The Frog Princess
Encyclopedia : T : TH : THE : The Frog Princess
The Frog Princess is a fairy tale that exists in many versions from several countries. Russian variants include the Frog Princess or The Tsarevna Frog: Царевна Лягушка; and also Vasilisa the Wise - Василиса Премудрая.
Synposis
The king sets his sons, or an old peasant woman, her sons, to marry, and tests their chosen brides. The king may set them to shoot arrows and find their brides where the arrows land, and the youngest prince's arrow is picked up by a frog; the two older sons may already have girls picked out, but the youngest son be at a loss until a friendly frog takes pity on him and offers to marry him.The king then assigns his three prospective daughters-in-law various tasks, such as spinning cloth and baking bread. In every task the frog far outdoes the lazy brides-to-be of the older brothers. Still, the young prince is ashamed of his froggy bride, until she magically is transformed into a princess. In some versions of the story, the transformation is a reward for her good nature; in others, she is transformed by witches out of amusement; and in others, she is revealed to have been an enchanted princess all along.
Variants
In an Italian variant The Prince Who Married a Frog, included by Italo Calvino in Italian Folktales, the only variation is that the princes find their brides by using slings rather than bows and arrows.This tale is closely related to Puddocky and its variants, in which a transformed frog helps the youngest prince after the king set three tasks to his sons to determine which one is best to rule.
See also
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.