The Love for Three Oranges (fairy tale)

Italo Calvino included a variant The Love of the Three Pomegranates, an Abruzzese version known too as As White as Milk, As Red as Blood but noted that he could have selected from forty different Italian versions, with a wide array of fruit,[11] such as the version The Three Lemons, published in The Golden Rod Fairy Book.[12]

In a Sicilian variant, collected by Laura Gonzenbach, Die Schöne mit den sieben Schleiern ("The Beauty with Seven Veils"), a prince is cursed by an ogress to search high and low for "the beauty with seven veils", and not rest until he finds her. The prince meets three hermits, who point him to a garden protected by lions and a giant, In this garden, there lies three coffers, each one holding a veiled maiden inside. The prince releases the maiden, but leaves her by a tree and returns to his castle. He kisses his mother and forgets his bride. One year later, he remembers the veiled maiden and goes back to her. When he sights her, he finds "an ugly woman". The maiden was transformed into a dove.[13] Laura Gonzenbach also commented that the tale differs from the usual variants, wherein the maiden appears out of a fruit, like an orange, a citron or an apple.[14]

A scholarly inquiry by Italian Istituto centrale per i beni sonori ed audiovisivi ("Central Institute of Sound and Audiovisual Heritage"), produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, found fifty-eight variants of the tale across Italian sources.[15]

Despite a singular attestation of the tale in a Norwegian compilation of fairy tales, its source was a foreign woman who became naturalized.[16]

Variants of the tale are also present in compilations from Hungary. Scholar Hans-Jörg Uther remarks that the tale type is "quite popular" in this country, with 79 variants registered.[17] Usually, the fairy maiden comes out of a plant ("növényből").[18]

One tale was collected by László Merényi with the title A nádszál kisasszony[19] and translated by Jeremiah Curtin as The Reed Maiden.[20] In this story, a prince marries a princess, the older sister of the Reed Maiden, but his brother only wants to marry "the most lovely, world-beautiful maiden". The prince asks his sister-in-law who this person could be, and she answers it is her elder sister, hidden with her two ladies-in-waiting in three reeds in a distant land. He releases the two ladies-in-waiting, but forgets to give them water. The prince finally releases the Reed Maiden and gives her the water. Later, before the Reed Maiden is married to the prince, a gypsy comes and replaces her.

Another variant is Lovely Ilonka, collected by Elisabet Róna-Sklárek and also published by Andrew Lang. In this tale, the prince quests for a beautiful maiden to marry and asks an old lady. The old woman points him to a place where three bulrushes grow and warns him to break the bulrushes near a body of water.

In another variant by Elisabeth Rona-Sklárek, Das Waldfräulein ("The Maiden in the Woods"), a lazy prince strolls through the woods and sights a beautiful "Staude" (a perennial plant). He uses his knife to cut some of the plant and releases a maiden. Stunned by her beauty, he cannot fulfill her request for water and she disappears. The same thing happens again. In the third time, he gives some water to the fairy maiden and marries her. The fairy woman gives birth to twins, but the evil queen mother substitutes them for puppies. The babies, however, are rescued a pair of two blue woodpeckers and taken to the woods. When the king returns from war and sees the two animals, he banishes his wife to the woods.[21]

Antal Hoger collected the tale A háromágú tölgyfa tündére ("The Fairy from Three-Branched Oak Tree"). A king goes hunting in the woods, but three animals plead for their lives (a deer, a hare and a fox). All three animals point to a magical oak tree with three branches and say, if the king break each of the branches, a maiden shall appear and request water to drink. With the first two branches, the maidens die, but the king gives water to the third one and decides to marry her. They both walk towards the castle and the king says the fairy maiden should wait on the tree. A witch sees the maiden, tricks her and tosses her deep in a well; she replaces the fairy maiden with her own daughter.[22] He also cited two other variants: A tündérkisasszony és a czigányleány ("The Fairy Princess and the Gypsy Girl"), by Laszló Arányi, and A három pomarancs ("The Three Bitter Oranges"), by Jánós Érdelyi.[23]

