The Golden Root (Italian fairy tale)

The tale can be classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as belonging to type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband". Nancy Canepa indexes it as type 425A, "The Animal as Bridegroom".[6]

Scholars have called attention to structural similarites between the tale and the Graeco-Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche, as related by Apuleius in the 2hd century AD.[7] In fact, The Golden Root is considered to be one of Basile's rewritings of the myth, the other being Il catenaccio ("The Padlock", former tale type AaTh 425L, "The Padlock on the Enchanted Husband").[8]

Center-wise: Parmetella opens the box and the instruments fly out of it. Illustration by George Cruikshank for The Story of Stories (1850).

Scholarship notices the resemblance between Parmetella's quest for the box of instruments and Psyche's quest for Persephone's casket, and the result of curiosity for both women.[9] Catalan scholarship locates the motif of the box of musical instruments in Greek, Turkish and South Italian variants.[10]

The heroine is also helped by ants to carry grains from one place to the other. A similar event occurs in the myth of Psyche and in other fairy tales, such as The Queen Bee, by the Brothers Grimm.[11]

In a Sicilian variant collected by Laura Gonzenbach, Der Kônig Stieglitz, a poor shoemaker sits on a rock to lament his lack of work and suddenly a youth appears, named Cardiddu, saying that the shoemaker called out his name. The youth guides the shoemaker to his rich underground palace and lets him take some riches with him. The youth tells him that he wants to marry the shoemaker's third and youngest daughter. The shoemaker agrees and returns home to explain the situation to his daughters. The third one marries the mysterious prince and they live a good life, but her husband orders her not to open a certain door. He explains that he was a king, banished to this underground castle by a mamma draja who want him to marry her daughter. King Cardiddu leaves for some days and his wife is visited by her sisters. They try to convince their sister to open the door, but she refuses. One night, spurred by curiosity, she lights a candle to see if her husband was asleep. One drop of wax falls on his head and she finds herself out in the forest, the castle having disappeared. King Cardiddu admonishes her and tells her to follow the trail to the witch who enchanted him, and make her swear on his name to avoid being eaten by her. She does as instructed and the witch takes her as her servant. The witch forces her to do difficult tasks, which she accomplishes with her husband's help. The last task by the witch is for her to take a letter and a box to her sister, also a witch. On her way, curiosity gets the better of her and she opens the box, which begins to ring. Her husband appears and silences it. She delivers the box to the witch and returns to the mamma draja, who has made the preparations for the marriage between her daughter and King Cardiddu. The woman is to hold burning candles at the foot of the bridal bed during the nuptial night, but King Cardiddu knows it is a trap, so he makes the mamma draja's daughter change places with the woman. The witch's daughter falls into the trap and the couple escape from the house by transforming into different thing - a sequence that appears in tale type ATU 313, "The Magic Flight".[12] Scholar Jack Zipes translated the tale as King Cardiddu and classified it as type ATU 425A, "The Animal as Bridegroom", with an episode of type 313, "The Girl as Helper in he Hero's Flight".[13]

In another Sicilian variant, collected by Giuseppe Pitrè with the title Marvizia, a prince's daughter owns a potted plant that produces a rose with good seeds to eat. A green bird comes and eats the seeds. The girl wants to own this green bird, but the prince's servants fail to catch it. Then, she dons a disguise as a pilgrim and follows the bird to villages, under the pretense that she is going on a seven year penance. She arrives at a city whose queen misses her son, but shelters the girl. In return, the girl asks for the queen's ring, a memento of her lost son. The queen agress and the girl pilgrim continues on her journey. She arrives at the house of a mammadraga and asks for lodging. The mammadraga invites her in, calls her Marvizia (from Marva, a mallow plant) and sets her on doing strenuous taks. First, the girl, Marvizia, has to clean all copper utensils, and confides to the mammadraga's giant servant, Ali. The green bird appears on the window sill and advises the girl. Next, to wash all the mattresses, and finally to weave clothes for the mammadraga. The next day, the mammadraga turns the green bird into a man, and sets her giant servant Ali to take Marvizia to be devoured by goats. Ali meets the green bird, who gives him a magic staff to create grass to satiate the goats. A shepherd girl gives food to mammadraga, who, after thanking her, decides to make the girl her daughter-in-law. The green bird agrees to the mammadraga's decision, but secretly, uses the Ring of Command to materialize a torch with gunpowder and pellets inside. After their marriage, with Marvizia holding the torch on the foot of the bridal bed, the green bird asks for his new wife to hold the torch. The torch explodes on the shepherdess's hands, taking the mammadraga's house with it. Marvizia, the now human green bird and the giant Ali escape from the mammadraga with the Ring and the Book of Command, the villainess hot in pursuit. The trio escape and meet with the queen who gave Marvizia the ring.[14] Waldemar Kaden, who translated this tale, commented that this was another variant of the myth of Cupid and Psyche.[15]

