Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/202

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178
A STUDY OF FAIRY TALES

mond," and proved that it must have been learned by a certain Princess Blanche, of Castile, and transmitted by her to France about 1275. This romance must have traveled to Spain from the East. It is the same as "The Enchanted Horse" in The Thousand and One Nights, and through Keightley's proof, is originally Persian. Keightley also selected the Straparola tale, The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Beautiful Green Bird, and proved it to be the same as Grimm's Three Little Birds, as a Persian Arabian Night's tale, and also as La Princesse Belle Etoile, of D'Aulnoy. But as Gallaud's translation appeared only the year after Madame D'Aulnoy's death, Madame D'Aulnoy must have obtained the tale elsewhere than from the first printed version of Arabian Nights.

No date. The Thousand and One Days. This is a Persian collection containing the "History of Calaf."

1550. Straparola's Nights by Straparola. This collection of jests, riddles, and twenty-one stories was published in Venice. The stories were taken from oral tradition, from the lips of ten young women. Some were agreeable, some unfit, so that the book was forbidden in Rome, in 1605, and an abridged edition prepared. There was a complete Venetian edition in 1573, a German translation in 1679, a French one in 1611, and a good German one with valuable notes, by Schmidt, in 1817. Straparola's Nights contained stories similar to the German The Master Thief, The Little Peasant, Hans and the Hedge-Hog, Iron Hans, The Four Brothers, The Two Brothers, and Dr. Know-all.

1637. The Pentamerone, by Basile. Basile spent his early youth in Candia or Crete, which was owned by Venice. He traveled much in Italy, following his sister,