In this case the merchant, when he goes out to buy his wares, asks
his three daughters what he shall bring them. The eldest asks for
fine dresses, the second for beautiful shawls, the third for nothing
but some sand out of the garden of King Otho. The king had registered
sentence of death against anyone who should ask for the sand. But in
consideration of a bribe of three hundred scudi the gardener gives
him a little.
When she gets it, the daughter burns a little in the evening, when
the sisters are gone to a ball. Instantly King Otho comes, and falls
in love with her. She gives him a most exquisite pair of knee-bands
she has embroidered, before he goes away. The second night she gives
him a handkerchief of her work, and the third a beautiful necktie.
After this, her father insists one evening that she should go to the
ball. Her sisters say that if she goes they shall stay away. When she
is gone they burn down her room, and in it all the sand of King Otho's
garden. If the king came quickly for the burning of a little pinch, he
naturally comes in exceeding greater haste at the burning of the whole
quantity: in such haste that he is wounded all over with the blazing
beams and broken glass. There is a great explosion. [69] As he knew
nothing about the spite of the sisters, he could only think that the
mischief arose from the misconduct of her to whom the sand had been
given, and determines accordingly to have nothing more to do with her.
When she comes home, and finds what has happened, she is in
despair. She dresses like a man and goes away. In the night, in a
cave where she takes shelter, she hears an ogre and ogress talking
over what has happened, and they say that the only cure is an
ointment made of their blood. [70] She shoots them both, and takes
their blood and heals the king with it. The king offers any kind of
reward the supposed doctor will name; but she will have nothing but
some of the sand of the garden. She contrives, however, to discover
the knee-bands, the handkerchief, and the necktie she had given him,
and asks him what they are. 'Oh, only the presents of a faithless
lover,' he replies. She then insists he should give them up to her,
which he does, and she goes away.
When she gets home she burns a pinch of the sand, and the king is
forced by its virtue to appear; but he comes in great indignation, and
accuses her of wounding him. She replies it was not she who wounded
him, but who healed him. He is incredulous; and she shows him the
knee-bands, handkerchief, and necktie, which convince him he owes
his healing to her. They make peace, and are married.
[Mr. Ralston gives a very pretty counterpart of so much of this story
as relates to the transformation of a human being into a flower, at
p. 15 of the story commencing at page 10, and 'Aschenputtel,' Grimm,
p. 93, has something like it; but I do not recall any European story
in which a person is actually wounded and half-killed by damage done
to a tree mysteriously connected with him. There is something like
it in the 'trees of life' which people plant, and their withering is
to be a token that harm has befallen them.
Overhearing the advice of supernatural beasts under a tree occurs
in the Norse 'True and Untrue,' and is very common in all sorts of
ways, everywhere. It enters, too, into the analogous Italian Tirolean
tale of 'I due cavallari,' where witches figure instead of the orco
and orchessa.
Next, are four stories in which many incidents of the Cinderella
type are set in a different framework; they are represented in the
Gaelic by 'The King who wanted to marry his Daughter;' at the end of
which reference will be found to other versions, where are details
occurring in one or other of the following: that from Straparola is
naturally the most like the Roman, but it is not like any one of them
all throughout, and forms a remarkable link between the first Roman
and the two Gaelic versions. The girl's answer, that she 'came from
the country of candlesticks,' in the second version, is noteworthy,
because it connects it with the Roman story of the 'Candeliera,'
at the same time that it conveys no sense in its own. The box in
the Gaelic versions recalls, just as Mr. Campbell says, the fine
old chests which served for conveying home the corredo (including
much more than trousseau in its modern use) of the bride, which are
not only preserved as heirlooms and curiosities in many an Italian
palace, but in many a museum also; there are some very handsome ones
at Perugia. And yet it is just in the Italian versions that the box
loses this character. In Straparola's, it is a wardrobe; in the two
versions of 'Maria di Legno,' a wooden statue; in 'La Candeliera,'
it has the shape of a candlestick. In the third version of 'Maria di
Legno,' the box used is only an old press that happens to be in the
deserted tower.
Mr. Ralston, pp. 77-8, supplies a Russian counterpart, in which it
is a prince, and not a maiden, who is conveyed in a provisioned box,
and this is linked hereby with the Hungarian story of Iron Ladislas,
who descends by such means to the underground world in search of
his sisters; and this again connects this story both with those
in which I have already had occasion to mention him and with one
to follow called 'Il Rè Moro,' one I have in MS. called 'Il Cavolo
d'oro,' &c. The first and more elaborate of the four Roman stories,
'Maria di Legno,' does the same.]