The Bay-Tree Maiden

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The Bay-Tree Maiden
Folk tale
NameThe Bay-Tree Maiden
Also known asFata din dafin
Data
Aarne–Thompson grouping407
MythologyRomanian
CountryRomania

The Bay-Tree Maiden (Romanian: Fata din dafin) is a Romanian fairy tale about a fairy or maiden that comes out of a tree or plant and falls in love with a human prince.[1]

Published sources[]

This tale was originally collected and published by I. C. Fundescu (ro) with the name Fata din dafinu, in 1875.[2]

According to Laura Regneala, a version of the tale, titled Fata din Dafin, was written down by Romanian folklorist G. Dem. Teodorescu in 1878, but was only published in 1894, in the magazine Ateneul Român, on the January 15th edition.[3]

Synopsis[]

Once, a prince began to cry six weeks before he was due to be born. Nothing his mother did placated him until she promised him that he could marry Sanda-Lucsandra, a fair maiden who lived past nine lands and nine seas. When he grew up, however, he demanded that his parents marry him to her, and when the queen confessed she had made up Sanda-Lucsandra, he set out in search of her. He came to a great bay tree. While the prince rested under it, he heard a verse being pronounced, calling a maiden out, and a beautiful maiden came out. He seduced her, promising to marry her, and sneaked away the next morning. He came to a castle, where the master claimed that his own daughter was Sanda-Lucsandra and a wedding was arranged.

The maiden could no longer get back into the bay tree, and so set out in search of the prince. She traded her clothing, unsuitable for travel, with a monk. Then she found the carriage where the prince was bringing his bride back. The prince took her up and she told the story of seeing a maiden weeping in the meadow because a prince had seduced her, and she could no longer get into the bay tree. He had her tell it to him again and again.

At his parents' castle, on the wedding day, the monk vanished. The prince went to the room and found the monk hanging by the neck. When he went to cut her down, he realized she was a woman, and the maiden, and that he had not married the true Sanda-Lucsandra. He sent back the false bride and married the maiden from the bay tree.

Translations[]

The tale was translated from the original Romanian into English with the title The Daughter of the Rose.[4]

Variants[]

In Teodorescu's variant, the tree maiden calls the tree Dafinul-verde ("Green Laurel"). She is still seduced by the prince and disguises herself as a monk. Before the prince's wedding with the false bride, he unmasks the tree maiden.[5]

According to Laura Regneala, Teodorescu's tale was translated into French as La Fée du Laurier Vert ("The Fairy of the Green Laurel"), and published by Jules Brun in a 1896 compilation of Romanian fairy tales.[6]

Romanian author Cristea Sandu Timoc collected another Romanian variant with the same name, from a 35-year-old teller named Stani Meila.[7]

Analysis[]

Tale type[]

Romanian scholarship classified the story in the then Aarne-Thompson Index as type AaTh 652A, "The Myrtle".[8][9] This tale type refers to a myrtle born of a human woman; from the myrtle comes out a beautiful maiden or fairy, who the prince falls in love with.[10] However, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, in his revision of the Aarne-Thompson Index, in 2004, subsumed type AaTh 652A (and others about a flower girl) under only one type: ATU 407, "The Girl as Flower".[11]

Writer and folklorist Cristea Sandu Timoc stated that the title Fata din Dafin is another name for the tale type ATU 408, The Love for Three Oranges, in variants from southern Romania.[12]

According to scholars Anna Angelopoulou and Aigle Broskou, Greek variants of former tale type 407A, "The Bayberry Child" (now subsumed under ATU 407), may involve a mother wishing for a child, even if it is some sort of plant. In regards to the ending of the tale, there are variants where the tree maiden marries the prince, and variants where both hang themselves.[13]

Related tales[]

Richard MacGillivray Dawkins noted that similar tales may begin with a mother wishing for a bayberry tree child, but, as the story continues, the daughter acts as if she lived in the tree all along - a trait "distinctively Greek", he argued. He also reported a Turkish variant where her abode is a cypress tree, and 7 other texts found in Greece.[14]

One of the Greek variants was collected from Iannina by Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn, with the title Das Lorbeerkind ("The Laurel Child"). In this tale, a childless mother prays for a child, even if it is a leaf of a laurel tree. She gives birth to a leaf that is washed away and plants itself on the ground, becoming a golden-leaved laurel tree. A prince rests nearby and a maiden comes out of the laurel tree by chanting a command for the tree. She is seduced and abandoned by the prince, and trades her clothes for a dervish's garments and horse.[15] Another Greek variant was collected by William Roger Paton in Mytilene, from Mersini.[16]

von Hahn cited a Wallachian tale from Banat, collected by the Schott brothers, with the title Die Waldjungfrau Wunderschön. In this story, the heroine lives in a bed atop a tree she calls Dafin. She meets a prince and is abandoned by him. She meets a monk on the way and trades clothes with him. The girl from the tree, as a monk, becomes the prince's friend, even after he marries another princess. His father discovers her true nature and hangs her. The prince, seeing that the monk was the girl from the tree, joins her sad fate.[17][18]

