The Story of Pretty Goldilocks facts for kids
Quick facts for kids The Story of Pretty Goldilocks |
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The ambassador presents Goldilocks with the giant's head as proof of his deed.
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| Folk tale | |
| Name | The Story of Pretty Goldilocks |
| Also known as | La Belle aux cheveux d'or |
| Data | |
| Aarne–Thompson grouping | ATU 531 (The Clever Horse) |
| Region | France |
| Published in | Les Contes des Fées (1697), by Madame d'Aulnoy |
| Related |
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The Story of Pretty Goldilocks or The Beauty with Golden Hair is a French literary fairy tale written by Madame d'Aulnoy. Andrew Lang included it in The Blue Fairy Book.
It is Aarne–Thompson type 531. This type is generally called "The Clever Horse," but is known in French as La Belle aux cheveux d'or, after this tale. Other tales of this type include Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful, The Firebird and Princess Vasilisa, Corvetto, King Fortunatus's Golden Wig, and The Mermaid and the Boy.
Contents
Synopsis
A princess was so beautiful and had such golden hair that she was known as Pretty Goldilocks. A neighboring king fell in love with her from her description, but much to the king's disappointment, she rejected his ambassador, saying she had no wish to be married. A young courtier and royal favorite, called Charming, told his friends that if he had gone, she would have accepted, and the king threw him in prison. He lamented his fate, and the king, hearing, told him what he had said was the cause of it. Charming said that he would have drawn such a picture of the king as to make him irresistible to her, and the king decided to send him. On the way, he helped a carp that was out of water, a raven being chased by an eagle, and an owl caught in a net; each one promised to help him.
When he attempted to bring his master's suit before the princess, she told him that she had lost a ring in the river and was so vexed that she would not listen to any suit unless the ambassador brought back her ring. His dog, Frisk, advised him to try, and the carp brought him the ring. When he brought it to Goldilocks, she told him that a giant who was a prince had tried to marry her and was troubling her subjects. She could not listen unless he killed the giant. He went to fight it, and with the raven's aid in pecking the giant's eyes during the fight, he succeeded. Goldilocks refused unless he brought her some water from the Fountain of Health and Beauty, and the owl fetched the water for him.
The princess agreed then and made preparations to go and marry the king, although she at times wished they could stay, and she would marry Charming. Charming refused to be disloyal to his king.
Goldilocks married the king but remained fond of Charming, and Charming's enemies told the king that she praised him so highly, he should be jealous. The king had Charming thrown in a tower. When Goldilocks begged for his freedom, the king refused, but decided to rub his face with the water from the Fountain of Health and Beauty to please her. A maid had broken that bottle, though, and replaced it with another, not knowing the other bottle was actually a potent poison used for executing nobles by rubbing their faces with it.
Frisk came to the queen and asked her not to forget Charming, and the queen immediately released him and married him.
The name of the princess
Alternate translations to the name of the tale are Princess Goldenhair, The Fair with Golden Hair The Fair Maid with Golden Locks, or Fair Goldilocks. Fair is an English word associated with beauty, and it keeps the connection between light-colored hair and good qualities, like kindness and beauty.
The ritual of rejuvenation or beautification
In many variants, the last item the hero must quest for is the "milk of fiery mares", which will grant beauty, strength and vigour after a special ritual. Russian folklorist Alexander Afanasyev mentioned that these equine characters come from the sea. When the princess uses the magical milk, the horse helper uses its breath to protect the hero, by inhaling the fumes or by cooling the mixture. When the kingly rival steps in, he is killed in the process.
When the emperor or king uses the ointment or magical water, a mix-up happens: the maid or a lady-in-waiting accidentally breaks the flask and, in a hurry, unknowingly substitutes the broken vial with poison. This theme is also widespread in French literary and oral tradition, under the theme of La Jeune Fille aux cheveux d'or et l'Eau de la mort et de la vie: a king, emperor or sultan becomes enamored with a princess or lady of royal birth, famed for her golden hair, and sends an emissary (a knight, a page, an ambassador) to win her over in his stead. When the dame is brought before her would-be suitor, she seizes the opportunity to dispose of him, by performing an elaborate ritual involving the holy water, or bath. After the deed is done, her kingly suitor is (accidentally or deliberately) killed, and she is free to marry the emissary.
Variants
Origins
Professor Stith Thompson remarked that the geographic distribution of the tale pointed to "an unbroken line through the Caucasus, the Near East, India, Cambodia, and the Philippines", which suggested an Eastern point of origin, "possibly from India". Its dissemination is also said to be limited "to Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey and India".
A quantitative study, published by folklorist Sara Graça da Silva and anthropologist Jamshid J. Tehrani in 2016, seemed to indicate that the tale type shows a certain antiquity: based on a phylogenetic model, both researchers estimated that the ATU 531 type belongs to an ancestral tale corpora of the Indo-Iranian languages and the Western branch of the Indo-European languages.
Predecessors
A predecessor to the tale penned by Madame d'Aulnoy is Livoretto, an Italian literary fairy tale by Giovanni Straparola, in his The Facetious Nights.
Distribution
Europe
Despite its origins as a literary tale penned by Madame d'Aulnoy, the story shares many recognizable themes and motifs with many tales collected from oral tradition and folklore, such as those by the Brothers Grimm. For example, Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful. In French sources, d'Aulnoy's tale has been reported to have influenced at least 5 of the 51 versions collected.
The character of the foreign princess of an exotic, sometimes fictional, country appears in French variant La princesse de Tronkolaine ("The Princess of Tronkolaine").
The episode where the king tries to get rid of his rival by bathing in a vat of a special mixture or using the ointment/holy water the hero collected also happens in Romanian fairy tale The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy, published in 1901 in Andrew Lang’s The Violet Fairy Book. A similar event happens in Russian fairy tale The Firebird and Princess Vasilisa and in French/Breton fairy tale King Fortunatus's Golden Wig (Barvouskenn ar roue Fortunatus).
The character of the lovely maiden with golden hair also appears in Slavic fairy tales, with the name Dieva Zlato Vláska or simply Zlatovláska, meaning Goldenhair. As such, the fairy tale was adapted into the Czech film Zlatovláska (Goldilocks, Czechoslovakia, 1973).
A variant in Spanish has been collected by writer Fernán Caballero, titled Bella-Flor. The tale has been translated into English and published in Andrew Lang's The Orange Fairy Book, with the name The Princess Bella-Flor.
According to Professor Bronislava Kerbelytė, the tale type is reported to register two hundred Lithuanian variants, under the banner The Clever Horse, with and without contamination from other tale types.
Asia
A Filipino variant, titled Benito, the faithful servant, has been collected and published in The Journal of American Folklore.
Variants of tale have been identified in the works of Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube and British orientalist William Crooke.
Legacy
The tale was one of many from d'Aulnoy's pen to be adapted to the stage by James Planché, as part of his Fairy Extravaganza. He translated the tale as The Fair One with Golden Locks for the stage.
