to adolescence, are made known to their father through the strange working of a certain water, of an apple, and of a bird.
Gracious ladies, I have always understood that man is the noblest and cleverest of all living creatures fashioned by nature, insofar as God has made him in His own image and similitude and willed that he should rule and not be ruled. It is rightly said, therefore, that man is the perfect animal and of greater excellence than all others, because all of these, including women, are subject to him. For that reason, anyone who by deceit and cunning causes the death of so noble a creature commits a heinous crime. It is no wonder that such persons, seeking to work harm to others, run headlong into destruction, as did the four women I’m about to describe, who, in trying to destroy others, were themselves deceived and came to a miserable end. This will all become clear to you in the fable to follow.
In Provino, a very famous and royal city, there lived in ancient times three sisters, pretty to look at, gracious in manners, and courteous in bearing, but of base lineage. They were the daughters of a certain Messer Rigo, a baker, who used his oven to bake the bread of other folk. One of the girls was named Brunora, another Lionella, and the third Chiaretta. One day when the three sisters were in their garden enjoying themselves, it happened that Ancilotto the king passed that way with a large entourage on their way to the hunt. Brunora, the oldest of the sisters, seeing such a fair and noble company, said to her sisters Lionella and Chiaretta, ‘If I were married to the king’s major-domo, I flatter myself to think that I could quench the thirst of the entire court with just one glass of wine.’
‘And I,’ said Lionella, ‘please myself to think that if the king’s private chamberlain were my husband, I could make enough linen from one spindle of my yarn to provide shirts of the best quality for the entire court.’
Then Chiaretta added, ‘Well, if I were the king’s wife, I flatter myself that I would give him three children at one birth, two sons and a daughter. Each of them would have long hair braided below the shoulders and intermingled with threads of the finest gold, and a chain of gold around the throat, and a star on the forehead.’
These sayings were overheard by one of the courtiers who hastened to the king and told him of the young girls’ chatter. When he heard the gist of it, the king asked that they be brought before him, and when they were present, he asked them one by one to repeat what they had said in the garden. After each one had repeated to the king what she had formerly said, and in a manner most becoming, Ancilotto was mightily pleased by it all. So then and there, he wedded Brunora to the majordomo and Lionella to the chamberlain, and took Chiaretta as his own wife. The hunting was called off, for that very day everyone was to return to the palace where the unions were celebrated with the greatest pomp.
But the mother of Ancilotto was greatly angered by his marriage, for no matter how fair Chiaretta might be in face and figure, graceful in her person, or sweet and modest in her conversation, the queen mother held it a slight to the royal dignity that her daughter-in-law should be of vile and common descent, nor could she endure the fact that the major-domo and the chamberlain should be brothers-in-law of her son, the king. These matters kindled so fierce a rage in the queen mother against Chiaretta that she could hardly endure her presence. Nevertheless, she hid her wrath so as not to offend her son. In due time, according to God’s good pleasure, Chiaretta became pregnant, to the great joy of the king, who soon expected to see the lovely progeny he had been promised.
Just at the time Chiaretta was expecting to give birth, Ancilotto was forced to make a journey to a distant country and stay for several days. He gave out orders that during his absence, his mother should look after the welfare of the queen and of the children born to her, and this, in spite of her concealed hatred, she heartily pledged herself to do. As soon as the king had begun his journey, Chiaretta gave birth to three children, two boys and a girl, just as she had promised when she was yet a maid. All three had their hair braided below the shoulders, and they wore golden chains on their necks and had golden stars on their foreheads. But as soon as the queen mother cast her eyes upon the innocent children – her hatred for Chiaretta burning as malignantly as ever – she vowed to have them secretly slain. No one would know they had ever been born and Chiaretta would be disgraced in the eyes of the king. Beside this, Brunora and Lionella had come to regard their sister with violent hatred and jealousy because she had been made their sovereign queen. They too lost no chance to further inflame the queen mother’s spite through their cunning wiles.
On the very same day that the queen had given birth, it happened that in the stable yard three mongrel pups were born, two males and a female, which had white stars on their foreheads and traces of frilled collars around their necks. When this came to the attention of the sisters, these two she-devils went and took the puppies away from their mother and, with all their malicious craft, brought them to the old queen, saying in their sycophantic manner, ‘We know, madam, that your highness has little love for our sister, and quite justifiably so, for she is of humble stock. It is not becoming that your son and our king should have mated with a woman of such base blood as hers. Knowing the disposition of your mind towards her, we have brought you these three mongrel pups, which, as you can see, were all born with stars on their foreheads. We now await your instructions in the matter.’
These words greatly pleased the old queen, guessing plainly at their evil intent. She arranged to show these whelps to her daughter-in-law, who had not yet seen the children she had borne, and to have her informed that these were her own offspring. To fortify the deception, the old queen compelled the midwife to bear the news. Accompanied by the two sisters and the queen mother, she showed the mutts to Chiaretta, saying, ‘See, O queen, the fine fruit of your womb! Cherish it well so that the king, when he returns, may rejoice in the fine gift you have presented to him.’ With these words the midwife placed the mongrels by her side, consoling her and telling her that such misfortunes as these happened to high-born folk from time to time.
It only remained for these wicked women, now that this barbarous deed had been completed, to contrive a means to slay the three poor, innocent children. But mercifully, God held them back from soiling their hands in the blood of their kindred. Instead, they made a chest, wellpitched inside and out, and, having placed the children within, they closed it and cast it into the river to be carried away by the current. But God in His justice would not allow these innocents to suffer. As the box floated along, it was seen by a certain miller named Marmiato, who hauled it out and opened it and found the three laughing children inside. Seeing how fair and graceful they were, he presumed they were the little ones of some noble lady who, to hide her shame, had committed this crime. Thus, after closing up the chest again, he set it on his shoulders and bore it straight home to his wife, Gordiana, and said to her, ‘Look here, wife, what I’ve found on the river bank. It’s a present for you.’ Gordiana received the children joyfully and brought them up as if they had been her own, calling one Acquirino, the other Fluvio, because they had been found on the river, and the little girl Serena.
When he came back from his journey, Ancilotto was in high spirits, for he fully expected to find that Chiaretta had given to him the three beautiful children he had been promised. But the outcome was not what he had hoped, for the cunning queen mother, when she saw her son approaching, went to meet him and told him that his beloved wife had given him three puppy dogs instead of three children. Then, leading him into the chamber of the unfortunate Chiaretta, she showed him the mongrels which were lying beside her. The queen began to weep bitterly and to deny resolutely that the dogs were any of her children, but her wicked sisters came and declared that everything the old mother had said was the truth. On hearing this, the king was gravely disturbed and all but fell to the ground in a fit of grief. At long last, after he had come to himself, he credited his mother’s false tale. But Chiaretta’s dignity and sweetness, and the patience with which she bore the insults of the courtiers, won him over to spare her life. Even so, he condemned her to be kept in a cell under the palace where she was to wash the cooking pots and pans and be fed on the rotten garbage that fell continually into this stinking place.
While the unhappy queen passed her life in that foul cell feeding upon garbage, Gordiana, the wife of Marmiato the miller, gave birth to a son who was christened Borghino and lovingly brought up with the three foundlings. Once a month it was customary for Gordiana to cut the long and knotted hair of the three royal children, whereupon rare stones and great white pearls fell in abundance from their tresses. By these means Marmiato was able to give over his humble milling trade and live a life of ease and affectionate tranquillity with his wife and four children. But when the three foundlings had come to years of discretion, they discovered that they were not the children of Marmiato and Gordiana, but had been found floating in a chest on the river. As soon as they learned this, they became very unhappy and resolved to go their way in search of fortune elsewhere, much to the chagrin of their foster parents, who saw they would soon lose the rich harvest of jewels which fell from the children’s locks and starry foreheads.
The brothers and their sister left Marmiato and Gordiana and journeyed many long days until they came to Provino, the city of Ancilotto their father, where they hired a house and lived together, maintaining themselves by selling the jewels and precious stones that continued to fall from their hair. One day the king, riding into the country with some of his courtiers, happened to pass by the house where the three were living, and they, as soon as they heard the king was coming, whom they had never seen before, ran down the steps and stood bareheaded to give him a respectful salutation. The king, whose eyes were as keen as a peregrine falcon’s, looked at them steadily and remarked that on their foreheads each had a golden star, and immediately his heart stirred, for he had an inkling that they might prove to be his children. He stopped and said to them, ‘Who are you, and where do you come from?’
Humbly they replied, ‘We are poor foreigners who have come to this city to live.’
‘I’m pleased to hear this,’ replied Ancilotto. ‘So tell me now your names.’
Then one of them said, ‘I am named Acquirino.’
‘And I Fluvio,’ said the other.
‘And I,’ said their sister, ‘am called Serena.’
‘Ah ha, very well,’ cried the king, ‘I invite you all to dine with me tomorrow.’ Although they were daunted by his gracious invitation, these young people did not dare to decline. No sooner was Ancilotto returned to the palace than he said to his mother, ‘Madam, while I was abroad today I came by chance upon two handsome youths and a lovely maiden, and all three had golden stars on their foreheads. It seems to me they must be the children first promised to me by Queen Chiaretta.’
