"The Story of Pretty Goldilocks" or "The Beauty with Golden Hair" is a French literary fairy tale written by Madame d'Aulnoy.Marie Catherine Baronne D'Aulnoy, The Fairy Tales of Madame D'Aulnoy. Miss Annie Macdonell and Miss Lee, translators. Clinton Peters, illustrator. London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1892."Fair Goldilocks" Andrew Lang included it in The Blue Fairy Book.Andrew Lang, The Blue Fairy Book, "The Story of Pretty Goldilocks"
It is Aarne–Thompson type 531. This type is generally called "The Clever Horse", but is known in French as , after this tale. Other tales of this type include Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful, The Firebird and Princess Vasilisa, Corvetto, King Fortunatus's Golden Wig.Heidi Anne Heiner, "Tales Similar to Firebird"
Synopsis
A princess was so beautiful and had such golden hair that she was known as Pretty Goldilocks. A neighboring king fell in love with her from her description, but much to the king's disappointment, she rejected his ambassador, saying she had no wish to be married. A young courtier and royal favorite, called Charming, told his friends that if he had gone, she would have accepted, and the king threw him in prison. He lamented his fate, and the king, hearing, told him what he had said was the cause of it. Charming said that he would have drawn such a picture of the king as to make him irresistible to her, and the king decided to send him. On the way, he helped a carp that was out of water, a raven being chased by an eagle, and an owl caught in a net; each one promised to help him.
When he attempted to bring his master's suit before the princess, she told him that she had lost a ring in the river and was so vexed that she would not listen to any suit unless the ambassador brought back her ring. His dog, Frisk, advised him to try, and the carp brought him the ring. When he brought it to Goldilocks, she told him that a giant who was a prince had tried to marry her and was troubling her subjects. She could not listen unless he killed the giant. He went to fight it, and with the raven's aid in pecking the giant's eyes during the fight, he succeeded. Goldilocks refused unless he brought her some water from the Fountain of Health and Beauty, and the owl fetched the water for him.
The princess agreed then and made preparations to go and marry the king, although she at times wished they could stay, and she would marry Charming. Charming refused to be disloyal to his king.
Goldilocks married the king but remained fond of Charming, and Charming's enemies told the king that she praised him so highly, he should be jealous. The king had Charming thrown in a tower. When Goldilocks begged for his freedom, the king refused, but decided to rub his face with the water from the Fountain of Health and Beauty to please her. A maid had broken that bottle, though, and replaced it with another, not knowing the other bottle was actually a potent poison used for executing nobles by rubbing their faces with it.
Frisk came to the queen and asked her not to forget Charming, and the queen immediately released him and married him.
Analysis The horse helper The Aarne–Thompson–Uther tales types ATU 530, 531 (The Clever Horse) and 533 (The Speaking Horsehead) fall under the umbrella of Supernatural Helper in the folk/fairy tale index and pertain to a cycle of stories in which a magical horse helps the hero or heroine by giving advice and/or instructing him/her.Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. pp. 61-65.
According to French folklorist Paul Delarue, the tale type ATU 531 is known in French academia as La Belle aux Cheveux d'Or, after d'Aulnoy's tale.Delarue, Paul Delarue. The Borzoi Book of French Folk-Tales. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1956. pp. 363-364. At the beginning of the story, the hero finds some shiny objects in his way (a shining feather or a shining lock of hair), but his talking horse warns him against it.Skabeikytė-Kazlauskienė, Gražina. Lithuanian Narrative Folklore: Didactical Guidelines. Kaunas: Vytautas Magnus University. 2013. p. 15. .
The role of the heroine The heroine's lack of agency has been noticed and called into question: despite being part of Madame d'Aulnoy's cast of heroines and princesses with agency in her literary fairy tales, Princess Goldilocks still needs the intervention of a third party (the loyal ambassador) in order to ensure her happy ending at the end of the tale.
The name of the princess Alternate translations to the name of the tale are Princess Goldenhair,Vredenburg, Edric, Capt. My Book of Favourite Fairy Tales: retold by the editor and others. London and Paris: Raphael Tuck & Sons. pp. 34-41. The Fair with Golden HairPlanché, James Robinson. Fairy Tales by The Countess d'Aulnoy, translated by J. R. Planché. London: G. Routledge & Co. 1856. pp. 22-34. The Fair Maid with Golden Locks,Baring-Gould, Sabine. A book of fairy tales. London: Methuen. 1895. pp. 169-184. or Fair Goldilocks.Aulnoy, M. d' (Marie-Catherine)., Dohm, J., Peters, D. Witt Clinton., Lee, M. XX., Macdonell, A. The fairy tales of Madame d'Aulnoy. London: Lawrence and Bullen. 1892. pp. 19-30. Fair is an English word associated with beauty,Warner, Marina. From The Beast To The Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. London: Vintage. 1995. p. 363. and it keeps the connection between light-colored hair and good qualities, like kindness and beauty.
