Four and Twenty Fairy Tales

"They have here great numbers of slaves who are bought and sold at high prices. They are Moors and Turks, some of them worth four or five hundred crowns a piece… You are extremely well served by these unhappy wretches, they are far more diligent, laborious, and humble than other servants… I have one that is not above nine years old. She is as black as jet, and would be reckoned in her own country a wonderful beauty, for her nose is quite flat, her lips prodigiously thick, her eyes of a red and white colour, and her teeth admirable in Europe as well as in Africa. She understands not a word of any language than her own. Her name is Zayde; we have got her baptized… Those who sold her to me told me she was a girl of quality; and the poor child will come often and fall down on her knees before me, clasp her hands, cry, and point towards her country. I would willingly send her thither if she could there be a Christian; but this impossibility obliges me to keep her. I would fain understand her, for I believe her to be intelligent– all her actions show it. She dances after her fashion, and so pleasantly that she affords us much entertainment. I make her wear white patches, with which she is mightily taken. She is dressed as they are at Morocco, that is, in a short gown almost without any plaits, large shift sleeves of fine cloth striped with different colours like those of our Bohemians and gipseys. A pair of stays made of merely a strip of crimson velvet on a gold ground, and fastened at the sides with silver buckles and buttons, and a mantle of exceedingly fine woollen stuff, very long and very large, in which she wraps herself, and with one corner of it covers her head.

"This dress is very handsome; her short hair, which looks like wool, is cut in several places, on each side like a half-moon, on the crown in a circle, and in front like a heart. She cost me twenty pistoles. My daughter has made her governess of her Marmoset, the little monkey given to her by the Archbishop of Burgos. I assure you Zayde and the Marmoset are capitally matched, and understand each other extremely well." —Relation du Voyage en Espagne.

With this characteristic and suggestive extract from a book deserving to be better known, I leave a subject to which it is not likely I shall return in print, though it will never cease to interest me in the study.

THE END

notes

1

Gueridons, i. e., stands to place lights or china upon. The word is now used to signify any small round table with one foot; but the old-fashioned stand, which was higher than a table, and its top not bigger than a dessert plate, is occasionally to be met with.

2

Looking-glasses with frames of the same material were much in vogue at that period. Of silver-framed mirrors some magnificent specimens remain to us at Knowle Park, Kent.

3

A celebrated distillation of spirit of wine upon rosemary, so-called from the receipt, purporting to have been written by a Queen Elizabeth of Hungary, and first published at Frankfort in 1659.

4

From the explanation contained in this parenthesis, it is probable that we have here the earliest mention of these celebrated articles in a French story; Jack the Giant-killer and Jack and the Bean-stalk being of English origin.

5

Collet-monté. The contemporary of the ruff. In the reign of Louis the Fourteenth it was succeeded by the collet-rabattu, and totally discarded before his decease.

6

A sauce piquante, as ancient as the fifteenth century, being one of the seventeen sauces named by Taillevant, chief cook to Charles VII. of France, in 1456.

7

See Appendix.

8

This compliment, so deservedly paid to the Countess d'Aulnoy, proves that this story was written after the production of that lady's popular fairy tale entitled "La Princesse Carpillon."

9

Charmes is the French name for that species of elm called the yok elm.

10

A Michel Duboulay, or Duboulai, was the author of two operas, entitled, Zephyr et Flore and Orphée; but the music of these is said to have been composed by Lulli.

11

A favourite palace of Louis XIV., four leagues west of Paris, and the scene of many celebrated entertainments. It was destroyed in the Revolution of 1789.

12

A shepherd who, according to the story told by Plato, was possessed of a ring which he took off the finger of a dead man enclosed in the body of a brazen horse, and which rendered the wearer invisible. By means of this ring he became King of Lydia.

13

La vigne d'or, more commonly la vigne de l'évêque. "On dit d'un mari et d'une femme qui passent la première année de leur mariage sans s'en repentir, qu'ils auront la vigne de l'evêque." – P. J. Le Roux, Dictionnaire Comique. In the only English version I have seen of this story, "the golden vine" is of course transformed into "the flitch of bacon."

14

Louis XIV., "Le Grande Monarque."

15

I have not thought it necessary to run into rhyme the exceedingly prosaic effusions of the two pairs of lovers.

16

I have not thought it necessary to alter these initials, signifying those of "La Belle."

17

A South American tribe (genus Erbus), distinguished from all other monkeys for their gentleness and intelligence. There are many varieties, – the white-fronted, the horned, the large-headed, the golden-footed, the weeper, &c., and their differences in colour are very considerable.

18

Perhaps an allusion to the New Theatre in the Rue des Fosses, St. Germain. Vide page 272, note.

19

At this period, the Grand Opera, or "Académie Royal de Musique," under the direction of the celebrated Lulli, was located at the Theatre du Palais Royal, which had been occupied by Molière from 1660 to his death in 1673. It was opened in 1674, with the opera of Alceste, and destroyed by fire on the 6th of April, 1763.

20

Of this celebrated Fair a notice will be found in the notes to the Fairy Tales of Madame d'Aulnoy, page 65. It was visited by the royal family, and may be said to have been the birthplace of the opera comique and the vaudeville of France. It was suppressed in 1789.

21

The most celebrated was that of Brioche, who is said to have been the inventor of that species of entertainment.

22

Le Sage and other equally celebrated authors wrote for this theatre.

23