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Author
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Comment
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Brelyan
Registered User
(12/3/02 10:27:26 am)
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Identification (or even existence!) help
I am trying to remember if this fairy tale is something I have read... or if it's just something I made up by combining different elements from different tales. It has so many strong connotations and elements of other tales, that in my memory it strikes me as authentic and something I have read.
On the other hand, if I'm combining forms, it could do the same thing.
It's very Rapunzel-like, in some ways, involving a princess locked in a tower by someone. No doors, a high window. That sort of thing. She's visited regularly by her captor, and is very alone.
She's also visited regularly by a prince(?) who has the ability to shape change. He visits her by changing form into a bird -- either a nightingale or a canary if memory serves -- and flying up to sing in her window.
Her captor figures this out, and one day spirits her away, and leaves her pincushion, needles facing up, in the sill. When he comes in to land on her sill, he lands on the pins instead, and they pierce his breast. He falls from the tower, and shape-changes back on the way down, before he lands on the ground. I don't remember what happens after that, even if he lives or dies.
The element of the traditional Rapunzel is definitely there, with the tower, and the spiriting away, and the piercing with the needles, but the shape changing is something else entirely.
The part with the needles is especially vivid for me, and it's what makes me think this is something I've read.
I have no idea when I would have read it -- if it even exists -- but it came into my awareness about 5 years ago. So let's say 1997ish.
Regardless, I'd appreciate any help anyone has. This is something I'm wanting to write, but I want to know if I'm doing a retelling or not, first!
Thanks!
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(12/3/02 12:02:28 pm)
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Might be Finist the Falcon...
There is a Russian Fairy Tale that fits some aspects of your tale - the lady in question is no captive, though. It is a East of the Sun, West of the Moon variant:
www.lacquerbox.com/finist-long.htm
There is also a French Fairy Tale "Finette and the Blue Bird" (????) that has certain elements, though the prince is enchanted and can not change form at will. Any of the wonderfully konwledgeable people on this board help me out here, please?! Sorry, but I simply can't find it at the moment...
Regards and Seasons Greetings,
Lotti
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tlchang37
Registered User
(12/3/02 4:30:14 pm)
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Re: Might be Finist the Falcon...
Lotti, there is a version that sounds like your French tale in the Golden Book of Fairy Tales (the one illustrated by Adrienne Segur) called "Bluecrest". A king chooses 7 years in the form of a bird rather than marry the heroine's ugly stepsister. The jealous step-sister and her wicked mother find out his identity (he visits the heroine at her window by night) and hang the place with razors and swords...
Tara
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JenM
Unregistered User
(12/3/02 7:38:14 pm)
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Bluebird
Do you read French? If so, you can go to
www.contes.net/contes/aul...e_fee.html
and read L'oiseau Bleu, by Catherine D'Aulnoy. For an English version, there is a collection of French Fairytales (Beauty and the Beast and Other Classic French Fairytales. I think) it is edited by Jack Zipes and has a lot of great stories other than the Bluebird.
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(12/4/02 1:21:59 am)
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Yep, that's the one I meant :o)
Thanks Tara & JenM,
that was the story I meant!
Seasons Greetings,
Lotti
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Brelyan
Registered User
(12/4/02 6:37:03 am)
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Re: Yep, that's the one I meant :o)
I looked up the BlueBird one, and that's relatively similar, yes.
I also made a run by Barnes and Noble last night to flip through some more, and found a Blue Bird one in a paperback collection of French folk tales that looked similar, too.
Hunting through some lists, though, I'm also wondering if it might be The Canary Prince -- haven't found the book of Italian folk tales that it's in yet, but I have a friend who catalogs at a university library, and she told me they have it, so I'll have to get her to check.
None of the ones I have read have really struck me as being precisely the story yet, but they're similar.
Thanks for all the help, and I'll let you know if that's the one I'm after!
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