The King of Love (Sicilian: Lu Re d'Amuri)Storie di Amore e Psiche. A cura di Annamria Zesi. Roma: L'Asino d'Oro Edizioni. 2010. pp. 112-121. is an Italian fairy tale from Sicily collected by Giuseppe Pitre and translated into English by Thomas Frederick Crane in Italian Popular Tales.Pitrè, Giuseppe. "17. The King of Love (Lu re d’amuri)". In: Catarina the Wise and Other Wondrous Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales. Edited by Jack Zipes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. pp. 117-127. https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226462820-019"The King of Love". In: Crane, Thomas Frederick. Italian Popular Tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company. 1885. pp. 1-6.
It is part of the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom and classified as tale type Aarne-Thompson-Uther type ATU 425B, "Son of the Witch", thus distantly related to the Graeco-Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche, in that the heroine is forced to perform difficult tasks for a witch.
Synopsis
A man made his living gathering wild herbs. One day he took his youngest daughter, Rosella (Rusidda), with him, and she pulled up a radish. A Turk appeared and said she must come to his master and be punished. He brought them underground, where a green bird appeared, washed in milk, and became a man. The Turk told what had happened. The father said that there was no sign that the radish had belonged to him. The man married Rosella and gave her father a sack of gold. One day, while the man was away, her sisters visited her. She told them that her husband had forbidden her to ask who he was, but they persuaded her to ask his name. He told her that he was the King of Love and vanished.
She wandered in search of him, calling for him, and an ogress appeared, demanding to know why Rosella called on her nephew. The ogress took pity on her and let her stay the night, telling her that she was one of seven sister ogresses, and the worst was her mother-in-law. Each day, Rosella met another; on the seventh day, a sister of the King of Love told Rosella to climb her hair into the house while their mother was out. Then she and her sisters told Rosella to seize their mother and pinch her until the ogress cried out to be left alone in her son's name.
Rosella did this, and the ogress wanted to eat her, but the ogress's daughters stopped her. Then she insisted that Rosella carry a letter for her. In the wilderness, Rosella called on the King of Love again. He warned her to flatter things along the way: to drink from and praise two rivers, to eat and praise fruit from an orchard, to eat bread from an oven and praise it, to feed two dogs, to sweep a hall, and to polish a knife, razor and scissors. Then she was to deliver the letter, seize a box from the table, and run. When she did this, the ogress called after her for things to destroy her, but they refused because of her kindness. Curious, she opened the box; musical instruments escaped, and she had to call on her husband again to get them back.
The ogress wanted to eat Rosella again but her daughters stopped her again. She ordered her to fill a mattress with feathers from all the birds in the air. The King of Love got the King of Birds to have the birds fill the mattress. Then the ogress married her son to the daughter of the King of Portugal, and had Rosella hold the torches for the bridal chamber; but the king got his bride to switch places with Rosella, and the ground opened up and swallowed the bride.
The ogress declared that Rosella's child would not be born until she unclasped her hands. The King of Love had his body laid out as if he were dead, and his sisters lamented him. The ogress unclasped her hands, demanding to know how he had died. Rosella's son was born. This so enraged the ogress that she died.
Analysis Tale type Folktale collector Thomas Frederick Crane described thus the format that would later be classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband":Crane, Thomas Frederick. Italian Popular Tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company. 1885. pp. 1, 322.
In this regard, these tales involve the heroine performing difficult tasks for her husband's family (more specifically, her mother-in-law), a type classified as ATU 425B, "The Son of the Witch" or "The Witch's Tasks".The Collected Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitrè. Edited and translated by Jack Zipes and Joseph Russo. Illustrated by Carmelo Lettere. New York: Routledge: 2009. p. 823.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. .
Motifs According to Renato Aprile, the heroine's husband's name, "Re d'Amore", is a reminiscence of Cupid from the Graeco-Roman tale.
The heroine's tasks A motif that appears in the tale type is that the heroine must travel to another witch's house and fetch from there a box or casket she must not open. German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther remarked that these motives ("the quest for the casket" and the visit to the second witch) are "the essential feature" of the subtype.
Catalan scholarship locates the motif of the box of musical instruments in Greek, Turkish and South Italian variants.Poveda, Jaume Albero. "Rondalla «El castell d'entorn i no entorn» d'Enric Valor. Anàlisi hermenèutic i folklòrica". In: Miscel·lània Joan Veny. Volume 7. Estudis de llengua i literatura catalanes/LI. L'Abadia de Montserrat, 2005. p. 229. . In that regard, Swahn, in his study on Cupid and Psyche, remarked that the instruments as the contents of the box are "common" to Mediterranean tradition.