The wicked old woman shuddered at these words as though a knife had been driven through her heart, and calling in the midwife who had been present at the birth, she said to her in greatest secrecy, ‘Hear this my old friend, do you know that the king’s children are far from being dead as we planned, but are alive and more beautiful than ever?’
‘How can this be?’ replied the old crone. ‘Were they not drowned in the river? Who has told you this?’
The queen mother answered, ‘As far as I can gather from the king’s own words they’re alive, so I’m in desperate need of your help, for otherwise we are as good as dead.’
‘Don’t be alarmed, madam,’ said the midwife. ‘I have a plan in mind that should work the destruction of all three of them.’
So the midwife immediately set off for the house of Acquirino, Fluvio, and Serena and, finding Serena alone, she saluted her and talked of many things. After a long conversation, she said, ‘My daughter, might you by chance have any dancing water?’
‘Why no,’ answered the girl.
‘Ah, my daughter,’ said the old lady, ‘what delights you would enjoy if only you had some. If you could but once bathe your face in it, you would become a thousand times more beautiful than you are even now.’
Her curiosity now aroused, the young girl said, ‘And how could I possibly get it?’
‘Don’t you have brothers?’ the old goody asked. ‘Send them to fetch it. They will find it easily enough, for it is not far from here.’ And with these words she departed.
After a short while, Acquirino and Fluvio came back, and right away Serena told them of the old woman’s visit and began begging them, if they loved her, to get her some of the wonderful dancing water. But they laughed at her request as a silly fancy and refused to go on a fool’s errand, seeing that no one could say where it was to be found. But persuaded at last by their sister’s pleading words, they departed together to fulfil her request, taking with them a phial to hold the precious water. When they had ridden several miles, they came to a fountain in which a snow-white dove was drinking and they were amazed when the bird spoke to them, ‘What are you looking for, young men?’
To this Fluvio answered, ‘We seek the precious water that is said to dance.’
‘Wretched youths,’ said the dove, ‘who sends you on such a quest as this?’
‘We want it for our sister,’ said Fluvio.
‘Then you’re looking for death, for what you seek is guarded by many fierce beasts who will devour you instantly. But if you really must have some, leave the task to me, for I will surely bring it back to you.’ Taking the phial and tying it beneath her right wing, the dove flew away out of sight.
Acquirino and Fluvio awaited her return with great anxiety, and in time she came into sight bearing the phial filled with the magic water. They took it from her, thanking the bird for the great service she had rendered them, then returned to their sister and gave Serena the water, exhorting her never to impose such another task upon them because they had nearly met their deaths in attempting it.
A short time after this, the king again met the two brothers and said to them, ‘Why did you not come to dine and spend the day with me after promising to do so?’
‘Gracious majesty,’ they answered with profound respect, ‘a pressing errand called us away from home.’
‘Then,’ said the king, ‘tomorrow I will expect to see you for dinner without fail.’
The youths having made their apology, the king returned to the palace where he met his mother and told her he had once more seen the youths with the stars on their foreheads. The queen mother was now doubly perplexed and again she gave orders to have the midwife called to whom she secretly told all she had heard, at the same time begging her to find a remedy to their danger. The old crone told her to take courage, for she would plan matters this time so that they should be seen no more. The midwife went again to see Serena, whom she found alone, and asked her whether she had got any of the dancing water.
‘I have it,’ the girl replied, ‘but getting it nearly cost my brothers their lives.’
‘I’d like for you to have an apple that sings,’ said the midwife. ‘You never saw fruit so fair to look upon, or listened to music so sweet.’
‘But how could I get it?’ said Serena, ‘for my brothers will never go in search of it, seeing that their last venture put them more in peril of death than in hope of life.’
‘But they won the dancing water for you,’ said the woman, ‘and they are still alive. They will get the singing apple for you just as harmlessly.’ And having said this she went on her way.
Hardly had the midwife gone when Acquirino and Fluvio came in, and again Serena cried out to them, ‘Oh, my brothers! I hear now of another wonder more beautiful by far than the dancing water. It is the singing apple, and if I cannot have it I will surely die of vexation.’ When Acquirino and Fluvio heard these words they chided her soundly, affirming that for her sake they were reluctant to risk death again. But she would not cease her prayers, weeping and sobbing so sweetly that the brothers, seeing that this new desire of hers came from her innermost soul, again gave in and agreed to satisfy her at whatever risk. So they mounted their horses and rode along until they came to an inn where they demanded of the host if he could tell them where an apple might be found that could sweetly sing. He told them that he knew where it was, but warned of the dangers to anyone bold enough to attempt to pluck it. ‘It grows,’ he said, ‘in the middle of a fair garden that is watched day and night by a poisonous beast which, with its extended wings, kills without fail anyone who goes near the garden.’
‘What, then, would you advise us to do?’ said the youths, ‘for we are intent upon plucking the apple at all cost.’
‘If you follow my orders,’ said the host, ‘you can pluck the apple without fear of the poisonous beast or of death. You must take this robe which, as you see, is all covered with mirrors, and one of you must put it on. So dressed, you will enter the garden, the gate of which you’ll find unfastened. The other must wait outside and be careful not to let anyone see you. The beast will make for the one who enters, but seeing an exact resemblance of itself in the mirrors, it will fall to the ground dead. Then the one waiting outside can go up to the tree, delicately pluck the singing apple, and leave the garden careful not to look behind.’ The young men thanked their host courteously and observed all his directions so faithfully that they acquired the apple without any harm and carried it back to Serena. Again they besought her not to compel them to run such dangers ever again.
After some days had passed, the king once again came by and met the two young men. ‘And what is the reason this time that you have disobeyed my command and failed to come dine with me?’
Fluvio replied, ‘We would have been there without question had weighty matters of business not intervened.’
‘Then you must come tomorrow. See that you don’t let me down.’ Acquirino assured him that, barring matters unforeseen, the pleasure would be theirs. The king returned to his palace and there he met his mother, telling her that he had once more seen the two youths. Now he was more firmly persuaded than ever that they must be the children promised him by Chiaretta and he would feel no rest till they had dined with him at his table.
The queen mother, when she heard that they were still alive, was in dire terror, no longer doubting that her fraud had been discovered. Struck with grief and terror, she sent for the midwife and said to her, ‘I thought for certain the children were dead by this time and that we should hear no more of them. But they are still alive and we stand in peril of our lives. Look to our affair, for otherwise we shall be lost.’
‘Noble lady,’ said the midwife, ‘take heart. This time I will work their bane without fail and you will bless me hereafter, seeing that they will trouble you no longer.’
Then the old woman, raging at her failure, left the palace and went directly to Serena’s house. Wishing her a good day, she enquired whether she had managed to get the singing apple and Serena told her that she had. The cunning old crone then said, ‘Ah, my daughter, all you have is nothing at all unless you get one more thing, the most beautiful, and the most graceful thing in the world.’
‘Good mother, what may this fair thing be?’ said the girl.
The old woman replied, ‘It is the beautiful green bird, my child, which talks night and day and speaks words of marvellous wisdom. If you had it in your keeping, you would be called blessed and happy.’ Having said this, she went on her way.
Acquirino and Fluvio came in directly after she was gone and Serena forthwith begged them to do her one last favour. They asked her what this boon might be that she desired, and she replied, ‘The beautiful green bird.’ Fluvio, who had plucked the apple guarded by the venomous beast, was still haunted by the dangers of his adventure and refused to go in quest of the bird. Acquirino, though for a long time he likewise turned a deaf ear, was finally moved by the brotherly love he felt and by the hot tears of grief which Serena shed, and was determined to satisfy her wish. Once Fluvio agreed to go, they mounted their horses and rode for several days until at last they came into a flowery green meadow in the middle of which stood a fine tree, lofty and full of leafage, surrounded with sundry marble statues which mocked the living by their wondrous workmanship. Through the meadow there ran a little stream, and up in the tall tree was the beautiful green bird preening itself and hopping about from bough to bough in a lively way, all the while uttering words more divine than human. The young men dismounted from their stallions and left them free to graze in order to inspect the marble statues more closely. But upon touching them, they themselves were turned where they stood into pure stone.
Serena for several months anxiously awaited the return of her dear brothers Acquirino and Fluvio and then began to despair, fearing that she would never see them again. Overcome with grief at their unhappy fate, she resolved to try her own fortune. So she mounted a sturdy horse and set forth, riding on until she came to the fair meadow where the beautiful green bird was hopping about on the tall tree and talking sweetly on one of the branches. The first thing she saw upon entering the green meadow were her brothers’ horses grazing on the turf. Casting her eyes upon the statues, she saw that two of them must be Acquirino and Fluvio, for the unhappy youths, although turned into marble, retained their features exactly as in life. Serena dismounted and, going softly up to the tree, she laid her hands on the green bird from behind. Finding himself a prisoner, he pleaded with her to let him go, promising that at the right time and place he would show his gratitude. But Serena refused all hope of compliance unless her brothers were first returned to their former states, whereupon the bird replied, ‘Look then under my right wing and there you will find a feather much greener than any of the others with certain yellow markings inside. Pluck it out and with it touch the eyes of the statues; then your brothers will return to flesh and blood.’ Serena raised the wing and found the feather just as the bird had said. Then she went directly to the marble shapes and, touching them one by one, immediately the statues turned into living men. The two brothers, seeing themselves restored to their rightful states, hugged and kissed their sister most joyfully.
