hearing, and the man of greatest strength, while the Devil sleeps unconscious even of her disobedience. In another, given by Schneller from the Italian Tirol,[1] a dove comes to her window from her home; by it she sends a message back to her father, who rescues her with the help of the three servants just mentioned, and a fourth, who can glide so softly that his sharp-eared comrade cannot hear him.[2]
In Grimm's tale of Fitcher's Bird,[3] the heroine finds in the Forbidden Chamber her sisters' bodies hacked in pieces, and, having managed to evade the test of her disobedience (the egg stained with blood), puts the scattered fragments together and so brings her sisters back to life. The sorcerer, deceived into a belief of her obedience, promises to marry her. He has now (like persons of flesh and blood who have been entrapped into a similar promise) no more power over her, but must do what she desires. She tricks him into carrying her two sisters home in a basket. Fear of her and belief that she can see him all the way prevent him from discovering what is inside the basket, though he tries several times. On his return she detains him to hold a dialogue with her as she stands disguised in feathers until help arrives, when, the sorcerer and his friends being all in the house, her brothers and kinsmen set fire to it and burn them all. This tale, as regards its termination, holds an intermediate position between those already mentioned in which the heroine is rescued by others, and the far larger class where her own wit is the chief agent in her deliverance. The variants in which the heroine is the youngest of at least three sisters are very numerous; and in these cases the
- ↑ Schneller, loc. cit.
- ↑ Pitré (Fiabe Novelle e Racconti Popolari Siciliani, vol. i. Story No. 21, p. 191) gives an allied story in which the bridegroom compels his bride to take a number of dead bodies, one by one, out of a certain room and arrange them erect. Worn out by this labour, she bethinks her of a magic gift bestowed on her by her aunt. She opens the vessel containing it and utters her wish to return home. A dove flies out and bids her write to her father. The dove carries the letter. She is rescued by a seventh son. The husband afterwards makes the attempt at revenge, discussed later on under the Dead Hand type. In a variant the messenger is a swallow, and the monster is a dragon with a long tail, out of whose folds the heroine is delivered. This is analogous to the sleeping Devil of the text.
- ↑ Grimm. Story already cited.
