King Crin (Italian: La storia del Re Crin) is an Italian fairy tale collected by Antonio Arietti. Italian author Italo Calvino reworked the tale as King Crin in his work Italian Folktales.
The tale is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband, wherein a human maiden marries a prince cursed to be an animal, loses him and has to search for him. According to scholars, the pig or swine as the form of the cursed husband is very popular in Italy.
Sources Calvino sourced the tale from Monteu da Po, Piedmont.Calvino, Italo. Italian Folktales. Houghton Mifflin Harcour. 1980 . p. 719. .
Summary
A king has a pig for a son, named King Crin. One day, he oinks that he wants a human wife, one of the baker's daughters. The baker's elder daughter is convinced of marrying the pig, and they celebrate the wedding. The pig prince, however, wanders through town to play in the mud, and returns to the palace to meet his wife in their wedding chambers. He jumps on the bed to caress her, and ends up dirtying her dress. The girl tries to shoo him away in disgust, and the pig threatens her. The next morning, she is found dead.
King Crin decides to marry again, this time to the baker's middle daughter. Again, befitting his porcine appearance, he dirties himself in mudpits around the city and goes back to his wife in their chambers. Once again, he dirties her dress, she complains about it, and he kills her for it.
Finally, the baker's youngest daughter marries the pig, treating him with kindness despite the pig's behaviour, and survives the night. One night, however, she lights a taper to better see her husband, and finds on her bedside a handsome youth instead of the pig. She then accidentally drops the taper on his body and he wakes up. King Crin then admonishes his wife, saying she will only find him after filling seven jars with tears, and wearing out seven pairs of iron shoes, seven iron hats and seven iron mantles, then vanishes.
The girl decides to go after her husband: after she sheds tears to fill the jars, she commissions the iron garments to begin her quest. She passes by the house of the Wind ('Vent', in the original) and its mother, and is given a chestnut. She next goes to the house of the Lightning ('Losna', in the original) and its mother, and is given a walnut, and lastly to the house of the Thunder ('Tron', in the original) and its mother, and gains a hazelnut.
At the end of her wanderings, she reaches a city where the now human King Crin is set to be married to the local princess. Following the advice of the mothers of the elements, she cracks open the nuts to find valuable items inside: the chestnut reveals gems and diamonds, the walnut produces gowns and silks; and the hazelnut yields horses and carriages. For three days, the girl bribes the local princess with the exquisite gifts so she can spend a night with her husband. She gives the gems and diamonds to the princess, who gives King Crin a sleeping potion and he cannot react to his true wife's tearful pleas. The situation repeats on the second night. On the third night, King Crin pretends to be asleep, and secretly listens to his wife's pleas. He wakes up and recognizes her, and they both go home.Arietti, Antonio; Pitrè, Giuseppe. "La Storia del Re Crin". In: Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni populari. Rivista Trimistrale. Vol. 1. 1882. pp. 424-429.Calvino, Italo. Italian Folktales. Houghton Mifflin Harcour. 1980 . pp. 57-60 (tale nr. 19). .
Analysis Tale type Philologist classified the tale as Italian type 425, Lo sposo scomparso ("The Lost Husband").D'aronco, Gianfranco "Le fiabe di magia in Italia: memoria". In: Atti dell'Accademia di scienze lettere e arti di Udine, serie 6, v. 14 (1954/1957). p. 92. The Italian type corresponds, in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, to type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband". More specifically, it is classified as subtype ATU 425A, "The Animal (Monster) as Bridegroom": the princess burns the husband's animal skin and she must seek him out, even paying a visit to the Sun, the Moon and the Wind and gaining their help.Vernaleken, Theodor. In the Land of Marvels: Folk-tales From Austria And Bohemia. London: W. S. Sonnenschein & co., 1884. pp. 359-360.Kovacs, Agnes. "Az égig éro fa meséjének magyar redakcioi és samanisztikus motivumaik" [Die ungarischen Redaktionen des Märchens vom Himmelhohen Baum (AaTh 468) und ihre schamanistischen Motive]. In: Ethnographia vol. 95, n°1 (1984). p. 23. The heroine is given marvellous objects on the way to her husband by the personifications of the elements, or by her helpers, and she uses them to bribe the false bride for a night with him. Only on the third night the heroine manages to talk to her husband and he recognizes her.Bamford, Karen. "Quest for the Vanished Husband/Lover, Motifs H1385.4 and H1385.5". In: Jane Garry and Hasan El-Shamy (eds.). Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature. A Handbook. Armonk / London: M.E. Sharpe, 2005. p. 254.
