The Story of Bensurdatu is an Italian fairy tale collected by Laura Gonzenbach in Sicilianische Märchen.
When they were done eating, the princesses wandered about the garden, but when they stepped across a fence, a dark cloud enveloped them.
Two generals set out in search, but having spent all their money without finding the princesses, were forced to work as servants to repay an innkeeper for the food and drink he had given them.
The old woman there told them that the king's daughters were taken by a thick cloud, and that two were the prisoners of giants and the third of a serpent with seven heads, all at the bottom of a river.
They lowered him on a rope, and gave him a bell to ring when he wanted to be pulled back up; he quickly lost his courage and rang it.
Soon after he developed his classification of folktales, Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne published, in 1912, a study on the collections of the Brothers Grimm, Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn, Danish folklorist Svend Grundtvig, Swiss scholar Laura Gonzenbach and Alexander Afanasyev.
[2] This typing was corroborated by professor Jack Zipes, who also classified the tale as AaTh 301, "Quest for a Vanished Princess".
[3] According to Reinhold Köhler's annotations on the tale, the story belongs to a Märchen cycle of a youth that rescues three princesses from their captivity in a subterranean realm and is betrayed by his companions.