Four and Twenty Fairy Tales

PRINCESS CAMION

A translation of La Princesse Camion, much abridged and altered, was published in the Child's Fairy Library some twenty years ago, under the title of Princess Minikin. The plot of this story is intricate without being ingenious. The persecution of Camion by Marmotte is purely capricious, and her contrivances are of the clumsiest description. In the original, Zirphil is commanded to "take off, one by one, the scales of the whale;" but a whale has no scales that it could feel the deprivation of. It is skinning the fish alive that would be a cruel operation, and I have therefore rendered "écorcher" in that sense, and not to scale, as it had been previously translated, in accordance with the specific direction quoted above. The transformation of the unfortunate Princess into a crayfish, and her being shelled instead of pounded as Marmotte had decreed, is all of the same character. The long story told by her in that state to the other crayfish in the plantation is a lame way of enlightening either Zirphil or the reader, and has to be continued in as lame a manner by Citronette. The pounding the crayfish for the King's soup, and the disappearance of them in flames when they are put into the mortar, seems to point to an Eastern origin. The latter portion reminds us of the black man flinging the fish into the fire, in the story of "The Fisherman and the Genius," in the Arabian Nights, where there is also a city changed into a lake, and all its inhabitants into fishes, and re-transformed in the end and restored to the rightful monarch, the young King of the Black Island. The crayfish broth may be an allusion to the well-known Bisque d'Ecrévisse, but it is also an Oriental dish; for while this book was passing through the press, a morning journal announced that "the eldest royal son of his Majesty the First King of Siam," on his arrival at Claridge's Hotel, "after satisfying himself that due provision had been made for the comfort of his staff, retired to rest, having first partaken of a frugal repast, prepared by his own chef-de-cuisine, consisting of crabfish pounded with various Eastern condiments." —Morning Post, October 31st, 1857.

The eagerness with which the nobles of the Court sought for the servile office of filling the King of the Whiting's bowl with sea-water, is the only stroke of satire in the story, and evidently levelled at the candle-holding and similar ceremonies of "le grand et le petit coucher." To stand and hold a "bougeoir allumé," while Louis XIV. undressed himself, was, says St. Simon, "une distinction et une faveur qui se comptait, tant le Roi avait l'art de donner l'être à des riens."

In a note to the expression, "shrieks like Melusine's," page 398, I have suggested that some portion of Princess Camion might have been founded on the romance of Melusine. This romance was composed towards the end of the fourteenth century, by Jean d'Arras, at the desire of the Duke de Berri, son of John, King of France, and was founded on an incident recorded in the archives of the family of Lusignan, which were in possession of the Duke. It is briefly as follows: —

THE LEGEND OF MELUSINE

A King of Albania, named Elinas, had married the beautiful Fay Pressine, by whom he had three daughters at a birth, Melusine, Melior, and Palatine. Fay had stipulated that he should never enter her chamber during the period of her confinement; but the King having broken his promise in his anxiety to embrace his newly-born children, the Queen cried out that she was compelled to leave him, and immediately disappeared with her three daughters. She retired to the Court of her sister, the Queen of the "Isle Perdue," and as her children grew up, instructed them in the art of sorcery. Melusine having learned from her mother the conduct of her father, determined to be revenged on him, and proceeding to Albania, by means of her newly-acquired art carried off the King and shut him up in a mountain called Brandelois. The Queen, who still retained some affection for her husband, on becoming acquainted with this unnatural act, punished Melusine by sentencing her to become every Saturday a serpent from the waist downwards, till she should meet with a lover who would marry her on condition of never intruding on her during the time of her transformation, when she was ordered to bathe; with a promise that if she strictly attended to this injunction, she might eventually be relieved from her weekly disgrace and punishment. Melusine was excessively beautiful, and Raimondin, son of the Count de Forez, having met with her in the forest of Colombiers,[61 - At a spring called the Fountain of Thirst, or the Fountain of the Fays, "corruptly called 'La Font des Sees'" (says a writer in 1698), and every year, in the month of May, a fair is held in the neighbouring mead, when the pastrycooks sell figures of women 'bien coiffées,' called 'Merlusines.'] fell in love with her so deeply that he married her without hesitation on the prescribed conditions. She built for him, near the spot where they had met, the Castle of Lusignan, and bore him several children; but her husband's jealousy being excited by a cousin, who suggested to him that Melusine had a criminal object in secreting herself on a Saturday, he made a hole with his sword in the door of the chamber to which she was wont to retire, and perceived her in her state of transformation. The various versions of this legend differ in the details of the consequences; but all agree in stating that Melusine, reproaching him with the breach of his word, disappeared, and left him to end his days as a hermit on Montserrat. The popular belief was, that she appeared on what was called the Tower of Melusine when any of the lords of Lusignan were about to die; and Mezeray assures us, on the faith "of people who were not by any means credulous," that previous to the death of a Lusignan, or of a king of France, she was seen on this tower in a mourning dress, and uttered for a long time the most heart-piercing lamentations. The Duke de Montpensier destroyed the castle in 1574, on account of the resistance made to his arms in it by the Huguenots; but the family of Lusignan, till it merged in that of Montmorency-Luxembourg, continued to bear for its crest a woman bathing, in allusion to the story of Melusine.

