Las barbas de plata (English: Silver Beard) is a Spanish fairy tale from Cádiz, published by Spanish scholars Julio Camarena and Maxime Chevalier. It is about the marriage between a human maiden and the Devil disguised as a suitor, but a talking mule rescues the maiden to another kingdom, where she marries a human prince. Spanish and Portuguese scholars locate similar tales in Iberian Peninsula.
Summary A widowed father has an only daughter, and issues a proclamation: he will only marry her off to a suitor with a silver beard. One day, the man is drinking his coffee, when a stranger appears to him, with the silver beard, as the proclamation stated. The stranger announces he intends to marry the man's daughter. The man calls for his daughter Mariquilla, who consents to the marriage, to be held on Saturday. Mariquilla goes to take her mule, when the animal begins to talk to Mariquilla, asking her that when Saturday comes she should bring a bag of clothes and take a ride on it, without telling anyone where she is going.
On Saturday, the stranger comes and a carriage is ready to take Mariquilla, but she takes the mule and rides away from home, reaching a distant castle by nightfall. She leaves the mule in the nearby village and takes shelter with a shepherd. A week goes by, and Mariquilla reads on the newspaper a castle is looking for a new squire to look after the horses. The girl disguises herself as a youth named Noé, takes on the job at the castle and brings the mule with her.
The prince falls for Noé, and suspects the squire is a woman. His mother, the queen, dismisses her son's ideas, but suggests they test his gender: first, invite Noé to dine with them, and, if he is a woman, she will eat many olives. Noé/Mariquilla's mule advises her to eat a single olive, in order to preserve her disguise. It happens thus. The next time, the queen suggests Noé takes a bath with the other servants. This time, the mule advises her to take the mule with her and let it loose to create a distraction; the other servants will try to rein it in, and Mariquilla can take her bath.
The mule's stratagem works twice. The third time, the queen suggests the prince, Juanillo, invites him as a sleeping companion; if Noé refuses, he is a woman. This time, the mule advises Mariquilla to reveal herself to the queen and explains the whole story. Mariquilla/Noé meets the queen and explains everything, and the queen marries her to prince Juanillo.
In time, the prince goes to war and leaves his pregnant wife at home. Mariquilla bears twins, a boy and a girl, and the queen sends a messenger to deliver a letter to the prince at the battlefield. However, the messenger meets on the way the silver-bearded suitor, who materialized a store. The messenger stays the night, and the silver-bearded suitor falsified the letter with a false information Mariquilla bore two puppies.
The messenger delivers the false letter to the prince, who writes back to his mother to keep his wife at the palace. The messenger passes by the same store and the silver-bearded falsified the second letter with a command to expel Mariquilla and the children. The second false letter arrives, the queen reads it and Mariquilla decides to fulfill the false request. She takes the children, some belongings and the mule with her, and they depart.
At a meadow, the mule tells Mariquilla to light a fire with firewood and throw the animal into the fire to burn; after it burns to cinders, blow on the ashes, and a castle will appear to her, and soon her husband and father will be with her. Mariquilla refuses to do it at first, but the mule insists she does it. Thus, with the mule's sacrifice, a splendid castle appears to house her. A person or the Virgin appears to Mariquilla, to tell her no harm will befall her.
Later, Mariquilla's husband and her father are each closing in on the castle, from different directions, and are welcomed by Mariquilla and her twins, whom they do not recognize. Her father sits with the girl on his lap and the boy on his father's lap. The girl points to her father, the prince, and says she prefers him, then bids her mother tells the group the same tale she tells the twins every night to lull them to sleep. Mariquilla has some reservations, since the two men are strangers, but relents and tells them the story of how everything transpired to her. Mariquilla's father drops dead on the spot, while the prince embraces her and his children. The family reunites, and makes their way back to the prince's palace.CAMARENA, JULIO; Maxime CHEVALIER (1995). Catálogo tipográfico del cuento folklórico español. Vol. I: Cuentos maravillosos. Madrid, Castalia. pp. 507-512.
