[1] Italo Calvino included a Piedmontese variant The Snake, with some elements from a Tuscan version,[2] while noting the vast alternations between the style of Straparola's story beside the simplicity of the folktale.
When she turned ten, the snake spoke to her in the garden, telling her that she was her sister, Samaritana, and that if Biancabella obeyed her, she would be happy but miserable if she did not.
Some time later, Ferrandino had to go to war; while he was gone, his stepmother ordered her servants to take Biancabella away and kill her, bringing back proof of her death.
After a time, Biancabella asked the old man to bring her back to where she had been found, and there she called on Samaritana until she finally thought of killing herself.
Samaritana told the king the truth; Ferrandino ordered the stepmother to be thrown into a furnace, married off the old man's three daughters well, and lived happily with Biancabella until he died, and his son succeeded him.
A king learns of her existence and wishes to marry her, but the girl's wicked stepmother blinds and replaces her for her own daughter.
The blind girl is helped by a fisherman and the snake helper, regains her sight, and the king marries her.
[5] However, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, in the 2004 revision of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, reclassified the tale as an autonomous type: ATU 404, "The Blinded Bride".
In the new tale type, the heroine is blessed at birth by good spirits with the ability to produce gold with her tears and her hands, but, later in life, is blinded by a jealous rival, until a helper buys back her eyes.
[8] In addition, this form of the tale, where the heroine is helped by the snake, is "current" in Italy and Spanish tradition.