The Story of Princess Zeineb and King Leopard (French: Histoire de la Princesse Zeineb et du Roi Léopard) is a French language fairy tale published in the 18th century. The tale belongs to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom as a subtype, with few variants reported across Europe. In it, the heroine is delivered to a cursed or enchanted prince, but breaks a taboo and loses him; later, she finds work elsewhere and wards off the unwanted advances of male suitors with the magical object her enchanted husband gave her.
Sources The tale was published by abbot and preacher Jean-Paul Bignon in the work Les Aventures d'Abdalla, fils d'Hanif, tome 2.Bignon, Jean-Paul. La suite des aventures d'Abdalla, fils d'Hanif, ou son voyage à l'île de Borico. [Paris] 1785. pp. 237-254.Le Cabinet des fées, ou Collection choisie des contes des fées, et autres contes merveilleux. Tome 13. pp. 257-277. The tale was translated into English as The History of Princess Zeineb and the King Leopard by Henry Weber,Weber, Henry; and François Pétis de La Croix. Tales of the East: Comprising the Most Popular Romances of Oriental Origin. Edinburgh: J. Ballantyne and company; [etc., etc.], 1812. pp. 687-691. and as Princess Zeineb and King Leopard by Jack Zipes.
Summary Princess Zeineb narrates her tale in first person: she is the youngest of six daughters of King Batoche, who rules the eastern part of the Isle of Gilolo. One day, her father finds a palace in a part of the island. He enter, but a voice forbids him, threatening to kill him unless he delivers one of his daughters. The king returns to tell his daughters about the event, and they see a leopard with a ferocious glare in his eyes. That same day, the leopard appears at court; every daughter tries to gather some courage to offer herself to the leopard, but only Zeineb decides to bear the burden of her father's decision.
Zeineb goes to the leopard's palace and admires the extravagance. She is served by nymphs and the leopard is no animal, but shows great wisdom and respect for Zeineb. And so they live together in the palace. However, ten months into their domestic arrangement, Zeineb begins to suspect that the leopard may be more than he seems. One night, she notices that there is someone in bed with her, and the leopard skin is strewn about on the floor. Zeineb decides to tear the animal skin to pieces and goes back to bed.
Her mysterious bedmate wakes up the next day and despairs at the torn leopard fur. He reveals he is a king, enchanted by an evil magician. Zeineb tries to explain herself. The leopard begins to calm down and teaches her a magical spell to command people. Then, the princess notices that the palace and everything has disappeared. She finds some of her previous clothes, now in tatters, puts them on and decides to beg for food and work in the world. She meets a Mussulman trader who is travelling to Borneo, and embarks on his ship.
They reach Borneo and she disembarks. After walking to deeper parts of the island, the princess moves to the city of Soucad, where she decides to take up the job of seamstress. Her business thrives and she gains enough money to hire help and buy a larger studio. Due to her successes, three local men decide to try their luck in wooing her. The first of the would be seducers dines with Zeineb. The princess thinks of a ploy to get rid of him: she has a window in her apartment that the first suitor goes to shut, and the princess uses the magical command to glue him to the window until the morning. The man enters a trance and closes the window for the whole night, then returns to his mates and lies that he spent a happy evening with the princess, which convinces the other two to try their luck. However, the other wooers are subjected to the same humiliation by princess Zeineb: she magically orders him to wind a reel of silk for the whole night, and for the third, she forces him to comb her hair for whole night.
Their passion for the princess turns to hatred and they report her to a judge, a magician. Zeineb manages to delay her trial for three months by bribing local magistrates, but she is still sentenced to be burnt alive. She is walked to her execution and the executioner prepared to deal the fatal blow, when he stays still - Zeineb is the one who paralyzed the executioner with the magical spell. The three suitors seize the opportunity to their favour and incite the populace. Suddenly, a great sound of acclamation is heard in the mob: the king of Soucad, their monarch, has returned, and wished to surprise his people. He halts the execution and releases the princess. After some moments taking in the visage of her saviour, she recognizes that the king of Soucad is the Leopard.