In a variant from Tuscany, Ermenegilda e Cupido, collected from a Rosina Casina, Ermenegilda is the youngest of three sisters. One day, she enters a palace and, after some wandering, reaches a door that says it is her room. She lives with a mysterious character that comes at night to her bed. She suspects it might be a monster, so the next time he comes, she will light a candle to see him. So she does, and sees a handsome youth. He awakes and tells her he feels betrayed, and that she must seek his mother, a sorceress. Ermenegilda meets her mother-in-law, who discovers she married her son, so she sends her on difficult tasks: to wash a bicoloured piece of cloth to all white, to separate many feathers, and to carry a letter to the sorceress's sister and get from her "i canti, i balli e soni". Finally, the sorceress forces Ermenegilda to carry ten candles, one on each finger, to her son's wedding to another woman.[16]

In a Valencian variant collected by author Enric Valor i Vives with the title El castell d'entorn i no entorn, poor girl Teresa gives water to a hermit and receives a magic book in return. She opens the book; a ghostly figure of a prince answers from within the book and tells her to go the castle of "Serra dels Plans". There, she seeks employment with Queen Tomanina, mother of Prince Bernat. One day, the queen's elderly housekeeper lies to the queen that the girl boasted that she could accomplish great things. Then, Teresa is tasked with unstitching and cleaning the mattresses of the entire palace. She does with a little help from Prince Bernat. Lastly, the girl is asked to go to the queen's sister, Argelagaina, and to get two boxes from her.[17]

Other Spanish variants of the tale type were located in Mallorca, Catalunya and Eivissa.[18]

Richard MacGillivray Dawkins translated a Greek variant from the island of Karpathos, with the title Moskambari. In this tale, a poor girl lives with her starving mother. One day, she eats too much of their food and her mother curses her daughter to be eaten by an ogress. A wind blows the girl's kerchief to an ogress's house, who takes her in. The ogress orders the girl to do some tasks for her son's upcoming wedding. First, she has to clan forty rooms; then, to wash clothes without soap and thirdly to stuff mattresses with feathers - all tasks done with help from Moskambari (Musk and Amber), the ogress's son. Finally, the ogress sends the girl to her ogress sister to get fiddles for the wedding. At the ceremony, Moskambari chooses the girl instead of his bride-to-be, who is further humiliated by being made to fart in front of the ogress.[19][20]

In a variant from the island of Lesbos collected from a Mersini by William Roger Paton with the title Melidoni ("Sorrow" or "Care"), a poor fisherman wants to marry his three daughters to suitable suitors. A cafezi advises him to pray to God and to cast his net in the sea. He marries his two elder daughters. When it is the youngest's turn, he catches a lobster in his net and gives it to his daughter as her husband. At first, the girl is sad, but the lobster reveals he is a prince and that the losbter is his ship ("kanani" in Modern Greek, similar to "kananida", a kind of lobster). He warns her not to tell anything to her family. One day, she visits her family and watches over the lobster skin. Meanwhile, she sees outside a prince (her husband) appear three times, each on a more splendid horse and garments than the later. The third time, she tells the prince is her husband and he disappears. She then wears three leather dresses, three pairs of boots with rion soles, and goes on a quest for him. She meets three ogresses on the way, who help her and indicate the way to Melidoni. She meets a disguised Melidoni, who asks her for a kiss. She refuses and he turns her into a button, promising to take her to his mother. Once there, Melidoni changes her back and presents her to his mother. The ogress mother tells her to sweep and not sweep the floor of 40 rooms, to cook and not cook the meat for the ogress, and to fetch yeast from the house of the ogress's sister. She accomplishes it all with her husband's guidance. Melidoni's mother betrothes him to another bride and tells the girl to fill many mattresses with feathers, to make a donkey dance, to feed the dog and to being back a loaf of bread untouched. Finally, on the wedding day, the girl is forced to hold torches, bearing the pain of their burning, and - as her husband instructed the night before - throws them at the bride. They escape back to her father's house.[21]

In a variant collected by Georgios A. Megas with the title Ο χρυσαετός του κόσμου ("The Golden Eagle of the World"), a married couple lives a happy life, until the wife is pressed by her neighbours to ask her husband's name. He says it is "Μαυροτάρταρο της Γης, το Χρυσαετό του Κόσμου" (Black Tartaro of the Earth, the Golden Eagle of the World). He vanishes overnight and the wife goes looking for him. She reaches his mother's house, a dragon, and is taken as a maid. The dragon forces the wife to sweep and not sweep the house, to cook and not cook a piece of lamb, and to go to the dragon's sister to get the "toumoula" and the "moumoula" and bring them back. Her husband advises her to change the donkey's and the dog's food on the way to the sister's house, compliment a crooked fig tree and a river filled with dirty water, get the things and escape. Finally, the dragon mother prepares her son's wedding to another bride, and forces the human girl to wash her husband's clothes in the river and to hold candles near the bridal bed.[22]