How the Devil Married Three Sisters

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How the Devil Married Three Sisters is an Italian fairy tale collected by Thomas Frederick Crane in Italian Popular Tales.^[1]

It is Aarne-Thompson type 311, the heroine rescues herself and her sisters. Another tale of this type is Fitcher's Bird.^[2]

Italo Calvino included a variant Silver Nose in his Italian Folktales, a Piedmont version that was the only one to include the silver nose, but added elements from variants from Bologna and Venice. ^[3]

1 Synopsis
2 Variants
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Once, the devil decided to marry. He prepared a house, disguised himself as a fine gentleman, and wooed in a family with three daughters. The oldest agreed to marry him. When he took her home, he forbade her to look in a door, but as soon as he left, she did so, and hellfire singed flowers she wore. She could not hide what had happened, so the devil said her curiosity would be satisfied, and threw her into hell. A few months later, he wooed the second daughter, but it happened to her as to her sister.

When he came to woo the youngest, she thought he had murdered her sisters but the match was so good, she would try to do better. She put her flowers in water before she opened the door, and realized that she was married to the devil. She pulled her two sisters out and hid them. The devil, reassured when he saw her flowers still blooming, came to love her.

She asked him to carry three chests to her parents, without putting them down on the way, and he agreed. Whenever he hesitated, thinking she could not see him, the sister she had smuggled inside shouted, "Don't put it down; I see you!" When the three chest went, with her inside, she put a dummy on the balcony to appear to watch him. He returned and discovered it was only a dummy, but when he went to her house, he found that all three of his wives were alive, and the thought of three at once made him flee.

Since then, he has not wanted to marry.

[edit] Variants

In Calvino's variant, the devil has a silver nose, and the girls are not married but hired to do housework. The youngest sends him for news of her mother, and to carry a bag of laundry with him.