The three lemons

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The three lemons ( Neapolitan original: Le tre cetra ) is a fairy tale ( AaTh 408). It is in Giambattista Basile 's Pentameron collection as the ninth story of the fifth day (V, 9).

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A prince never wants to marry, to the sorrow of his father. But once he cuts his finger, blood is dripping on white ricotta cheese, and he is looking for a woman who looks like this. In France he has to leave his servants behind and ships to India via Gibraltar. Two old women send him away before their three sons and three daughters devour him. The third gives him three lemons, which he should cut open, and the fairy who appears he should give water immediately. Twice he is too slow, with the third he has his lover in his arms. He hides them in an oak tree, rides ahead and fetches clothes. A Mohress fetching water from the well takes the reflection to be hers. She stabs the fairy in the head, who flies away as a dove, and lies to the prince that she is the transformed fairy. While preparing for the wedding, the cook hears the dove singing and cooks it at the command of the Mohrin, but a tree with three lemons grows out of the feathers, in which the prince finds the fairy. The wicked will be burned according to their own judgment.

Remarks

The fairy tale prepares the following unmasking of the deceiver in the framework of the Pentameron . Cf. on the color motif Basiles IV, 9 Der Rabe , otherwise V, 4 Der goldene Stamm . He contrasts white innocence several times with the cunning “black ass” who thinks in broken Italian, “be so beautiful and mistress you get some water”, falls in love with her supposed mirror image and breaks the jug like Narcissus . The parents are dismayed to see how their son was looking for a "white pigeon" and "loaded a black crow". The dove's song reads: "You cook, you cook in the kitchen, look: What does the king do with the Saracen woman?" The colors white and red parody the Song of Songs ( Hld 1,1  EU ) in a widespread manner , in Eschenbach's Parzival blood falls on snow. The three lemons (No. 21) appeared in Kletke's fairy tale hall in 1845 . Cirese / Serafini name 58 modern Italian variants in Tradizioni orali non cantate .

According to Walter Scherf , the fairy tale is richly represented in European versions; the prince's obsession with the curse of an old woman whom he disturbed while cooking often comes from (cf. Basiles II, 7 The Dove ). It is only known in German from Zingerle's Vomrich Grafensohne and Schneller's Die Liebe der drei Bomberanzen , which may depend on Gozzi's play. A child-friendly version is The Virgin from Orange in Sandman's Journey through Wonderland . Cf. in Grimm's fairy tale on the false bride no. 13 The three little men in the forest , no. 135 The white and black bride , on the colors no. 53 Snow White , on the dove also no. 88 The singing, jumping little lion .

It is the oldest example of the fairy tale type AaTh 408, subtype A, which is particularly common in the Mediterranean area and occurs very stable across the Balkans and Caucasus to Persia, in Spain and South America only subtype B, rarely in the north. He often begins with long-distance love through an old woman's curse. The tree rebirth at the end is rare. They are poetic fairy tales with erotic images and plastic scenes, formulaic speeches, often verses are an integral part. Lorenzo Lippi's Malmantile racquistato (7.27-105; 1676) has echoes . The French fairy tale Incarnat, blanc et noir (anonymous, 1718) has an otherwise Indian variant of its own final motif. Božena Němcová received the version of the first Slovak fairy tale collection, 1845. Agustín Durán wrote Legenda de las tres toronjas del vergel de amor , 1856. Individual motifs are older, such as the fruits of paradise in Indian Rāmāyana and Arabic descriptions of the Wāq-wāq islands in al-Masʿūdī and Ibn al-Wardī, Chinese fairy tale of the snail girl, the multiple rebirth in the Egyptian brother tale (AaTh 318). Carlo Gozzi's theatrical tale L'amore delle tre melarance (1761) and Sergej Prokof'ev's opera Ljubov 'k trëm apel'sinam (1921) are not part of Basile's tradition.

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literature

  • Giambattista Basile: The fairy tale of fairy tales. The pentameron. Edited by Rudolf Schenda. CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46764-4 , pp. 464–473, 568–570, 616–617 (based on the Neapolitan text of 1634/36, completely and newly translated).
  • Christine Shojaei Kawan: Oranges: The three O. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchen. Volume 10. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 3-11-016841-3 , pp. 346-355.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Giambattista Basile: The fairy tale of fairy tales. The pentameron. Edited by Rudolf Schenda. CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46764-4 , pp. 616-617 (based on the Neapolitan text of 1634/36, completely and newly translated).
  2. ↑ Walter Scherf: The fairy tale dictionary. Volume 1. CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-406-51995-6 , pp. 233-237.
  3. ↑ Heinz Görz (ed.): Sandman's journey through fairy tale land. Bertelsmann. Gutersloh. Pp. 232-235.
  4. ↑ Christine Shojaei Kawan: Oranges: The three O. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchen. Volume 10. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 3-11-016841-3 , pp. 346-355.