Prunella (fairy tale)
A handsome young man asked her what her trouble was, and told her that he was Bensiabel, the witch's son; if she kissed him, he would fill the basket.
[3] The stolen plant was originally parsley (prezzemolo in Italian), as in Rapunzel, but Andrew Lang changed it to a plum and the heroine's name to Prunella.
The fairies first order Prezzemolina to bleach the black walls of a room, then paint them with all birds of the air.
Prezzemolina goes to Fata Morgana and meets four old women on the way (in Imbriani's text): the first gives her a pot of grease to use on two creeking doors; the second gives her loaves of bread to use on her guard dogs; the third a sewing thread to be given to a cobbler; and the fourth a rag to be given to a baker that is cleaning an oven with their hands.
Fata Morgana commands the baker, the cobbler, the dogs and the doors to stop her, but, due to her kind actions, Prezzemolina escapes unscathed.
First they tricked and boiled three fairy ladies in the garden house, and then went to a room where they blew out the magic candles that held the souls of all the others, including Morgan's.
[9] French comparativist Emmanuel Cosquin noted that Imbriani's Tuscan tale (Prezzemolina) contained the motif of a fairy antagonist imposing tasks on the heroine - akin to Psyche of her namesake myth -, also comparing it to Italian The Golden Root.
[10] Calvino's tale (numbered 86 in his collection) was listed by Italian scholars Alberto Maria Cirese [it] and Liliana Serafini under type AaTh 428, Il Lupo ("The Wolf") (see below).
Belèbon helps her by summoning with a whistle an army of rats that grind the wheat into flour and bake enough bread to fill the room.
She then is to use the oil on the hinges of a door, throw the bread to a dog, give the cord to a woman next to a well in the courtyard to draw water, the little broom to a cook in the kitchen to clean the oven, enter Viperine's room, get the box and escape.
The witch's sister commands the cook, the woman at the well, the dog, the door hinges and the stream to stop her, but Fragolette returns safely with the box.
Next, the ogresses order her to go to the house of Maga Soffia-e-Risoffia, steal a cage with a bird named Biscotto-Binello, and get back before nine in the evening.
Beniamino realizes his mother's trick and vows to free himself from her magic, so he plots with Prezzemolina: they approach the cauldron of boiling water and shove the witch inside.
[18][19] In his notes, Coltro remarked that the central action (heroine helped by the sorceress's son) also occurred in Basile's The Golden Root (Pentamerone, Day Five, Fourth Story).
[20] In a Veronese tale first collected in 1891 from informant Caterina Marsilli with the title La storia della Bella Parsemolina or La storia della bella Prezzemolina ("The tale of Beautiful Prezzemolina"), a pregnant woman lives next to an old ortolana woman, and steals parsley from the latter's garden to eat, until one day the ortolana discovers her.
Prezzemolina cries a bit, until the ortolana's son, Bel Giulio, offers his help: he takes out a wand and with a magic command fulfills the task for her.
Thirdly, the ortolana says she will place three roosters in the stables (a red, a black and a white one), and Prezzemolina has to guess which one will crow.
The fairies take the girl home with them and order her to prepare their food, their beds, clean the house "and everything", then leave.
Memè suggests Prezzemolina calls for the fairies to come check the cauldron, then they will shove the faires into the boiling water.
The monster takes the girl to a chamber filled to the ceiling with clothes and orders her to wash, iron and fold them, otherwise he will devour her.
Still trying to have her fail, the Ogre directs her to a mountain she must climb, enter a house and steal from there a scattoletta ('a small box').
The Ogre's son intercepts her, gives her some items and advises her how to proceed: she is to throw some pieces of bread to a pack of hungry dogs; place hay for some horses, give rope to a woman fetching water from a well with her hair, smear the hinges of a gate with grease, take the box and come back.
The son, however, conspires with the girl, opens the small box and releases fat monsters through the window, which his father eats and dies.
[23][24] In a Piemontese tale titled Mirabé, first collected from Montferrato in 1869 and published by Italian linguist Gian Luigi Beccaria [it], a woman named Prezzemolina is pregnant and starts to steal prezzemolo herbs from a neighbour fairy's garden.
Startled with the impossibilty of dividing a human girl, Prezzemolina agrees to surrender her own daughter to the fairy in one piece.
In time, the fairy takes Prezzemolina's daughter and forces her on hard tasks: first, to wash and dry hundreds of shirts; next, to fill a mattress with feathers from nightingale birds and have it ready by afternoon.
As for the third task, the fairy orders the girl to go to an aunt's house, another sorceress, and ask for a box ("scatola") with three birds inside.
Mirabé intercepts the girl and gives her provisions for the journey: some meat to be thrown to a lion and a wolf and some grease to smear on the hinges of a door.
[25][26] Professor Licia Masoni, from University of Bologna, collected two variants of Prezzemolina from two informants in Frassinoro.
[27] Folklorist D. L. Ashliman, scholar Jack Zipes and Italian scholars Alberto Maria Cirese [it] and Liliana Serafini list Prezzemolina as a variant of tale type ATU 310, "The Maiden in the Tower" (akin to German Rapunzel), of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index.