The king of Soucad, the same leopard, marries Zeineb and tells her the whole story: he is the legitimate heir to the throne, but his brother conspired with a magician to turn him into an animal. A sage, however, mitigated the curse by establishing an escape clause: if a princess was willing to spend a whole year with him, the curse would be lifted.
Analysis Tale type The tale has been compared to the Graeco-Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche, by Apuleius, and to "Beauty and the Beast", in that a human heroine marries a supernatural or animal husband and loses him, having to search for him.Bulletin De Folklore. Société belge de folklore, and Société de folklore wallon. Bruxelles: J. Lebeǵue & Cie., 1891. pp. 316, 317.Zipes, Jack. The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 61. . As such, it is classified, in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, as tale type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband".Robert, Raymonde; Jasmin, Nadine; Debru, Claire. Le conte de fées littéraire en France: de la fin du XVIIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Champion, 2002. p. 140. .Damman, Günther. "Conte de(s) fées". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 3: Chronikliteratur – England. Edited by Kurt Ranke; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Max Lüthi; Lutz Röhrich; Rudolf Schenda. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 137. . https://www.degruyter.com/database/EMO/entry/emo.3.031/htmlHourcade, P. (1986). "[Review of Il était une fois les fées, contes du XVIIe et du XVIIIe siècles, by R. Robert, P. Degré, & F. Freminet]". In: Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de La France, 86(4), 751. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40528627
French scholars Paul Delarue and Marie-Louise Ténèze, establishers of the French folktale catalogue, classified it as subtype 425N.Delarue, Paul. Le conte populaire français: catalogue raisonné des versions de France et des pays de langue française d'outre-mer: Canada, Louisiane, îlots français des États-Unis, Antilles françaises, Haïti, Ile Maurice, La Réunion. Volume 2. Érasme, 1957. p. 93. In subtype AaTh 425N, "Bird Husband", after losing her husband, the heroine finds work somewhere else and has to avoid the romantic advances of unwanted suitors.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . pp. 144.Delarue, Paul. Le conte populaire français: catalogue raisonné des versions de France et des pays de langue française d'outre-mer: Canada, Louisiane, îlots français des États-Unis, Antilles françaises, Haïti, Ile Maurice, La Réunion. Volume 2. Érasme, 1957. p. 109. According to Christine Goldberg, the heroine enchants the servants to be kept busy with some other task for the whole night.Goldberg, Christine. "Nächte erkauft". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 9: Magica-Literatur – Neẓāmi. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 1119. .
In his monograph about Cupid and Psyche, Swedish scholar proposed that subtype 425N derived from a type he designated as 425A, that is, "Cupid and Psyche", which contains the episode of the witch's tasks.Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. pp. 23, 344.
However, after 2004, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther updated the international catalogue and subsumed type AaTh 425N under the more general type ATU 425B, "The Son of the Witch".Oriol, Carme. «La catalogació de les rondalles en el context internacional». In: Revista d’etnologia de Catalunya, [en línia], 2007, Núm. 31, p. 94. https://raco.cat/index.php/RevistaEtnologia/article/view/74325 [Consulta: 11-08-2021].
Motifs The crow is the supernatural husband's form in Northern European variants, but in all of them the heroine receives a magical token from her husband: either a feather from the bird husband, or a ring. According to Swahn, the husband's token (feather or ring) is what allows the heroine to humiliate her unwanted suitors (akin to some variants of tale type ATU 313, "The Magic Flight"), and the feather as the token appears in German, English and Irish variants.Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. pp. 344-345. Similarly, Delarue and Thénèze described that subtype N is characterized by the motif of the tricked three youths - also found in type ATU 313.Delarue, Paul. Le conte populaire français: catalogue raisonné des versions de France et des pays de langue française d'outre-mer: Canada, Louisiane, îlots français des États-Unis, Antilles françaises, Haïti, Ile Maurice, La Réunion. Volume 2. Érasme, 1957. p. 109.
Variants According to scholar Christine Goldberg, Swahn reported 17 variants of subtype 425N across Europe, in Ireland, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and France.
Europe France