Ange par la figure, et serpent par la reste. —Delisle

PRINCESS LIONETTE AND PRINCE COQUERICO

La Princesse Lionette et le Prince Coquerico is an infinitely better story than La Princesse Camion: but, like that, its aim is no higher than to excite the interest and awaken the wonder of its readers. As a work of fancy, however, it is one of the best of its class, and I believe is now for the first time translated into English.

I do not recollect any story on which it could be said to be founded; but at the end of La Tyranine des Fées détruite, by the Countess d'Anneuil, is a story, entitled La Princesse Lionne, in which a princess is changed into a lioness, and persecuted by a fairy called La Rancune; but there the similarity ends. Mademoiselle de Lubert edited an edition of the Nouveaux Contes des Fées of the Countess d'Anneuil, and may have taken an idea from that particular incident.

The model of the globe in which Prince Coquerico saw and heard all that passed in the universe, and witnessed the opera, the play, and the orations at the Académie Française, reminds one of the room in the Palace of the Beast, the various windows of which afforded Beauty similar entertainment.

The Fairy Tigreline's employments of spinning and threading pearls, is in strict accordance with the manners of the sixteenth century. "Passons avec les dames," says Rabelais, "nostres vie et nostres temps à enfiler les perles ou à filer, comme Sardanapalus." – Livre i. chap. 33. I have mentioned (p. 438) that the opera of Armide was considered the chef-d'œuvre of Quinnault. The music was composed by Lulli, and it is reported that he made Quinnault write the last act over again five times, which so disgusted the poet that he ceased to write for the stage from that period. The incident of the shield is that in which Ubaldo holds before Rinaldo his adamant or diamond shield, in which the latter sees himself reflected in his effeminate attire, is awakened to a sense of his degraded situation, and abandons the enchanted gardens of Armida. – Book xvi.

MADAME LEPRINCE DE BEAUMONT

Jeanne Leprince de Beaumont was born at Rouen, in 1711, and commenced her literary career in 1748, by the production of a romance, called La Triomphe de la Vérité; shortly after which she came to England, and resided in London for a considerable time, occupying herself as a governess, and in writing works for the instruction as well as the amusement of youth. That which acquired the most popularity was Le Magazin des Enfans, in which appeared her abridgment of Beauty and the Beast, and her original Fairy Tales. She was twice married. Her first was an unfortunate union, annulled almost immediately afterwards. Her second marriage took place in England, but to a Frenchman; and in 1762 she returned to France for the benefit of her native air. In 1768, she purchased a small estate, called Chenavoi, and died in 1780. Her miscellaneous works amount to seventy volumes; but even Le Magazin des Enfans is scarcely remembered in the present day, and the four short fairy tales which terminate this volume are, with the abridgment of Beauty and the Beast, the only effusions by which she is popularly known in England. The best of them is

PRINCE DÉSIR AND PRINCESS MIGNONE

It is more like one of the good old Breton stories – pleasant, short, and with a sound moral.