The ritual of rejuvenation or beautification
In many variants, the last item the hero must quest for is the "milk of fiery mares", which will grant beauty, strength and vigour after a special ritual. Russian folklorist Alexander Afanasyev mentioned that these equine characters come from the sea. When the princess uses the magical milk, the horse helper uses its breath to protect the hero, by inhaling the fumes or by cooling the mixture. When the kingly rival steps in, he is killed in the process.Афанасьев, А.Н. Поэтические воззрения славян на природу: Опыт сравнительного изучения славянских преданий и верований в связи с мифическими сказаниями других родственных народов. Том 1. Moskva: Izd. K. Soldatenkova 1865. pp. 621-624. (In Russian) Likewise, as described by professor Susan Hoogasian-Villa, in Armenian variants, the sea horse's milk also grants youth to the character.Hoogasian-Villa, Susie. 100 Armenian Tales and Their Folkloristic Relevance. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1966. p. 66. In regards to a similar motif in Russian variants, Jack Haney suggested an oriental origin.
Folklorist Alexander Krappe also noted that, in many variants, the hero quests for a water of life and a water of death. When the emperor or king uses the ointment or magical water, a mix-up happens: the maid or a lady-in-waiting accidentally breaks the flask and, in a hurry, unknowingly substitutes the broken vial with poison. This theme is also widespread in French literary and oral tradition, under the theme of La Jeune Fille aux cheveux d'or et l'Eau de la mort et de la vie:Cosquin, Emmanuel. Contes populaires de Lorraine comparés avec les contes des autres provinces de France et des pays étrangers, et précedés d'un essai sur l'origine et la propagation des contes populaires européens. Tome I. Deuxiéme Tirage. Paris: Vieweg. 1887. pp. 44-49. a king, emperor or sultan becomes enamored with a princess or lady of royal birth, famed for her golden hair, and sends an emissary (a knight, a page, an ambassador) to win her over in his stead. When the dame is brought before her would-be suitor, she seizes the opportunity to dispose of him, by performing an elaborate ritual involving the holy water, or bath. After the deed is done, her kingly suitor is (accidentally or deliberately) killed,Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. pp. 62-63. and she is free to marry the emissary.Cosquin, Emmanuel. Contes populaires de Lorraine comparés avec les contes des autres provinces de France et des pays étrangers, et précedés d'un essai sur l'origine et la propagation des contes populaires européens. Tome II. Deuxiéme Tirage. Paris: Vieweg. 1887. pp. 289-303.
Variants Origins Professor Stith Thompson remarked that the geographic distribution of the tale pointed to "an unbroken line through the Caucasus, the Near East, India, Cambodia, and the Philippines", which suggested an Eastern point of origin, "possibly from India".Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 63. . In the same vein, professor agreed with an Eastern source, but via Central Asia and Iran, not India. Its dissemination is also said to be limited "to Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey and India".
A quantitative study, published by folklorist Sara Graça da Silva and anthropologist Jamshid J. Tehrani in 2016, seemed to indicate that the tale type shows a certain antiquity: based on a phylogenetic model, both researchers estimated that the ATU 531 type belongs to an ancestral tale corpora of the Indo-Iranian languages and the Western branch of the Indo-European languages.
Literary connections Folklorist and comparative mythologist Alexander Haggerty Krappe, in a 1925 article, argued that the myth of Jason and Medea was a reworking of the widespread folktale The Quest of the Princess with the Golden Hair, by illuminating parallels between the Greek myth and the tale type: the hero is helped by a talking horse (or mule, or donkey, given by a spirit, God, Virgin Mary, or the Devil), so - Krappe deduced - the Argo ship must have been originally given by a deity, and served to warn Jason against dangers. Also, Krappe indicated that the king, in the tale type, sends the hero to find him precious treasures associated with gold, and with the golden-haired princess in the folktale, who is sometimes associated with the Sun - like Medea, descendant of Sun god Helios. Lastly, the princess of the tale type submits the hero and the king to an experiment of rejuvenating, which involves both men entering a burning oven, or bathing in boiling milk or oil. Krappe, to conclude his comparison, cited that ancient authors Pherecydes of Syros and Simonides reported variations wherein Medea applies a similar rejuvenating treatment to Jason himself, instead of Pelias.
A line of scholarship believes that the tale type ATU 531 also shows parallels with the Celtic chivalric romance of Tristan and Iseult, namely French Emmanuel Cosquin and Germans and . They argued for the presence of motifs of the tale type in Tristan and Isolde: in some versions of the Celtic romance, a little bird (a swallow) flies to King Mark's castle with a strand of golden hair in its beak; he then becomes interested in finding its owner.Cosquin, Emmanuel. Les Contes indiens et l'occident: petites monographies folkloriques à propos de contes Maures. Paris: Édouard Champion. 1922. pp. 351-356.Tegethoff, Ernst. Französische Volksmärchen. Erster Band. Aus neueren Sammlungen. Jena: Eugen Diederichs. 1923. pp. 333-334 (note to tale 33).
German folklorist Felix Liebrecht seemed to agree with Köhler's assessment of the connection between the chivalric romance and the tale type, but complemented his analysis. Liebrecht located the motif of the lock of golden hair in the Ancient Egyptian story, Tale of Two Brothers: after being exiled from home, Batu is given a wife by the gods. One day, the Nile river washes a lock of her hair to the court of the Pharaoh, who falls in love with its owner. The Pharaoh's wise men tell him that its owner is the daughter of the Sun god, lord of the celestial realms and of the waters.