WHOLE books have been written on the different versions of single tales (see Select Bibliography, items by Cox, Dundes, etc.). What follows is a very small sample, in the form of summaries, chosen because they are relevant to Perrault’s versions, not in order to give a truly representative selection of any given tale. The reasons for inclusion are various: because they are more or less probable sources for Perrault, or vary significantly from his tales, or exemplify literary versions contemporary with his, or illustrate the French tradition for a particular tale.
Where possible I have tried to give not only the bare bones of these splendid stories but convey something of their style, sometimes by quotation. For readers who may be interested in pursuing the topic I give the numbers of the tale-type, as found in the basic reference work on folk-tale, known as Aarne-Thompson-Uther, ATU. This is the latest revision (2004), by Hans-Jörg Uther, of Aarne’s The Types of the Folktale, first published in 1928. For the tales by the Brothers Grimm included below I have used: Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm, Selected Tales, trans. Joyce Crick (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005) (referred to below as Crick), but give the tales their traditional numbering. For the French tales in my most important source, the marvellous repertoire of French folk-tales known as Delarue/Tenèze, I give the editors’ own type-numbers, which sometimes differ very slightly from the ATU numbering. I have mostly used two websites, edited respectively by D. L. Ashliman and Heidi Anne Heiner, for texts from The 1001 Nights, Straparola, Basile, and Jacobs. For Mlle Lhéritier, Mlle Bernard, and Mme d’Aulnoy, I have referred to the editions by Raymonde Robert and Nadine Jasmin. For further details on all these, see the Select Bibliography. References for some particular tales are given as required below.
ATU type 887, Griselda. I have used the translation of the Decameron by G. H. McWilliam (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), from which I take the quotations.
Boccaccio, Decameron, Tenth Day, Tenth Story: Gualtieri, the Marquis of Saluzzo, is urged by his subjects to marry, so as to ensure an heir, and they offer to assist in finding a suitable wife. In a speech he agrees to their request but states that he will find his wife for himself. He has been attracted by a village girl and arranges with her father to marry her. Announcing his intention to his subjects, he tells them to honour his wife whoever she may be. He makes arrangements and, with a large escort, goes to fetch the unwitting bride. He asks her whether she will always obey him, try to please him, and never be upset by his words or actions; she promises it all. She is then stripped naked before everyone, reclothed and crowned, and the marriage takes place on the spot. As his wife she behaves perfectly to everyone, earning great respect from his subjects, and complies in every way with Gualtieri’s wishes. A daughter is born; ‘but shortly thereafter Gualtieri was seized with the strange desire to test Griselda’s patience, by subjecting her to constant provocation and making her life unbearable’. He feigns anger, telling her that his subjects are discontented with her as a mother because of her previous humble status; she responds with docility. Soon after he sends a man to remove the daughter, apparently to have her put to death. Despite her grief she submits without protest. The child is sent to a relative of Gualtieri’s. Similar events occur with the birth of a son, Gualtieri now claiming that the people complain even more because a peasant’s grandson will be their lord. Griselda remains outwardly unmoved (although she has been seen ‘doting upon the children’) when the son also is taken. Years later Gualtieri decides, in a final test, to obtain a papal dispensation allowing him to divorce her and remarry; he arranges for forged letters from Rome to arrive. He tells her that because of her social inferiority she must return to her father as she came, and that he will marry a woman of higher status. In a speech, she accepts his decisions and returns the wedding ring, but recalling her nakedness asks, in return for her virginity, that she should leave wearing at least a smock. Gualtieri, though moved almost to tears, sternly agrees, not allowing the pleas of those present to affect him. Her father, unsurprised, has kept her clothes; she keeps house for him as before. Gualtieri makes preparations for another marriage, and sends for Griselda, telling her to get the house ready for the new bride. ‘Since Griselda was unable to lay aside her love for Gualtieri as readily as she had dispensed with her good fortune, his words pierced her heart like so many knives.’ She herself in peasant’s dress sweeps, tidies, and gives instructions for the decoration of the rooms, then on the wedding day welcomes the guests. The children are brought, but the daughter’s identity is carefully kept secret; Griselda welcomes her. When asked by Gualtieri to give her opinion, she praises the girl, but begs him ‘not to inflict those same wounds on her that you imposed upon her predecessor’. Seeing her accept the situation still without protest, Gualtieri makes a speech, explaining that his intention was to show her and his people what a wife should be, and that the torments he had made her suffer were intended to prove that he would have peace; now he would make amends. ‘These are your children … and I am your husband, who loves you above all else.’ Joyous reunions follow, with celebrations for days. Gualtieri is regarded as wise but Griselda ‘the wisest of all’ and her ordeal ‘harsh and intolerable’. Her father is treated with honour, her daughter married to a gentleman, and she and Gualtieri live happily together. The final comments compare her to an angel and him to a swineherd, praise her constancy, and suggest that she would have been justified in finding another man after she had been driven out.
ATU type 510B, Peau d’Asne; Grimms no. 15 (see below). Straparola’s version appears to be a Donkey-Skin tale with motifs from other types, such as the calumniated queen near the end. Perrault’s tale is in outline and some stylistic features close to Basile, but Basile’s version lacks the demands made for dresses, and when the heroine leaves home she is transformed, not simply disguised; there is nothing about a donkey, except that the animal is mentioned in two passages.
