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188

Pitré, Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti popolari Siciliani. Palermo, 1875. vol. i. Story No. XLV, p. 393. (Told at Noto, and collected by Signor Mattia Di Martino.)

"LA CERVA"
(The Deer).

ABSTRACT

King and Queen have daughter with teeth of gold (heroine) and daughter with teeth of silver--Death-bed promise--Deceased wife's ring marriage test--Unnatural father--Pope aid-- Counter-tasks--Magic dresses--Heroine and sister get into chest which Pope throws into sea--Sick prince finds Heroine's hiding- box--Heroine discovered--Happy marriage-- Father's curse transforms heroine to deer--Sister impersonates bride; says Madonna has changed her teeth from gold to silver--Prince hunts in forest, wounds deer, who runs to palace, binds up arm and dons usual clothes. Explanation follows.

TABULATION

(1) King and queen have two daughters; one with teeth of gold, the other with teeth of silver. When one is fourteen and the other fifteen years old, the mother dies, leaving her husband a diamond ring, and telling him to wed the woman whom it would fit exactly.-- (2) King tries it on a good many, but it fits none; so he puts it on his writing-table.-- (3) One New Year's Day his daughters go to kiss the king's hand, and the elder, seeing the ring, tries it on. It fits her exactly, and the father goes mad, and wants to marry her. He urges; she refuses, and at length, not knowing what to do, throws herself at the Pope's feet and tells him all.-- (4) He counsels her to say to father that she will marry him when he gives her a robe which shows the sun by day and the moon by night. Father, setting out in search of it, meets a horseman, who says, "Your Majesty, what are you looking for?" and being told, gives him the dress. At sight of it daughter faints. Pope bids her demand another robe which shows the sea with its fishes. This robe is provided.-- (5) Then she has a chest made, and Sets out with her sister. The Pope puts them both into the chest, which he pitches into the sea. A king of the neighbouring country, being ill, is ordered by his doctors to take a sea voyage. One day, whilst fishing, he draws up the chest. Well pleased, he takes it to the palace, finds the elder sister, presents her to his mother, and marries her.-- (6) One day the wedded pair are looking out of window at a wood. The girl sees all at once a cavalier on horseback, and recognises her father, he draws near, and, whilst the prince has turned aside, says to her: "Are you there, wicked creature? I hope to God you will become a deer, and be separated from your husband!" Since curses of fathers and mothers always come to pass, the girl resolves what to do against she becomes a deer. She brings her sister out of the chest, tells her all [arrangess with her to personate herself], and says that if prince asks why she has silver teeth, she must say the Madonna has changed them, and that she has vowed not to sleep with him for six months.-- (7) Then the girl who is enchanted (fata), being made a deer, sets out for the wood. Her sister tells the prince what she was told to say, and he believes it. After a time prince goes to hunt in the wood.-- (8) He is eating, and the deer comes up to his side, till at last she annoys him, and, enraged, he takes his gun and fires. The wounded deer runs to the palace, binds up her arm, and dresses like herself. The prince returns, tells her what has happened, and shows the sister. They all live happily together.

Cox, Marian Roalfe. Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-five Variants of Cinderella, Catskin, and Cap O' Rushes, abstracted and tabulated. London: David Nutt for the Folklore Society, 1893.

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