"Prunella" is an Italian fairy tale, originally known as Prezzemolina. Andrew Lang included it in The Grey Fairy Book.Lang, Andrew. The Grey Fairy Book. New York: Longmans, Green, 1905. pp. 382-387. It is Aarne-Thompson type 310, the Maiden in the Tower.

Italo Calvino noted that variants were found over all of Italy.Italo Calvino, Italian Folktales p 733-4 The captor who demands his captive perform impossible tasks, and the person, usually the captor's child, who helps with them, is a very common fairy tale theme—Nix Nought Nothing, The Battle of the Birds, The Grateful Prince, or The Master Maid—but this tale unusually makes the captive a girl and the person the captor's son.

Synopsis Prunella A girl goes to school, and every day, she picks a plum from a tree along the way. She is called "Prunella" because of this. But the tree belongs to a wicked witch and one day she catches the girl. Prunella grows up as her captive.

One day, the witch sends her with a basket to the well, with orders to bring it back filled with water. The water seeps out every time, and Prunella cries. A handsome young man asks her what her trouble is, and tells her that he is Bensiabel, the witch's son; if she kisses him, he will fill the basket. She refuses because he is a witch's son, but he fills the basket with water anyway. The witch then sets her to make bread from unmilled wheat while she is gone. Prunella, knowing it is impossible, tries for a time, and then cries. Bensiabel appears. She again refuses to kiss a witch's son, but he makes the bread for her.

Finally, the witch sends her over the mountains to get a casket from her sister, knowing her sister is an even more cruel witch, who will starve her to death. Bensiabel tells her and offers to save her if she kisses him; she refuses. He gives her oil, bread, rope, and a broom, and tells her to oil the gate's hinges at his aunt's house, give a fierce dog the bread, give the rope to a woman trying to lower the bucket into the well by her hair, and give the broom to a woman trying to clean the hearth with her tongue. Then she should take the casket from the cupboard and leave at once. She does this. As she leaves, the witch calls to all of them to kill her, but they refuse because of what Prunella had given them.

The witch becomes enraged when Prunella returns. She orders Prunella to tell her in the night which cock crows, whenever one does. Prunella still refuses to kiss Bensiabel, but he tells her each time the yellow and the black cock does. When the third one crows, Bensiabel hesitates because he still hopes to get Prunella to kiss him, and Prunella begs him to save her. He springs on the witch, and she falls down the stairs and dies. Prunella is touched by his goodness and agrees to marry him, and they live happily ever after.

Translations The tale originally appeared as Prezzemolina in 1879, collected from Mantua by Isaia Visentini. The stolen plant was originally parsley (prezzemolo in Italian), as in Rapunzel, but Andrew Lang changed it to a plum and the heroine's name to Prunella. Lang did not name a source for the story.

Author Ruth Manning-Sanders adapted the tale in her work A Book of Witches, wherein the witch's son's name was given as "Benvenuto".

Imbriani's La Prezzemolina A version from Florence, Tuscany, was published in 1871 by Italian writer Vittorio Imbriani. Italo Calvino adapted it in his Italian Folktales..

Summary Prezzemolina is captured not because of her own eating, but because of her mother's craving for, and theft of, fairies' parsley. The girl is seized when going to school, but after the fairies send her to tell her mother to pay what she owed, and the mother sends back that the fairies should take it.

Memé, cousin of the fairies, helps Prezzemolina as Bensiabel does, despite her refusal of kisses. The fairies first order Prezzemolina to bleach the black walls of a room, then paint them with all birds of the air. Memé waves his magic wand and completes this task. Next, the fairies send Prezzemolina to collect a casket ("scatola del Bel-Giullare", in Imbriani's text; "Handsome Clown's box" in Calvino's; "Handsome Minstrel's box", in Zipes's) from the evil Morgan le Fay (Fata Morgana). Prezzemolina goes to Fata Morgana and meets four old women on the way (in Imbriani's text): the first gives her a pot of grease to use on two creeking doors; the second gives her loaves of bread to feed her guard dogs; the third a sewing thread to be given to a cobbler; and the fourth a rag to be given to a baker who is cleaning an oven with their hands. The last woman also advises her to enter Fata Morgana's castle and, while she is away, get the casket and run away as fast as possible. Fata Morgana commands the baker, the cobbler, the dogs and the doors to stop her, but, due to her kind actions, Prezzemolina escapes unscathed. Now at a distance, she opens the casket and a group of musicians escape from it. Memé appears and offers to close the box in exchange for a kiss. Prezzemolina declines, but Memé uses the magic wand to draw everyone back into the box. Prezzemolina then delivers the casket to the fairies. However, there was no test of identifying a rooster's crow.

