Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/246

 238 sugar obtains by her prayers the grace from the Almighty that it shall become a real man, and she is married to him. A neighbouring princess falls in love with him on hearsay and kidnaps him to her own palace, where he is married de novo to the new aspirant. The original princess, finding that her husband does not return, sets out in search of him, taking with her (mirabile dictu) exact counterparts of Peau d'Âne's three marvellous dresses. She reaches the city where her husband now lives, and is accepted into the service of the king and queen as goose-girl. There she eventually bribes the queen by means of the three dazzling dresses to let her sleep in the king's chamber on three successive nights, on the third of which she succeeds in making the king sensible of her presence, and the pair make their escape to their own kingdom.

This is a well-known Italian fiaba. It is curious also for its containing a reflection of Peau d'Ane and for its inversion of the antique myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.

No. 3, The thrice Accursed, i.e. the devil.

This is the same story as the various Italian versions of Blue Beard, wherein the objectionable husband is always a devil.

In this Greek tale Belzebub marries a princess who is too proud to accept any one else. He takes her off in a ship (a more Greekish conveyance than a coach and four) to his abode in a desolate mountain, and there shows her, by way of preliminary monition, to borrow Lord Penzance's phraseology, a woman hanging up. This was his former wife, another princess, to whom he had given a man's heart for a meal, and on her failing to eat it had killed her. He tries his new wife with a similar dainty, and then departs for the chase. When he returns she tells him that she has eaten the heart, but is contradicted by the heart itself who testifies against her.

On this evidence the new wife is hung up like her predecessor. The devil now marries successively his wife's two sisters; and the Greek story proceeds on the same lines as the Italian. The youngest wife outwits the devil, and escapes from his mountain abode. Her escape however is brought about not by her own subtilty, as in the Italian tale, but by the assistance of strangers, as in Perrot's French version.