PRINCE CHÉRI,

Corrupted into "Prince Cherry" in our children's books, exhibits the influence of the importations from the East. But that it has so manifest a moral, it might pass for a French alteration of an Oriental tale. The names of Suliman and Zélie would encourage the suspicion.

THE WIDOW AND HER TWO DAUGHTERS

La Veuve et ses Deux Filles is better known by the title of Blanche and Vermillion, under which it has been frequently printed, and was also produced on the French stage by Mons. Florian, in March, 1781. The moral of the story is declared by the Fairy to be that excessively trite and common-place axiom, that happiness consists in content, or, in the words of the author, the possession of things only that are necessary without wishing for more; but the author forgot to show us that Blanche was discontented. It does not appear that she wished for superfluities, or to be a "great Queen," or that such an idea ever entered her head till the Fairy promised her she should become one, "not to reward," but "to punish," her for begrudging to give away her plums. Poor Blanche is therefore made an unhappy queen; her low birth renders her an object of contempt at Court; the King is a worthless person, who neglects the innocent girl his passion induced him to place upon his throne, and who is the mother of his children; and at length the miserable wife exclaims that "happiness is not to be found in magnificent palaces but in the innocent occupations of the country." Now this is foolish – it is worse, for it is false and injurious. There is as much happiness in palaces and on thrones, thank God, as there is in cottages. The occupations of a virtuous sovereign are as innocent as those of a husbandman, while the power to do good, existing with the will, must make the balance of happiness greatly in favour of the former. The cares of State are burdensome enough, no doubt, and the more conscientious the monarch, the weightier the sense of responsibility; but has the countryman no cares, no sorrows, no vices? The legal occupations of all classes are "innocent." Is it only kings and nobles who yield to temptations or indulge in the evil propensities of our common nature? There has been too much of this fallacy infused into what are called moral stories, and at the risk of being accused of breaking a butterfly on the wheel, I have singled out this particular instance, as Blanche and Vermillion is to be found in almost every child's story-book. That the author's intention was laudable, I do not doubt; but to read a wholesome lesson, she should have shown Blanche to have been discontented with the lot assigned to her by Providence, pining to mix in society for which she was neither fitted by birth nor education, and dreaming that happiness consisted solely in rank, wealth, and luxury. The moral should have been, not that such possessions were incompatible with virtue and happiness, but that their owners were not exempted from the frailties and sufferings of humanity, and that unequal marriages were rarely fortunate ones. All this, it will be said, she might mean, but it is not evident; and the only impression made upon a child's mind by this story, if any impression can be made by it whatever, is the very absurd and objectionable one, that all kings and queens are wicked and unhappy, and all farmers and dairy-maids virtuous and contented.

PRINCE FATAL AND PRINCE FORTUNÉ

This is another of the moral Fairy Tales of Madame de Beaumont, and, as Fatal and Fortuné, a great favourite with the compilers of children's story-books. It is healthier in tone than the preceding: the value of adversity is difficult to impress on a young mind, and it is pointed out in this little tale as well, perhaps, as it could be; but there is one observation I must venture to make in reference to a point of taste. The writers of the old Fairy Tales never mix up the Almighty with fairies and enchanters. The superior powers are invariably the mythological divinities of ancient Greece and Rome. Their heroes and heroines pray to "the gods," not to "God." The introduction of the sacred name is, I am well aware, too frequent in familiar French conversation, to render it a matter of criticism in the original language; and I fully acquit Madame de Beaumont of any intentional irreverence; but it is a fact worthy of remark, that in an age and at a Court which are described as particularly licentious, the writers for youth or entertainment carefully abstained from an unnecessary profanity of which they had examples enough in the older fabliaux and romances, not only of their own country, but throughout Europe; and that although the majority of these authors were in the highest ranks of society – members of the circle that surrounded the throne of one of the most despotic monarchs in the civilized world – they never spared the foibles or the crimes of princes, or the hypocrisy and treachery of their parasites.