Mythological parallels[]

Fundescu stated that "Dafinu" was the name for the laurel tree in Romanian, and recalled the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne, the maiden transformed into her arboreal namesake.[19]

Moses Gaster and B. Heller cited the Romanian tale Fata din Dafin as a parallel to the story of prophet Isaiah hiding inside of a cedar-tree. The hamadryads of Greek mythology (dryads who live in trees) were also listed as another parallel.[20]

Fundescu associated the name "Sanda Lucsandra" with Cassandra, princess of Troy. According to him, "Lucsandra" may be connected to Leuctra, a region in Laconia where Pausanias described that Cassandra was known as "Alexandra".[21]

Romanian folklorist Petru Caraman (ro) also considered that the maiden harked back to the myth of Daphne. However, he noted that the maiden is not the tree, but lives in it. He argued that, since the maiden is described as a fairy or having immense, almost supernatural beauty, the tree maiden was something of a tree or nature goddess - a remnant of ancient tree worship.[22]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Ioana Sturdza, Raymond Vianu, Mary Lǎzǎrescu, Fairy Tales and Legends from Romania p 70 Twayne Publishers, New York. 1982.
  2. ^ Fundescu, I. C. Basme, orații, păcălituri și ghicitori. Bucuresci: Librari Editori Socec și Compania. 1875. pp. 21-26.
  3. ^ Regneală, Laura. G. Dem. Teodorescu (1849-1900). Bucharest: Biblioteca Centrală Universitară "Carol I" din București, 2008. pp. XXIX, XXXIX. ISBN 978-973-88947-0-9.
  4. ^ Mawer, E. B. Roumanian Fairy Tales And Legends. London: H.K. Lewis, 1881. pp. 42-47.
  5. ^ Teodorescu. "Fata din Dafinu". In: Ateneul român. 15 Iaunarie 1894. pp. 46-55.
  6. ^ Regneală, Laura. G. Dem. Teodorescu (1849-1900). Bucharest: Biblioteca Centrală Universitară "Carol I" din București, 2008. p. 17. ISBN 978-973-88947-0-9.
  7. ^ Sandu Timoc, Cristea. Poveşti populare româneşti. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1988. pp. 176-177 (tale nr. 79).
  8. ^ Andrei, Alexandru. Valori etice în basmul fantastic românesc. București: Societatea Literară "Relief Românesc", 1979. p. 232.
  9. ^ Sandu Timoc, Cristea. Poveşti populare româneşti. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1988. p. 407 (tale nr. 79).
  10. ^ Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Third Edition. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 [1961]. p. 228.
  11. ^ Uther, Hans-Jörg. The types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography, based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Volume 1: Animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, and realistic tales, with an introduction. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia-Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. p. 240. ISBN 9789514109560.
  12. ^ Sandu Timoc, Cristea. Poveşti populare româneşti. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1988. p. viii.
  13. ^ Angelopoulou, Anna; Broskou, Aigle. "ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΑΚΩΝ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 300-499". Tome B: AT 400-499. Athens, Greece: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ Ε.Ι.Ε. 1999. pp. 606-607.
  14. ^ Dawkins, Richard McGillivray. Modern Greek folktales. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1953. pp. 136-137.
  15. ^ Hahn, Johann Georg von. Griechische und Albanesische Märchen 1-2. München/Berlin: Georg Müller, 1918 [1864]. pp. 118-122
  16. ^ Paton, W. R. “Folktales from the Ægean. [Continued].” In Folklore 11, no. 3 (1900): 339–340. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1253134.
  17. ^ Hahn, Johann Georg von. Griechische und Albanesische Märchen 1-2. München/Berlin: Georg Müller, 1918 [1864]. pp. 347-348.
  18. ^ Schott, Arthur und Albert. Rumänische Volkserzählungen aus dem Banat. Bukarest: Kriterion, 1975. pp. 186-188.
  19. ^ Fundescu, I. C. Basme, orații, păcălituri și ghicitori. Bucuresci: Librari Editori Socec și Compania. 1875. p. 184 (footnote nr. 1.)
  20. ^ Gaster, M.; Heller, B. "Beiträge Zur Vergleichenden Sagen- Und Märchenkunde. (Fortsetzung)". In: Monatsschrift Für Geschichte Und Wissenschaft Des Judentums 80 (N. F. 44), no. 1 (1936): 34-35. Accessed August 16, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23093794.
  21. ^ Fundescu, I. C. Basme, orații, păcălituri și ghicitori. Bucuresci: Librari Editori Socec și Compania. 1875. p. 185 (footnote nr. 1.)
  22. ^ Caraman, Petru. "Xilogeneza şi litogeneza omului. Eseu despre originea şi evoluţia credinţelor în Europa Orientală" [Human Xylogenesis and Lithogenesis. Essay on the Origin and Evolution of Beliefs in Eastern Europe)]. In: Anuarul Muzeului Etnografic al Moldovei [The Yearly Review of the Ethnographic Museum of Moldavia] 16/2016. p. 49. ISSN 1583-6819.


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