In the end, Memé and Prezzemolina together destroy the evil fairies. First they trick and boil three fairy ladies in the garden house, and then enter a room where they blow out the magic candles that held the souls of all the others, including Morgan's. They then take all that had belonged to the fairies, marry, and live happily in Morgan's palace, where they are generous to the servants who had not attacked her.Causa, Cesare. I Racconti Delle Fate, Ovvero Novelle Estratte Dalle Antiche Leggende Nuovamente Raccolte E Narrate. Florence: Adriano Salani, editore, 1884. pp. 117-125.

Analysis Imbriani, commenting on the tale, noted its initial resemblance to the tale L'Orca, from the Pentamerone, but remarked that the second part of the story was close to The Golden Root.Imbriani, Vittorio. La Novellaja Fiorentina. Italia, Florence: Coi tipi di F. Vigo. 1887. p. 215 (footnote nr. 1). French comparativist Emmanuel Cosquin noted that Imbriani's Tuscan tale (Prezzemolina) contained the motif of a fairy antagonist imposing tasks on the heroine - akin to Psyche of her namesake myth -, also comparing it to Italian The Golden Root.. Access date: 25 Nov. 2022.

Calvino's tale (numbered 86 in his collection) was listed by Italian scholars and Liliana Serafini under type AaTh 428, Il Lupo ("The Wolf") (see below).

Laboulaye's Fragolette French author Édouard René de Laboulaye published a retelling in which the plant was a strawberry, the heroine was renamed "Fragolette" (from the Italian fragola), and the hero was renamed Belèbon.Laboulaye, Édouard. Derniers contes bleus. Paris: Jouvet, 1884. pp. 137-166.

In Laboulaye's tale, the action is set in Mantua. A little girl likes to pick up strawberries, and thus is nicknamed "Fragolette" ('little strawberry'). One day, she is picking up berries in the usual spot, when something strikes the back of her head. It is a witch, who takes the girl on her broom to her lair. Once there, the witch forces Fragolette to be her servant. One day, she asks the girl to take a basket to the well and fill it with water. Fragolette goes to the well to fulfill the task, but the basket cannot hold any drop of water. She begins to cry, until a soft voice inquires what is her problem; it belongs to the son of the witch, Belèbon. He asks for a kiss, but Fragolette refuses. At any rate, Belèbon breathes into the basket, fills it with water and gives it to Fragolette.

The next time, the witch tells Fragolette she will travel to Africa and gives the girl a sack of wheat; Fragolette is to use the wheat and bake some loaves of bread for her when she returns later that night. Belèbon helps her by summoning with a whistle an army of rats that grind the wheat into flour and bake enough bread to fill the room.

Later, the witch orders Fragolette to go to Viperine, the witch's sister, and get from her a strong-box. Belèbon appears to her and instructs her on how to proceed: he gives her an oil can, a bread, a cord, and a little broom. She will first cross a dirty stream, she is to compliment it for it to allow her passage. She then is to use the oil on the hinges of a door, throw the bread to a dog, give the cord to a woman next to a well in the courtyard to draw water, the little broom to a cook in the kitchen to clean the oven, enter Viperine's room, get the box and escape. Fragolette follows the instructions to the letter, but Viperine wakes up. The witch's sister commands the cook, the woman at the well, the dog, the door hinges and the stream to stop her, but Fragolette returns safely with the box.

Lastly, Fragolette is to identify between three cocks which is the one who crows. With Belèbon's help, she says it is the white one. The witch springs a trap: she jumps at the girl, but Fragolette escapes through the window, while the witch catches her foot in the window and falls, the fall breaking at once her two tusks, the source of her life and power.

After the witch dies, Fragolette is free, and Belèbon, in love with her, tries to propose to her. Some time later, she concedes, and they are happily married.Laboulaye, Edouard; Booth, Mary Louise. Last Fairy Tales. New York: Harper & Brothers [c. 1884]. pp. 65-87.Laboulaye, Édouard. Fairy Tales. Philadelphia: David McKay. pp. 112-120.Laboulaye, Édouard. Smack-Bam, or The Art of Governing Men: Political Fairy Tales of Édouard Laboulaye. Edited by Jack Zipes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. pp. 222-237. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691184487-014

Variants Prezzemolina (Genova)