Fairy Tale Friday--La Petite Tout-Belle (Brittany 1900)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

I had been trying to go in roughly chronological order on these versions of Snow White, but found this tale from 1900 and it was too good to miss. The story of La Petite Toute-Belle (Little All-Beautiful) is a Breton fairy tale published in 1900 by Paul Sébillot in Contes Des Landes et des Grèves which according to Google translate means Tales of the Moors and Strikes. The Strikes part confuses me, so if any of my readers are fluent in French and can shed some light on it for me, I would appreciate it. According to my source, this tale was told by Jeanne-Marie Kernevivaine, from Médréac.

According to Wikipedia:

Paul Sébillot was a French folklorist, painter, and writer. Many of his works are about his native province, Brittany.  In 1881 he initiated with Charles Leclerc the publication Collection des Littératures populaires de toutes les nations (Collection of the Popular Literatures of all Nations), to which he contributed La littérature orale de la Haute-Bretagne (Oral Literature of Upper Brittany). In 1882, came the creation of the Société des Traditions populaires, which organized the Dîners de ma Mère l'Oye,(Dinners of my Mother Goose)  meetings of folklorists which gave rise to the journal of the same name.

Our tale begins not only with a jealous mother, but also with a spiteful servant. Both have taken against our protagonist--the mother for her beauty and the servant for the fact that All-Beautiful is about to snitch to her mother about the maid’s stealing. Together they conspire to kill the girl by pushing her in a well. As in tales like Mother Holle, a fall down a well might not drown you but rather land you with a magical benefactor. In this case, three dragons who love her for her beauty.

When the maid discovers that All-Beautiful is living comfortably at the bottom of a well a “nasty” fairy is employed to dispatch her. I love the word nasty here. I don’t know if that is just the translation, but it cracked me up. Anyway, as the colour red seems to be associated with death our heroine is nearly killed by red sugared almonds but falls for the old “try on this red dress sent by your mother” trick.

The dragons give her a burial at sea and her body floats away like the chest with Danae and Perseus. She is picked up by a young king who feels that her body is too rosy and fresh to be dead and tries to warm her by the fire. His mother and a servant take off the red dress to try to warm her better and she awakens. She remembers being dead and not being able to cry out and comfort the dragons who were so kind to her. I like this young king for several reasons—he does not secretly strip her naked and get a good look (and feel) of her dead  naked body. He, in the company of others, try to revive her. Then he says the most wonderful thing that he could possibly say: “All-Beautiful will be my wife, if she wants to.” If she wants to is a very progressive phrase for 1900. I cannot think of another tale where our protagonist has a choice in the matter as it is just assumed that of course she will want to marry the man who fondled her dead body.

This tale ends with the dragons being rewarded for their kindness and the mother and the maid executed for their wickedness.

source

Little All-Beautiful source

 Once upon a time there was a little girl who was so pretty that she was called All-Beautiful, and her mother was jealous of her beauty. She had a maid, a thief like a magpie, who hated her too because she was going to tell her mother everything she took from her. The wicked maid told her mistress that All-Beautiful was a liar, that she was the one who stole from her, and she repeated it so many times that she ended up making her mother believe it.

One day the lady, from whom jewellery had been taken, believed that it was All-Beautiful who had stolen it from her; she entered into a great anger and exclaimed that she would gladly give something to the person who would rid her of All-Beautiful; the maid said to her:

“All-Beautiful comes every day with me to the well; I will make her believe that a beautiful flower is seen at the bottom; as she is very curious, she will bend over to look, and I will push her into the well. Everyone will believe that she fell there while bending over.”

Her mother replied that she wanted to. The next day the maid went to the well, and when she was about to drop her bucket there, she cried out that a beautiful flower was seen. All-Belle wanted to see her, and while she was bent over, her maid pushed her and made her fall. But instead of drowning, Tout-Belle found herself in a pretty room. Soon she saw three dragons enter it and asked her how she got there. She told them, and the dragons told her they found her so pretty that they kept her to stay with them.

The next day, when the maid came to the well to draw water, Tout-Belle appeared and said to her:

“ Hello, my good servant; say hello to my mother.”

When the maid heard it, she almost fell backwards, in surprise; she ran with all her strength to the house and told her mistress that the little girl was not dead and that she had spoken to her.

