When administered the same test, she too was overcome by curiosity and opened the forbidden door, making the discovery that hell lay beyond it, that her sisters were there, and the man she wedded was the Devil.
Hatching an escape plan, Margerita asked the Devil to carry each of three chests to her parents, making him promise never to put it down along the way.
A dummy posing as her was affixed to the balcony (poggiolo) as if to keep watch, after which the maid helped load the chest upon the Devil's back.
[b] Then he dashed up and struck her hard in the ear, only to discover it to be a dummy made of rags, with a fake head which was only a hatmaker's mold.
The other texts that Calvino borrowed were the Bolognese version of Coronedi-Berti's "La fola del diavel" (B), and the Venetian "El Diavolo" (V).
In (P), the third daughter is clever enough to keep her promise, whereas in (WW) curiosity gets the best of her and she opens the forbidden door too, but remains undetected because she had removed the flower bouquet beforehand.
Consequently, (P) leaves unaccounted how the third daughter ever learned the fate of her sisters—which she inevitably had to know before she could have committed her next action of scheming their escape; whereas in (WW), she had discovered her sisters with other damned souls in flaming hell behind the forbidden door.
adapts from (V) where the clever daughter tells the devil she is stuffing the chest with a "bit of stuff (or clothes) to wash" (un poca de roba a lavar).
"The Slave" by Zipes,[16] and "Der Albanese" i.e. 'the Slav', by Kaden[17]) features three daughters of a cavuciliddaru (German:Kräutersammler), that is, a man who gathers or sells cavuliceddi or leafy brassica vegetables (of the cabbages, mustards, or rapes kind) for a living.
She is treated well, until one day the Slave leaves house and after making her promise to do whatever he bids her, instructs her to eat a hand with fresh flesh on it in his absence.
She gains her captor's trust, discovers the fresh corpses of her sisters and kings and princes, finds a pot of healing, whose content when administered with a brush on the severed wound restored the missing body part and revived the dead.
[g] There is an epilogue whereby the Slave tries to take revenge by transforming into an immobile statue or doll, dressed in Portuguese garb and placed in a glass cabinet, fooling the king into buying the doll as decor for his wife's chamber (Kaden's German translation is clearer on this; the original word for the furniture piece is scaffarrata, which Zipes translates as "cabinet", but is really a glass case).
[h] The Slave tries to harm her while she lies asleep, but Antonia notices, he is apprehended, all of the Slav's former victims are invited to exact revenge upon the villain until he is dead.
(Tuscan) This tale, subtitled "Questa si domanda la Novella dei Tre Cavolfiori" was published in English translation by Violet Paget, collected orally in Colle di Val d'Elsa.
[24][25][26] The "cauliflowers" in the title and opening scene is evocative of the several Sicilian tales that feature broccoli-type herbage (cavuliceddu) or broccoli-gatherers.
This tale is imperfect as type 311, since the heroine Francesca only makes her own escape, and is unable to rescue her two sisters (Luisa and Teresina) or the other victims, whose carcasses are hung in a closet.
After drowning the tattletale lapdog, the heroine escapes from the mage ("the Mago") by bribing a carpenter into locking her in a box and tossing it in the sea.
But Francesca blows out the candle, rendering the Mago helpless as he meets his death by the mob alerted by the queen's call for help.