Motifs According to Hans-Jörg Uther, the main feature of tale type ATU 425A is "bribing the false bride for three nights with the husband". In fact, when he developed his revision of Aarne-Thompson's system, Uther remarked that an "essential" trait of the tale type ATU 425A was the "wife's quest and gifts" and "nights bought".
The animal husband Polish philologist Mark Lidzbarski noted that the pig prince usually appears in Romance language tales, while the hedgehog as the animal husband occurs in Germanic and Slavic tales.Lidzbarski, Mark (Hg.). Geschichten und Lieder aus den neuaramäischen Handschriften. Weimar: Verlag von Emil Felber, 1896. p. 82.
Calvino noted that "the folktale about the swine king is one of the most widespread in Italy".Calvino, Italo. Italian Folktales. Houghton Mifflin Harcour. 1980 . p. 719. . A similar opinion was given by Letterio di Francia: he concluded that in many Italian variants the prince is either transformed into a serpent or is an enchanted pig.Di Francia, Letterio (Curatore). Fiabe e novelle calabresi. Prima e seconda parte. Torino: Giovanni Chiantore. 1935. p. 33. Likewise, Swedish scholar stated that the swine as the form of the enchanted husband is "traditional" in Italy.Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. pp. 228-229. In turn, according to Greek folklorist 's quantitative analysis, among the many forms of the enchanted husband in Italian variants, he appears as a serpent in 11 tales and as a pig in 10 texts. In the same vein, according to 's Dizionario della fiaba italiana, in type 425, La ricerca dello sposo scomparso ("The Search for the Lost Husband"), in the Italian variants, the enchanted husband can assume a crab form or a pig form, although the latter is more prevalent.
Variants Italy About King Pig In a Sicilian variant collected by Laura Gonzenbach, Vom Re Porco ("About King Pig"), a queen wishes for a son, even if it is a pig, and thus one is born. Years later, the pig son wants to marry. He marries three times: the first two times, after the marriage, he plays in the mud and tries to climb onto the bride's lap, but she rejects him. On the wedding night, the pig prince takes off his skin, becomes a handsome human prince and kills his wife. With the third bride, she accepts the dirty bridegroom and her life is spared on her wedding night. She also learns her husband is an enchanted prince and must not reveal the truth to anyone. However, she tells the queen and her pig husband disappears. The princess, then, is forced to seek him out in a distant kingdom. On her journey, she meets three old hermits, who give her a hazelnut, a nut and an almond. Finally, the princess reaches the foreign queen's realm, and cracks open the hermits' presents: first, she finds a golden hen with golden chicks; next, she finds a golden toy schoolgirl and pupils; lastly, a golden eagle. The girl uses the golden objects to buy three nights in her husband's bed.
The Prince with the Pigskin In a Venetian variant, Der Prinz mit der Schweinshaut ("The Prince with the Pigskin"), an evil sorceress curses a neighbouring king so that his wife gives birth to "a prince wearing a pigskin". He marries two princesses who insult him when he dries off his body with their bridal dress and he kills them for it. He marries the third princess, who does not seen to mind his drying off his body with her dress. This pleases the pig prince, who lets her see his true form, in exchange for her keeping the secret. When they attend a tournament the next day, the Queen Mother notices the handsome man by her daughter-in-law's side and thinks it is not her son. Soon, the queen confronts the princess, who is forced to reveal the truth to her mother-in-law and the location of the pig prince's pigskin. The queen takes the pigskin from the ashbox and burns it, causing the prince to disappear. The princess goes on a quest to rescue him, by meeting the Stella d'Oro ("Abendstern"), the Sun and the Wind. She gains from each a hazelnut, a nut and an almond. The princess hires herself as a goose herd for a second spouse, and cracks opens the nuts: she finds a dress "the colour of the Stella d'Oro" in the first; a dress the colour of the sun in the second, and "an even more beautiful dress" in the third. The princess uses the three dresses to bribe for three nights with her husband.
The Pig King (Florence)