So the mother went to find a nasty fairy and asked her how to kill All-Belle. The fairy gave her red sugared almonds and told her that All-Beautiful would die as soon as she had eaten them.

The next morning, when the maid went to the well, Tout-Belle attracted herself again and said to her:

“ Hello, my good servant; say hello to my mother.”

“ Hello, All-Beautiful,” replied the maid, “here are some pretty red sugared almonds that your maman is sending you.”

Tout-Belle picked up the sugared almonds and carried them to her room, but as she was going to eat them, the dragons arrived and told her that it was poison.

The next day, the maid went to the well; Tout-Belle attracted herself and said to her:

“ Hello, my good servant; say hello to my mother!”

“Hello, All-Beautiful,” replied the maid.

Then she returned home, shouting:

“Ah! Madam, I have seen Tout-Belle again, who is prettier than day.”

“How? or What!” cried the mother. "She's not dead yet! Go get me the fairy.”

When the fairy arrived, she said to her:

 “This is the second time that I have ordered you to kill this child, and she is not yet dead! If this time it escapes, I will kill you.”

“Madame,” replied the fairy, “I regret killing this little girl, because she is the most beautiful in the world; but, since you order it, here is a red dress; as soon as she puts it on, she will die.”

The next day, when the maid went to the well, Tout-Belle attracted herself and said again:

“Hello, my good servant; say hello to my mother.”

“Hello, All-Beautiful; here is a dress that your maman sends you to replace your worn one.”

Tout-Belle took the dress her maid was throwing at her, and she went to her room; it seemed so pretty to her that she wanted to put it on right away, so that the dragons would find it beautiful when they returned. But as soon as she put it on, she fell to the ground without movement.

Upon their return, the dragons saw Tout-Belle lying on the floor. They thought she was dead, and they were very sad because they loved her like their sister.

They had a shrine made where they put Tout-Belle, then they went to deposit it by the sea. When the tide came up, the reliquary was raised and began to float on the water like a boat. As long as the dragons saw it, they remained on the shore crying; but soon it disappeared from their eyes, and they thought it had sunk to the bottom of the water.

The shrine sailed for a long time on the sea; it ends up stopping on rocks near which a castle was built. The young king, who was looking out of his window, saw her and ordered his servant to go get it and bring it to his room.

When she had been transported there, the young man closed his door and opened the shrine. He saw All-Belle, who was as pretty as a day, and seemed to be sleeping. 

"Oh!” he said to himself, “she's too cool, she can't be dead. She can only be asleep.”  He lit a big fire and took the girl on his lap to see if the heat would bring her back to life.

However, the king's mother, who had not seen him for a few days, thought he was sick, and she went up to her son's room. The door was closed, and she ordered one of her maids to look through the keyhole. The servant saw the king who was trying to warm the girl and was holding her on his lap. She said so to the queen, who entered in great anger, and broke down the door. But when she entered, and saw this young girl who seemed dead, she was taken pity, and said to the king:

“Where then, my son, did you find this young person?”

"My mother," he replied, “there she was in this reliquary, which sailed on the water like a boat and stopped at the foot of the castle.”

The servant had approached Tout-Belle, and said to the queen:

 “Madame, this young girl is too pretty and too fresh to be dead; if you want, we can take off her dress to warm her up better.”

As soon as the dress was removed, Tout-Belle opened her eyes and asked, "Where am I?" "

Then the king and queen told her that she was with people who wanted to help her, and they asked her to tell her story. She told them what had happened to her until, having put on the red dress, she had fallen motionless. But, she said, I saw everything that was going on around me; I heard the crying dragons saying goodbye to me, but I couldn't speak or move.

The king sent for the three dragons, who were very happy when they saw that All-Beautiful was alive: the king rewarded them and said:

“All-Beautiful will be my wife, if she wants to; but before I marry her, I want to bring her mother and her maid.”

When they were before the king, he respectfully greeted the mother of Tout-Belle and said to her:

 “Madam, I heard that you had a young girl to marry.”

"No," she replied. “I had one, but she died.”

“What disease?”

 “She died suddenly, and I was very sad.”

“Madam, you are lying: your daughter is alive; Here she is, and she will be queen. For you and your evil maid, you will go up to the stake to be burned alive, because you are not a mother, but a stepmother.”

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a tale full of magic and transformation.