When this wonder was accomplished, the bird again pleaded with Serena to kindly restore his liberty, promising that if she would grant his prayer that he would come to her aid whenever she might call upon him. But Serena was not to be so easily cajoled and declared that before she would let him go free, he must help them find their father and mother, and that until he had accomplished this task, he must remain her prisoner.
There was much debate to follow among the three as to who should have the bird in keeping, but in the end they agreed that it should be left in Serena’s charge, who watched over it and tended it with great care. Now that they had the precious green bird, they mounted their horses and rode home. Meanwhile, Ancilotto had often passed by their house and was astonished to find it empty. He inquired of the neighbours what had become of them, yet all he could learn was that they had not been seen for many days. But they had not been back for long before the king again went by and, catching sight of them, asked how it was that nothing had been seen of them for so long and why they had disregarded his commands so many times. Acquirino answered with deep respect that some amazing troubles and adventures had befallen them and that if they had not presented themselves at the palace before in accordance with his majesty’s desires, it was through no lack of respect, and that they were anxious to amend their conduct in the future.
When the king heard they had been in tribulation, he was moved to pity and would not leave until they all accompanied him back to the palace for dinner. But before they set forth, Acquirino secretly filled a phial with the dancing water, Fluvio took the singing apple, and Serena the talking bird, and they rode back with the king. Joyously they entered the palace with him and sat down at the royal table. When the malicious queen mother and the two wicked sisters saw so lovely a maiden and such handsome youths with their eyes shining like stars, their suspicion was great and their hearts were filled with foreboding. The banquet once come to an end, Acquirino said to the king, ‘Sire, we would now be pleased to show you certain things that will greatly please your majesty,’ and with these words he took a silver goblet and poured the dancing water into it and set it on the table. This done, his brother put his hand into his breast pocket and drew out the singing apple, which he placed beside the water. Serena also brought out the talking bird from her lap and set it on the table. Immediately the apple launched into song most sweetly and with the sounds the water most marvellously began to dance, delighting the king and all the courtiers who laughed aloud with pleasure. But the iniquitous queen mother and the wicked sisters were overcome with ill foreboding, certain their doom was near.
At last, when the apple and the water had ceased to sing and dance, the bird opened its mouth and said, ‘O sacred majesty, what doom should be dealt to those who once plotted death against two brothers and a sister?’
Then the cunning queen mother, scheming to excuse herself, cried out, ‘No lighter doom than the flames,’ to which all who were present agreed.
Then the singing apple and the dancing water lifted their voices and said, ‘Ah, false and cruel woman, your own tongue has doomed you to this horrible death, together with those wicked and envious sisters and the miscreant midwife as well.’
At these words the king froze in silence, but the beautiful green bird continued, ‘O sacred majesty, these are the three children you longed for, the children who bear the star on their foreheads. And their innocent mother is she who to this day is kept a prisoner in that foul and filthy place.’
Then the king saw clearly how he had been tricked and gave orders that the unhappy Chiaretta should be taken out of her noisome prison and robed once more in her royal garments. As soon as this had been done, she was brought into the presence of the king and of his court. And although she had for so long a time suffered such cruel imprisonment, she retained all her former loveliness. Then the talking green bird related the strange history from beginning to end and the king, understanding the entire affair, tenderly embraced Chiaretta and their three children. Therewith, the dancing water, the singing apple, and the talking bird, having been set at liberty, suddenly all disappeared.
The next day, the king had a great fire kindled in the middle of the marketplace into which he ordered his mother to be cast, along with the two sisters of Chiaretta and the midwife, to be burned to death without pity in the presence of all the people. Thereafter, Ancilotto lived many happy years with his dear wife and his beautiful children and, having chosen for Serena an honourable husband, he left his two sons to inherit his kingdom.
When Lodovica’s story ended, the Signora asked her to propound her riddle, and here is what she offered:
When Sol pours down his fiercest heat,
High on Ghiraldo’s lofty seat,
A man I marked, with roguish eye,
Shut fast within a closure high.
All through the day he prates and talks,
And clad in robes of emerald walks,
I’ve told you all except his name,
And that from your own wit I claim.
Many were the interpretations put upon this enigma, but no one came near the mark except the charming Isabella who, greatly pleased with herself, said in a merry tone, ‘Lodovica’s enigma can only refer to the popinjay who lives within an iron cage, which is the closure, and has plumage green as emerald, and chatters all day long.’ The deft solution to the riddle pleased everybody except Lodovica, who had flattered herself that no one would be clever enough to solve it, and who for a time didn’t know what to say. Then, with a face now all vermilion, she turned to Isabella and said, ‘I’m feeling really envious and annoyed, not because of all your honours, but because now I’m inferior to everyone present. They had a chance to set out the solutions to their riddles when no one could guess the answers, but mine have all been guessed. Well, don’t worry, because if I can come up with tit for tat, I won’t be caught napping.’
‘As you please, Signora Lodovica,’ came Isabella’s cheerful reply, ‘but the early bird gets the worm.’
The Signora, seeing that words were about to multiply, imposed silence on them both, ordering Isabella to get on with telling her fable, which she began in merry spirit.
The various meanings of the present story are a product of its particular assembly of narrative parts, each one invested with the social values and psychological imperatives that have guaranteed their successes as story ‘memes,’ from the fairy-tale rise of a commoner through marriage to a king, to the wish-fulfilling incineration of the patently guilty mother-inlaw. A sense of those parts arises systemically as a matter of the chunking and shedding operations of memory itself. The story just read has already, by the devious and subliminal processes of mind, been collapsed into its salient categories – the same, in theory, that are isolated for Proppian analysis, and the same, arguably, that correspond to the principal standalone stories that have been interlinked to make up this compound creation. These can be profiled only through paraphrase – the poorest excuse for literary criticism – because motifs are by definition little plot summaries reduced to their identifying characteristics. Inferentially, these orders of action were the same to have been trimmed and stored by the default operations of memory in the minstrel mind, thereby controlling and defining their future elaboration and recombination. It is this property of the brain that prefigures all interpretational efforts and links us on a phylogenetic basis to the operations of the makers – our brains in this regard make us equals before the ‘text.’ Hence, these narrative ‘chunks’ are the units through which the story must be investigated as an assembly of discrete parts.
For purposes of structural analysis, then, the first is the micro-romance of the three commoners overheard daydreaming by a passing king who, charmed by the prospect of offspring born with golden stars and chains, imposes a matrimonial novelty upon the royal family. The second inset story involves the animus of the king’s mother, offended by this fairy-tale violation of social echelons. There follows the diabolical plot to substitute the newborns with animals and send the children to their deaths in order to discredit the young queen. This portion of the tale, with its deception mechanisms and the cruel handling of the beleaguered girl, is a moveable structure known in many other forms and contexts. The third segment moves to the story of the second generation, the recovery of the children, their childhood circumstances, their awakening with regard to their birth parents, and their quest for origins. This segment may be considered alone or in conjunction with the sequel adventures of the tripartite quest. The challenge by the midwife to find the dancing water, the singing apple, and the truth-speaking bird is a result of the stratagems employed to keep secret the crimes committed in the second part. Yet it is a questing tale of its own, a fourth and now defining episode featuring a triple pattern of adventure involving sibling loyalty and rescue and the capturing of three of the folk world’s most precious talismanic objects pertaining to health, wealth, and truth. This segment, likewise, has an elaborate history of its own, alone and in conjunction with other folk-tale types. There are now three centres of energy: the king who seeks the friendship of the mysterious children; the four malefactors keen to eliminate the royal heirs; and the three children beset by the risks and dangers of their encounters with the magic kingdom. The capturing of the allknowing bird, the culmination of the fourth narrative episode or story type, leads to the fifth and closing section, which entails reunion with the birth father (completing the third episode), and the performances of the talismanic objects (completing the fourth), leading to the recovery of their birth mother together with the apprehension and destruction of the four villainesses (completing the second episode). The design, in itself, is excellent, consisting of distinct motivic units upon which all investigations into origins and narrative coherence must be based.
These four or five parts together form a complete representation of ATU 707, ‘the truth bird,’ which enjoyed particular favour among the French authors of fairy tales, the first of them being Mme. d’Aulnoy in ‘La princesse Belle-Étoile,’ published in 1698, a story derived in all its essentials from Straparola.60 The type consists of a double action over two generations in which the second generation brings delayed justice to the malignant parties of the preceding generation, leading to the restoration of the betrayed family. The first is a rags-to-riches tale cut short by envy and malice; the second is a tale of debasement, trial by quest and initiation, and the restoration of a birthright. The first part is also an emblematic enactment of the animosity within the extended family that threatens innocent children and leads to the psychological incarceration of the helpless young mother, robbed of the affections of her husband. The second part portrays the optimism of their three offspring who, alone in the world, engage with the realms of mystery and danger in order to equip themselves with the forces and skills for survival embodied not only in the discipline of questing but in the magic powers of language invested in the bird of truth. The final objective of this story is to return estranged children to their parents, but only through the preliminary redemption of their own mother from her life of lingering torment. Finally, for those who showed no humanity or bloodline solidarity, it is a tale of justice of a summary kind that fairy tales seldom avoid, whether of boilings or burnings, beheadings or quarterings, or – my favourite – of being rolled down a mountainside in a barrel driven full of nails. In sum, the story is a rich configuration of profoundly blunt but enduring motifs pertaining to family life, a tableau of envy and retributive justice, as well as of sibling loyalty and parental longings, constituting the psychological trajectory of the completed fabula. How could such a story not achieve the highest status among the archetypal creations of the race?
