Los Tres Claveles (English: The Three Carnations) is a Spanish folktale from Extremadura collected by folklorist Sérgio Hernandez de Soto in Zafra, Badajoz. In the story, a poor girl works as a queen's servant, who, tricked by envious maidservants, orders the girl to accomplish impossible tasks, which she does with the secret help of the queen's son.
It is related to the cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom and distantly related to the Graeco-Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche, in that the heroine is forced to perform difficult tasks for a witch.
Publication The tale was first published by Sérgio Hernandez de Soto in El folk-lore frexnense, in 1883, and sourced to a female relative, who derived it from "family tradition".
Writer Elsie Spicer Eells translated the tale as The Carnation Youth, in her book Tales of Enchantment from Spain, albeit making the third prince an only son. In Eells's version, the flower the heroine burns is a pink carnation, and the prince tells her to find him "among the rocks of the whole world". The tale was also translated to German as Die drei Nelken, to Russian as "Три гвоздики" ("Three Carnations"), to Italian as I tre garofani, and to Hungarian as A három szegfű.
Summary A poor laborer has a daughter. One day, he finds in the fields three carnations and brings them to his daughter. One of the carnations ("claveles") falls in the fire, and a prince appears to her. The youth tries to talk to her, but she does not answer, and he tells her she will have to seek him in the "piedras de toito el mundo" ("the rocks of all the world"). The second and the third claveles also fall in the fire, and summon a second and a third princes. María, the girl, falls in love with the third prince and decides to look for the rocks of all the world. María climbs a large rock and begins to cry.
Suddenly, a rock cracks open and the third prince appears to comfort her, but she still does not talk to him. Still, the prince directs her to a house in the valley, where she can find work as a maidservant. María goes there and is hired as a servant. María earns her employer's trust, but the jealousy of the other servants. For this, they lie María can wash all the clothes in the house. María takes the clothes' piles to the river and goes to the rocks to cry. The third prince appears to her and advises her to summon all birds of the world to help her. Next, the servants lie that María can restore the lady of the house's sight, since, according to the story, she cried so much after her losing her three sons. The third prince advises María to summon all the birds again, and every one of them will carry a drop in their feathers to fill the flask.
Lastly, the maidservants lie that María promised to disenchant the mistress's three sons. The third prince advises María to gather all the maidens from the neighbouring villages, have each carry a lit candle, form a procession around the rocks, and must not let any candle be put out. María follows his orders and a procession circles the rocks, but a gust of wind snuffs out María's candle and she shouts. The three rocks disappear and the three princes are back to normal. The third prince explains that the one who burned the carnation should talk to him, in order to break the spell. María marries the third prince.
Analysis Tale type The tale was classified as type 425B, Las Labores Difíciles ("The Difficult Tasks"), based on the Catalogue of Spanish Folktales devised by Julio Camarena and Maxime Chevalier.CAMARENA, JULIO; Maxime CHEVALIER (1995). Catálogo tipográfico del cuento folklórico español. Vol. I: Cuentos maravillosos. Madrid, Castalia. p. 250.
In his monograph about Cupid and Psyche, classified Los Tres Claveles ("The Three Carnations") as subtype 425A of his analysis, that is, "Cupid and Psyche", being the "oldest" and containing the episode of the witch's tasks.Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. p. 169 (entry 2). In the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, however, Swahn's typing is indexed as type ATU 425B, "The Son of the Witch": the heroine is forced to perform tasks for a witch or her mother-in-law, but she is secretly helped by her husband or love interest.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Third Printing. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . p. 142 (footnote nr. 1).
Variants El príncipe encantado In an Extremaduran tale titled El príncipe encantado ("The Enchanted Prince"), collected from an informant named Filomena Moreno Pozo, from Zalamea de la Serena, a traveller marries a merchant's daughter, who asks for three dresses as wedding gifts: a white one, a "colorado", and a black one. In time, the couple have a daughter with the same colours as the dresses. However, the woman dies, but advises her to remarry if their daughter agrees to it. Time passes; his daughter grows up and meets a widow with two daughters. The widow convinces the girl to arrange for the marriage to the girl's father. It happens thus. Some time later, the traveller bring gifts for his daughter and stepdaughters. One day, his own daughter asks for a three-leaf carnation. The man travels far and cannot find it, but is advised to look for the flower in a magic castle just outside the village. The man returns with the carnation and gives it to his daughter, who places it in her hair. Later, a king passes by with his retinue through the village, and he sights the girl with the carnation on her hair. He falls in love with her, she gives out a scream and says she wants to see him again, but he tells she can meet him in the castle of the Lions ("castillo de los Leones"). With this, he disappears, and his retinue do not know where he went. They know he is in the castle of the Lions, but those that enter it cannot leave. Meanwhile, the girl decides to pluck one of the carnation's petals; she does it and a voice asks the girl, named María, to talk to them. María faints, and is helped by her stepfamily. María plucks the next two petals, and believes it to be her mother's voice. The stepmother admonishes her for her deed, and she leaves home. María goes to look for a job in a castle, and is hired as a maidservant, working in the garden and teaching sewing to the two princesses. She also notices that the queen keeps muttering about her lost son, and one night, in bed, she realizes the prince has been enchanted into the carnation. Suddenly, the prince's voice talks to her, and tells her he can disenchant him: first, she is to ask the queen for every cloth, which she is to wash in a single day. Her orders are carried out, and María, following the prince's voice, simply rests for a bit, and the clothes are washed, ironed and folded. Next, the queen comments she would feel happier with her husband's ring, lost at sea. For the second task, the prince advises María to guide some soldiers to the sea, then enter the water on a horse, and raise her sword. María puts on a man's disguise ("jinete", in the original), rides the horse into the sea, and brings back the queen's ring. Lastly, the queen sighs and wishes to be with her son again, and María offers to bring him back. The prince's voice advises her how to rescue him: she is to gather bones and bring two brushes with herself to the castle of the Lions; she is to give the brushes to two people cleaning up an oven and the bones to two lions; she will then meet a witch who will say the girl dropped a kerchief, whom she is to shove into the ground. María does as instructed and meets the prince in a pavilion just past the witch. The prince embraces María and both escape through a backdoor, while the castle of the Lions becomes filled with smoke. The pair returns to the castle, and the queen thanks María for saving her son. María and the prince marry. The tale was classified as type 425B, Las Labores Difíciles ("The Difficult Tasks").
Les pedres del Cap del Món