The fearless frankness, indeed, with which they satirized the follies and inveighed against the vices of the great, is as honourable to them as their perfect freedom from that questionable morality which would deny in any class the existence of virtue and the enjoyment of happiness founded upon it. Madame de Beaumont's admission that such may be the case concludes her story of Fatal and Fortuné more satisfactorily than her insinuation to the contrary does that of The Widow and her Two Daughters.

So much has been said in this Appendix about Peau d'Ane and L'Adroite Princesse, that although, as in the case of Prince Marcassin and Le Dauphin, in my former volume, I have not included them in the body of the work, I think it may be as well, as in the above instance, to give in this place an analysis of their plots, they being undoubtedly two of the oldest fairy tales of their class on record.

PEAU D'ANE

A Princess, in order to escape the persecution of the King, her father, on a point of conscience, consults a fairy, who is her godmother, and by her advice successively requests her father to give her three dresses – the first of the colour of the sky, the second of the colour of the moon, and the third of the colour of the sun, believing he will be unable to fulfil his promises. He succeeds, however, in procuring for her the three dresses; and she is then instructed to ask him for the skin of a marvellous ass in the royal stables, which supplies the King daily with an ample quantity of gold coin, under the impression that his Majesty will never consent to such a sacrifice. The infatuated Monarch, however, does cause the ass to be killed and flayed, and the Princess, on the receipt of the skin she has requested, is reduced to flight. The Fairy tells her to put the three fine dresses and all her jewellery, &c. in a large trunk, which by magical power is to follow her underground, and appear whenever she needs it; and begriming her face and hands, and wrapping herself up in the ass's skin, the Princess escapes from the palace, and travels into the dominions of a neighbouring monarch. She there obtains employment in a farm as a scullion and keeper of the pigs and poultry, her only pleasure consisting in occasionally locking herself up in her miserable room, and putting on her fine dresses and jewellery, which appear at her wish, as the Fairy promised her.

The son of the King of this country happens to visit this farm occasionally as he returns from hunting, and one day peeps through the keyhole of the door, and sees Peau d'Ane (as the Princess is called, from the only dress she wears in public) arrayed in one of her richest robes. He is dazzled with her beauty, and believing her to be some divinity, he is afraid to burst open the door, and returns to the palace, where he falls perfectly love-sick, refusing to eat, drink, or take any amusement. He inquires who lives in that wretched room at the farm, and is told an ugly, dirty, kitchen wench, called Peau d'Ane, for the reason aforesaid. He declares that nothing can cure him but a cake made by her hands. After all sorts of expostulations, they yield to his wishes, and Peau d'Ane is ordered to make a cake for the Prince. She has seen him on his visits to the farm, and is equally in love with him. She makes the cake, and drops, by accident or design, a magnificent emerald ring into it. The Prince devours the cake, and finds the ring. He immediately declares that he will marry no one but the woman who owns that ring. On this determination being made public, all the unmarried ladies in the Court and kingdom endeavour to fit on the ring, but it is too small for any one to pretend to the ownership. At length Peau d'Ane is sent for at the Prince's wish, and dropping her hideous ass's skin, appears in magnificent attire, and places the ring easily on her finger. Everybody is astonished, the Prince and his parents delighted, and the nuptials take place, being honoured by the presence of Kings and Fairies from all quarters, and specially by the father of the Princess, who has recovered from his infatuation.