Straparola, Doralice (Piacevole Notte, vol. i, Tale 4, a long adventure story): The father of Doralice, a prince of Salerno, remains faithful to his dead wife’s wish that he should not remarry; her condition was that only if her ring fitted another woman perfectly could Tebaldo marry her. However, by chance the daughter tries the ring on and says to her father that it fits; not long after, he is ‘assailed by a strange and diabolical temptation’ to take her to wife. Doralice, when she hears ‘the evil designs of her wicked father was deeply troubled in her heart’, but is afraid of him and says nothing; she consults her old nurse, who, fearing that mere flight will not succeed, devises a trick: Doralice swallows a potion which puts her to sleep, and is hidden in a clothes-chest, in which she is taken to England. Here she makes her way into a prince’s bedroom, still concealed, and looks after it; she is discovered and marries the Prince. The story thereafter concerns their two children and Tebaldo’s cunning and ruthless pursuit of revenge (he murders the children, making it look as if their mother had killed them). Eventually, after ever more extraordinary events, the nurse saves Doralice from a terrible death and the villain meets a fitting and no less terrible end.
Basile, L’Orza (‘The She-Bear’), Pentamerone, Day 2, Tale 6: A king’s wife dies, making him promise not to remarry; after mourning briefly, he seeks a new wife everywhere, but decides that his wife’s conditions are met only by his daughter Preziosa. She rebuffs him immediately and firmly, whereupon he orders her to marry him the same evening. She explains her plight to an old woman, who says: ‘When your father comes to you this evening—donkey that he is, wanting to act the stallion—put this piece of wood into your mouth, and you will at once become a she-bear.’ This happens, and frightens the King; Preziosa, as advised by the old woman, runs away to the forest, where she is seen by another king’s son. The she-bear and the Prince form an attachment. One day he sees her in her human form, falls in love, and becomes ill. His mother agrees to his wish that the bear should be in his room and cook for him, which she does, so well that the Queen understands why he is fond of her and allows him and the bear to kiss. ‘While thus engaged, I do not know how it happened, but the piece of wood fell from Preziosa’s mouth, and she remained in the Prince’s embrace, the most beautiful and ravishing being in the world.’ All is explained and the lovers marry; nothing more is said of the father.
There is much humour, as in Perrault, but of a folksy, burlesque kind.
Brothers Grimm, no. 65, Allerleirauh (‘All Kinds of Fur’ or ‘Coat o’ Skins; Crick, 184), is itself found in several versions, from 1812 until 1857. Very briefly: the condition imposed by the Queen who dies is that any future wife of the King should have hair as golden as hers; envoys he sends to search cannot find such a woman, but when the daughter grows up the King falls in love with her. She like his councillors is horrified. On her own initiative she requests three dresses (like sun, like moon, like stars) and a coat made from the skins of every kind of animal, believing that since he cannot give her such things he will no longer pursue her. But he succeeds, and she runs away, to be found in the forest and taken to a palace kitchen. She does the worst work and is mistreated by the cook (an important character), but makes soups for the King in which she places gifts, including a ring; eventually she appears in her dresses, wins the King’s love and marries him.
Delarue/Tenèze ii. 256, conte-type, La Peau d’Ânon (‘The Little Donkey’s Skin’), recorded c. 1885 in east central France: A prince and his wife have a daughter; the wife dies, making the Prince promise never to marry unless it is a woman like herself. In due course he tells his daughter that he wants to marry her. She consults her godmother, who tells her to consent on condition only that he gives her a spinning-wheel which spins by itself. After a long search he finds one. The same happens when she asks for three dresses, like the stars, the sun, and the moon; and for a cabriolet drawn by four rats. The godmother tells her to leave in this, taking all the gifts with her; she will meet shepherds who will sell her a young donkey and skin it for her to wear, when she must look for any kind of menial work. All this happens, and she is employed as a shepherdess, setting the wheel to spin meanwhile. The son and daughter of the estate where she works go to dances, laughing at her when she asks to go too, but the mother allows her to go, for each of three times, beating her beforehand first with a cloth, then a broom, then a poker, but permitting her on each occasion to stay longer. Each time she wears a different dress and is asked where she comes from, answering first ‘the land of the cloth’, then of the broom, then of the poker. Back home she is told about the beautiful, unknown girl and is mocked when she replies that the girl was no more beautiful than herself. At the last dance it is the King’s son who asks her where she comes from; when she leaves, he follows the light of her dress in the darkness and sees her put on the donkey-skin. He falls in love and insists on having a cake made by the shepherdess. She comes to cook for him. While she does so he plucks at the donkey-skin; she pretends to think it is the cat. She puts her ring into the cake before leaving. Finding it, he announces that he will marry its owner. All others having failed to make it fit, she appears in the donkey-skin. When the ring is seen to fit her the Prince says he will wed her and removes the skin, to show her wearing the sun dress beneath. She writes to tell her father, who comes to the wedding.
ATU type 750A, The Three Wishes, second form.
Philippe de Vigneulles, untitled story, no. 78 in Cent nouvelles nouvelles (‘A Hundred New Stories’), c. 1505–15; from the edition by Charles H. Livingston (Geneva, 1972), 302–7. This begins with a version of ATU type 1430, The Man and his Wife Build Air Castles: A poor and lazy man has an industrious wife, who gets enough milk one Sunday to make a good lot of cheese. Counting on this, they indulge in wishful thinking about getting rich and powerful, until the man gets so excited by the prospect that he spills the milk. Enraged, the wife throws him out, and on his return, seeking to persuade her that she was also to blame, he tells a story against another wife: a poor and lazy couple (like himself, he says), prayed hard and often to God to make them rich. God, ‘seeing that their prayers were not founded in reason’, granted them three wishes. Delighted at first, they soon quarrel over which of them should wish first. Fearing to lose her opportunity, the wife makes a wish that her cauldron should have a new leg to replace the broken one. The husband is furious, and ‘wishes the leg inside her belly’. With it inside, she will die if it is not removed; the neighbours, hearing her cries, all come in, and tell him that he will be a murderer unless he wishes the leg out again. ‘Thus were the three wishes all lost and turned to nothing.’ The man decides that the poor are destined always to be poor.
