The Enchanted Wreath is a Scandinavian fairy tale, collected in Benjamin Thorpe in his Yule-Tide Stories: A Collection of Scandinavian and North German Popular Tales and Traditions. Andrew Lang adapted a variant of it for The Orange Fairy Book . [1] It is Aarne-Thompson type 403B, the black and the white bride, and includes an episode of type 480, the kind and the unkind girls.
A man had a wife, and both of them had a daughter from an earlier marriage. One day, the man took his daughter to cut wood and found when he returned that he had left his axe. He told his wife to send her daughter for it, so it would not grow rusty. The stepmother said that his daughter was already wet and, besides, was a strong girl who could take a little wet and cold.
The girl found three doves perched on the axe, looking miserable. She told them to fly back home, where it would be warmer, but first gave them crumbs from her bread. She took the axe and left. Eating the crumbs made the birds feel much better, and they lay on her head an unfading wreath of roses, with tiny birds singing in it. The stepmother pulled it off, and the birds flew off and the roses withered.
The next day, the father went alone and left his axe again. The stepmother was delighted and sent her own daughter. She found the doves and ordered them off as "dirty creatures." They cursed her to never be able to say anything except "dirty creatures." The stepmother beat her stepdaughter, and was all the angrier when the doves restored the wreath to its condition and the girl's head.
One day, a king's son saw her and took her off to marry her. The news of them made the stepmother and her daughter quite ill, but they recovered when the stepmother made a plan. She had a witch make a mask of her stepdaughter's face. Then she visited her, threw her into the water, and put her daughter in her place, before setting out to see if the same witch could give her something to cure the doves' curse on her daughter. Her husband was distraught by the change in her, but thought it stemmed from an illness. He thought he saw his bride in the water, but she vanished. After twice more seeing her, he was able to catch her. She turned into various animals, a hare, a fish, a bird, and a snake, but he cut off the snake's head, and the bride became a human again.
The stepmother returned with an ointment that would work only if the true bride had really been drowned; she put it on her daughter's tongue and found it did not work. The prince found them and said they deserved to die, but the stepdaughter had persuaded him to merely abandon them on a desert island.
This tale contains two sequences, which are often found together – "The Three Little Men in the Wood", "The White Bride and the Black One", "Maiden Bright-eye", and "Bushy Bride" – but which can also be two separate stories. First, there is the "kind and unkind girls" tale, where variants include "Mother Hulda", "Diamonds and Toads", "The Three Heads in the Well", "The Two Caskets", and "Father Frost". [2] Literary variants include "The Three Fairies" and "Aurore and Aimée". [3] Second, the theme of the stepmother (or another woman) managing to usurp the true bride's place after the marriage, is often found in other fairy tales, where the obstacles to the marriage differ, if they were part of the tale: "The Wonderful Birch", "Brother and Sister", "The Witch in the Stone Boat", or "The White Duck".
"Cinderella", or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants that are told throughout the world. The protagonist is a young girl living in forsaken circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune, with her ascension to the throne via marriage. The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo sometime between 7 BC and 23 AD, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is usually considered to be the earliest known variant of the Cinderella story.
"Snow White" is a German fairy tale, first written down in the early 19th century. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection Grimms' Fairy Tales, numbered as Tale 53. The original German title was Sneewittchen; the modern spelling is Schneewittchen. The Grimms completed their final revision of the story in 1854, which can be found in the 1857 version of Grimms' Fairy Tales.
A stepmother, stepmum or stepmom is a female non-biological parent married to one's preexisting parent. Children from her spouse's previous unions are known as her stepchildren. A stepmother-in-law is a stepmother of one's spouse.
In mythology, folklore and speculative fiction, shapeshifting is the ability to physically transform oneself through unnatural means. The idea of shapeshifting is in the oldest forms of totemism and shamanism, as well as the oldest existent literature and epic poems such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Iliad. The concept remains a common literary device in modern fantasy, children's literature and popular culture.
"Hansel and Gretel" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 as part of Grimms' Fairy Tales. It is also known as Little Step Brother and Little Step Sister.
The Wonderful Birch is a Finnish/Russian fairy tale. A variant on Cinderella, it is Aarne–Thompson folktale type 510A, the persecuted heroine. It makes use of shapeshifting motifs. Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book.
Diamonds and Toads or Toads and Diamonds is a French fairy tale by Charles Perrault, and titled by him "Les Fées" or "The Fairies". Andrew Lang included it in The Blue Fairy Book. It was illustrated by Laura Valentine in Aunt Louisa's nursery favourite.
The Three Heads in the Well is a fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales.
The youngest son is a stock character in fairy tales, where he features as the hero. He is usually the third son, but sometimes there are more brothers, and sometimes he has only one; usually, they have no sisters.
Father Frost is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki (1855–63). Andrew Lang included it, as "The Story of King Frost", in The Yellow Fairy Book (1894).
Shita-kiri Suzume, translated literally into "Tongue-Cut Sparrow", is a traditional Japanese fable telling of a kind old man, his avaricious wife and an injured sparrow. The story explores the effects of greed, friendship and jealousy on the characters.
"The Three Little Men in the Wood" or "The Three Little Gnomes in the Forest" is a German fairy tale collected in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book (1890) as "The Three Dwarfs," and a version of the tale appears in A Book of Dwarfs (1964) by Ruth Manning-Sanders.
Bushy Bride is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Asbjørnsen and Moe. It is Aarne-Thompson type 403. It is included in Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book.
"The White Bride and the Black One" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 135. It is Aarne-Thompson type 403A. Other tales of this type include The Three Little Men in the Wood, Brother and Sister, Bushy Bride, and The Enchanted Wreath.
The Two Caskets is a Scandinavian fairy tale included by Benjamin Thorpe in his Yule-Tide Stories: A Collection of Scandinavian and North German Popular Tales and Traditions. Andrew Lang included it in The Orange Fairy Book.
The Old Witch is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in his 1894 book, More English Fairy Tales. It is also included within A Book of Witches by Ruth Manning-Sanders and A Book of British Fairy Tales by Alan Garner.
"The Three Fairies" is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 work, the Pentamerone.
Aurore and Aimée is a French literary fairy tale written by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. Like her better known tale Beauty and the Beast, it is among the first fairy tales deliberately written for children.
King Lindworm or Prince Lindworm is a Danish fairy tale published in the 19th century by Danish folklorist Svend Grundtvig. The tale is part of the more general cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom, and is classified in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as tale type ATU 433B, a type that deals with maidens disenchanting serpentine husbands.
The Dragon-Prince and the Stepmother is a Turkish fairy tale collected by Turkologist Ignác Kúnos. The tale is part of the more general cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom, and is classified in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as tale type ATU 433B, "King Lindworm", a type that deals with maidens disenchanting serpentine husbands. In the Turkish variants, however, the story continues with the adventures of the banished heroine, who meets a man at a graveyard, rescues and marries him, and eventually is found by her first husband, the snake prince whom she disenchanted before.