This story, founded originally on the legend of St. Dipne, was a favourite in France from an exceedingly early period, and was versified by Perrault, and published with Les Souhaits Ridicules, as I have already stated, in 1694. He alludes to the original nursery tale in his Parallele des Anciens et des Modernes, 1689, in which he makes the partisan of the ancients say, "Les fables Milesiennes sont si puériles, que c'est leur faire assez d'honneur que de leur opposer nos Contes de Peau d'Ane et de la Mère l'Oye." The prose version of this tale was not published until many years after his death, and is supposed by Baron Walkenäer not to have been his composition; and I think there is a point unnoticed by the Baron which supports that opinion. The story is dedicated to Mademoiselle Eleanore de Lubert.[62 - In the Cabinet des Fées, 1785, it is printed "de Huber," quite a different name; but the edition of the works of Perrault, 1826, by M. Collin de Plancy, is more carefully printed, and there it is distinctly de Lubert.] Now, if this be Mademoiselle de Lubert, author of La Princesse Camion, &c., she was not born till some years after the death of Perrault; and as in the dedication we find the lines

"Quoique vous soyez à l'aurore,
Du printemps de vos jeunes ans,"

the dedication itself could not have been written much before 1720, Mademoiselle de Lubert having been born about 1710.

There is another story in the Contes ou Joyeux Devises de Bonaventure Desperiers, Novel 130, of a young girl named "Peau d'Ane," and "how she got married by the means furnished her by the Ants." A gentleman fell in love with a merchant's daughter, named Pernette. The father and mother, not daring flatly to refuse their consent, attached to it what they considered an impossible condition – namely, that for a given period previous to her marriage the girl should wear no other apparel than the skin of an ass. Pernette, returning the gentleman's affection, was not to be discouraged by this obstacle, and cheerfully wore the skin of an ass for the appointed time. Foiled in this matter, they set their wits to work to invent something more impracticable. They insisted that she should lick up, grain by grain, a bushel of barley, which they spilt for that purpose on the ground. Nothing daunted, she applied herself to this task; but the ants repaired to the same spot, and took away all the barley by degrees, without being noticed, so that it appeared as if Pernette had done it; and her parents considering further opposition useless, the girl obtained her husband. The story concludes with the assertion that "Vray est que tant quelle vesquit le sobriquet de Peau d'Ane lui demeura."

There is nothing whatever in this story to remind one of the last, beyond the simple circumstance of the skin; nor have we any clue as to which may be the oldest: but both were called Peau d'Ane, and it may be just possible that one furnished a hint for the other, or, indeed, that there was a collection of stories so entitled; for La Porte, the valet of Louis XIV., tells us, in his Mémoires, that when that monarch was still a child, but had passed from the hands of females into those of men, he could not go to sleep "parcequ'on ne lui contait plus les contes de Peau d'Ane ainsi que les femmes qui le gardaient avaient coutume de le faire."

L'ADROITE PRINCESSE; OU, LES AVENTURES DE FINETTE

A King departing for the Crusades commits to a Fairy the charge of his three daughters – Nonchalante, Babillarde, and Finette, names descriptive of their characters. They are shut up in a tower without a door, and furnished with three enchanted distaffs of glass, which they are told will break on the commission of any indiscretion. They were to be provided with everything they might properly require by means of a basket let up and down by a crane and pulley fixed on the top of the tower. The two eldest Princesses soon become weary of solitude, and one day pull up in the basket an old beggar woman, Nonchalante hoping she will be her servant, and Babillarde being anxious to have somebody else to talk to. The beggar woman proves to be a Prince disguised, the son of a neighbouring King who is a bitter enemy of the father of the three Princesses, and who has had recourse to this expedient in order to revenge himself for some insult or injury he has sustained. By flattering the foibles of the two Princesses who introduced him into the tower, he succeeds in causing them to break both their distaffs, but all his artifices are foiled by Finette (L'Adroite Princesse), who gets rid of him by making him fall through a trap door into the ditch under the tower. Enraged at his defeat, he has recourse to another scheme, and succeeds in inducing Finette to descend in the basket to procure assistance for her sisters, who are suffering from the consequences of their indiscretions. He seizes Finette, and is about to have her rolled down a precipice in a tub filled with spikes, when she adroitly flings him into it, and he suffers the fate he had projected for the Princess. Mortally hurt, he bequeaths his vengeance to his brother, who swears to him that he will marry Finette, and murder her on the night of his nuptials. She, however, places a figure of straw in the bed, which the Prince unwillingly stabs, and is only too delighted to find he is not guilty of murdering a woman he loves, and who becomes his happy Queen.