Delarue/Tenèze iv (2). 122; conte-type, Les Quatre souhaits (‘The Four Wishes’), recorded 1883 in Brittany; told by François Marquet, a cabin-boy, aged 16: A poor couple with one son do not have enough to eat. One day when they are resting after working hard, they meet Jesus, who is sympathetic and gives them an ox, telling them that if they cut off its legs they will have four wishes. They take it home and do as directed, wishing each time ‘by the virtue of the leg’; first the wife wishes that her son should be bearded like his father, whereupon he grows a large beard and the leg returns under the ox, ‘so perfectly joined that it was as if it had never been cut off ‘. Horrified by the boy’s ugliness the wife wishes it removed; and the second leg returns to the ox. The husband storms at his wife, and wishes that she had an ox’s leg stuck to her behind, which happens. With only the last wish remaining, the husband offers to ask for gold and silver, so that he will be able to make a golden cover for the leg. She refuses, and herself wishes that the leg might disappear. The ox is now as it had been, and the final comment is that the couple were neither richer nor poorer than before.
The Three Wishes, in Joseph Jacobs, More English Folk Tales, New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, s.d., first published 1894: A woodman intending to fell a huge oak is addressed by a fairy who implores him not to. Amazed, he agrees, and she grants him three wishes. When he is at home all thoughts of the wishes have gone, but on being told that he will have to wait for his supper he wishes for ‘a good link of black pudding’; it at once comes down the chimney. His wife exclaims in astonishment and he recalls what happened that morning. She tells him he is a fool and wishes that the length of sausage was on his nose. It sticks there and they cannot pull it off. He asks what to do. ‘T’isn’t so very unsightly’, she says, but he makes a wish for it to be removed. The final comment is that although they did not become rich they had good black pudding for supper.
ATU type 410, Sleeping Beauty; Grimms no. 50, Dornröschen (‘Briar-Rose’, which must be derived from Perrault but ends with the marriage; Crick, 323). Delarue/Tenèze, in their Commentary (ii. 70) on the tale, do not regard the version they give as evidence that Perrault’s source was a French oral tradition, believing that he used Basile.
Basile, Sole, Luna e Talia (‘Sun, Moon, and Talia’), Pentamerone, Day V, Tale v: A lord has a daughter, Talia. Astrologers predict that she will be in danger from ‘a splinter of flax’; he bans it from his house. One day from the window she sees a woman spinning, tries to do it herself, gets a point of flax under her nail, and falls dead. The body is laid out and left abandoned in the lord’s country mansion, sitting on a throne. A king out hunting enters the house following his falcon which has flown in, fails to awaken the girl, but is excited and has intercourse with her. Still unconscious, she bears boy and girl twins, called Sun and Moon, and is attended by fairies. Seeking the breast one day, the babies suck on her finger, drawing out the flax, and she comes back to life. The King returns to her and comes to love her more and more; his wife becomes suspicious. She frightens a servant into revealing the truth, and makes him ask Talia to send the children to the King. The Queen orders them to be killed and cooked, but the cook hides them with his wife and prepares lamb instead, which the Queen serves to the King, constantly repeating to him that he is ‘eating of his own’. Eventually, irritated, he goes away, whereupon the Queen sends for Talia. Insulting her and refusing to believe her innocent, she prepares a pyre in which to throw her. Talia asks to undress, screaming as she removes each garment; at the last and loudest scream the King reappears. The Queen reproaches him and tells him that he has eaten the children; she is thrown into the fire, together with the servant. The cook, also threatened with burning, is able to explain in time; father and children are reunited and the cook rewarded.
The Ninth Captain’s Tale (The 1001 Nights): A woman, unable to conceive, prays for a daughter even if she is not proof against the smell of flax; she bears a fair and delicate girl, Sittukhan, with whom a sultan’s son falls in love. It makes him ill; an old woman discovers the cause and offers to help. She advises Sittukhan to learn to spin, which, despite her mother’s protests, she does, but faints when a piece of flax gets behind her nail. The old woman tells the parents not to bury her but put her on an ivory bed in a pavilion in a river, then tells the sick Prince where she is. Finding her, he takes her hand to kiss it, sees the flax and draws it out; then he stays forty nights before leaving, but returns immediately three times on seeing beautiful things—flowers, carobs, a fountain—which remind him of Sittukhan. At last he bids her farewell for ever, whereupon, grieving, she finds a speaking cornelian ring, which gives her even greater beauty and a palace next to the Prince’s. He sees her and again falls in love, without recognizing her; he asks his mother to take her precious gifts, brocade, which Sittukhan has cut up, then emeralds, which she gives to pigeons. She tells the Queen that if her son wishes to marry her he must feign death, be wrapped in a shroud and buried in her garden; this is done, and when he is left in the garden she makes herself known and they live together happily.
Delarue/Tenéze ii. 68, La Belle endormie (‘The Sleeping Beauty’), recorded in the late nineteenth century in south-western France: A rich but ugly and repellent prince asks to marry a beautiful princess, and a meeting between them is arranged at a fair. She refuses him. A fairy godmother of the Prince casts a sleeping spell on her, and she lies sleeping for over a hundred years in a castle, which falls into ruins. No one dares to enter it until a prince loses his way when hunting; having been given shelter and poor food in a hovel he cuts his way into the castle. She wakes and cannot understand what has happened; they marry and live happily.
ATU Type 333, Little Red Riding-Hood. I summarize the Grimms’ version because it has superseded Perrault’s Petit chaperon rouge as the typical form of the story. The version in Delarue/Tenèze below, and others like it, have attracted much critical attention. The mysterious paths were explicated, with reference to rural customs for girls about the age of puberty, by Yvonne Verdier in an influential article which has often been discussed (for instance in Zipes, Trials … of Little Red Riding Hood, 5–8; see the Select Bibliography).