Latent in the inaugural episode is the question of bride selection from among commoners in tales going back to ancient India, including the Griselda group, as well as that of the clever girl (die kluge Rätsellöserin) who becomes a royal bride through the solution of riddles posed by a prince on tour in the countryside. These relate in turn to all the crux tales concerning exogamy and the elevation of brides from outside the royal circles. Their counterpart tales are those concerned with propinquity and the selection from inner circles of brides as close as daughters. Straparola has already introduced two such stories in I.4 and III.3. The second part deals with maligned, banished, or mutilated queens, our tale combining the fear of bestial births and related superstitions with the reality of household jealousies and the scheming of the old queen displaced by the arrival of the new daughter-in-law as reigning queen. It is telling that the heroine is traduced not in her capacity as consort for reasons of infidelity, but in her capacity as mother in failing to perpetuate the royal bloodline. Implicit in this assault is a deep fear and hatred of outsiders, of monstrous births, or simply of the commanding power of maternity itself, remotely associated with latent allusions to cannibalism, infanticide, and bestiality by which the slander against the queen is variously made credible.61 Meanwhile, Chiaretta is forced to believe in the science of monstrosity accounting for a litter of puppies in lieu of human infants on the authority of the midwife, in opposition to her own fantasy of triplets with stars, braids, and chains which the king embraces as a biological entitlement. This is a wonder tale.
The final section is a Bildungs fantasy that includes anxiety over parental identity, a rite of initiation, and the deliverance of a helpless and innocent mother through the offices of her children. It is a tale of maturation in innocence, narrow escape through perseverance and concentration, sibling loyalty and succour, and the recovery of the birth family through the delayed exposure of an essential truth. In the dancing water and the singing apple there may well be vestiges of occult healing powers, elements left over from tales of the wasteland, the water of life, and the golden bough, the sacred objects of spiritualized quests reduced to the scale of the folk tale. Readers are at liberty to make as much or as little as they choose of the meanings to be recovered through structural, seasonal, psychological, archetypal, and anthropological intimations ranging from pure allegory to the implicit cognitive categories (belief schemata) by which consciousness is invigilated to social advantage – categories that might well find expression through the elementary stories of the race. It is not the intent here to make elaborate representations of such readings, but to aver that of all the tales in the collection apt for such analysis, this one is among the most propitious. The only brakes to be set upon such procedures are those set by the hermeneute’s own particular sense of the limitations of folk thinking and intentionality, or by the plausibility of analogies through which one system is imposed upon another.62
Straparola’s version of ‘The Truth-Speaking Bird’ presents a particularly challenging case to the student of literary sources. It is an effective and well-integrated work composed of several narrative motifs, such as bride selection through an overheard conversation, the exposure of a queen’s newborn children on the pretext that they are animals, and the quest on the part of those children for the three magic elements that will lead them back to their parents.63 These motifs are firmly cemented together by the mid-sixteenth century, as the present tale confirms, and possibly much earlier, given the ‘swan children’ analogue formulated by Johannes de Alta Silva in Dolopathos more than three centuries earlier. But of that assembly process there is no clear record. Meanwhile, there is a closely cognate work in The Arabian Nights, the independent circulation of which during the Renaissance period, given the present story, must now be taken for granted, thereby becoming Straparola’s selfevident source. But therein may lie a mystery, for The Arabian Nights as we know it was not assembled by Galland before the early eighteenth century, and not all of its parts have demonstrable former lives. The tales are so close that only two options remain: it was available to Straparola in a form proximate to his by the early sixteenth century without leaving any corroborative traces; or it was ‘orientalized’ from Straparola’s own story. Should the latter case prove true, we are once again compelled to imagine the present story’s origins among the folk raconteurs of the late Middle Ages relying on Eastern materials of much earlier provenance. The result, once again, would be that Straparola’s rendition is the only pre-modern literary version of the fully assembled work. The case to be made against the early circulation of ‘The Truth-Speaking Bird’ featured in The Arabian Nights, and its source potential for Straparola, is reviewed in the following three paragraphs. Readers in haste may leap over them.
Antoine Galland, the first Western compiler of The Arabian Nights, collected a story closely resembling Straparola’s from a Syrian raconteur and added it to the Nights in the early 1700s. That, in itself, does not deny its antiquity, for it may well have been in circulation in the Arabic world during the preceding centuries. On that assumption, Valentin Schmidt became the first of many to consider this tale to be Straparola’s unquestionable source.64 Something to the matter, however, is that both Galland’s and Straparola’s versions represent two relatively late glimpses into a far more ancient story concerning maligned queens that had spread across the Eurasian landmass literally centuries earlier.65 But if Schmidt is right, it becomes an academic point whether, at a time preceding Straparola, the precise folk tale upon which the present story is based travelled to the East to inspire the cognate tale collected by Galland, or the inverse, as has so often been assumed. The challenge to the latter hypothesis is that the story in more remote forms was already well known in the West and grew to its fullness through the offices of the Western folk mind. In following Schmidt and others, however, Straparola’s tale would owe little to any of the individual motifs represented in antecedent European tales. There is a third option, however, that Galland attributed Straparola’s tale to his mysterious Syrian raconteur while ‘orientalizing’ it for the Arabian Nights in the manner employed by Thomas-Simon Gueullette in subsequent years. The Eastern tale is a hoax, the full tale is Western, Straparola records it first, and evidence of its component parts must be sought among the writers of the late Middle Ages. Proof in this matter depends upon the appraisal of Galland’s opportunism and the existence of corroborating Arabic versions confirming the story’s antiquity in the East. What is revealingly clear is that it does not occur in the most complete of the fourteenth-century manuscripts of The Arabian Nights.66 Nevertheless, there are related stories of Eastern provenance that were collected in the nineteenth century and included in the Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights dealing with a queen falsely accused of cannibalism, going all the way back to the foundations of the maligned queen tradition (see below). The fullest irony may be that the medieval core around which the Renaissance tale was elaborated is Eastern from an even earlier period, perhaps completing the circle.
However the current of influence is deemed to flow, a comparative study of Straparola’s ‘The Truth-Speaking Bird’ must begin with ‘The Jealous Sisters and their Cadette’ – which Galland reports to have heard in Paris in 1709 as recited by Hanna Dieb, a Maronite Christian Arab from Aleppo – for it remains the closest in its narrative pattern to Straparola, if only because it is a clever act of plagiarism or remaking (refacimento).67 It is one of the few, for example, even among the many versions collected in the nineteenth century, to join in common cause the hatred of a wicked mother-in-law with the invidious envy of two elder sisters. Generally, the defamation of the young queen is managed by one or the other. In the following resume, readers will find themselves speculating upon the differences in such details and whether they are best accounted for as independent deletions and additions to a common folk source, or the kinds of choices that Galland might have made to disguise his debt – an exercise in evidential assessment. In Galland’s rendition, Khusrau Shah goes walking in disguise with his Grand Vizier in a poor quarter of the city and overhears the talk of three fair sisters. Charmed by them, the Shah brings the three weddings to pass, marrying the youngest daughter himself. In the next section the promised prince is born, having virtues similar to those of Biancabella as well as the children of Ancilotto, although instead of shedding jewels from his hair he weeps pearls and laughs roses, while his gold and silver hair reflects both sun and moon. (Galland could have taken these variants from Straparola as well.) The two older sisters, seething with anger, solicit and receive from the Shah the right to serve as midwives and caregivers to the newborn. They wrap the child up and throw him into the canal, replacing him with a dead puppy. Thereafter, the Shah flies into a rage and nearly kills the queen, but the Grand Vizier intercedes and so she is given a second and a third chance. In this way she brings forth, one by one, the same two sons and a daughter as in Straparola’s ‘The Truth-Speaking Bird,’ the last replaced in her birth-bed by a muskrat. All three are rescued by the Intendant of the Gardens, who intuits their royal pedigree, as the miller does in Straparola. The queen’s third failure is determinant, for she is thereafter suspended in a wooden cage beside the mosque for all good Muslims to spit upon in passing, upon pain of retribution. The children are raised in a country mansion where they become model pupils. Before their protector dies, he informs them of their birth and admonishes them to live in love and mutual support of each other. These admonitions are merely implicit in Straparola. While her two brothers are away, Parizad is visited by a beggar woman who tells her that she must acquire the ‘Bird of a Thousand Tales,’ principally as an ornament to her mansion. The bird becomes an object of insatiable curiosity and desire, setting up the first of the ensuing quests. To this, in time, are added the singing tree and the golden water which leaps up in a basin like an eternal fountain. Absent from Straparola’s tale is the magic object that signals the destiny of the absent brother, in this case a knife with a colour-changing blade, although this ‘life sign’ motif is standard folk tale fare (see the commentary to VII.5). Trekking towards India for many days, the first brother meets an ancient sage who gives instructions and provides a ball that rolls before the hero until he reaches the magic mountain with a long path leading to the top. On both sides there are creatures who cry, moan, and hurl insults, soliciting each seeker to turn in response and so be transformed to stone. That taboo is a mere vestige in Straparola’s tale in the form of the pointless command to the brother not to look back after killing the basilisk. In this fashion, both brothers in the oriental tale are turned to stone, whereas in the present tale the two are transformed merely by touching the statues. The knife blade shows gore with their transformations, inciting Parizad to disguise herself as a man (a detail suppressed in Straparola or added by Galland?) to go in search of her brothers. Undistracted by the voices, she presses on to the top, indifferent to the insults hurled after her, captures the bird, releases her brothers with the water of life, and proceeds with them back to their house, there to encounter the Shah who is invited in at last to see their newfound wonders. It is all a prelude to the peripeteia, the recall of the queen through the revelations of the truth-speaking bird and the execution of the wicked women, a mother and two sisters though they may be. No special pleading is required to see that this is essentially the same story as Straparola’s, separated only by the substitutions typical of oral transmission or literary adaptation. Both rehearse three of the deepest crises of the human social condition: the integration of an unapproved bride, the protection of offspring from calumny and abduction, and the recovery of personal identity through the discovery of lost parents. These are among the most compelling of natural obsessions and carry innate power to drive narrative order, as they do in Straparola’s tale.