German philologist Heinrich Christoph Gottlieb Stier (de) collected a Hungarian variant from Münster titled Die drei Pomeranzen ("The Three Bitter Oranges"): an old lady gives three princely brothers a bitter orange each and warns them to crack open the fruit near a body of water. The first two princes disobey and inadvertently kill the maiden that comes out of the orange. Only the youngest prince opens near a city fountain and saves the fairy maiden. Later, a gypsy woman replaces the fairy maiden, who turns into a fish and a tree and later hides in a piece of wood.[24] The tale was translated and published into English as The Three Oranges.[25]

In the tale A gallyból gyött királykisasszony ("The Princess from the Tree Branch"), a prince that was hunting breaks three tree branches in the forest and a maiden appears. The prince takes her to a well to wait for him to return with his royal retinue. An ugly gypsy woman approaches the girl and throws her down the well, where she becomes a goldfish.[26]

In a different variaton of the tale type, A griffmadár leánya ("The Daughter of the Griffin Bird"), a prince asks his father for money to use on his journey, and the monarch tells his son he is not to return until he is married to the daughter of the griffin bird. The prince meets an old man in the woods who directs him to a griffin's nest, with five eggs. The prince grabs all five eggs and cracks open each of them, a girl in a beautiful dress appearing out of each one. Only the last maiden survives because the prince gave her water to drink. He tells the maiden to wait by the well, but a gypsy girl arrives and, seeing the egg girl, throws her in the well and takes her place. The maiden becomes a goldfish and later a tree.[27]

English scholar A. H. Wratislaw collected the tale The Three Lemons from a Hungarian-Slovenish source and published it in his Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources. In this tale, the prince goes on a quest for three lemons on a glass hill and is helped by three old Jezibabas on his way. When he finds the lemons and cracks open each one, a maiden comes out and asks if the prince has prepared a meal for her and a pretty dress for her to wear. When he saves the third maiden, she is replaced by a gypsy maidservant who sticks a golden pin in her hair and transforms the fruit maiden into a dove.[28]

Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn collected a variant from Asia Minor titled Die Zederzitrone. The usual story happens, but, when the false bride pushed the fruit maiden into the water, she turned into a fish. The false bride then insisted she must eat the fish; when the fish was gutted, three drops of blood fell to the floor and from them sprouted a cypress. The false bride then realized the cypress was the true bride and asked the prince to chop down the tree and burn it, making some tea with its ashes. When the pyre was burning, a splinter of the cypress got lodged in an old lady's apron. When the old lady left home for a few hours, the maiden appeared from the splinter and swept the house during the old woman's absence.[29] Von Hahn remarked that this transformation sequence was very similar to one in a Wallachian variant of The Boys with the Golden Stars.[30]

The tale is said to be "very popular in the Orient".[31] Scholar Ulrich Marzolph remarked that the tale type AT 408 was one of "the most frequently encountered tales in Arab oral tradition", albeit missing from The Arabian Nights compilation.[32]

Richard McGillivray Dawkins, on the notes on his book on Modern Greek Folktales in Asia Minor, suggested a Levantine origin for the tale, since even Portuguese variants retain an Eastern flavor.[33]

A Persian variant, titled The Three Silver Citrons, was recorded by Katherine Pyle.[34]

In another Persian variant, The Orange and Citron Princess, the hero received the blessing of a mullah, who mentions the titular princess. The hero's mother advises against her son's quest for the maiden, because it would lead to his death. The tale is different in that there is only one princess, instead of the usual three.[35]

A Turkish variant, titled The Three Orange-Peris, was recorded by Hungarian folklorist Ignác Kúnos.[36] The tale was translated as The Orange Fairy in The Fir-Tree Fairy Book.[37]

In a variant from India, The Anar Pari, or Pomegranate Fairy, the princess released from the fruit suffers successive deaths ordered by the false bride, yet goes through a resurrective metamorphosis and regains her original body.[38]

As pointed by Richard McGillivray Dawkins, the Indian tale of The Bél-Princess, collected by Maive Stokes,[39] and The Belbati Princess, by Cecil Henry Bompas,[40] are "near relatives" of The Three Citrons, since the two Indian tales are about a beautiful princess hidden in a fruit and replaced by a false bride.[41]