Grimms no. 26, Rottkäppchen (‘Little Redcap’; Crick, 91. She includes the sequel, often omitted): A much-loved little girl is known as Little Redcap from the red velvet cap given to her by her grandmother. Her mother sends her one day with cake and wine as a treat for the grandmother, who is ill, and warns her firmly not to stray. As Little Redcap enters the forest where her grandmother’s house is she meets a wolf and, unafraid, explains her errand in detail. The wolf suggests that she should pay more attention to the flowers and birds, and she begins to collect a posy, straying from the path, while he goes straight to the grandmother’s house. He pretends to be the girl and is told to come in. He eats the grandmother and gets into her bed dressed in her clothes. Little Redcap eventually enters, finding everything strange, and seeing the ‘grandmother’ exclaims at his ears, eyes, hands, and mouth, at which the wolf ‘took one leap out of the bed and swallowed Little Redcap all up’. Then he falls asleep. Hearing loud snores, a passing huntsman looks in, finds the wolf, and cuts open his stomach, releasing the girl and her grandmother unharmed. Little Redcap then puts stones inside the wolf instead, which causes him to die when he wakes and tries to run off. The huntsman gets the skin, the grandmother recovers with the cake and wine, and Little Redcap reflects that she will never stray again.
At some later date, Little Redcap, on a similar errand, meets another wolf, but is not to be led astray and on arrival tells her grandmother about him. The wolf, pretending to be the little girl, fails to get in, and climbs on to the roof to lie in wait for her. Her grandmother tells her to pour the water from a boiling of sausages into a trough outside, and the smell so tempts the wolf that he slides down the roof, falls, and is drowned.
Delarue/Tenèze i. 373: conte-type from east central France: A mother gives her daughter milk and a bun to take to her grandmother. She meets a werewolf, who tells her to take the needles path, while he takes the pins path; she picks up needles as she goes. The werewolf kills and eats the grandmother but puts some of her flesh and blood on one side. When she enters, he tells her to leave the milk and bun and take the meat and wine which is there; the voice of a cat tells her that she is a filthy girl to eat her grandmother’s flesh and blood. The werewolf tells her to undress and get into bed with him. As she takes off each garment she asks what to do with it and is told to burn it since she will have no need for it. In bed, she exclaims at the wolf’s hairiness, claws, ears, and so on, and he replies. When she comes to his mouth and he says ‘to eat you’, she tells him that she needs to relieve herself. Despite being told to do it in the bed, she insists on going outside; the wolf ties her by a piece of wool, but she attaches it to a cherry-tree and runs off. When the wolf discovers that she has gone he chases her, but she reaches home in time.
ATU type 312, The Maiden-Killer (Bluebeard). Delarue subdivides, giving Types 311,312 A, and 312B (Delarue/Tenèze i. 182). The closest to Perrault is 312A; 312B has the framework of a Hansel and Gretel tale. The Brothers Grimm included in their first edition a version (no. 30) very like Perrault’s, but no doubt for that reason dropped it later; see Crick, 290, 321.
Delarue/Tenèze i. 182; conte-type 311, Le Gros Cheval blanc (‘The Great White Horse’), recorded in 1946 in Canada: A great white horse abducts girls from a village. A widow with three daughters is forced by her need for firewood to send them, one by one, to collect wood from the forest, where in turn they are caught by the horse (but each time he has to come nearer to their house). He tells them to clean his house while he is out during the day, giving them keys but forbidding them to enter one particular room. The two older sisters, on doing so, see dead girls hanging with their throats cut; scared, each drops the key into the blood, which they cannot remove. The horse on his return demands the key, sees the blood, and kills them. The third daughter, however, having recognized her sisters among the corpses, keeps hold of the key. She replaces their heads, and over two days takes them to the barn and wraps them in straw. The horse, seeing the key free of blood, agrees to her request to take the packages back to her mother. On the third day the youngest daughter makes a large rag doll and puts it in her place by the butter-churn to deceive the horse. Then she wraps herself in straw and is carried back also. The horse on realizing the deceit stamps on the floor so hard that he breaks through it, and is never seen again.
Conte-type 312A, Le Père Jacques, from the Vendée area: Bluebeard has killed six wives, and takes a seventh; he goes away, giving her a key but forbidding her to use it. She does so, and sees the six murdered women hanging in their wedding-dresses. She drops the key, it is stained by blood, and she cannot wash it clean. Searching the other rooms she finds an old man, Father Jacques, kept captive in a tower as a lookout. On hearing what she has done he tells her that she will be killed, and that her husband had put something beneath the feet of the other wives which first made them laugh, but then hurt them. The wife sends her dog to her brothers with a message for help. The husband returns, sees the key, and tells her to put on her wedding clothes before she dies. In her room, she plays for time by saying to his repeated requests that she is putting on first this, then that item of clothing. Meanwhile he sharpens his knife, repeating a bloodthirsty refrain as he does so, and she keeps asking Jacques if her brothers are coming. At the moment when she has to admit that she is ready, they arrive and kill him.
Conte-type 312B, from east central France, recorded in about 1885: Two lost sisters are taken in by a housewife, who gives them food to eat that they do not recognize. Then they are shut in a dark room, and threatened with being cooked when her devil husband returns. He removes the elder sister’s clothes one by one, with an accompanying series of questions and answers, while the girl asks her sister each time whether she can see anyone coming: a little woman and a little white man are approaching. This couple, who are the Virgin and Jesus, appear as the devil reaches the child’s last garment; he and his wife are thrown into the oven.
A version given in abbreviated form, Comorre, 191, recorded in 1853 in Brittany, has many elements from the 312A type, but not the key. Comorre, who has married four times already, marries Tryphina, the daughter of a lord. He goes away, leaving her behind. On his return, finding that she is pregnant, he says he will kill her. She is able to escape with the help of the four dead wives, who give her the instruments of their execution (poison, rope, fire, club). She is pursued and killed, but resuscitated by St Veltas. Comorre dies when his castle falls in ruins. On Comorre or Conmar, a historical figure, and the connection between Bluebeard and Brittany, see Warner, Beast to Blonde, 260–2.
