The Story of King Pig (Corsican: U Purcellu; French: L'histoire du Roi-Porc) is a Corsican fairy tale, collected by Ghjuvan Ghjaseppiu Franchi. It concerns a prince born in pig form who marries three times, but kills the first two brides for a perceived rudeness and spares the third one due to her kindness. Eventually, she betrays his secret and has to search for him, finding him on the verge of marrying another bride.
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.
Summary In this tale, a king and a queen are married, but cannot have children. The doctors, apothecaries, oracles, healers and magicians cannot help her, since the queen is infertile. One day, the queen walks through a narrow street, spots a sow with its young, and wishes she could be the one in place of the sow. In time, the queen becomes pregnant, to the king's and the kingdom's happiness, but the queen gives birth to a pig. The kingdom laments that the prince is a pig, but the monarchs make the best of the situation and raise the pig son as befits a royal prince, with large accommodations and a royal basin, but their son is still a pig.
When he is old, he sings some verses that he wishes to be married, lest he destroys the city. A nurse brings the news to the queen, who is astonished that her pig son spoke and wants a bride. The king goes over whose family can provide a daughter, from the noblemen to the generals, the soldiers, when he thinks about the miller and his three beautiful daughters. The king goes to talk to the miller in person and tries to convince him to arrange a marriage between their children. The eldest daughter overhears their exchange and declares she wishes to marry the prince, unaware he is a pig. The king takes the miller's elder daughter and organizes the wedding: the girl is wearing a blue dress dotted with stars and the pig prince is decked. When the wedding procession passes by a rivulet, the pig goes to play in the water, dirties himself with mud and goes to rub his body in the bride's dress, but she insults him by calling pig. For this, the pig pierces the bride with his tusks, the wedding is postponed and the monarchs take him back.
Some time later, the prince announces he wishes to be married again, lest he destroys the city. The king goes to talk to the miller to let the middle daughter marry the pig prince, but the miller accuses the pig of killing his elder daughter. Still, the middle daughter overhears the exchange and states her wish to marry the prince, thinking she will be the reigning princess in case of her pig husband's incapacity. During the wedding procession, the second bride is wearing a dress coloured like the summer sky, and they pass by the same rivulet. The pig prince rolls over in the mud and goes to clean himself on her dress, but she calls him pig. For this, he kills her with his tusks. The kingdom grieves for the whole affair.
The pig prince grows even larger and demands another bride. The king goes to talk to miller, who refuses to deliver his cadette, wanting to die in her place. The cadette offers herself to marry the pig prince, and the wedding procession passes by the same rivulet. The pig prince enjoys playing the mud, and the girl cleans him up with her white dress. The wedding is celebrated, and in the marital bed, the girl waits for the pig, when a handsome youth appears to her, saying he is the pig. She is incredulous at first, but the prince explains that she saved him from his spell, but she must remain silent about the secret and he will return to his pigskin in the morning. The new princess remains blissful in her wedding to the pig and acts loving towards him, which arouses the queen's suspicions.
One day, she confronts her daughter-in-law about her behaviour, but she feigns ignorance. The queen presses her for answers for some days more and the girl relents: the pig prince becomes a handsome youth at night when he removes the pigskin. The queen confirms her suspicions that her son was under a curse and wishes to hold a celebration for the occasion, but the girl makes her promise to keep the secret between them. Thus, they plan to burn the animal skin that same night. The princess justifies that she is breaking the curse as an act of love: while the prince is asleep, she burns the pigskin in the oven. When he wakes up, he asks for the skin, but the princess says she burned it. The prince chastises her, saying she will never see him again, turns into a green bird and perches on the windowsill. The princess asks for forgiveness and another chance, the prince thinks a bit on the idea and says she must do the impossible: fill seven jars with her tears and search for him by wearing down seven iron staves and seven pairs of iron shoes.
The prince flies off, and his wife prepares herself for the journey, by collecting her tears and commissioning the iron apparel from a smith. She journeys far and wide, until the shoes are all worn out and the seventh iron staff is but a stick in her hands. She traverses countries and lands, but no one knows of her husband. She reaches a hermit's house in a desert who welcomes her. He does not know the location of Green Bird, but gives her a hazelnut and directs her to another brother. She reaches the second hermit brother's house by a ravine, gains an almond, and departs for another brother's house. Lastly, she reaches a humble house at the end of the world and is welcomed by the third hermit brother. The third hermit does not know of any Green Bird in his two hundred years living there, but he has heard rumours of a bird-prince marrying a princess. The girl is surprised, since she is the prince's wife, who surpassed the tests, but the hermit explains that the prince's curse has ended, and he returned to normal, subject to the same foibles as a normal human. Before she leaves, the hermit gives her a nut, for her open in the moment of need.
The girl soldiers on and reaches the royal palace, then breaks open the hazelnut: out comes a golden hen with chicks, which she trades with the local princess for a night within its walls. The pig prince's wife has the opportunity to look for her husband and finds a set of locked doors, then calls out for the pig prince by shouting "Ghjuvà", since the tale explains his name is Ghjuvanni. She fails in the first night, and the princess expels her from the castle. The second day, she takes out the almond and cracks it open, revealing an object even more splendid than the first one, which she trades for another night to wander the palace halls. The girl goes to the locked doors and cries out for Ghjuvà, but he was given a somnifer to sleep.
Lastly, the girl cracks open the remaining nut and produces an indescribable object she trades with the princess for a last night in the palace. As for Ghjuvanni, in the morning, a servant informs the prince of the girl crying for him, since the residents cannot sleep at all due to the crying. Ghjuvà avoids drinking the herbal drink the princess offers him and opens the door when he hears his name: he finds his true wife, whom he cannot recognize due to looking like a wanderer. She breaks down in front of him, and he feels embarrassed, so he goes to talk to his future father-in-law about a riddle: he is at the shop with an offer of two she-calves, one familiar to him, and the other unfamiliar to him. The king says he should keep the she-calf he knows, and Ghjuvanni explains the whole story to the king. The local monarch releases Ghjuvanni from his engagement and he returns with his wife to their homeland.
Analysis Tale type
French scholars Paul Delarue and Marie-Louise Thèneze, establishers of the French folktale catalogue, follow 's classification:"Dans l'analyse de ce conte-type, nous nous alignons sur la décomposition en éléments faite par Jan-Ojvind Swahn dans sa récente monographie". 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. Érasme, 1957. p. 84. French type 425A (or sous-type A) follows Cupid and Psyche with the tasks; type 425B is the one with the gifts and the three nights.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. Érasme, 1957. pp. 88-90, 108.
The French 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. 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 The heroine's gifts 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 heroine gains magical fruits from her helpers which she opens and finds objects connected to a traditional female milieu (a distaff, a spindle, and a spinning wheel).
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. The prince is born as a pig due to his mother's fear or a rash desire for a son, and marries the third maiden that welcomes her, after two other girls (sisters) reject him as a potential suitor. According to Claudine Vassas, the pig appears as the prince's transformation in "many Mediterranean versions". In the same vein, professor Marie-Gracieuse Martin-Gistucci suggested that, in the Corsican area, author Straparola's tale The Pig King was the source of the local tales, since the pig appears as the animal groom in the island.
Variants The Little Red Pig