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Author
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Comment
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arnaldo74
Unregistered User
(6/14/04 8:46 am)
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Looking for a fairy tale - Help needed
I know part of the plot of a fairy tale, but I would like to have some more information about it.
The fairy tale is about a prince who is looking for an intelligent wife and submits his claimants to several trials. One of these trials is to make him a gift without making it. The girl who will pass the test and become his wife brings him a cage with a bird inside as a gift, then opens the cage and let the bird fly away.
I can't remember anything else.
Thanks in advance to anybody who can help me.
Andrea
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winkingstar
Registered User
(6/17/04 12:50 pm)
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Re: Looking for a fairy tale - Help needed
ooh, this is really annoying. i know this tale, but i can't think of the title right now. i remember reading it in a bookstore one day, and i remember the entire plot, and the picture on the cover ... but i just can't remember the title! i'll get back to you 'cause now it'll drive me crazy until i remember it.
edit: oops, i was thinking of another story. the one you are looking
for sounds like a variant of the Russian tale, "The Wise Little
Girl," which I have in Afanas'ev's Russian
Fairy Tales, and which you can find a slight variation of
online here.
was this what you were looking for? i have a feeling i've read a
longer adaptation of this tale, but i can't think of it.
~winkingstar
Edited by: winkingstar at: 6/17/04 1:50 pm
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arnaldo74
Unregistered User
(6/18/04 10:07 am)
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Looking for a fairy tale - Help needed
Yes! I remember it was an eastern Europe tale, probably Russian: I remember the plot because I saw a Slavic cartoon telling this tale when I was small (there were a lot of Slavic cartoon here in Italy).
However, I was interested mainly in the riddle module with the cage and the bird, which is perfectly developed in the online variation.
Of course I'm also interested in the version you read in the bookstore; therefore, if you remember it, please get back.
Thank you very much,
Andrea
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Ruthanne
Unregistered User
(6/22/04 10:29 pm)
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Clever Manka
Hi there,
The story type you are looking for is Clever Manka. It is a riddle story where a man tests a girl's cleverness by posing several riddles to her. One set of riddles is his instructions on how she is to appear when they first meet. The ususal is "neither walking nor riding, neither clothed nor naked"... and then variations like neither sated nor hungry etc.
The Russian version "The Wise Little Girl" is in Jane
Yolen's "Favourite
Folktales from around the World." The line about the bird
is "neither with a present nor without a gift." The girl
takes a quail when she goes to the palace, hands it to the Tsar
and the bird flies away. This is the only version I have come across
that has the bird as part of the riddles.
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Leibosan
(7/3/04 7:15 pm)
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Another variation
There are, of course, many variants of this tale. Another one is
collected in Kathleen Ragan's "Fearless
Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters" and called "The
Innkeeper's Wise Daughter" (which is listed in a rather troublingly
vague way as "Jewish-American").
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