ATU type 545, The Cat Helper. With this tale it is the earlier Italian writer, Straparola, who is closer to Perrault than Basile. The tale in Delarue/Tenèze illustrates a French tradition which differs considerably from Perrault.
Straparola, Costantino il Fortunato (‘Lucky Costantino’), Piacevole Notte, Night XI, Tale i: Costantino, the third son of a poor woman who dies, is left only the cat; his brothers treat him harshly, refusing to give him any of the food they get. The cat by chance is a fairy, who from compassion tells her master that she can help, and catching a young hare she gives it to the King as a present from her master, whom she describes as good-looking and virtuous. She returns to him with food which she has taken surreptitiously (and which he refuses to offer to his brothers). Costantino having suffered from his privations she takes him to the river, washes his skin, and cures him. She continues to offer presents from him to the King, but getting bored she tells her master that if he will follow her instructions she will make him rich. Taking him to the river near the King’s palace she tells him to strip and get in, then cries out that Costantino is drowning. He is rescued by the King’s servants. The cat tells him that Costantino was bringing jewels as a present but was attacked and robbed. The King decides to give his daughter in marriage to the goodlooking young man, whom he believes to be rich, but when the time comes for the couple, with their escort, to repair to Costantino’s castle he has to ask the cat for help. She goes ahead and on meeting some riders tells them that they will be attacked by an approaching force of mounted men; to avoid trouble they must say that they serve Messer Costantino. The same happens with herdsmen and drovers she meets. All tell the King that they serve Costantino. When the cat arrives at a castle she gives the same instructions to the soldiers on guard there; as it happens the castle’s owner was away and had met with a fatal accident, so that Costantino takes possession without difficulty. In due course, having married the King’s daughter, he becomes king himself.
Basile, Gagliuso, Pentamerone, Day II, Tale iv: Remarks against ingratitude introduce the tale. A poor man from Naples dies, leaving to his elder son a sieve, which he is able to use to make money, and a cat to the younger son, who on bemoaning his fate is told by the cat that she can help him. She catches fish in the bay, and gets birds from the fowlers, and takes them to the King as a present, praising Gagliuso. Eventually the King asks to meet him; next day, the cat explains that his servants have stolen all his clothes; the King sends some in replacement. At the banquet they are given the cat has to cover for Gagliuso’s ill-bred remarks. She tells the King that Gagliuso’s estates further north are vast enough for him to marry a princess; the King sends a group of officials with her to see; in advance, she tells herdsmen and farmers that if they wish to avoid being attacked by the group approaching, they must say that their animals and farms all belong to Gagliuso. Informed of Gagliuso’s apparently endless wealth the King, through the good offices of the cat, arranges for his daughter to marry him. After a month the couple set off north, Gagliuso buying a baron’s estate with the dowry he has been given. He promises eternal gratitude to the cat, but she, to test him, pretends to be dead, whereupon Gagliuso expresses no regret but tells his wife to throw the body out of the window. With long and bitter reproaches the cat ‘threw her cloak about her, and went her way’, disregarding his efforts to pacify her.
Delarue/Tenèze ii. 339, conte-type, Monsieur Dicton, recorded 1911 in western France: M. Dicton, a poor man whose ‘castle’ is a hovel, is helped by Renard the fox, who asks to have his only three chickens, one at a time; in return, he first persuades a flock of pheasants to follow him to the King’s palace, on the pretext that their tails will be gilded there; he presents them as a gift from M. Dicton. Next he does the same with a flock of woodcock. The third time Renard takes M. Dicton, now in a bad state from hunger, and they find some deer; deceiving them as before, he takes them to the King, who wishes to thank M. Dicton personally. Before he does so, Renard explains his haggard state by saying that he has been attacked and robbed. The King is invited to visit M. Dicton’s castle, Renard going on ahead and ordering the countryfolk to say that all the land around belongs to M. Dicton. Coming to a castle where a party is in progress, he warns its owners that the King is coming with an army to attack them, and hides them in heaps of straw. The King arrives, the food is devoured, and the fox suggests lighting the straw as a celebration, which rids the countryside of the owners to M. Dicton’s benefit.
ATU type 480, The Kind and the Unkind Girls; Grimms no. 24, Frau Holle (Crick, 86; more elaborate than the Perrault tale). This type is known traditionally as ‘Diamonds and Toads’, but more usually now as ‘The Kind and Unkind Girls’. It is very common, and often regarded as intrinsically connected with the Cinderella type. I give a sample of the French tradition from Delarue/Tenèze. It seems likely that Perrault knew the tale personally as a separate entity; I give Basile’s version which has further episodes, together with that published by Mlle Lhéritier, exactly contemporaneous with Perrault’s, but designed to give a somewhat different lesson from his.
Delarue/Tenèze ii. 188, conte-type, Les Deux Filles, la laide et la jolie (‘The Two Daughters, One Ugly and One Pretty’), recorded 1870–5 in the Lyons area: The mother treats the younger, disagreeable, and lazy daughter well, but mistreats the elder, kindly one, making her work. Going to fetch water, she meets the Virgin, who asks her to delouse her hair and enquires what she finds in it; ‘gold crowns’, says the girl, and is given a box which she is to open at home. When she does so she becomes beautiful. The other daughter, going on the same errand, is asked to do the same for the Virgin, but says she has found lice and fleas; she is given a box which makes her ugly when she opens it. However, the mother goes on treating them in the same way as before.
