The battered old woman

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Illustration by Franz von Bayros , 1909

The battered old woman ( Neapolitan original: La vecchia scorticata ) is a fairy tale ( AaTh 877). It is in Giambattista Basile 's Pentameron collection as the tenth story of the first day (I, 10). Felix Liebrecht translated The Discovered Old Woman .

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Two old sisters who do not leave their apartment complain about everything. The king says on the upper floor that a tender woman lives there and woos her. At last he can see a finger through the keyhole, it's a polished stick. Then one of them wants to visit him in the dark in his bed, for which she ties the folds on her back. When she fell asleep, he notices it and has her thrown out the window, whereby she gets stuck in a tree. This amuses some fairies so much that they rejuvenate them. At the wedding with the king, her sister always wants to know how she did it. Finally she says she had been skinned ("flayed"). The sister imitates it and dies.

Remarks

Exaggerated (and hearty) speeches give the text its length. Basile likes to caricature greedy women and ridiculous kings, this one only has one apartment. His motto are Neapolitan children's verses at the time. The mockery of poor old people had a literary tradition, as Rudolf Schenda notes. Nevertheless, the fairy tale was taken up, e.g. B. About the king who wanted a beautiful woman in Gonzenbach's Sicilian fairy tales (No. 73) and five variants from the 20th century in Cirese / Serafini's Tradizioni orali non cantate .

In Matteo Garrone's Pentamerone film adaptation of The Fairy Tale of Fairy Tales from 2015, The battered old woman is also told. The two sisters are played by Shirley Henderson and Hayley Carmichael , Vincent Cassel took over the role of the king.

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. 96-106, 526-528, 583-584 (based on the Neapolitan text of 1634/36, completely and newly translated).

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. 583-584 (based on the Neapolitan text of 1634/36, completely and newly translated).