Further to the comparison of the tales of ‘The Truth-Speaking Bird’ and the Shah Khusrau,68 the latter has the births in succession, as in many subsequent folk versions – and it is instructive to recall that in potentially reshaping his tale, Galland had available to him the versions by Mme. d’Aulnoy and Eustche Le Noble (described below). At the same time, Straparola’s tale is seen to carry vestiges of former features not present in the Galland tale, such as the birth of a son to the miller’s wife who has no role to play thereafter. That feature appears to have been part of Straparola’s source, for it survives in later versions in which the miller’s natural child grows up to taunt the foundlings as bastards – a motif already seen in analogues to the tale of ‘Fortunio’ (III.4). That is a smoking gun. Less elaborated in Straparola is the ritual quest on the mountain according to the directions of a sage found dead once the talismanic objects are removed from the shrine. Whether it became a part of the tradition early or late, this ritualized trek up the mountain between menacing creatures ‘feels’ oriental in spirit and is featured in many of the cognate tales collected in the nineteenth century. The water of life is more clearly restorative and the bird rather more holy in the oriental tales, while the flask is sufficient to fill a fountain which shoots water far into the air in a fantasy of garden décor. These things are scaled back in Straparola, or arguably were simply absent in his ‘less developed’ source. In our tale, the two boys go together and complete their first two quests. Only during the third are the two boys turned to stone, compelling their sister to come to their rescue. That the sage is merely the host of an inn and that the mirror trick to defeat a guardian basilisk is represented in the place of the Arabian story’s voices taunting the boys riding up the mountain means an inventive departure from the Eastern source on Straparola’s part, or simply a different source. In the oriental tale, the king visits his children at their palace and is amazed by their exotic possessions, whereas in our tale the three sacred objects, on a far smaller scale, are taken to the king’s palace to amuse him at the table. In both stories, something of their deeper ritualistic significance may be lost; both make extraneous necessity of residual details. Only in Galland’s tale is the king upbraided for his credulity in believing that women could give live birth to animals against all the laws of nature. As stated above, such variations may be late rather than early and hence reveal little about the ‘Ur-text’ that produced Straparola’s source and much about Galland’s temptations to moralize a tale in the spirit of his age that should have been made more enigmatic and spare to make it pass as Eastern. Galland’s addition to the Arabian Nights remains the closest kin to Straparola’s tale, whether as the product of a common source or as a clever plagiarism. But Straparola’s departure from the model set by Galland’s tale and the independent existence of all three narrative motifs in related medieval and Renaissance texts are further indicators that the present tale is a Renaissance creation from parts circulating widely in popular literary culture. Moreover, the allusion to popular tales about ‘truth-speaking birds’ in the contemporary letters of Andrea Calmo (1552), discussed below, offers further confirmation. In brief, the comparative evidence points to a Renaissance folk source which contributed all of the features unique to Straparola that have been suppressed in Galland’s pseudo-oriental tale. Hence, the latter production becomes part of the growing Straparolan legacy, but may be discounted as a direct Eastern source.
Concerning the motif of the accused queen, there is a sense of déjà vu in reading the story of ‘The Swans’ in Dolopathos.69 In effect, it is the same story as Straparola’s, less the quest for the water, tree, and bird. The opening is related to ‘the Mélusine’ group, for the hunter marries a water nixie. But mermaid or baker’s daughter, the hunter’s mother hates her new daughter-in-law and so the familiar story proceeds. She gives birth not to three but to seven children, six sons and a daughter, a truly miraculous and prodigious performance. Each child has a golden necklace around its neck. The mother-in-law replaces the seven babies with seven puppies and arranges for the infants to be strangled, but they are exposed, instead, and raised in a cave by an old philosopher and for seven years nourished with deer’s milk. So much is familiar, so much is strange, but the second, third, and fifth parts of Straparola’s tale are already in congruence. The young mother, much like her queenly counterparts, is buried alive to her breasts in the courtyard, a detail redolent of the Doralice group, but she is fed on food thrown to the dogs, and courtiers are instructed to wash their hands over her head (redolent of the spitting motif in the Galland story). For seven years her health deteriorates and her flesh is eaten away. While out hunting, the father sees the children with their necklaces and feels a surge of emotion in his heart. He tells his mother of his encounter and fear grips her immediately. Now, rather than send them on dangerous missions – they are still too young – she contrives to steal their golden chains, thereby trapping them in their transformations as swans. These are children seeking their maternal heritage, after all, as the offspring of a water nymph, and in this feature the story seeks its own identity in the Lohengrin group. The swan children settle on a lake near their father’s palace until the orphan sister (her necklace alone remaining), while begging bread to feed her mother, is questioned by the king. She becomes the truth-speaking bird, while the expression on the servant’s face exposes his guilt. An attempt is made on the girl’s life, but fails. In the end, all but one of the necklaces is restored, the mother is brought to health with baths and ointments, and the wicked mother is buried in her place. The story follows a profile similar to the present one, featuring the same principal episodes. Johannes de Alta Silva, who died in 1212, assembled his collection in the north of France from materials belonging essentially to the story tradition of The Seven Sages, thus materials from the Arabic and Turkish worlds that made their way to Europe at the time of the Crusades.70 That it made a direct contribution to the sources employed by Straparola is beyond demonstration, but it appears at an early date in witness to a generic story type of mothers whose children are replaced by animals, who are victimized by cruel relatives, subjected to unspeakable torture, and who are restored through the truth preserved in the unique identities of her children. The seeker of sources is now brought to think in terms of the wide circulation of these idiosyncratic motifs in Europe as far back as the twelfth century. As for tales of exiled queens abused by their relatives, that date can be pushed back even further.71
The vista, in fact, opens upon an ‘ocean’ of stories and, of the many examined, my candidate for the most ‘primitive’ version is the following in which the queen is accused not of giving birth to monsters, but of eating her children. In a Sanskrit Buddhist legend, a queen of humble origins is envied by her husband’s other wives.72 While giving birth, they cover her eyes, then remove her children and throw them into the river. At the same time, they smear her face with blood and accuse her publicly of eating the newborn twins. This motif will recur. The queen is rescued from an awful fate by a wise man who dreams the truth. The children are meanwhile adopted and raised, and eventually they are identified simply by their physical resemblances to the king. The tale has no opening bride selection plot and no quest by the royal children. It is a simple story of jealousy that entails a credulous husband ready to accept an accusation of cannibalism. It would seem to hearken back to more ancient conditions, replaced in later tales by allegations of bestiality and monster births. In both instances the representations are fraudulent, but seem to express deep-seated anxieties about paternity and legitimacy. The familiar sequence of the tale, from maligned queen and the crisis of childbirth to the recovery of foundlings through a mechanism of anagnorisis leading to the restoration of the nuclear family, is provided in seminal form, amenable to all the elaborations of ‘the envious sisters’ group represented in Straparola’s tale without loss of narrative identity. Tales in this tradition may be the fuse to all the later tales of maligned queens. In a version translated by Richard Burton in the Supplemental Arabian Nights, a queen’s children are stolen and she is accused of eating them after her mouth is smeared with blood. It is the jealous second wife who perpetrates these atrocities. The queen is rescued by a servant and returned to her father, while her sons are found by a fisherman and are later discovered by the king who then makes a pilgrimage to Benares to reclaim his innocent wife.73 This has the ‘feel’ of a very early tale not yet close to the world of Straparola.