Basile, Le Doie Pizzele (‘The Two Cakes’), Pentamerone, Day IV, Tale vii: Two sisters, one good and one bad, each have a daughter who resembles her mother. The good cousin, Marziella, sent to get water from a fountain, asks beforehand for a cake to eat there; she sees a hunchback woman who begs a piece, but she gives her the whole cake, and is rewarded: flowers will fall from her mouth, jewels from her hair, and wherever she walks lilies and roses will grow. The next day her mother takes some of the jewels to a usurer. While she is away her aunt visits and hears what has happened; hastening home she sends her daughter Puccia on the same errand, but on meeting the same old woman Puccia eats the cake in front of her; as punishment she will foam at the mouth, her hair will drop toads, and ferns and thistles will grow as she passes. From here on, the story turns to romance between Marziella and a prince, who having heard about her from her brother, wants to see her, but her aunt tries to drown her and sends Puccia instead, with dire consequences; Marziella and the Prince eventually meet through the kind offices of geese that she has fed.
Mlle Lhéritier, Les Enchantements de l’éloquence, ou les Effets de la douceur (‘The Enchantments of Eloquence, or The Effects of a Sweet Nature’), in her Œuvres mêlées, 1695: Blanche is the daughter of a widowed marquis, a worthy man who loses much money and marries a rich widow. She and her daughter Alix are both coarse; they hate Blanche, and she is made to do menial tasks, which she does well. Alix, well dressed and bejewelled, nonetheless has no suitors. Blanche, who reads novels for consolation, is caught by her stepmother but defended by her father, who speaks at length about the educative value of fiction. The family being in the country for the summer, Blanche is sent to fetch water in a wild area at some distance; she is accidentally hurt by a prince out hunting, and impresses him with her sophisticated conversation. Finding out about the family from villagers, the Prince asks one of his fairy godmothers, Dulcicula, to provide a cure for the girl’s injury. She visits the family, and is repelled by Alix’s hostility and struck by Blanche’s charm; her gifts are that the former will be even worse and the latter even better. Cured, Blanche is sent again for water, meets a fine lady and when asked gives her a drink, with great politeness, and again impresses by her conversation. The lady, another fairy godmother, called Eloquentia Nativa, gives her the gift of jewels that come from her mouth. At home, everyone seizes on them. Her stepmother sends Alix to fetch water, despite her protests. This time Eloquentia is dressed as a peasant girl, and on asking to drink from Alix’s jug is sent packing, with abuse, and then threatened with violence; she leaves Alix with the gift of spitting out toads, snakes, spiders, and other unpleasant creatures. When this happens, even her mother is repelled by her. Eloquentia takes Blanche to the Prince, whom she marries; Alix wanders the country, falls into destitution and dies alone.
ATU type 510A, Cinderella; Grimms no. 21, Aschenputtel (Crick, 78). From the multitude of versions available, the first and second below, from French and Scottish oral tradition, are versions in which the meeting with the Prince occurs at church; in one it is through the father that Cinderella obtains magic gifts, in the other through the mother. The differences between Basile’s version and Perrault’s imply that he based his on one he knew personally. See also Mme d’Aulnoy’s tale Finette-Cendron, summarized below with Hop o’ my Thumb tales.
Delarue/Tenèze i. 248; conte-type, Cendrouse, recorded in 1892 in Poitou: In a rich family with no mother there are two proud sisters and a third, known as Cendrouse, because she likes to be by the hearth. Her sisters often tease her. When they go out she remains at home. Their father goes away to a fair, and asks them what they would like him to bring back; the elder sisters ask for dresses, the third for a hazelnut. When they have the dresses the two go to Mass in them. Cendrouse, opening the nut, finds in it, besides clothes, a coach with driver and horses. With these she too attends Mass. On their return her sisters tell her of the beautiful young lady who was there, to which she says that the lady was no more beautiful than herself; she is mocked. The same happens on the next Sunday, but this time she drops a slipper (‘une pantoufle’); it is picked up by a king’s son, who swears that he will marry the woman it fits. Next Sunday, all the women try it on, without success, but when Cendrouse arrives, dressed as usual, the slipper fits her; she and the Prince depart together in the coach from the nutshell.
Rashin Coatie: a northern Scottish version first recorded by Andrew Lang; text in Neil Philip, The Cinderella Story, 60–2: The daughter of a widower who remarries has been left nothing by her mother except a red calf. The stepmother and her three ugly daughters ‘did na like the little lassie because she was bonny’, and make her wear a ‘rashin coatie’ (‘a garment made from rush fibres’; Philip, 60). She has to sit in a corner of the kitchen and eat scraps, but the red calf gives her all she asks for. The stepmother has it killed. It tells the weeping Rashin Coatie to pick up its bones and bury them under a grey stone. At Christmas everyone except her goes to church in their best clothes, but she has to stay behind to cook the meal. Not knowing how to, she is given a spell to say by the red calf, together with fine clothes to go to church in; ‘she was the grandest and the brawest lady there’. A prince falls in love with her. Back home, she is in her coat with the dinner ready when the others return; told about the fine lady, she asks to go with them next day but is rudely rebuffed. The same things happen next day, with ‘brawer claes’; on the third day, the Prince tries to prevent her leaving, ‘but she jumped ower their heads and lost one of her beautiful satin slippers’. The Prince announces that he will marry the one whom it fits. When nobody can put it on, the stepmother cuts the heel and toes of one of her daughters and it is forced on. She goes with the Prince to be married, but a bird repeatedly sings a rhyme saying that the slipper does not fit her, but does fit the one ‘in the kitchen neuk’. The Prince, suspicious, gets the truth from the stepmother. Before he can try the slipper on Rashin Coatie, she goes to the grey stone and returns dressed more richly than ever; ‘and the slipper jumped out of his pocket and on to her foot’.