The delayed pregnancy This form of startling the mother-in-law into allowing the baby's birth is found in Italian fairy tales; usually it is done by announcing the birth.Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 1, p 85, Dover Publications, New York 1965 In English and Scandinavian ballads, such as Willie's Lady, the mother-in-law must be startled so that she will accidentally reveal the charms she is using against the birth.Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 1, p 83-4, Dover Publications, New York 1965 This motif has been compared to the myth of Hercules's human mother, Alcmene, who could not bear him due to a curse by goddess Lucina. Also, the trickery of ringing the bells twice, the first time for the false mourning, the second for the heroes' victory and the son's birth, "reflects" the Mediterranean rendition of the myth, which appears in Sicilian stories. Similarly, according to Luisa Rubini, the motif of the queen preventing the heroine from giving birth by clasping her hands harks back to "an old Greek belief", also found in the myth of Hercules and his mother Alcmene.
Variants King Goldfinch Swiss-German author Laura Gonzenbach collected a Sicilian tale she titled Der König Stieglitz ("King Goldfinch"). In this story, a poor shoemaker sits on a rock to lament his lack of work and suddenly a youth appears, named Cardiddu, saying that the shoemaker called out his name. The youth guides the shoemaker to his rich underground palace and lets him take some riches with him. The youth tells him that he wants to marry the shoemaker's third and youngest daughter. The shoemaker agrees and returns home to explain the situation to his daughters. The third one marries the mysterious youth and they live a good life, but her husband orders her not to open a certain door. He explains that he was a king, banished to this underground castle by mamma draja, a witch who wants him to marry her daughter. King Cardiddu leaves for some days and his wife is visited by her sisters. They try to convince their sister to open the door, but she refuses. One night, spurred by curiosity, she lights a candle to see if her husband was asleep. One drop of wax falls on his head and she finds herself out in the forest, the castle having disappeared. King Cardiddu admonishes her and tells her to follow the trail to the witch who enchanted him, and make her swear on his name to avoid being eaten by her. She does as instructed and the witch takes her as her servant. The witch forces her to do difficult tasks, which she accomplishes with her husband's help: first, she has to sweep and not sweep the floor, while the witch is away. The girl sits down to weep as King Cardiddu appears to her, mocking her for listening to her sisters' words. Despite his initial harsh treatment, he tells her to sweep the whole house, gather the trash and let it roll downstairs. Next, she is to light the fire and not light it; Cardiddu tells her to place some firewood in the fireplace, set up the cauldron and place some matches nearby, without kindling them. Thirdly, she is to make and not make the bed; Cardiddu tells her to fold the bedsheets, but leave the mattresses untouched. The next day, the witch smears her clothes with oxen's blood and delivers a large pile of them for the girl to wash, whiten, sew, iron and fold them; fourthly, on the day after, unmake the mattresses, take their wool and wash them, then iron and fold the bedsheets. On both tasks, Cardiddu advises her to go up the mountain and tell the king of the birds King Cardiddu sent her; the birds will come and help her. Finally, the witch forces her daughter-in-law to take a letter and a box to the witch's sister, also a witch. On her way, curiosity gets the better of her and she opens the box, which begins to ring. Her husband appears and silences it. She delivers the box to the witch and returns to the mamma draja, who has made the preparations for the marriage between her daughter and King Cardiddu. The woman is to hold burning candles at the foot of the bridal bed during the nuptial night, but King Cardiddu knows it is a trap, since the ground will open up to swallow the human girl, so he makes the mamma draja's daughter change places with the woman. The witch's daughter falls into the trap and the couple escape from the house by transforming into different things - a sequence that appears in tale type ATU 313, "The Magic Flight": first, a garden (the girl) and a gardener (Cardiddu), then a church (her) and a priest (him), lastly an eel (her) and a pond (him). The ogress tries to catch the eel and fails, returning home empty-handed. However, the ogress then places her hands between her knees and utters a curse for Cardiddu's wife not to bear her child until the ogress removes her hands from their current position. King Cardiddu's wife is pregnant, but she cannot bear her son, so the king orders the church bells to ring and sends a servant to the ogress's house. The servant lies to the creature King Cardiddu is dead, and she claps her hands in victory. King Cardiddu's baby is born, the church bells ring in celebration, and the servant tells the ogress Cardiddu's son is born. Defeated, the ogress hits her head on the wall and dies. The tale was later translated into Italian language as Re Cardiddu ("King Goldfinch")."Re Cardiddu". In: Gonzenbach, Laura; Consolo, Vincenzo; Rubini, Luisa (eds). Fiabe siciliane. Donzelli Editore, 1999. pp. 81-89. . Scholar Jack Zipes translated the tale as King Cardiddu and classified it as type ATU 425A, "The Animal as Bridegroom", with an episode of type 313, "The Girl as Helper in the Hero's Flight".Zipes, Jack. Beautiful Angiola: The Lost Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Laura Gonzenbach. Routledge, 2004. pp. 324-332 (translation), 358 (classification). .
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