How the Devil Married Three Sisters

Italo Calvino's retelling entitled Il naso d'argento ("Silver Nose") is based on the Piedmont version, but he found this rudimentary version to be meager, and expanded his retelling with added elements using variants from Bologna and Venice[5]

(Piedmont)
The original of Calvino's base story, "Il diavolo dal naso d'argento (The devil with the silver nose)" was collected in the Langhe region of Piedmont, by Carraroli,[6] designated (P) below. The other texts that Calvino borrowed were the Bolognese version of Coronedi-Berti's "La fola del diavel" (B), and the Venetian "El Diavolo" (V). The Widter-Wolf/Crane text (WW) is also invoked here for comparison.

In (P), the stranger comes to the house of a single mother, not to woo her three daughters as in (WW), but to put them in his service. This man has a silver nose which raises the mother's suspicion immediately that he is the devil, but the first girl does not heed the mother's warning. In (P), when the daughter opens the forbidden door, the devil catches her in the act just as she was shutting the door. The devil in (P) then returns to the mother to fetch the second daughter, without stating a proper reason why, prompting a comment by Carraroli that the devil probably explained the bride to be content but still missed the company of others. (Calv.) however makes the devil explain that there were so many chores that one helper was not enough.

In (P), the third daughter is clever enough to keep her promise, whereas in (WW) curiosity gets the best of her and she opens the forbidden door too, but remains undetected because she had removed the flower bouquet beforehand. Consequently, (P) leaves unaccounted how the third daughter ever learned the fate of her sisters—which she inevitably had to know before she could have committed her next action of scheming their escape; whereas in (WW), she had discovered her sisters with other damned souls in flaming hell behind the forbidden door.

In (B) and (Calv.) the devil makes the three women wear a rose, a carnation,[7] and a jasmine[8] respectively instead of a bouquet, and the names are Zoza/Carlotta and Lucia/Lozla for the first and third daughters. In (V), it is a rose placed in the head each time. In all the non-(P) variants, the forbidden door hides the infernal flames that ruins the flowers for the daughters who fail the test.

In (P), (WW), and the other variants, the devil is tricked into bearing chests with the women hidden inside, whereas in (Calv.) he is asked to carry back bags of laundry, to the women's mother, who is a widowed washerwoman. Here, (Calv.) adapts from (V) where the clever daughter tells the devil she is stuffing the chest with a "bit of stuff (or clothes) to wash" (un poca de roba a lavar).[lower-alpha 3]

A comprehensive list of analogues (for Grimm's tale Fitchers Vogel) spanning many languages is compiled in Bolte and Polívka's Anmerkungen von Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm I (1913), (designated BP in folkloristics).[9][lower-alpha 4]

The reduced list below covers Italian examples classed as AT 311 types by modern commentators.

Published in Italian or dialects

• Bernoni (1873), "Il Diavolo," Fiabe e novelle popolari veneziane, no. 3[2][10][9]
• Carraroli (1906), "Il diavolo dal naso d'argento," Archivio XXIII[11][9]
• Coronedi-Berti (1883), no. 27, "La fola del diavel"[12]
• Imbriani (1877), "[Gli] Assassini", La Novellaja fiorentina, no. 22.[14][9]
• Imbriani (1877), "Il contadino che aveva tre figliuoli", La Novellaja fiorentina, no. 2[13][15]
• Imbriani (1877), "L'orco", La Novellaja fiorentina, no. 1[3][9][13][15]
• Imbriani (1877), "Lombrion", La Novellaja milanese [13]
• Pitrè, "Lu scavu" (tr. Zipes & Russo (2009) "The Slave")
• Visentini (1879), "Il Diavolo" Fiabe mantovane, no. 39[3][9]

Published in German

• Kaden (1880), "Der Albanese" (Translation/adaptation of Pitre 19. "Lu scalvu").[lower-alpha 5]
• Gonzenbach (1870), no. 22, "Vom Räuber, der einen Hexenkopf hatte" ("Del brigante che. possedeva la testa di mavara"; tr. Zipes (2004) "The Robber with a Witch's Head".)[13]
• Gonzenbach (1870), no. 33, "Die Geschichte von Ohimè" ("La novella di Ohimè"; tr. Zipes & Russo (2009) "The Story of Oh My".)[9][13]