To be passed over lightly here are all the many stories in the Olive-Hélène-Constance-Émaré-Doralice group already explored in relation to Straparola’s story of ‘Doralice and her Incestuous Father, Tebaldo’ (I.4).74 Margaret Schlauch deals with the abundance of materials by listing twenty of the best known, summarizing the tale in its fullest generic terms and listing by numbers the major variants according to their sources. Common to all are the betrayal of the queen, the exposure of her children, the operations of deceitful family members, the queen’s banishment or incarceration, the return of the king, the eventual rediscovery of his wife many years later through the industry of his lost children raised by strangers, and the summary execution of the treacherous family members. Many of these stories begin with a girl driven into exile by the incestuous intentions of her own father, which is markedly different from the present tale, but thereafter – in the segment concerning the betrayal of the queen – there are many common features. In the saints’ lives tradition, the heroine manifests the purity and patience of a martyr and serves as an emissary of the faith, as in the Olive-Hélène group. The letter exchange whereby the king is misinformed of the true nature of his offspring and led to believe in a monstrous birth is a feature common to many. The modus of the queen’s long period of absence and torment varies from live burial up to the neck, to incarceration, to exile, often in a mutilated state – the last of these typifying the Biancabella group (for which see the commentary to III.3). At this juncture the stories diverge, the ‘truth-speaking bird’ group concentrating on the adventures of the second generation that lead the exposed children back to their parents.75
There is yet another from the late medieval period confirming the antiquity of this material. The Histoire du Chevalier du Cygne was first printed in 1499 and tells of a queen who gives birth to six sons and a daughter, each one with a golden chain.76 This midwife reports that she has given birth to seven dogs. A squire to the queen mother is told to kill the children, but he leaves them at a hermitage instead where they are raised in stark fashion. When they are seven years old, a hunter sees them and describes them to the old queen, who once again sends out a murderer. The weight of the swan children tale from Dolopathos is evoked when the hunter steals six of their seven gold necklaces in a story that is otherwise directly in the folk tradition that furnished Straparola with his materials.
That Straparola acquired his story from an oral tradition is strengthened by the many folk versions of the story, collected largely in the nineteenth century, in which all three motifs are present. That heritage, to have achieved its nineteenth-century diversification, would need to reach back over several generations of storytellers, up to 800 years back when the story received literary amplification in such works as the Ur-text of Valentin et Orson. A source for Straparola may be hypothesized as a folk creation midway between the medieval tales and those collected in the nineteenth century in which a bride-selection opening is combined with the motif of the abused queen leading to the quest for the dancing water, the singing tree, and the speaking bird. Among the many collected in Italy are those by Imbriani, Comparetti, Pitrè, de Gubernatis, Nerucci, Visentini, and finally Calvino, whose retelling is based in the story collected by Imbriani which includes the wicked stepmother and the three now-familiar magic objects, the most prominent of which is the truth-speaking bird.77 This story appears among Italo Calvino’s favole as ‘L’ucell bel-verde’ (The beautiful green bird). The story is so close to Straparola’s that it need not be retold. Monkeys are substituted in the place of the children. The sisters write the maligning letter to the king who replies, nevertheless, to have the queen cared for until he gets back. After three monster births, however, the queen is walled up in a cellar and fed on bread, water, and slop. The children have a palace built for them opposite the king’s palace, perhaps inspired by the story of Aladdin in the Arabian Nights. The king sees the children and invites them to supper, but they are detained by quests suggested by the emissary from the old queen mother. The wonders they find, however, help to placate the spurned king. Some of the most noticeable touches of narrative tightening come at the end when the boys are turned to stone in breaking a silence taboo over concern for their mother, while the dancing water is used to heal the imprisoned queen. A final touch is the old queen’s last-ditch attempt to destroy the incriminating survivors by poisoning the food at the banquet.78 Such stories as this must have been widely current in Straparola’s day, for his contemporary, Andrea Calmo, talks about them in his letters, the story of the green bird, the ‘Usel bel verde,’ figuring among those he was pleased to treat as ‘le pi stupende panzane, stampie, e imaginative del mondo’ (the most wonderful and imaginative fabrications and twaddle in the whole world). Moreover, he reveals that the several he mentions were told as part of the evening recreations of the Venetians.79 That has to be a smoking gun. His letter invites us to think that the folk tale to which he makes allusion must have been a part of Straparola’s purview as well, and very possibly a source. Yet another, published in 1575 in Contos e histórias do proveito e exemplo (Stories for profit and example), merely confirms the story’s Renaissance currency in forms less like the tale in the Arabian Nights. It too begins with the three daydreaming seamstresses who are married to members of the court circle, followed by the replacing of the newborns with serpents and the queen’s banishment to a convent. The king finds his own children near the fisherman’s house.80 Only the quest for the marvellous objects is missing, reflecting an early Portuguese tradition to which the third part had not yet been added.
Giuseppe Pitrè collected a charming tale entitled ‘Li figghi di lu cavuliciddaru’ (The herb-gatherer’s daughters) that contains all the parts of the Straparola story. The evil older sisters are placed in charge of the birth and exchange the newborns for puppies. But now the infants are rescued by a fairy and nursed by a deer (a motif seen earlier). A selfreplenishing purse replaces the golden hair, and a ring that changes colours in the event of misadventure for one of the brothers is an added feature from the Galland tale (there it was the bloodied knife blade). The royal children rent a house opposite the palace and are spied by their wicked aunts who then incite the hopefully fatal desires for the water, tree, and bird. The quest, once again directed by a hermit, leads to a mountain top, as in the oriental prototype, with guardian giants and rituals for entry, as in Calvino and Imbriani. But again redolent of Galland, the water leaps in a grand basin. This story has been carefully rationalized and prepared by a pattern-conscious storyteller. Also, as in the prototype, the sister disguises herself as a page before going in search of her two brothers. It is now the bird that tells gossipy news, and responding to it leads to petrifaction, another tightening feature. The quest once completed, the king recognizes his children and is entertained by their new acquisitions, but fails to hear the bird until it arranges the final banquet at which the truth will be revealed. The young queen, on the verge of death, is restored in the nick of time. The story is from Palermo and is a version of ‘The Three Golden Children,’ or ‘The Jealous Sisters,’ or ‘The Talking Bird.’81
To illustrate the fanciful variations permitted to this story type, mention may be made of the Albanian tale of ‘Les soeurs jalouses’ (The jealous sisters). The king who overhears the three girls marries all three. One promises a rug; the second, a tent; and the third promises two children, a boy and a girl, with stars on their foreheads and moons on their shoulders. At the time of their births, their treacherous aunts arrange to have them replaced by a cat and a mouse, while the disgraced mother is sent where she may be spat upon. The miller who finds the children has a grotto with a magic bridle that provides them with two horses. They ride back to their hometown and open a café. There they are discovered by their father, the king, who reports this to his two remaining wives (the rug and tent makers). They, in turn, send out an old crone to lure their niece into desiring the flower possessed by ‘La Belle de la Terre’ (Beauty-of-the-earth). A lamia met along the way gives instructions to the young adventurer in quest of the flower for his sister. Once there, he must feed a lion and a lamb before plucking it. His second quest is for La Belle’s handkerchief and then for La Belle herself, whom he must disempower by removing a ring from her finger as she sleeps. The contaminatio from other popular fairy tales is evident. The princess then accompanies him home and marries him, too. She will play her part, like the truth-speaking bird, in rescuing the children from the dishes poisoned by their invidious aunts which were to have been served up at the king’s banquet in their honour. To be sure, their mother is rescued from the vale of sputum and the wicked sisters (wives and aunts) are foiled again, in fact torn to pieces.82 Clearly it is the same tale, confirmed in its signature parts, but widely departing from an imaginable medieval oikotype.