Basile, La Gatta Cenerentola (‘The Cat Cinderella’), Pentamerone, Day I, Tale vi: A widowed prince has a daughter Zezolla, whose governess treats her with affection, but he gets married again, to ‘a wicked jade’ who is hostile to her. She frequently confides her sorrows to Carmosina, the governess, saying that she wished she had her as mother. Eventually Carmosina offers to give her advice; she accepts. The suggestion is that she should entice the stepmother to look into a big clothes-chest and kill her by bringing down the lid on her neck. Zezolla carries this out, and later cajoles her father until he marries Carmosina. At the wedding a dove appears and tells Zezolla that if she sends any request to the Dove of the Fairies in Sardinia it will be granted. Carmosina discloses that she has six daughters from a marriage previously concealed, and ensures good treatment for them, while Zezolla is reduced to being a kitchenmaid. Before a journey to Sardinia, the father promises his stepdaughters the gifts that they want; Zezolla asks only to be remembered to the Dove of the Fairies, but warns that if he forgets he will be unable to stir. He does forget, and his ship cannot move from port until the captain has a dream in which he is told of the father’s negligence. He goes to the fairies’ grotto and is given a kind message and a date-tree for Zezolla, with a hoe, a golden bucket, and a silk cloth to tend it. When she plants it it soon grows tall, and from it comes a fairy, who gives her a spell to recite, through which the tree will provide her with fine clothes. A feast-day comes round and the sisters attend the ball; Zezolla recites the spell and receives a pony, rich garments, and pages to attend her. The young King is entranced, and sends a servant to follow her, but she delays him by throwing down gold coins. Back at home, the sisters tell her what she has missed by not going to the ball. The next day she receives from the date-tree more finery, a coach-and-six, and liveried attendants; the King falls in love. This time she escapes the servant by throwing down jewels. The third time, the spell brings her a golden coach and numerous attendants. As she leaves the ball, the King’s servant follows the coach; she tells the coachman to go at full speed and in the rush drops one of her slippers. The servant brings it to the King, who orders every woman to attend a banquet; the slipper fits none of them. When he enquires if all are present, Zezolla’s father confesses that he has not brought her because she is ‘such a graceless simpleton’. After another banquet next day, the slipper darts on to her foot of its own accord. She is crowned queen, and her stepsisters depart in rage.
This is not of folk-tale origin, but would appear to have developed out of some kind of collaboration between Perrault, Mlle Lhéritier, and Mlle Bernard. I summarize the two women authors’ tales below, as examples of the more literary treatment of a fairy-tale theme. The ambiguous and uncomfortable ending of Mlle Bernard’s tale is considered by Collinet, 291, to anticipate the plot of the main novel, in which the heroine is married against her will. Perrault’s version can be related to tales of the Frog-Prince type (ATU type 440; Grimms no. 1), in which a princess has a suitor of some repugnant form whom she eventually finds attractive after all.
Catherine Bernard: Riquet à la houppe, in her novel Inès de Cordoue, 1696: A prince and princess have a beautiful but stupid daughter called Mama, too stupid to realize it; she meets a hideously ugly man who emerges from the ground and tells her that the reason why she is neglected in gatherings is her lack of intelligence, but that he can make her intelligent by putting a spell on her, on condition that she marries him after a year has passed. She agrees, without understanding what she is agreeing to, and soon becomes clever as well as attractive. She has many suitors, of whom she prefers the handsomest, Arada. But when the year is up Riquet appears, and tells her he is the king of the goblins, living underground; in view of her reluctance, he gives her two days to make her mind up to marry him and stay intelligent. She marries him but cannot reconcile herself to his ugliness. She gets a message to Arada, who joins her, but Riquet finds out. Angry, he revises the spell so that she is clever only for him, during the night. However, she finds a way to keep him asleep and to continue her love-affair. One day, by accident, her ruse is discovered, and Riquet finds the lovers together; this time the spell he casts is that Arada and he should look exactly the same. The story ends at this point with the remark that lovers always become husbands eventually.
Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier: Ricdin-Ricdon, an episode in her novel, La Tour ténébreuse et les jours lumineux (‘The Dark Tower and Days of Light’), 1705, supposedly from an ancient chronicle written by Richard Lionheart: The intricate plot concerns a village girl, Rosanie. She is seen by a prince being bullied by her mother and is taken by him to court to work at spinning; her mother has said, but ironically, that she was good at it. In fact she hates it and, aware of her ignorance in dressing and other courtly skills, cannot endure her new life. In despair, she meets a curious stranger who offers to help. On condition that she will remember the name Ricdin-Ricdon in three months’ time, he gives her a magic wand, which enables her to spin with extraordinary speed and to dress elegantly. The Prince, falling in love with her, arouses the hatred of a rejected lover, who plots revenge on him; first with the help of a witch and a magician (later revealed to be Ricdin-Ricdon) he is tempted to leave Rosanie for a beautiful princess and her kingdom; then a wicked ambassador attempts to abduct Rosanie, but after an accident to his carriage and a fight she is rescued by three strangers, their leader turning out to be her Prince; then—after he has seen an apparition in which Ricdin-Ricdon, in fact a devil, boasts of a future triumph in getting a girl into his power—he is attacked by three men but fights them off. Meanwhile his father the King has been told that Rosanie is not what she seems, but of royal blood (in fact the princess whose shape the witch of a previous episode had taken on). Failing to remember the name—which she had not written down because at the time she could not write—she confesses her despair to the Prince, who having heard it when seeing the apparition is able to tell her, and all ends happily for them; on being told his name, Ricdin-Ricdon vanishes, screaming horribly.
On the significance of the tale see Warner, Beast to Blonde, 175. As she remarks, it recalls Rumpelstiltskin tales rather than Ricky, there being no question of a marriage contract between Ricdin-Ricdon and the heroine.