(Sicilian) Pitrè's collected Sicilian tale "Lu Scavu" (tr. "The Slave" by Zipes,[16] and "Der Albanese" i.e. 'the Slav', by Kaden[17]) features three daughters of a cavuciliddaru (German:Kräutersammler), that is, a man who gathers or sells cavuliceddi or leafy brassica vegetables (of the cabbages, mustards, or rapes kind) for a living.[18][19] The man takes the youngest named Rusidda (tr. Rosetta or Rosa) and find a lovely mushroom, which they pull and tug, until there pops up out of the ground (pulled out by the ear, according to Kaden) a slave (or the Slav). The Slave bargains to have the daughter stay with him in his magnificent dwelling underground, paying the father a purse full of money. She is treated well, until one day the Slave leaves house and after making her promise to do whatever he bids her, instructs her to eat a hand with fresh flesh on it in his absence. Horrified, she crushes the hand up in a mortar and throws the mess in the toilet. Upon the Slave's return, she tells a lie, claiming she ate it, but when the Slave calls out to the hand, it answers and reveals its whereabouts.[lower-alpha 6] The Slave beheads and discards Rusidda, then bargains the father for the other sisters, Catarina (Caterina) who fails the test, and 'Ntonia (Antonia) who outwits the Slave. Antonia grinds up the hand and smears the mess on her stomach like plaster. She gains her captor's trust, discovers the fresh corpses of her sisters and kings and princes, finds a pot of healing, whose content when administered with a brush on the severed wound restored the missing body part and revived the dead. The rescued royalty offer to marry or adopt their rescuer, and Antonia chooses to be the wife of the Prince of Portugal.[lower-alpha 7] There is an epilogue whereby the Slave tries to take revenge by transforming into an immobile statue or doll, dressed in Portuguese garb and placed in a glass cabinet, fooling the king into buying the doll as decor for his wife's chamber (Kaden's German translation is clearer on this; the original word for the furniture piece is scaffarrata, which Zipes translates as "cabinet", but is really a glass case).[lower-alpha 8] The Slave tries to harm her while she lies asleep, but Antonia notices, he is apprehended, all of the Slav's former victims are invited to exact revenge upon the villain until he is dead.

Several more Sicilian variants, under titles "Lu cavulicciddaru",[lower-alpha 9] "Malu cani",[lower-alpha 10] "Manu pagana",[lower-alpha 11] and "Manu virdi"[lower-alpha 12] have also been noted.[13][15][20]

(Sicilian) Listed as a variant to Lu Scavu by Pitrè, this tale from Cianciana has been summarized in brief by Pitrè and by Zipes. A mage hires three daughters to keep shop, and the ones that fall asleep are turned into stone statues. The third remains, and catches the miserable dog asleep (this is the sorcerer), giving her opportunity to reanimate her sisters.[13][20]

(Sicilian) This is tale IV in Pitrè, "Nuovo Saggio di Fiabe" (1873).[lower-alpha 13] The manu pagana, or a "heathen hand", in Sicilian superstition refers to "the hand of an unbaptized child or of a strange servant who steals secretly."[21] In this version, there are seven daughters, and the last one eats the hand by pounding it into a pill she can swallow. The antagonist is called Zu Drau (Uncle Dragon)[lower-alpha 14]

There is nothing about the mage receiving his just punishment here.[20][22]

(Sicilian) "The Story of Oh My" (Gozenbach ed.,[23] Zipes tr.[13]). In this variant, the father's profession is a woodcutter, with three granddaughters. The youngest and smartest daughter is named Maruzza (diminutive of Maria). "Ohimè!" is the desperate cry of the grandfather, which is answered by the villain of the story, because it happens to be his name. The brides are tested by being commanded to eat a dead leg (similar to the motif of the hand given to eat in Lu Scavu above).

(Tuscan) This tale, subtitled "Questa si domanda la Novella dei Tre Cavolfiori" was published in English translation by Violet Paget, collected orally in Colle di Val d'Elsa.[24][25][26]

The "cauliflowers" in the title and opening scene is evocative of the several Sicilian tales that feature broccoli-type herbage (cavuliceddu) or broccoli-gatherers. This tale is imperfect as type 311, since the heroine Francesca only makes her own escape, and is unable to rescue her two sisters (Luisa and Teresina) or the other victims, whose carcasses are hung in a closet. After drowning the tattletale lapdog, the heroine escapes from the mage ("the Mago") by bribing a carpenter into locking her in a box and tossing it in the sea. Armed with a sleep-inducing candle (made from the tallows of his victims), the Mago tracks her down in France where she has become queen. But Francesca blows out the candle, rendering the Mago helpless as he meets his death by the mob alerted by the queen's call for help.