Bella Venezia

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Bella Venezia is an Italian fairy tale collected by Italo Calvino in his Italian Folktales. Calvino selected this variant, where the heroine meets robbers, rather than others that contains dwarfs, because he believed the dwarfs were probably an importation from Germany.^[1]

It is Aarne-Thompson type 709, Snow White. Others of this type include Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree, Nourie Hadig, and Myrsina.^[2]

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

An innkeeper named Bella Venezia asked her customers whether they had ever seen a more beautiful woman than her. When they had not, she cut the price for their stay in half, but one day, a traveller said that he had seen such a woman: her own daughter. Bella Venezia doubles the price of his stay instead of halving it, and had her daughter shut up in a tower with a single window, but one day a traveller said that he had seen a more beautiful woman, looking from a tower. Bella Venezia asked the kitchen boy if he wanted to marry her, and promised to do so if he killed her daughter. The kitchen boy led her daughter into the forest and killed a lamb in her place.

The daughter wandered until she saw twelve robbers order a cave open and shut: "Open up, desert!" and "Close up, desert!" She sneaked inside and cleaned up the place, and then stole some of their food before hiding. The robbers set watch, but each robber waited outside, for the person to sneak in, and so did not catch her, until the chief robber waited inside and saw her. He told her not to be afraid: she could stay and be their little sister. But one day a robber went to Bella Venezia's inn, and answered that a girl they had with them was more beautiful.

A witch begged every day from the inn, and Bella Venezia promised her half her fortune if she could put an end to the daughter. The witch went into the forest as a peddlar, persuaded the girl to let her in, and while showing her a hair pin, thrust it into her head. The robbers found the body, wept, and buried her in a hollow tree.

One day, a prince went hunting, and his dogs sniffed about the tree. He took the dead body back to the castle and could not bear to be apart. His mother was angry and said that he could at least fix her hair. This revealed the pin. When it was pulled out, she woke, and the prince married her.