"Bella Venezia" is an Italian

fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cult ...

collected by

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...

in his ''

Italian Folktales ''Italian Folktales'' (''Fiabe italiane'') is a collection of 200 Italian folktales published in 1956 by Italo Calvino. Calvino began the project in 1954, influenced by Vladimir Propp's '' Morphology of the Folktale''; his intention was to emula ...

''. Calvino selected this variant, where the heroine meets robbers, rather than others that contain dwarfs, because he believed the dwarfs were probably an importation from Germany. It is Aarne-Thompson type 709,

Snow White "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is a 19th-century German fairy tale that is today known widely across the Western world. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection '' Grimms' Fairy Tales'' and numbered as T ...

. Others of this type include

Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree is a Scottish fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in his ''Celtic Fairy Tales''. It is Aarne-Thompson type 709, Snow White. Others of this type include ''Bella Venezia'', ''Nourie Hadig'', ''La petite Toute-Belle'' an ...

Nourie Hadig Nourie Hadig is an Armenian fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and m ...

La petite Toute-Belle "La petite Toute-Belle" ("Little Toute-Belle") is a Breton fairy tale published in 1900 by Paul Sébillot in '' Contes des landes et des grèves''.Paul Sébillot, ''Contes des landes et des grèves'', pp 144-152, Hyacinthe Caillière Editeur, Re ...

, and Myrsina.Heidi Anne Heiner,
Tales Similar to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Synopsis

An innkeeper named Bella Venezia asked her customers whether they had ever seen a more beautiful woman than herself. When they said they had not, she cut the price for their stay in half, but one day, a traveller said that he had seen such a woman: her own daughter. Bella Venezia doubled the price of his stay instead of halving it; and had her daughter shut in a tower with a single window. But the daughter escaped and wandered until she saw twelve robbers order a cave open and shut: "Open up, desert!" and "Close up, desert!" She snuck inside and cleaned up the place, and then stole some of their food before hiding. The robbers set watch, but each robber waited outside, for the person to sneak in, and so did not catch her, until the chief robber waited inside and saw her. He told her not to be afraid: she could stay and be their little sister. But one day a robber went to Bella Venezia's inn, and told her that a girl they had with them was more beautiful than Bella. A witch begged every day from the inn, and Bella Venezia promised her half her fortune if she could put an end to the daughter. The witch went into the forest as a pedlar, persuaded the girl to let her in, and while showing her a hair pin, thrust it into the girl's head. The robbers found her body, wept, and buried her in a hollow tree. One day, a prince went hunting, and his dogs sniffed out the tree where the girl was buried. He took her body back to the castle and could not bear to be away from her. His mother was angry and said that he could at least fix her hair. This revealed the pin. When it was pulled out, the girl awoke, and the prince married her.

References

{{Reflist Female characters in fairy tales Italian fairy tales Witchcraft in fairy tales Stories within Italian Folktales ATU 700-749

Synopsis

See also

References