This story was not published till 1742, when it was printed as Perrault's, although it was well known that Mademoiselle Lheritier, who had read Perrault's Histoires du Temps Passé in manuscript, had conceived from them the idea of trying her hand at the same sort of composition, and had actually published, in 1695-6, this very story, under the title of Les Aventures de Finette in her Œuvres Meslées, with a letter to the daughter of Perrault.

Speaking of that very story she says – "vous savez que dans le Conte de Finette, les deux sœurs sont très eloignées d'être aussi vertueuses que je les fais, on ne parle point de mariage: ce sont deux indignés personnes de qui on raconte des faiblesses odieuses avec les circonstances choquantes;" and she also observes, "j'ai pour moi la tradition qui met ce Conte de Finette; au Temps des Croisades."

There cannot surely be more evidence required to refute the assertion of Mr. Dunlop, that L'Adroite Princesse (be it written by Perrault or Mademoiselle Lheritier) is taken from the Pentamerone, with little variation of machinery or incident. The story he alludes to is the fourth of the third day, and is entitled Sapia Liccarda. There is no such name as Finette in it, and it is well known, independently of Mademoiselle Lheritier's declaration, that Le Conte de Finette was one of the oldest of the French nursery tales.

Nor can we desire clearer evidence of the way in which these stories were written than that which is afforded to us by the repeated acknowledgments of Mademoiselle Lheritier: —

"Ce que je viens de vous dire
Est toujours au fond bien naïvement
Tel qu'on ma conté quand j'etais enfant."

And, again, —

"Cent fois ma nourrice on ma mie
M'ont fait ce beau recit pres des tissons
Je n'ai fait qu'adjouter un peu de broderie."

Let any one compare these lines with those of the concluding portion of the story of L'Adroite Princesse commencing "Voila Madame," &c., and they must be struck by the singular resemblance.

There will be many general readers, and perhaps some critics, who may think I have been unnecessarily minute in my notes and humble attempts at illustration; but whilst I feel that the fairy tales I have selected contain in themselves nothing that may not afford innocent entertainment to children, I certainly hope that the little information I have been able to collect respecting some hitherto obscure and disputed points may give both this and the book that preceded it an interest in the eyes of elder readers, who may meet, where they least expect it, some fact or suggestion, trifling in itself, but furnishing a clue to more important matter.

My principal object has been, however, in this volume, to disabuse the minds of those who have taken for granted the assertions of our historians of fiction concerning the original sources from whence Perrault and Madame d'Aulnoy in particular derived the plots of their fairy tales – assertions which I confess I had not thought necessary to notice until, in a kind and complimentary review of my former volume, it was publicly regretted as an omission. I trust I have now made it perfectly clear that whether or not the writers of those tales were cognizant of the existence in the collections of Straparola and Basile of some half-dozen meagre and garbled versions of stories told for ages in all the tongues of Europe and Asia, that the real foundation of those of Perrault were the old Breton Contes de ma Mère l'Oye, which in company

"De Peau d'Ane et de Fier à bras
Et de cent autres vieux fatras,"

he had heard in his own nursery, and with which Louis XIV. had been rocked to sleep when a child, as well as all the rest of the children in his dominions; and that Madame d'Aulnoy, when not indebted to similar recollections, drew upon her own fertile and lively imagination, introducing occasionally an incident from one of the old Trouvères of Languedoc, or some of those Oriental stories which were circulated in manuscript long before their publication by Galland, or picked up by herself during her residence in Spain from the Moorish and Turkish slaves around her, nay, from her own little servant Zayde, who, though she could speak no language but her own at the time her mistress so pleasantly describes her, might have eventually acquired sufficient French or Spanish for such a purpose.

Her account of this child is so interesting that I shall not apologise for quoting it: —