In Italy in the seventeenth century the story was given representation by Pompeo Sarnelli in his Posilecheata, in a tale entitled ‘L’ingannatrice ingannata’ (The trickster tricked). His telling includes the dancing water, the speaking bird, and the petrification of a brother, together with his rescue by a sister who brings statues back to life. Moreover, grateful animals, liberated from various distresses, come to the aid of the secondgeneration protagonists. A magic palace is also brought into existence where the father unexpectedly discovers his abandoned son through means of a birthmark. This section of the story is fully anticipated by intrigues surrounding the first generation and the exposure of the royal offspring through the connivances of cruel sisters who accuse their younger sibling, the queen, of giving birth to animals. The king is subsequently misinformed through a series of falsified letters and the queen’s life is spared only through the compassion of her intended executioners. This compound plot is brought to a full peripeteia whereby the wicked sisters are brought low and the two generations of the royal family are reunited. The author of this story brings it to print some twelve decades after the publication of the Nights, allowing that Straparola’s ‘Truthspeaking Bird’ provided his narrative source. That hypothesis is complicated largely by the fact that Reppone was a close student of Basile, writing likewise in Neapolitan dialect, having edited the Lo cunto de li cunti for reprinting in 1674. He may have had the materials for this story from a closely parallel folk source and thus, presumably like Basile, may never have known Le piacevoli notti. But chances are equal that he worked with Straparola open before him, thereby extending the now-familiar tale to his Neapolitan readership as though it were a local creation. There is work here for a curious comparatist.83
In France, the story was taken up directly from Straparola by Eustache Le Noble and the Comtesse d’Aulnoy towards the end of the seventeenth century. No doubt their immediate source was the celebrated Louveau translation of the Piacevoli notti, completed only a few years after the Italian original and passing through edition after edition thereafter. In Le Noble’s fanciful elaboration upon the tale, the tastes of the French salons combined with a consciousness of the language of the literary fairy tale are in clear evidence. The three sisters are now, de rigueur, the children of a nobleman, and the eavesdropping royal is the king of Tartelettes (little pies). The girls, in keeping, speak of turning everything to sugar or rivers of cream, while the third speaks of giving birth to children with stars on their foreheads. Offers of sugar and cream the king finds ridiculous, but the third proposal he fancies and chooses the girl on the spot. Despite mama’s objections, the ceremonies are carried out with the pomp befitting the Ancien Régime. Good fairies arrive to offer aid while the king is away driving the king of l’Eau Rose (rose water) from his pie land. The newborns are reported to be cats, which are drowned, even as the children are set adrift. A miller comes to their rescue and names the girl Belle-Étoile. The Lilliput war involving King Pie and King Rose Water continues for eight years as the kids grow up. The lads get to know their dad when they are arrested as poachers; when he sees the gold stars he pardons them and they show their obeisance in return. In all this, there is no substantial deviation from Straparola’s plot, yet somehow everything is changed. The three sisters are nobly born, eliminating the poverty-to-prosperity profile so objectionable to the elite set. The king himself provokes the hostility to his new queen by dismissing the elder sisters as trivial and inconsequential. The three talismanic objects are all evoked, but the quest is downscaled to a simple request to their tutelary fairy, who brings these objects one by one. The king on his own figures out just who the children are and how his queen has been abused by foul play. Merely the look on the queen mum’s face when seeing them all enter the palace is grounds for her conviction. The sacred objects are now delivered over to the king for his cabinet de curiosité, except for the liberation-seeking bird, which tells its story and then flies away. The old queen poisons herself and the young queen makes her return, having been sustained by the fairy Landirette with quails, partridges, steaks, sugar almonds, and bread. Then the king makes amends by having new garments made for her from gold. The transformation of ambience, the ethos of préciosité, and the pervasive role of the fairies is sufficient to justify the new category of fairy tale, while the more random and less organized appearance of the helpers in Straparola’s tale merits for it the mere designation of wonder tale.84 These are matters for discussion. Nevertheless, this tale and the following are among the most important of Straparola’s direct literary legacies.
Catherine d’Aulnoy’s ‘Princesse Belle-Étoile et le Prince Chéri’ is a more ambitious creation of many pages in which the three daughters are now the offspring of a destitute queen reduced to cooking stews and selling gold and diamonds extracted from her old throne. In this way, she too ennobles the three sisters, turning a rising tale into a restoration tale to suit the tastes of her milieu. The girls are named for their three contrasting hair colours; the youngest, to be sure, is called Blondine. This is a tale of the recovery of lost entitlements on behalf of the fallen mother through the exploits of the second and third generations. An old woman dining on the good stew pays for her fare through future protection of the children, and so with many new details, interruptions, added dialogue, and adjusted circumstances, the well-known story is recreated. Sisterly envy flares, bringing them into league with the insulted queen mother. Puppies with stars provide the scandalous monsters and Rousette, the hypocrite red-head sister, actually calls for Blondine’s death upon the king’s return. Meanwhile, her ally, the old queen mother, sends the three babes out to be strangled, but their intended murderess takes pity on them and bundles them into a boat, along with the equally hated Prince Chéri, son of the second sister, to meet their destiny. D’Aulnoy keeps the feature of the jewel-shedding chevelure, which enriches the family of the corsair who adopts the foundling infants, and she pays particular attention to their rich and complete education. This too is new, for the corsair is in fact a gentleman of culture and a fit father for the high-born. A new story now emerges around the fourth child, Chéri, who lacks a star and chain, but who takes up with his cousin Belle-Étoile, both now adolescents, in a Daphnis and Chloe interlude. In this way a romance element saturated with sentiment imposes itself on the folk tale design. Ultimately, however, the quest for origins takes precedence over the life of innocent retreat. Many adventures follow in loose resemblance to Straparola’s tale. Belle is nearly frozen and must be revived by her protective dove who instructs her in trapping the green bird through the use of a decoy. The four children must get themselves back to court not only to liberate their mother, but to block an illegitimate marriage. This is our present story expanded by a combined aesthetic of social criticism and the emerging conventions of the fairy tale insofar as Mme. d’Aulnoy advances a parallel fairy world from which creatures emerge to take charge of the critical moments of all the characters in the tale.85
Distinct vestiges of the story survive in a folk tale included in Les contes populaires de la Basse-Bretagne entitled ‘Les trois filles du boulanger, ou l’eau qui danse, la pomme qui chante, et l’oiseau de vérité’ (The three daughters of the baker, or the dancing water, the singing apple, and the bird of truth). When the three girls are overheard, the king grants their fantasies by marrying the two older sisters to the valet and gardener respectively, while the one promising extraordinary children he takes for himself. Jealousy, in little time, drives the senior sisters to an old fairy to find ways to get even. The midwife helps by exchanging the queen’s babies with animals and sending the children down the Seine. The king’s gardener rescues the infants one by one, apparently to be raised incognito by the very aunt who sought their destruction. Meanwhile, the traduced queen is enclosed in a tower, there to subsist on bread and water. When the gardener and his wife die, the king brings the children into the palace to raise them, the stars on their brows still covered with bands. An itinerant witch arrives in due course to send the children in quest of the three enchanted objects. When the two brothers fail and the sister alone remains, she equips herself as a cavalier to find an old man, her future guide, whom she frees from 500 years of captivity by cutting his beard. By following his instructions to the letter, she is able to capture the bird and restore her brothers, although they do not recognize her and fret about returning home empty-handed. The king becomes so enamoured of the princess that he now wants her for his queen. Only then does the bird of truth speak up to prevent the unwitting crime. At last, the bands concealing their foreheads are removed, the rightful queen returns, not having aged at all during twenty years, while the midwife and the remaining sisters are burned.86 ‘Les deux frères et la soeur’ (Two brothers and their sister) is the thirteenth tale in Luzel’s Légendes chrétiennes wherein a scheming queen mother and a midwife exercise their destructive powers against the three children. The mother of the children, Marie, is maligned by her sisters, and after three tries is confined to a pit or ditch. The story maintains all of the subsequent episodes now familiar from Straparola’s tale except that, once again, the king falls in love with his daughter and must be dissuaded by the bird, which at last tells the story of the children’s birth and betrayal.87
This story was particularly popular in Gascony where several versions were collected in the last third of the nineteenth century by Jean-François Bladé. In ‘La mer qui chante, la pomme qui danse, et l’oisillon qui dit tout’ (The singing sea, the dancing apple, and the little bird that tells all), a story very similar to Straparola’s unfolds in brief but complete fashion. It begins with the three sisters overheard, the third promising to give birth to twins with golden chains between the skin and muscle of their arms, down to the reunion of the family through the truthspeaking bird. The king leaves a month before the birth of the twins, a boy and a girl, and returns only a week after. But through a pair of false letters, the young queen is led to expose the royal children on the high seas in answer to the king’s alleged command. Tenderly she dresses them, gives them suck for the last time, and sets them forth in a cradle. But upon the king’s return, his mother charges her daughter-in-law with infanticide, causing the king to order her decapitation. The distraught mother, now anxious to rejoin her children in heaven, gives thanks, which provokes the angry king to commute her punishment to eating scraps under his table. The twins, for a period of seven years, are raised by a fisherman and his wife, but when they are told the truth of their status they set off at that tender age to find their parents. Their seven-day trek takes them along the seashore until they reach an apple tree with its single poppy-coloured fruit. This is picked for them by a passing man, who tells them of its unique properties; he procures for them as well the magic bird that alights in the branches and instructs them that these two will indemnify the wicked woman who had thrown them into the sea. They then march directly to the palace of their father. There they beg for food, attain an audience with the king, and explain their quest. When the king asks how they will know their parents, they describe the golden chains on their arms, and thus their father reclaims them. When the king continues to kick their mother under the table, however, the children produce the apple and the bird, the one dancing on the old queen’s head, the other repeating the contents of her letters, making the entire truth known. Yet a long coda follows concerning the proper punishment for the old queen, who continually proclaims her innocence. Because no court could try a royal, and no son could condemn his own mother to death, the king sends her to a convent and then, most curiously, takes it upon himself to die in her place in an odd study of justice, jurisdiction, and obligation. Only when the executioner’s blades break before a blow can be delivered does the king accept his life. The entire story of the unfortunate children, including their simple quest and the pardon of their mother, is fully represented – this group of narratives from the Gers and Agenais supporting in their way the breadth and scope of the generic tale’s circulation and the certainty of its antiquity.88
Of interest, as well, is ‘Sun, Moon, and Morning Star,’ a Greek tale with charming substitutions.89 In this rendition, the three infants are replaced by a puppy, a kitten, and a mouse. They are brought up by a herdsman, while the mother spends her time enclosed in a chicken coop. The stepmother sends the nurse out disguised as a beggar woman to entice the girl to initiate a search for the musical bough, the magic mirror, and the bird named Dickjeretto. The brothers fail and are turned to stone, their misfortune revealed when their shirts back home turn black. But fortunes are altered when their sister completes the quest by snagging the magic bird from behind and reviving her brothers from their petrified state with the water of life. This story contains the episode of the sausage stuffed with diamonds employed at the final banquet, redolent of the jewel-filled cucumber in Galland’s analogue tale described above in Les mille et une nuits, neither necessitating the existence of this feature at the time of Straparola. In this scene, the bird has a dramatic role in laughing satyr-like from its perch as the hypocritical old queen whispers to the king, telling him the children are elves. The creature then mocks him, asking whether a woman can give birth to cats and dogs. And so the reversal is brought about.
