The Little Girl Sold With The Pears

"The Little Girl Sold with the Pears" ( Italian: ''La bambina venduta con le pere'') is an Italian fairy tale published by Italo Calvino in ''Italian Folktales'', from Piedmont. Ruth Manning-Sanders included a variant, as "The Girl in the Basket", in '' A Book of Ogres and Trolls''.

Synopsis

Once there was a man had to pay the king rent in the form of four baskets of pears. One year his trees yielded only three and a half baskets full, so he put his youngest daughter in the fourth basket to fill it up. When the baskets arrived at the castle, the royal servants found the girl by the pears she ate, and they set her to work as a servant. As the girl, named Perina (from ''pear''), grew up, she and the prince fell in love, which caused the other maidservants to grow envious. In Manning-Sander's version, the servants told the king that she had boasted of doing all the laundry in one day; with the prince's aid, she was able to do it.
In most other versions, the maids then tell the king that she had also boasted that she could steal the witch's (or ogress's, depending on the version) treasure. The king insisted that she do it.

In Manning-Sanders's version the prince told her what to do. Although Calvino found this in his original version, to increase her identification with the pears, she went and passed by an apple tree and a peach tree to sleep in the third, a pear tree. In the morning, a little old woman was under the tree.

In both cases, they gave her grease, bread, and millet. She went on, gave the millet to three women in a bakery, sweeping out the ovens with their hair, threw the bread to some mastiffs, crossed by a red river with a charm that the little old woman had given her, and greased the hinges of the witch's house. Then she took the treasure chest. The chest began to speak, but the door refused to slam on her, the river to drown her, the dogs to eat her, and the women in the bakery to bake her.

Curious, she opened the chest and a golden hen with her chicks escaped, or musical instruments that played on their own, but the little old woman or prince put them back. The prince told her to ask, for her reward, for the coal chest in the cellar. When she asked and it was brought up, the prince was hidden in it, so they married.

Source

The tale was originally collected by Italian scholar Domenico Comparetti with the title ''Margheritina'', and sourced from Monferrato. It was later translated by German writer Paul Heyse into German.

The tale was reworked by Calvino, who changed the girl's name from Margheritina to Perina to reinforce the fruit connection. He also added the old woman helper who gives the objects to the girl, while, in the original tale, the girl is helped by the prince.

Analysis

Tale type

In a review of Calvino's work, folklorist Walter Anderson classified the tale, according to the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, as type AaTh 428, "The Wolf". Swedish scholar also classified the original tale as type AaTh 428.

Calvino's tale (numbered 11 in his collection) was listed by Italian scholars and Liliana Serafini under type AaTh 428, ''Il Lupo'' ("The Wolf").

Tale type AaTh 428 is considered by scholars as a fragmentary version of the tale of ''Cupid and Psyche'', lacking the initial part about the animal husband and corresponding to the part of the witch's tasks. Accordingly, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther revised the international classification system and subsumed type AaTh 428 under new type ATU 425B, "Son of the Witch".Uther, Hans-Jörg.
The types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography, based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson
'. Volume 1: Animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, and realistic tales, with an introduction. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia-Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. p. 250. .

See also

* La Fada Morgana (Catalan folk tale)
* Prunella
* The Tale about Baba-Yaga (Russian fairy tale)
* The Man and the Girl at the Underground Mansion
* The King of Love
*Boots and the Troll
*Dapplegrim
*The Enchanted Canary
* The Magic Swan Geese
* The Old Witch
* The Three Aunts
*The Witch
*Thirteenth

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Little Girl Sold with the Pears
Female characters in fairy tales
Italian fairy tales
Witchcraft in fairy tales
Stories within Italian Folktales
ATU 400-459