ATU type 327B, The Brothers and the Ogre; Grimms: see below. Perrault’s tale, although it begins with the hero seemingly a tiny character like the English Tom Thumb, is never considered as a Tom Thumb story, but always as a version of the Hansel and Gretel type (ATU 327A), the classic form of which is the Grimms’ story. Delarue, in his commentary on the type (Delarue/Tenèze, i. 325), notes that the Tom Thumb motif is an unnecessary borrowing from ATU type 700, in which the hero’s size is crucial, while in Type 327 it is his cleverness that matters. He also says that no complete versions of the tale (i.e. with a plot ending in the defeat of the ogres) are known to antedate the stories by Perrault and Mme d’Aulnoy; see for instance the first summary below.
Basile, Pentamerone, Day 5, Tale 8, Nennillo and Nennella, begins like Hop o’ my Thumb: A widower marries a second wife, who hates his two children and makes him take them twice to a forest in order to lose them, but he leaves them with provisions and, the first time, leaves a trail of ashes by which they can find their way back. The second time, after renewed anger from the wife, he makes a trail of bran, which is eaten by a jackass. On hearing the sounds of a hunt, Nennella runs away and Nennillo climbs into a tree. From here on the story diverges from Perrault’s, telling how the girl is caught by a pirate and adopted, later to be swallowed by a magical fish, while the boy is found by a prince and taught to be a carver of meat. They are reunited at a seaside banquet where he hears his sister’s voice calling from inside the fish, and all ends happily except for the stepmother.
Delarue/Tenèze i. 306. Divided into subtypes 327A and 327B, the latter including Perrault’s Le Petit Poucet. Conte-type for 327B: Furon-Furette, collected 1945 from central France: A boy and girl are taken to the forest by their stepmother on purpose to lose them. She makes them think she is still near them by leaving a clog hanging on a tree, which when blown by the wind makes the sound of wood being chopped. Lost, they are taken in by a woman married to a devil; she tries to protect them when her husband returns, but he discovers and prepares an oven in which to cook them. Overhearing his plan, they persuade his children to change places with them in the bedroom and exchange gold rings for ones made of silk taken from a broom, thus tricking the devil into cooking his children. Escaping, they are pursued; meeting some washerwomen, they are helped to cross a river when the women spread out sheets for them to walk on. Later the women trick the devil into crossing in the same way but let him drown.
Mme d’Aulnoy, Finette-Cendron, a story contained in her novel Don Gabriel Ponce de Leon, 1697. It will be apparent that after the sisters escape from the Ogre’s castle the plot becomes that of a Cinderella story (or rather Perrault’s Donkey-Skin, which it resembles more than his Cinderella): A king and queen, who have three daughters, lose their kingdom and fall into poverty, to such an extent that the mother decides she must get rid of the daughters, Belle de Nuit, Fleur d’Amour, and Finette-Cendron. She leads them out into the wilderness three times in order to lose them. Finette-Cendron has the help of her godmother, the fairy Merluche, who gives her a white horse for use when necessary. To lead them on their way back home they have first a thread which extends indefinitely, then gravel. On the third occasion, the two elder sisters having always bullied and insulted Finette-Cendron, Merluche advises her to leave them where they are and go back home alone, but she is too good-natured to do so, and they leave a trail of peas behind when led away from home. The birds take them. Lost and with nothing to eat, they sow an acorn and water it; it soon grows into a tree, from which Finette-Cendron sees a marvellous castle, covered in gold and jewels. When the others, disbelieving her, climb the tree to look, they decide that they must go there, hoping to find princes as husbands, and in the night they take Finette-Cendron’s beautiful clothes which had been given her by Merluche. She has to follow them looking like their servant. The castle is owned by a one-eyed ogre, whose ogress wife takes them in, consoling them by undertaking not to eat them as soon as he would have done. When the even more monstrous Ogre comes in there is some conflict between them as his wife wants to keep the girls for herself. Finette-Cendron, as servant, is told to heat the enormous oven, but asked whether it is hot enough persuades the Ogre to look himself, whereupon he gets stuck and is roasted. The sisters suggest that the ogress should make herself beautiful to attract suitors, and they do her hair for her; meanwhile Finette-Cendron takes an axe and cuts her head off. The two elder sisters, seeing all the Ogre’s wealth, take over the castle and make outings, gorgeously dressed, to balls at the nearby town, leaving Finette-Cendron to do the housework. When they are out, she finds as she is sitting in the hearth a golden key hidden in the chimney; it opens a chest full of fine clothes and jewellery. She goes secretly to the same ball as her sisters and is not recognized, but makes a sensation there. Told of the unknown lady by her sisters, she murmurs that she was just the same. Visits to the ball continuing, she leaves later than usual one night, and loses a slipper in the dark. The King’s son finds it and becomes ill from love. Eventually he tells his mother that he will marry the one whom the slipper fits. The King announces that all women must come to try it on; many try in vain to make their feet smaller. Finette-Cendron, wanting to go, is insulted and told to water the cabbages, but after her sisters leave she dresses up, and finds Merluche’s white horse waiting to take her. On the way they pass her sisters and the horse spatters them with mud; Finette-Cendron tells them that ‘Cendrillon’ despises them as much as they deserve. When she is taken to the Prince’s room, the slipper fits, and she produces its pair; general joy ensues, and more so when she says that she is a princess. It turns out that it was the Prince’s parents who dispossessed Finette-Cendron’s parents; she agrees to marry him on condition that her parents recover their kingdom. When her sisters appear, she treats them kindly and forgives them. The verse moral reiterates that forgiveness is the best revenge for ingratitude.
Grimms: no. 15, Hänsel und Gretel (Crick, 58): The story falls into two parts, like Perrault’s. In the first, the parents attempt to get rid of their children in the forest, when Hansel plays the leading role; the second centres on the danger that they will be eaten. The main differences from Perrault’s tale are that the villain is a witch who has built an edible house into which she lures children, and that she is outwitted by Gretel, who (like Finette-Cendron) tricks her into entering the oven prepared for roasting the children. They return home with the help of a duck on whose back they ride across a wide stretch of water.