In Germany, the story is most notably recorded by the Grimm Brothers as ‘Die drei Vügelkens’ (The three little birds), a version much reduced and damaged by the passage of time. The king meets three girls tending cows and marries the third. The two others are brought to the palace to attend the childbirth and, without provocation, they throw the newborn into the river. This motive is twice repeated, so that in sequence two boys and a girl are pulled out by a fisherman to be raised while the young queen is thrown into prison. In the quest section, the singing apple is suppressed. On the way out of the magic castle, with the bird and water in hand, the girl must strike a black dog with her wand, who is an enchanted prince now liberated from the captor animal. In rapid sequence the king meets the children during a hunting expedition, the bird provides the missing information, and all ends according to custom, except there is now a prince for the king’s daughter to marry (in keeping with the new model provided by Mme. d’Aulnoy’s ‘Princesse Belle-Étoile’), and the wicked queen mother has disappeared altogether.90
Heinrich Pröhle collected the story of ‘Leaping Water, Speaking Bird, and Singing Tree’ for his Kinder- und Volksmärchen, in which country sisters are overheard by the king, each one proposing to marry him, but only the third offering children marked with stars.91 The familiar story follows. When, in later years, the king meets up with his offspring, they are more like fairy children, for they ride their horses upon the water of a moat and refuse to acknowledge his call (perhaps redolent of the swan children). Word gets back of their survival and a sorceress is sent to tempt them into questing after all three magic objects at once in order to bring their enchanted garden to perfection. Their perilous journey remains oriental in spirit with a hermit guide, a mountain, and the distracting voices that can turn intruders to stone. Despite the cotton-stuffed ears of the sirens’ song tradition, however, both brothers succumb and become their own tombstones. The sister, of course, succeeds and resurrects her brothers.92 Their garden now becomes a fantasy of music and fountains where the king finds joy until the bird begins to speak of past truths, maintaining that the false sisters should be torn apart by four horses – and so it comes to pass, together with the restoration of the queen. So faithful a rendition of the oriental tale is to be attributed either to a finer preservation of the ancient tale than Straparola knew or to the new model provided by the publication of The Arabian Nights.
A final few tales must complete this survey of potentially monographic magnitude. First is ‘Die drei Königskinder’ (The king’s three children), elaborated by Johann Wilhelm Wolf in his Deutsche Hausmärchen. In this version a prince goes to the country to find a simple bride.93 There are no sisters and no promise of children with stars on their foreheads. But the mother-in-law still plays the villainess. A daughter is born, tossed into a stream, and rescued by a miller’s wife. A second daughter follows, supposedly stillborn, and the royal parents are heartbroken. Fifteen years must pass before the mother-in-law goes to the mill, sees the children, and suspects the truth. She tells the miller outright that they are the royal children and must be slain, but he allows them to escape on a donkey. On the road they encounter a magical mist which, at their bidding, erects for them a splendid palace. Then the quests begin. The old lady makes them wish for a bough bearing golden fruit to plant in their garden. The first brother is turned to a pillar of salt for looking back, but he has the branch in his possession. His sister goes in search of the speaking bird, but after capturing the bird, finds herself rigid beside her brother. The old queen, as a beggar woman, then creates a longing in the third and last for the leaping water. It is the water of restoration which, employed, brings them all home with their booty intact. They embellish their castle until news of its wonders comes to the king. He feels the affinity of blood kinship upon his arrival and then the speaking bird tells all. There are tears of joy. The old queen, for her part, is to be boiled in oil in accordance with her own words, but the children intercede so that she might languish in a dungeon instead. What a relief! These are among the salient examples of a story type elaborated by Straparola some three centuries earlier that was itself chosen from an established storytelling tradition based on Eastern materials. Whether the three parts were assembled by folk raconteurs in the West or the Near East by the mid-sixteenth century remains a moot point – the credit could even be granted to Straparola himself. But Straparola’s tale is proof that the type that found widespread diffusion throughout Europe, placing it among the most successful of all European folk tales, was known in assembled form in the Renaissance.94
Another version originates in Spain – one among many – entitled ‘Los siete infantes’ (The seven children), in which the three daughters tell the king their fantasies, the third one dreaming of children with stars on their foreheads. It is the devil himself who sends the letter to the king saying the young queen has given birth to seven dogs, at which point she is confined to a tower. The long questing story for the magic elements is not a part of this tale.95 Another tale, closely related, derives from Portugal and is called ‘As cunhadas do rei.’ This king, too, listens at doors and hears the three girls, the third promising children to the king with ‘estrela de ouro na testa’ (golden stars on their heads), and the Virgin later puts in an appearance to relieve the heroine in distress.96 The role of the fairies becomes a Christian miracle.
Guillaume Spitta-Bey confirmed the modern currency of the story type in Arabic-speaking nations in the ‘Histoire d’Arab-Zandyq.’ It preserves the three parts, with all the ‘oriental’ trappings. The king goes walking with his vizier and overhears the merchant’s three daughters imagining themselves as the queen. The king spends the night with each, asking them about their dreams. When the first two report that it was a harmless fantasy, he puts them to work in the royal kitchens as slaves. The third plays her part more wisely, but falls prey to the king’s other wife who is successful in her treachery. A fisherman recovers the two children, but their mother is chained to a balustrade for all to spit upon in passing (echoes of Galland’s tale in Les mille et une nuits). Years pass until the boy one day sells fish directly to the king. Connections are made that alarm the wicked other wife and her midwife accomplice. The boy is sent for the rose of Arab-Zandyq: a flower which sings and amuses, but is kept by a mistress who turns seekers to stone. Success only leads to a second mission, but in the end the boy negotiates with the dangerous girl and she not only takes him in marriage but sets the two of them up in a magic palace on the fisherman’s isle. Here are new circumstances for the denouement, for the king is invited with his entire army to a forty-day bash. When the king reciprocates, Arab-Zandyq liberates the innocent mother, dresses her royally, and leads her before the king, herself serving as the ‘bird’ of truth.97 A similar tale was reported by Emmanuel Cosquin. Black dogs replace the children, the queen is attached to a stairway for abuse, and the two jealous sisters throw the children into the sea in boxes. The adoptive parents are rewarded not by gems falling from the children’s hair, but by bathwater that turns to gold. This tale is resolved by an encounter with their father that does not necessitate the quest, a final reminder of the distinct parts of the story and their abilities to function as autonomous units.98
As a final note, the story also found favour with two important playwrights, the first of whom developed the plot into a critique of Enlightenment philosophy. Carlo Gozzi found his inspiration in Pompeo Sarnelli’s Posilecheata for his L’augellina belverde.99 Raymond Roussel, by contrast, turned the story into a study of creative genius in L’Étoile au front.100 With these two notices, the overview history of ‘the truth-speaking bird’ story type concludes – Straparola’s version having played a vital part in the story tradition as the first in the European record in which the three traditional parts are combined and fully represented. Moreover, the story of the accused queen and the abandoned children in which close kin betray the fertile mother and seek to destroy dynastic continuity is a plot with Dawkinsian overtones, for it is a tale of genes, survival, and the conflicting interests which threaten their future. There was something about the tale, despite its shadowy early record, that made it one of the most successful of all the Eurasian folk tales.
The coda to follow is concerned with matters of style and one aspect of Straparola’s working habits. The present story contains a minimally modified sequence of words from Boccaccio’s Corbaccio which Straparola combines with a passage from the Decameron (II.9). It is the speech on the excellence of man, representing a literary interpolation into a work undoubtedly derived from an oral source. That he might easily have paraphrased the passage makes the close wording an altogether more intriguing event. What was he doing: cutting corners, paying homage, exposing his own lack of inspiration, or simply working in the scissorsand-paste manner that was second nature to the well-garnished humanist mind brought up on gleanings and memorization from the classics? It is a substantial passage. For a sampling, Straparola writes, ‘e volse che egli signoreggiasse e non fosse signoreggiato,’ while in the Corbaccio, it is ‘animale perfetto nato a signoreggiare e non ad essere signoreggiato.’ Straparola picks up the ‘animale perfetto’ in his next sentence.101 On the whole, Straparola remains faithful to the simpler procedures of his oral sources, yet by exceptions such as these he proves himself well read in the literature which, for the most part, he refrains from imitating.