Analysis Tale type Spanish scholars Julio Camarena and Maxime Chevalier, in their joint Spanish Folktale Index, classified the tale as a new Spanish tale type: 533A, "Caballo mágico salva a la novia del diablo" ("The Magic Horse Saves the Devil's Bride"). In this type, the heroine makes a vow to marry a suitor with a certain uncommon trait, which the Devil, in human disguise, fulfills, and tries to marry her; however, the heroine's talking horse advises her to run away, and both escape to another kingdom, where she takes on a male disguise; in the male disguise, she befriends a human prince and eventually marries him; later, the heroine is left alone at home when the demonic suitor returns and threatens her and her children, but the talking horse appears one more time to save her, defeating the Devil and creating a new home for her (a tower, a hut, or a castle).CAMARENA, JULIO; Maxime CHEVALIER (1995). Catálogo tipográfico del cuento folklórico español. Vol. I: Cuentos maravillosos. Madrid, Castalia. pp. 512-513.
According to Basque researcher , Italian folklorist located stories of the crossdressing heroine, her helpful horse and the flight from an unwanted monstruous suitor in Italy, Catalonia and Basque Country – which corresponds to Type C in Lo Nigro's study.
In a study about the European cycle of La Doncella Guerrera ("The Warrior Maiden"), French historian identified a second form of the cycle, which he termed La fille qui a épousé le diable (English: "The girl who married the devil"). In this form, the crossdressing heroine is still put to the test of her gender, but she is helped by her faithful magic horse. Delpech also concluded that the heroine's horse is the one that rescues her from a terrible marriage with a supernatural being and sets her up with a beneficial human partner.Delpech, François. ""La doncella Guerrera": chansons, contes, rituels". In: Formas breves del relato: coloquio Casa Velázquez-Departamento de Literatura Española de la Universidad de Zaragoza. Madrid, febrero de 1985. Coord. por Aurora Egido, Yves-René Fonquerne, 1986, pp. 67-68. . (In French)
Haitian anthropologist Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain studied an Haitian tale with the heroine's marriage with a monstrous bridegroom and her escape with the help of a horse. She compared the Haitian tale with African stories and a Basque tale collected by Paul Vinson, concluding that they "share the same origin". Comhaire-Sylvain also mentioned a Turkish tale (Kamertag) collected by Kúnos, which would point to an Eastern origin for the story.
Motifs According to Chilean folklorist , in some variants, the heroine is betrothed or already married to a gentleman (who is a devil in disguise), and escapes from him in a "Magic Flight" sequence. Despite the presence of the motif, these tales are not classified as type ATU 313, "The Magic Flight".
Relation to other tale types In an article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, narrative researcher Ines Köhler-Zülch stated that this narrative (heroine and magic horse save themselves from demonic bridegroom) may also start as tale type AaTh 621, "The Flea": her father, the king, fattens a louse and uses its hide as a suitor's riddle; a demonic bridegroom guesses it right.Köhler-Zülch, Ines. "Lausfell erraten (AaTh 621)" [Louse Skin (ATU 857)]. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 8: Klerus – Maggio. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 797. .
Italian scholar Sebastian Lo Nigro, in his study, noted that the motif of the sequence of falsified letters harks back to tale type ATU 706, "The Maiden Without Hands".Lo Nigro, Sebastiano. Tradizione e invenzione nel racconto popolare. Olschki, 1964. p. 78.
Variants Spain In her catalogue of Spanish sources, scholar Montserrat Amores reports few variants of Spanish type 533A, "El Caballo Mágico salva a la novia del Diablo" (English: "The Magic Horse Saves the Devil's Bride"), in Spain.Amores, Monstserrat. Catalogo de cuentos folcloricos reelaborados por escritores del siglo XIX. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Departamento de Antropología de España y América. 1997. p. 102. .
Galicia